CHAPTER XV
THE QUEEN AND THE CHILDREN
There had been only one drawback to the Queen's happiness during the Jubilee rejoicings, and that was the poor health of her favorite son-in-law, the Crown Prince of Germany. In the procession he had looked superbly well and strong, but his throat was giving him so much trouble that he remained in England the rest of the year, hoping that a change of climate would do him good.
Everyone loved "Our Fritz," as he was called in Germany, both his own countrymen and the English. His father, the Emperor, was over ninety and so feeble that he could not possibly live many months. Ever since that summer day on the hills of Balmoral when the Prince had given the sprig of white heather to the maiden of his choice, the Queen had hoped that Germany would unite under one emperor and that Prince Frederick William would become its ruler. The German states had united, and it was clear that the German throne would soon fall to her daughter's husband; but the physicians declared that his disease was incurable.
For several months the whole world watched for news of the beloved Emperor and his equally beloved son. Early in 1888 the Emperor died, and Queen Victoria's ambition of thirty years had come to pass; her daughter was Empress of Germany. But it was a sad accession to a throne, and the Queen forgot all about her ambitious hopes in her daughter's grief and her own. Hardly a day passed that she did not send some message of sympathy to the sorrowing wife. In three months the end came. The Emperor "Fritz," whose sufferings had been none the less because he sat on a throne, was dead. His son, the Frederick William Victor Albert who had given his young uncles so much trouble at the wedding of the Prince of Wales, now wore the German crown; but the Queen, instead of rejoicing in her daughter's being Empress of Germany, could only try as best she might to help her bear her loneliness.
No one, whether Princess Royal or Highland cottager, ever appealed to the Queen for sympathy in vain. She was always especially interested in the sick. In her Jubilee year, the women of England made her a present of $375,000, and she gave almost all of it to found an institute which should provide trained nurses for the poor in their own homes. When injured soldiers returned to England, she was never weary of going to see them, of walking down the long rows of beds, saying to one man, "I am afraid you are in great pain," to another, "England owes much to her brave soldiers." If she only asked "Where were you wounded?" or looked at a sufferer with that peculiarly sweet smile of which everyone spoke and which the photographers could never catch, he was content. Some of the hospital patients almost believed that her coming would cure them.
"Oh, it does hurt so," sobbed one little girl in a ward for children, "but if the Queen would only come and see me, I know I'd be well."
"Perhaps she will," said the nurse.
"No," cried the little one. "She went right by the door."