“I cannot say what indescribable emotions filled me,—­how much all seemed like a wonderful dream....  I advanced and embraced the Emperor, ... and then the very gentle, graceful, and evidently nervous empress.  We presented the princes and our children (Vicky, with very alarmed eyes, making very low courtesies).  The emperor embraced Bertie, and then he went upstairs, Albert leading the empress, who, in the most engaging manner, refused to go first, but at length, with graceful reluctance, did so, the emperor leading me and expressing his great gratification in being here and seeing me, and admiring Windsor.”

At dinner, on the day of his arrival, the new ruler of France seems to have charmed the queen.  “He is,” she records in her journal, “so very quiet.  His voice is low and soft. Et il ne fait pas des phrases.”

When the war was talked about, the emperor spoke of his wish to go out to the Crimea, and the queen noticed that the empress was as eager as himself that he should go.  “She sees no greater danger for him there,” she adds, “than in Paris.  She said she was seldom alarmed for him except when he went out quite alone of a morning....  She is full of courage and spirit, and yet so gentle, with such innocence and enjouement, that the ensemble is most charming.  With all her great liveliness she has the prettiest and most modest manner.”

The queen little guessed what commotion and excitement had gone on before dinner in the private apartments of the emperor and empress, when it was discovered that the case containing all the beautiful toilet prepared for the occasion had not arrived.  The emperor suggested to his wife to retire to rest on the plea of fatigue after the journey, but she decided to borrow a blue-silk dress from one of her ladies-in-waiting, in which, with only flowers in her hair, she increased the queen’s impression of her simplicity and modesty.

During the visit the emperor asked the queen where Louis Philippe’s widow, Queen Marie Amelie, was living.  She had been at Windsor Castle only a few days before, and the queen had looked sorrowfully after her as she drove away, with shabby post-horses, to her residence near Richmond.  The emperor begged her Majesty to express to Louis Philippe’s widow his hope that she would not hesitate to pass through France on any journey she might make to Spain.

There was a review of the household troops, commanded by Lord Cardigan, who had led the charge of the Light Brigade at Balaclava, and who rode the same charger.  The emperor rode a fiery, beautiful chestnut, and his horsemanship was much admired.  That evening there was a State ball at Windsor Castle, and the queen danced a quadrille with the emperor.  The queen wrote that evening in her journal:  “How strange to think that I—­the granddaughter of George III.—­should dance with the Emperor Napoleon, nephew of England’s greatest enemy, now my nearest and most intimate ally, in the Waterloo Room, and that ally living in this country only six years ago in exile, poor and unthought of!”