palling suddenness Victoria had exchanged the serene radiance of
happiness for the utter darkness of woe. In the first dreadful moments
those about her had feared that she might lose her reason, but the iron
strain within her held firm, and in the intervals between the intense
paroxysms of grief it was observed that the Queen was calm. She
remembered, too, that Albert had always disapproved of exaggerated
manifestations of feeling, and her one remaining desire was to do
nothing but what he would have wished. Yet there were moments when
her royal anguish would brook no restraints. One day she sent for the
Duchess of Sutherland, and, leading her to the Prince's room, fell
prostrate before his clothes in a flood of weeping, while she adjured
the Duchess to tell her whether the beauty of Albert's character had
ever been surpassed. At other times a feeling akin to indignation swept
over her. "The poor fatherless baby of eight months," she wrote to the
King of the Belgians, "is now the utterly heartbroken and crushed widow
of forty-two! My LIFE as a HAPPY one is ENDED! The world is gone for
ME!... Oh! to be cut off in the prime of life--to see our pure, happy,
quiet, domestic life, which ALONE enabled me to bear my MUCH disliked
position, CUT OFF at forty-two--when I HAD hoped with such instinctive
certainty that God never WOULD part us, and would let us grow old
together (though HE always talked of the shortness of life)--is TOO
AWFUL, too cruel!" The tone of outraged Majesty seems to be discernible.
Did she wonder in her heart of hearts how the Deity could have dared?

But all other emotions gave way before her overmastering determination
to continue, absolutely unchanged, and for the rest of her life on
earth, her reverence, her obedience, her idolatry. "I am anxious to
repeat ONE thing," she told her uncle, "and THAT ONE is my firm resolve,
my IRREVOCABLE DECISION, viz., that HIS wishes--HIS plans--about
everything, HIS views about EVERY thing are to be MY LAW! And NO HUMAN
POWER will make me swerve from WHAT HE decided and wished." She grew
fierce, she grew furious, at the thought of any possible intrusion
between her and her desire. Her uncle was coming to visit her, and it
flashed upon her that HE might try to interfere with her and seek
to "rule the roost" as of old. She would give him a hint. "I am ALSO
DETERMINED," she wrote, "that NO ONE person--may HE be ever so good,
ever so devoted among my servants--is to lead o