At Bruhl the Queen and the Prince were taken to the palace, where they found the Queen of Prussia, whose hostility to English and devotion to Russian interests when Lord Bloomfield represented the English Government at Berlin, are recorded by Lady Bloomfield. With the Queen was her sister-in-law, the Princess of Prussia, and the Court. The party went into one of the salons to hear the famous tatoo played by four hundred musicians, in the middle of an illumination by means of torches and coloured lamps. The Queen was reminded that she was in a land of music by hearing at a concert, in which sixty regimental bands assisted, "God save the Queen" better played than she had ever heard it before. "We felt so strange to be in Germany at last," repeats her Majesty, dwelling on the pleasant sensation, "at Bruhl, which Albert said he used to go and visit from Bonn."
The next day the visitors went to Bonn, accompanied by the King and Queen of Prussia. At the house of Prince Furstenberg many professors who had known Prince Albert were presented to the Queen, "which interested me very much," the happy wife says simply. "They were greatly delighted to see Albert and pleased to see me…. I felt as if I knew them all from Albert having told me so much about them." The experience is known to many a bride whose husband takes her proudly to his old alma mater.
The day was made yet more memorable by the unveiling of a statue to Beethoven. But, by an unlucky contretemps, the royal party on the balcony found the back of the statue presented to their gaze. The Freischutzen fired a feu-de-joie. A chorale was sung. The people cheered and the band played a Dusch—such a flourish of trumpets as is given in Germany when a health is drunk.
The travellers then went to the Prince's "former little house." The Queen writes, "It was such a pleasure for me to be able to see this house. We went all over it, and it is just as it was, in no way altered…. We went into the little bower in the garden, from which you have a beautiful view of the Kreuzberg—a convent situated on the top of a hill. The Siebengebirge (seven mountains) you also see, but the view of them is a good deal built up."
This visiting together the ground once so familiar to the Prince formed an era in two lives. It was the fulfilment of a beautiful, brilliant expectation which had been half dim and vague when the ardent lad was a quiet, diligent student, living simply, almost frugally, like the other students at the university on the Rhine, and his little cousin across the German Ocean, from whom he had parted in the homely red-brick palace of Kensington, had been proclaimed Queen of a great country. The prospect of their union was still very uncertain in those days, and yet it must sometimes have crossed his mind as he built air-castles in the middle of his reading; or strolled with a comrade along those old-fashioned streets, among their population of "wild-looking students," with long fair hair, pipes between their lips, and the scars of many a sword-duel on forehead and cheek; or penetrated into the country, where the brown peasant women, "with curious caps and handkerchiefs," came bearing their burden of sticks from the forest, like figures in old fairy tales. He must have told himself that the time might come when something like the transformation of a fairy-tale would be effected on his account; the plain living and high-thinking and college discipline of Bonn be exchanged for the dignity and influence of an English sovereign's consort. Then, perhaps, he would bring his bride to the dear old "fatherland," and show her where he had dreamt about her among his books.
At the banquet in the afternoon the accomplished King gave the Queen's health in a speech fit for a poet. He referred to a word sweet alike to British and German hearts. Thirty years before it had echoed on the heights of Waterloo from British and German tongues, after days of hot and desperate fighting, to mark the glorious triumph of their brotherhood in arms. "Now it resounds on the banks of our fair Rhine, amidst the blessings of that peace which was the hallowed fruit of the great conflict. That word is 'Victoria.' Gentlemen, drink to the health of her Majesty the Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland, and to that of her august consort."
"The Queen," remarked Bunsen, "bowed at the first word, but much lower at the second. Her eyes brightened through tears, and as the King was taking his seat again, she rose and bent towards him and kissed his cheek, then took her seat again with a beaming countenance."
After the four-o'clock dinner, the royal party returned to Cologne, and from a steamer on the Rhine saw, through a drizzle of rain which did not greatly mar the spectacle, a splendid display of fireworks and illumination of the town, in which the great cathedral "seemed to glow with fire."
We quote a picturesque description of the striking scene. "The Rhine was made one vast feu-de-joie. As darkness closed in, the dim city began to put forth buds of light. Lines of twinkling brightness darted like liquid gold or silver from pile to pile, then by the bridge of boats across the river, up the masts of the shipping, and along the road on the opposite bank. Rockets now shot from all parts of the horizon. The royal party embarked in a steamer at St. Tremond and glided down by the river. As they passed the banks blazed with fireworks and musketry. At their approach the bridge glowed with redoubled light, and, opening, let the vessel pass to Cologne, whose cathedral burst forth a building of light, every detail of the architecture being made out in delicately-coloured lamps—pinkish, with an underglow of orange. Traversing in carriages the illuminated and vociferous city, the King and his companions returned by the railroad to Bruhl."
Next morning there was a great concert at Bonn—part of the Beethoven festival, in which much fine music was given, but, oddly enough, not much of Beethoven's, to her Majesty's regret. The Queen drove to the University—in the classrooms of which the Prince had sat as a student—and saw more of the professors who had taught him, and of students similar to those who had been his class-fellows. Then she went once more to Cologne, and visited its glory, the cathedral, at that time unfinished, returning to Bruhl to hail with delight the arrival of the King and Queen of the Belgians. "It seems like a dream to them and to me to see each other in Germany," the Queen wrote once more. The passages from her Majesty's Journal read as if she were pleased to congratulate herself on being at last with Prince Albert in his native country.