"I think that everything so far is satisfactory," said Sir James Clark.( *) (*) Clarendon, II, 253-4: "One cannot speak with certainty; but it is horrible to think that such a life MAY have been sacrificed to Sir J.Clark's selfish jealousy of every member of his profession." The Earl of Clarendon to the Duchess of Manchester, December 17, 1861.
The restlessness and the acute suffering of the earlier days gave place to a settled torpor and an ever--deepening gloom.

Once the failing patient asked for music--"a fine chorale at a distance;" and a piano having been placed in the adjoining room, Princess Alice played on it some of Luther's hymns, after which the Prince repeated "The Rock of Ages." Sometimes his mind wandered; sometimes the distant past came rushing upon him; he heard the birds in the early morning, and was at Rosenau again, a boy.

Or Victoria would come and read to him "Peveril of the Peak," and he showed that he could follow the story, and then she would bend over him, and he would murmur "liebes Frauchen" and "gutes Weibchen," stroking her cheek.

Her distress and her agitation were great, but she was not seriously frightened.

Buoyed up by her own abundant energies, she would not believe that Albert's might prove unequal to the strain.