Lord Ronald Gower writes that his noble, liberty-
loving mother was very devoted to their guest, but does not add that by
so doing she shocked the sensibilities of footmen and housemaids. One of
the latter once told to another guest, a moving story of the strange
habits of "Italian brigand": "Why, marm," she said, "he was such a
common-looking person, and he would get up so awful early and go hobbling
about in the garden. One morning at six o'clock, I looked out of my
window, and there he was walking up and down, and the Duchess with him--
_my_ Duchess, walking and talking with the likes of him!"
The first public appearance of the widowed Queen was at the opening of
Parliament, in 1866. I do not know whether the splendid chair of State
she had provided for Prince Albert, in the happy old time, had been left
in its place, to smite her eyes with its gilding and her heart with its
emptiness; I do not know whether its presence or its absence would have
grieved her most; but every sorrowing widow knows what it is to look on
her husband's vacant chair. It does not matter whether it is made of
rude, unpainted wood and woven rushes, or is a golden and velvet-
cushioned chair of State,--it was _his_ seat, and he is gone! Queen
Victoria must have felt that day, in her lonely grandeur, like crying out
with Constance,
"_Here I and Sorrow sit.
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