Already the Queen, who was still at Balmoral, had heard of the disastrous outbreak of diphtheria in the Darmstadt royal family. It attacked every member in succession, the youngest, Princess Marie, a child of four years of age, dying on the 16th of November. It was supposed that the Duchess had caught the infection from having once, in an abandonment of sorrow for the death of her little daughter, forgotten the necessary precautions, and rested her head on the Duke's pillow. Her case was dangerous from the first, and she gave orders lest she should die, but did not seem to expect death. In her sleep she was heard to murmur, "Four weeks—Marie—my father." On the morning before she died she read a letter from her mother. Her last words when waking from sleep, she took the refreshment offered her, were, "Now I will again sleep quietly for a longer time." Then she fell back into the slumber from which she never awoke. She died on the 14th December, exactly four weeks from the death of her child, and seventeen years from the death of her father. She was thirty-five years of age. Princess Alice was a woman of rare qualities and remarkable benevolence.
The Prince of Wales and Prince Leopold went to Darmstadt and followed the funeral from the church to the Rosenhöhe, where all that was mortal of Princess Alice rests beside the dust of her children. A fine figure in white marble of the Princess, recumbent, clasping her little daughter to her breast, has been placed close to the spot as a token of the loving remembrance of her brothers and sisters. The engraving represents this beautiful piece of monumental sculpture.
In 1879 the Zulu war broke out. On the 11th of March Princess Louise of Prussia arrived in England, and on the 13th she was married in St. George's Chapel, Windsor, in the presence of the Queen and all the members of the royal family and the bride's father and mother, Prince and Princess Frederick Charles of Prussia. The bridegroom was supported by his brothers, the Prince of Wales and the Duke of Edinburgh. The bride walked between her father and the Crown Prince of Germany, and was followed by eight noble bridesmaids. The Duke of Connaught was in his twenty-ninth and Princess Louise of Prussia in her nineteenth year. Their residence is Bagshot Park.
Twelve days later the Queen left with Princess Beatrice and, travelling by Cherbourg and Paris, reached Lake Maggiore on the 28th. Immediately after their arrival the news came of the death, from diphtheria of one of the Crown Princess of Germany's sons, Prince Waldemar of Prussia, a fine boy of eleven years of age.
Her Majesty left on the 23rd of April, and returned by Milan, Turin,
Paris, and Cherbourg, to England.
CHAPTER XL.
BIRTH OF THE FIRST GREAT-GRANDCHILD—MARRIAGE OF THE DUKE OF ALBANY— CONCLUSION.
The Queen's first great-grandchild, the child of the Princess of Saxe-
Meiningen, was born on the 12th of May.
On her Majesty's arrival at Balmoral on the 22nd of May she went to see the granite cross erected to the "dear memory" of Alice, Duchess of Hesse, by her "sorrowing mother"
The Queen remained at Balmoral till after the 19th of June, when the melancholy tidings arrived that the Prince Imperial had been killed in the Zulu war. Her Majesty left on the 20th, and crossed over the Tay Bridge, which was destroyed in the terrible gale of the 29th December of the same year.