calmly announcing, as a family
event in which she was sure Victoria would be interested, the marriage
of her son, Montpensier--"qui ajoutera a notre bonheur interieur, le
seul vrai dans ce monde, et que vous, madame, savez si bien apprecier."
But the English Queen had not long to wait for her revenge. Within
eighteen months the monarchy of Louis Philippe, discredited, unpopular,
and fatally weakened by the withdrawal of English support, was swept
into limbo, while he and his family threw themselves as suppliant
fugitives at the feet of Victoria.

II

In this affair both the Queen and the Prince had been too much occupied
with the delinquencies of Louis Philippe to have any wrath to spare
for those of Palmerston; and, indeed, on the main issue, Palmerston's
attitude and their own had been in complete agreement. But in this the
case was unique. In every other foreign complication--and they were many
and serious--during the ensuing years, the differences between the royal
couple and the Foreign Secretary were constant and profound. There was a
sharp quarrel over Portugal, where violently hostile parties were flying
at each other's throats. The royal sympathy was naturally enlisted on
behalf of the Queen and her Coburg husband, while Palmerston gave his
support to the progressive elements in the country. It was not until
1848, however, that the strain became really serious. In that year of
revolutions, when, in all directions and with alarming frequency, crowns
kept rolling off royal heads, Albert and Victoria were appalled to find
that the policy of England was persistently directed--in Germany,
in Switzerland, in Austria, in Italy, in Sicily--so as to favour the
insurgent forces. The situation, indeed, was just such a one as the soul
of Palmerston loved. There was danger and excitement, the necessity
of decision, the opportunity for action, on every hand. A disciple of
Canning, with an English gentleman's contempt and dislike of foreign
potentates deep in his heart, the spectacle of the popular uprisings,
and of the oppressors bundled ignominiously out of the palaces they had
disgraced, gave him unbounded pleasure, and he was determined that there
should be no doubt whatever, all over the Continent, on which side in
the great struggle England stood. It was not that he had the slightest
tincture in him of philosophical radicalism; he had no philosophical
tinctures of any kind; he was quite content to be inconsistent--to