To do this involved some difficulty, as the mob, like that of Paris, was bitterly opposed to their sovereign leaving the capital; but by the management and determination of Nelson, who was greatly helped by the courage and presence of mind of Lady Hamilton, the royal family was embarked on board the “Vanguard” on the evening of December 21st.  During several previous days treasure to the amount of two and a half millions sterling was being conveyed secretly to the ship.  “The whole correspondence relative to this important business,” wrote Nelson to St. Vincent, “was carried on with the greatest address by Lady Hamilton and the Queen, who being constantly in the habits of correspondence, no one could suspect.”  On the evening of the 23d the “Vanguard” sailed, and after a most tempestuous passage reached Palermo on the 26th.  The youngest of the princes, six years old, taken suddenly with convulsions, died on the way in the arms of Lady Hamilton, whose womanly helpfulness, as well as her courage, came out strongly in this trying time.  Nelson wrote to St. Vincent:  “It is my duty to tell your Lordship the obligations which the whole royal family as well as myself are under on this trying occasion to her Ladyship.”  These scenes inevitably deepened the impression she had already made upon him, which was not to be lessened by her lapse into feminine weakness when the strain was over.  To use her own words, in a letter to her old lover, Greville, “My dear, adorable queen and I weep together, and now that is our onely comfort.”  “Our dear Lady Hamilton,” Nelson wrote again a few days later, “whom to see is to admire, but, to know, are to be added honour and respect; her head and heart surpass her beauty, which cannot be equalled by anything I have seen.”  Upon himself the brief emergency and its sharp call to action had had the usual reviving effect.  “Thank God,” he wrote to Spencer, “my health is better, my mind never firmer, and my heart in the right trim to comfort, relieve, and protect those who it is my duty to afford assistance to.”

In Palermo Nelson again lived in the minister’s house, bearing a large, if not a disproportionate, share of the expenses.  When they returned to England in 1800, Hamilton was L2,000 in his debt.  The intimacy and the manner of life, in the midst of the Neapolitan court, whose corruptness of manners both Nelson and Troubridge openly condemned, was already causing scandal, rumors of which were not long in reaching home.  “I am quite concerned,” wrote Captain Ball to Saumarez, when Nelson was about to quit the station, “at the many severe paragraphs which have been put in the newspapers respecting him and Lady Hamilton.  I am convinced that there has not been anything improper between them—­his Lordship could not fail being delighted with her accomplishments and manners, which are very fascinating.”  Lady Nelson, uneasy as a wife could not fail to be at reports affecting her husband’s honor, and threatening her own happiness, quickly formed, and