Her Majesty records in her Journal, "As for the sport itself, none of the gentlemen like this butchery." She turns quickly from the piteous slaughter to the beautiful, peaceful scenery.
A quiet Sunday was spent at Gotha. Monday was the Lieder fest, or festival of song, to which, on this occasion, not only the townspeople and villagers from all the neighbouring towns and villages came with their banners and bands, but every small royalty from far and near flocked to meet the Queen of England. These innumerable cousins repaired with the Queen to the park opposite the Schloss, and shared in the festival. The orchestra, composed of many hundreds of singers, was opposite the pavilion erected for the distinguished visitors. Among the fine songs, rendered as only Germans could render them, songs composed by Prince Albert and his brother, and songs written for the day, were sung. Afterwards there was a State dinner and a ball.
The last day had come, with its inevitable sadness. "I can't—won't think of it," wrote the Queen, referring to her approaching departure. She drove and walked, and, with her brother-in-law and his Duchess, was ferried over to the "Island of Graves," the burial-place of the old Dukes of Gotha when the duchy was distinct from that of Coburg. An ancient gardener pointed out to the visitors that only one more flower-covered grave was wanted to make the number complete. When the Duchess of Gotha should be laid to rest with her late husband and his fathers, then the House of Gotha, in its separate existence, would have passed away.
One more drive through the hayfields and the noble fir-trees to the vast Thuringerwald, and, "with many a longing, lingering look at the pine-clad mountains," the Queen and the Prince turned back to attend a ball given in their honour by the townspeople in the theatre.
On the following day the homeward journey was begun. After partings, rendered still more sorrowful by the fact that the age of the cherished grandmother of the delightful "dear" family party rendered it not very probable that she, for one, would see all her children round her again, the Duke and Duchess of Coburg went one stage with the travellers, and then there was another reluctant if less painful parting.
The Queen and the Prince stopped at the quaint little town of Eisenach, which Helen of Orleans was yet to make her home. They were received by the Grand Duke and Hereditary Duchess of Saxe-Weimar, with whom the strangers drove through the autumn woods to the famous old fortress of the Wartburg, which, in its time, dealt a deadly blow to Roman Catholicism by sheltering, in the hour of need, the Protestant champion, Luther. Like the good Protestants her Majesty and the Prince were, they went to see the great reformer's room, and looked at the ink-splash on the wall—the mark of his conflict with the devil—the stove at which he warmed himself, the rude table at which he wrote and ate, and above all, the glorious view over the myriads of tree-tops with which he must have refreshed his steadfast soul. But if Luther is the hero of the Wartburg, there is also a heroine—the central figure of that "Saint's Tragedy" which Charles Kingsley was to give to the world in the course of the next two or three years—St. Elizabeth of Thuringia, the tenderest, bravest, most tortured soul that ever received the doubtful gain of canonization. There is the well by which she is said to have ministered to her sick poor, half-way up the ascent to the Wartburg, and down in the little town nestling below, may be seen the remains of an hospital bearing her name.
From Fulda, where the royal party slept, they journeyed to Goethe's town of Frankfort, where Ludwig I., who turned Munich into a great picture and sculpture gallery, and built the costly Valhalla to commemorate the illustrious German dead, dined with her Majesty.
At Biberich the Rhine was again hailed, and a steamer, waiting for the travellers, carried them to Bingen, where their own little vessel, The Fairy, met and brought them on to Deutz, on the farther side from Cologne. The Queen says naively that the Rhine had lost its charm for them all—the excitement of novelty was gone, and the Thuringerwald had spoilt them. Stolzenfels, Ehrenbreitstein, and the Sieben-Gebirge had their words of praise, but sight-seeing had become for the present a weariness, and after Bonn, with its memories, had been left behind, it was a rest to the royal travellers—as to most other travellers at times—to turn away their jaded eyes, relinquish the duty of alert observation, forget what was passing around them, and lose themselves in a book, as if they were in England. Perhaps the home letters had awakened a little home-sickness in the couple who had been absent for a month. At least, we are given to understand that it was of home and children the Queen and the Prince were chiefly thinking when they reached Antwerp, to which the King and Queen of the Belgians had preceded them, and re-embarked in the royal yacht Victoria and Albert, though it was not at once to sail for English waters. In gracious compliance with an urgent entreaty of Louis Philippe's, the yacht was to call, as it were in passing, at Tréport.
On the morning of the 8th of September the Queen's yacht again lay at anchor off the French seaport. The King's barge, with the King, his son, and son-in-law, Prince Joinville, and Prince Augustus of Saxe- Coburg, and M. Guizot, once more came alongside. After the friendliest greetings, the Queen and Prince Albert landed with their host, though not without difficulty. The tide would not admit of the ordinary manner of landing, and Louis Philippe in the dilemma fell back on a bathing-machine, which dragged the party successfully if somewhat unceremoniously over the sands.
The Queen of the French was there as before, accompanied among others by her brother, the Prince of Salerno and his Princess, sister to the Emperor of Austria. The crowd cheered as loudly as ever; there seemed no cloud on the horizon that bright, hot day; even the plague of too much publicity and formality had been got rid of at Château d'Eu. The Queen was delighted to renew her intercourse with the large, bright family circle—two of them her relations and fast friends. "It put me so much in mind of two years ago," she declared, "that it was really as if we had never been away;" and the King had to show her his Galerie Victoria, a room fitted up in her honour, hung with the pictures illustrating her former visit and the King's return visit to Windsor.