She trusted
them, and they proved worthy of the trust.
After their return to Balmoral, the Prince wrote: "We should be happy
here were it not for that horrible Eastern complication. A European war
would be a terrible calamity. It will not do to give up all hope; still,
what we have is small."
It daily grew smaller, as the war-clouds thickened and darkened in the
political sky. During those troublous times, when some men's hearts were
failing them for fear, and some men's were madly panting for the fray,
asking nothing better than to see the Lion of England pitted against the
Bear of Russia, the Prince was in some quarters most violently and
viciously assailed, as a designing, dangerous "influence behind the
throne"--treacherous to England, and so to England's Queen. So
industriously was this monstrous slander spread abroad, that the story
went, and by some simple souls was believed, that "the blameless Prince"
had been arrested for high treason, and lodged in the Tower! Some had it
that he had gone in through the old Traitors' Grate, and that they were
furbishing up the old axe and block for his handsome head! Then the rumor
ran that the Queen had also been arrested, and was to be consigned to the
grim old fortress, or that she insisted on going with her husband and
sharing his dungeon.
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