One morning the Queen records
that on going to the Prince she found him looking very wretched: "He did
not smile, or take much notice of me. His manner all along was so unlike
himself, and he had sometimes, such a strange, wild look." In the evening
she writes: "I found my Albert most dear and affectionate and quite
himself, when I went in with little Beatrice, whom he kissed. He laughed
at some of her new French verses which I made her repeat, then he. held
her little hand in his for some time, and she stood looking, at him."
For several days he wished to be read to, and the Queen and faithful
Alice read his favorite authors; he also asked for music, and Alice
played for him some fine German airs. He even wished often to look at a
favorite picture, one of Raphael's Madonnas, saying, "It helps me through
the day."
At length the fever took on a typhoid form, congestion of the lungs set
in, and there was no longer reason for hope,--though they did hope, till
almost the last hour. Now, it seems that from the first, even when he did
not apparently suffer, except from mortal weariness, there were little
fatal indications. One morning he told the Queen that as he lay awake he
heard the little birds outside, and "thought of those he used to hear at
the Rosenau, in his childhood"; and on the last morning the Queen writes
that he "began arranging his hair just as he used to do when well and he
was dressing.
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