“The emperor has been very nervous, if we are to believe those who stood near him and who know him well.  He was kindly and courteous, and does not look so old nor so pale as his portraits make him, and is much gayer than he is generally represented.  The visit cannot fail to be a source of great gratification to him....  I have had two long talks with him, in which he spoke very sensibly about the war and the questions du jour.  People here are sanguine about the results of the expedition to the Crimea, and very sensitive about the behavior of Admiral Sir Charles Napier.”

The prince adds in his letter, the same evening:—­

“The emperor thaws more and more.  This evening after dinner I withdrew with him to his sitting-room for half an hour before rejoining his guests, in order that he might smoke his cigarette,—­in which occupation, to his amazement, I could not keep him company.  He told me that one of the deepest impressions ever made on him was, when having gone from France to Rio Janeiro and thence to the United States, and being recalled to Europe by the rumor of his mother’s serious illness, he arrived in London directly after King William’s death, and saw you going to open parliament for the first time.”

Subsequently the prince tells the queen,—­

“We discussed all topics of home and foreign policy, material and personal, with the greatest frankness, and I can say but good of what I heard....  He was brought up in the German fashion in Germany,—­a training which has developed a German turn of mind.  As to all modern political history, so far as this is not Napoleonic, he is without information; so that he wants many of the materials for accurate judgment.”

Dickens, who was at Boulogne on this occasion, thus tells of Prince Albert’s arrival:—­

“The town looks like one immense flag, it is so decked out with streamers; and as the royal yacht approached yesterday, the whole range of the cliff-tops was lined with troops, and the artillerymen, matches in hand, stood ready to fire the great guns the moment she made the harbor, the sailors standing up in the prow of the yacht, the prince, in a blazing uniform, left alone on the deck for everybody to see,—­a stupendous silence, and then such an infernal blazing and banging as never was heard.  It was almost as fine a sight as one could see, under a deep blue sky.”

While the guest of the emperor, Prince Albert expressed to him the queen’s hope that they should see him in England, and that she should make the acquaintance of the empress.

The prince, an excellent judge of character, in a subsequent memorandum concerning his impressions, says,—­