rybody recognised that he was the real centre of the
negotiations--the actual controller of the forces and the functions
of the Crown. The process by which this result was reached had been so
gradual as to be almost imperceptible; but it may be said with certainty
that, by the close of Peel's administration, Albert had become, in
effect, the King of England.

VI

With the final emergence of the Prince came the final extinction of Lord
Melbourne. A year after his loss of office, he had been struck down by
a paralytic seizure; he had apparently recovered, but his old elasticity
had gone for ever. Moody, restless, and unhappy, he wandered like a
ghost about the town, bursting into soliloquies in public places, or
asking odd questions, suddenly, a propos de bottes. "I'll be hanged if
I do it for you, my Lord," he was heard to say in the hall at Brooks's,
standing by himself, and addressing the air after much thought. "Don't
you consider," he abruptly asked a fellow-guest at Lady Holland's,
leaning across the dinner-table in a pause of the conversation, "that
it was a most damnable act of Henri Quatre to change his religion with
a view to securing the Crown?" He sat at home, brooding for hours in
miserable solitude. He turned over his books--his classics and his
Testaments--but they brought him no comfort at all. He longed for the
return of the past, for the impossible, for he knew not what, for the
devilries of Caro, for the happy platitudes of Windsor. His friends had
left him, and no wonder, he said in bitterness--the fire was out. He
secretly hoped for a return to power, scanning the newspapers with
solicitude, and occasionally making a speech in the House of Lords. His
correspondence with the Queen continued, and he appeared from time to
time at Court; but he was a mere simulacrum of his former self; "the
dream," wrote Victoria, "is past." As for his political views, they
could no longer be tolerated. The Prince was an ardent Free Trader, and
so, of course, was the Queen; and when, dining at Windsor at the time of
the repeal of the Corn Laws, Lord Melbourne suddenly exclaimed, "Ma'am,
it's a damned dishonest act!" everyone was extremely embarrassed. Her
Majesty laughed and tried to change the conversation, but without avail;
Lord Melbourne returned to the charge again and again with--"I say,
Ma'am, it's damned dishonest!"--until the Queen said "Lord Melbourne, I
must beg you not to say anything more on this subject