In the twenty-nine years that had passed since the first of these letters was written, what a number of events had occurred!
Princess Alice, that admirable mother, had died from giving a kiss to her son Ernie, when he was suffering from diphtheria; the royal grandmother, in her turn, had died quite recently. Of the seven children whose gaiety brightened the domestic charm of the little court at Darmstadt, two had perished in a tragic fashion: Prince Fritz, first, killed by an accidental fall from a window, while playing with his brother; and Princess May, carried off in twenty-four hours, she, too, by diphtheria caught at the bedside of her sister "Aliky," the present Empress of Russia. As for the other "dear little ones," as Queen Victoria called them, they had all been dispersed by fate. "Ella" had become the Grand-duchess Serge of Russia; "Enric" had succeeded his father on the throne of Hesse; two of his sisters had married, one Prince Henry of Prussia, the other Prince Louis of Battenberg; and the last had become the wearer of the heaviest of all crowns. And now chance placed her here, before me.
I looked at her with, in my mind, the memory of all the letters which an august and kindly condescension had permitted me to read and of the gentle emotion with which the good and great Queen used to speak of the Princess Alice and of her daughter, the present Empress of Russia. Her features had not yet acquired, under the imperial diadem, that settled air of melancholy which the obsession of a perpetual danger was to give her later; in the brilliancy of her full-blown youth, which set a gladsome pride upon the tall, straight forehead; in the golden sheen of her queenly hair; in her grave and limpid blue eyes, through which shot gleams of sprightliness; in her smile, still marked by the dimples of her girlish days, I recognised her to whom the fond imagination of a justly-proud mother had awarded, in her cradle, the pretty nickname of "Sunny."
She stopped before me for a few moments. Before moving away, she said:
"I believe you are commissioned to 'look after' me?"
"That is so," I replied.
"I hope," she added, laughing, "that I shall not give you too much worry."
I dared not confess to her that it was not only worry, but perpetual anguish that her presence and the Tsar's were causing me.