ffairs in the Crimea.

She concludes with every wish for his welfare and success.

[Footnote 96: Considerable difficulty had been found in
appointing a successor to General Simpson, who had resigned
a task which he found overtaxed his powers. Sir William
Codrington was junior to three other Generals, who might
have felt aggrieved by being passed over. The sagacity of the
Prince found a way out of the difficulty by appointing two
of the three to the commands of the two _corps d'armee_ into
which the Army had, at his instance, been subdivided. See
_ante._ 22nd November, 1855, note 92.]

[Pageheading: VISIT OF KING OF SARDINIA]

_Queen Victoria to the King of the Belgians._

WINDSOR CASTLE, _5th December 1855_.

MY DEAREST UNCLE,--I must make many excuses for not writing to you
yesterday, to thank you for your kind letter of the 30th, as on Friday
and Saturday my time was entirely taken up with my _Royal_ brother,
the King of Sardinia,[97] and I had to make up for loss of time
these last days. He leaves us to-morrow at an extraordinary hour--four
o'clock in the morning (which you did once or twice)--wishing to be at
Compiegne to-morrow night, and at Turin on Tuesday. He is _eine ganz
besondere, abenteuerliche Erscheinung_, startling in the extreme in
appearance and manner when you _first_ see him, but, just as Aumale
says, _il faut l'aimer quand on le connait bien_. He is so frank,
open, just, straightforward, liberal and tolerant, with much sound
good sense. He never breaks his word, and you may rely on him, but
wild and extravagant, courting adventures and dangers, and with a very
strange, short, rough manner, an exaggeration of that short manner of
speaking which his poor brother had. He is shy in society, which makes
him still more brusque, and he does not know (never having been out of
his own country or even out in Society) what to say to the number
of people who are presented to him here, and which is, I know from
experience, a most odious thing. He is truly attached to the Orleans
family, particularly to Aumale, and will be a friend and adviser to
them. To-day he will be invested with the Order of the Garter. He is
more like a Knight or King of the Middle Ages than anything one knows
nowadays.

On Monday we go to Osborne till the 21st.

One word about Vicky. I must say that she has a quick discernment of
character, and I have never seen her take _any_ predilecti