1757.  Nelson was a stern disciplinarian, who could never brook being under discipline himself.  Nor was he ever a day without a grievance of one kind or another.  It must have been a happy deliverance to Keith when he heard the last of him in the Mediterranean, for his mental capacity at this particular stage of his history was quite defective.  No doubt Lady Hamilton and the Queen jabbered into his ears the injustice of the wrongs imposed upon him.

After the battle of Marengo the whole of Northern Italy was given up to the French by convention signed by General Milas.  The British Commander-in-Chief proceeded to Leghorn with the fugitives, to be bored, as he fretfully declared, “by Nelson craving permission to take the Queen to Palermo, and the prince and princesses to all parts of the world.”  The Queen was panic-stricken at the French successes, and besought him to allow her to sail in the Foudroyant; but Keith could not be prevailed upon to release any of his ships for such a purpose, notwithstanding Nelson’s supplications and her flow of tears.  He told Nelson that the royal lady should get off to Vienna as quickly as she could and abandon the idea of Palermo, supplementing his refusal to employ the Foudroyant in any such way.  He would only allow a frigate to escort her own frigates to Trieste.  Lady Minto wrote to her sister from Florence that Keith told the Queen that “Lady Hamilton had had command of the fleet long enough,” and then she adds, “The Queen is very ill with a sort of convulsive fit, and Nelson is staying to nurse her, and does not intend going home until he has escorted her back to Palermo.  His zeal for the public service,” she continues, “seems entirely lost in his love and vanity, and they all sit and flatter each other all day long.”

Nelson, steady in his attachment to the Queen declared that he would see her through and then continue his journey home with the Hamiltons.  They all left Leghorn together, arrived at Florence safely, were taken from Ancona to Trieste on two Russian frigates, and landed at Trieste.  The Queen of Sicily accompanied them to Vienna, and Nelson and the Hamiltons continued their triumphant journey through Germany to Hamburg.  His association with the Court of Naples was now at an end, and his real friends, believing that it had corrupted and sapped his better nature, were glad of it.  His mind at this time was filled with delusions about his future.  He repeatedly declared that he would never serve again, and from a mixture of motives he acquired happiness in the belief that he would avenge his keenly-felt wrongs by achieving oblivion.  The idea that fate held in store for him a higher and a sterner destiny never occurred to him, and he little realized that he would soon be removed from a sphere where his presence would be no longer needed.  He was, in fact, combating the very destiny he had so often sought in which he would achieve immortal glory.

XI