“questioned things, and did not find
     One that would answer to his mind;
     And all the world appeared unkind.”

He believed that he was a failure and he began to despair.

Yet Stockmar had told him that he must “never relax,” and he never would.  He would go on, working to the utmost and striving for the highest, to the bitter end.  His industry grew almost maniacal.  Earlier and earlier was the green lamp lighted; more vast grew the correspondence; more searching the examination of the newspapers; the interminable memoranda more punctilious, analytical, and precise.  His very recreations became duties.  He enjoyed himself by time-table, went deer-stalking with meticulous gusto, and made puns at lunch—­it was the right thing to do.  The mechanism worked with astonishing efficiency, but it never rested and it was never oiled.  In dry exactitude the innumerable cog-wheels perpetually revolved.  No, whatever happened, the Prince would not relax; he had absorbed the doctrines of Stockmar too thoroughly.  He knew what was right, and, at all costs, he would pursue it.  That was certain.  But alas! in this our life what are the certainties?  “In nothing be over-zealous!” says an old Greek.  “The due measure in all the works of man is best.  For often one who zealously pushes towards some excellence, though he be pursuing a gain, is really being led utterly astray by the will of some Power, which makes those things that are evil seem to him good, and those things seem to him evil that are for his advantage.”  Surely, both the Prince and the Baron might have learnt something from the frigid wisdom of Theognis.

Victoria noticed that her husband sometimes seemed to be depressed and overworked.  She tried to cheer him up.  Realising uneasily that he was still regarded as a foreigner, she hoped that by conferring upon him the title of Prince Consort (1857) she would improve his position in the country.  “The Queen has a right to claim that her husband should be an Englishman,” she wrote.  But unfortunately, in spite of the Royal Letters Patent, Albert remained as foreign as before; and as the years passed his dejection deepened.  She worked with him, she watched over him, she walked with him through the woods at Osborne, while he whistled to the nightingales, as he had whistled once at Rosenau so long ago.  When his birthday came round, she took the greatest pains to choose him presents that he would really like.  In 1858, when he was thirty-nine, she gave him “a picture of Beatrice, life-size, in oil, by Horsley, a complete collection of photographic views of Gotha and the country round, which I had taken by Bedford, and a paper-weight of Balmoral granite and deers’ teeth, designed by Vicky.”  Albert was of course delighted, and his merriment at the family gathering was more pronounced than ever:  and yet... what was there that was wrong?