military conspiracies in those countries.  He never tired of talking about the courage of these two ladies, the nature of which was very different in each case.  The courage of the Queen of Portugal, he said, was resolute, but mournful and gloomy.  The example she set was good, but she cast a chill on officers and men alike.  Queen Christina—­passionate, a woman to her finger tips, careless of danger, but shedding tears of nervous excitement when the bullets smashed her windows and flew hither and thither about the apartments—­magnetised her defenders.  In the one case you cried “Welcome, Death!” in the other you shouted “Forward!” Very interesting indeed was the description Bois-le-Comte gave me of the La Granja conspiracy.  How, having been warned in the middle of the night of the danger threatening Queen Christina and her daughters, he got up in haste to hurry to their assistance, but desired, first of all, to warn the British Minister and carry him along with him.  How, when he reached the house of the minister, Mr. Villiers, afterwards Lord Clarendon, he rushed without meeting a soul into his bedroom, where the bed-curtains shook convulsively at the noise of his entrance, and the head alone of the minister appeared, saying, “I’ll follow you,” while a soft voice tried to detain him, with all the tenderest appeals in the Spanish language.  “I took myself off double quick,” said Bois-le-Comte to me; “but I had recognised the voice.”

From Amsterdam we went to the Hague, and as soon as I got there I asked to see the King.  “Let him come at once” was the reply.

King William, young-looking still, with a graceful figure and a kindly engaging face, framed with a fringe of grizzling beard, had a loud voice and a hearty laugh.  He was witty in conversation.  The Queen, whom I never saw laugh, nor even smile, talked cleverly too, but she picked her words too obviously.  Her daughter, the young Princess Sophia, now Grand-Duchess of Saxe-Weimar, was clever too.  I was watching her dance at a ball one night, wearing a pretty gown, the chief adornment of which was an eastern scarf, when her father, to whom I was talking, said, “Marmotte (her pet name in the family) looks like a Bayadere to-day.”  And indeed she had all the grace and charm of one.

My stay at the Hague was one succession of gatherings, dinners, balls, at which the cordiality of my reception never failed for one minute.  It touched me much, and I have kept a grateful memory of it, for there was some merit, on the King’s part, in its being so.  Had we not largely contributed by our support of the Belgian revolution to lessening his kingdom by one half?  And there had been yet another wound to his vanity.  In his youth King William, then Prince of Orange, full of eager bravery, had gone to serve in Spain under the Duke of Wellington.  He had been wounded in the ranks of the British army at Waterloo, and on the strength of these antecedents he had offered himself in 1815 as a candidate for