is forehead, trying to nerve himself to go up to
the Queen. When at last he did so, she gave him a stiff nod, whereupon
he vanished immediately behind another pillar, and remained there until
the party broke up. At the time of this incident the Prince of Wales was
over fifty years of age.

It was inevitable that the Queen's domestic activities should
occasionally trench upon the domain of high diplomacy; and this was
especially the case when the interests of her eldest daughter, the
Crown Princess of Prussia, were at stake. The Crown Prince held liberal
opinions; he was much influenced by his wife; and both were detested by
Bismarck, who declared with scurrilous emphasis that the Englishwoman
and her mother were a menace to the Prussian State. The feud was still
further intensified when, on the death of the old Emperor (1888), the
Crown Prince succeeded to the throne. A family entanglement brought on
a violent crisis. One of the daughters of the new Empress had become
betrothed to Prince Alexander of Battenberg, who had lately been
ejected from the throne of Bulgaria owing to the hostility of the Tsar.
Victoria, as well as the Empress, highly approved of the match. Of the
two brothers of Prince Alexander, the elder had married another of her
grand-daughters, and the younger was the husband of her daughter, the
Princess Beatrice; she was devoted to the handsome young man; and she
was delighted by the prospect of the third brother--on the whole the
handsomest, she thought, of the three--also becoming a member of her
family. Unfortunately, however, Bismarck was opposed to the scheme.
He perceived that the marriage would endanger the friendship between
Germany and Russia, which was vital to his foreign policy, and he
announced that it must not take place. A fierce struggle between the
Empress and the Chancellor followed. Victoria, whose hatred of her
daughter's enemy was unbounded, came over to Charlottenburg to join in
the fray. Bismarck, over his pipe and lager, snorted out his alarm. The
Queen of England's object, he said, was clearly political--she wished to
estrange Germany and Russia--and very likely she would have her way. "In
family matters," he added, "she is not used to contradiction;" she would
"bring the parson with her in her travelling bag and the bridegroom in
her trunk, and the marriage would come off on the spot." But the man
of blood and iron was not to be thwarted so easily, and he asked for a
private int