ntinople she fired
off three letters in a day demanding war; and when she learnt that the
Cabinet had only decided to send the Fleet to Gallipoli she declared
that "her first impulse" was "to lay down the thorny crown, which she
feels little satisfaction in retaining if the position of this country
is to remain as it is now." It is easy to imagine the agitating effect
of such a correspondence upon Beaconsfield. This was no longer the
Faery; it was a genie whom he had rashly called out of her bottle, and
who was now intent upon showing her supernal power. More than once,
perplexed, dispirited, shattered by illness, he had thoughts of
withdrawing altogether from the game. One thing alone, he told Lady
Bradford, with a wry smile, prevented him. "If I could only," he wrote,
"face the scene which would occur at headquarters if I resigned, I would
do so at once."

He held on, however, to emerge victorious at last. The Queen was
pacified; Lord Derby was replaced by Lord Salisbury; and at the Congress
of Berlin der alte Jude carried all before him. He returned to England
in triumph, and assured the delighted Victoria that she would very soon
be, if she was not already, the "Dictatress of Europe."

But soon there was an unexpected reverse. At the General Election
of 1880 the country, mistrustful of the forward policy of the
Conservatives, and carried away by Mr. Gladstone's oratory, returned the
Liberals to power. Victoria was horrified, but within a year she was to
be yet more nearly hit. The grand romance had come to its conclusion.
Lord Beaconsfield, worn out with age and maladies, but moving still, an
assiduous mummy, from dinner-party to dinner-party, suddenly moved no
longer. When she knew that the end was inevitable, she seemed, by a
pathetic instinct, to divest herself of her royalty, and to shrink, with
hushed gentleness, beside him, a woman and nothing more. "I send some
Osborne primroses," she wrote to him with touching simplicity, "and I
meant to pay you a little visit this week, but I thought it better you
should be quite quiet and not speak. And I beg you will be very good and
obey the doctors." She would see him, she said, "when we, come back from
Osborne, which won't be long." "Everyone is so distressed at your not
being well," she added; and she was, "Ever yours very aff'ly V.R.I."
When the royal letter was given him, the strange old comedian, stretched
on his bed of death, poised it in his hand, appeared to co