Had she won?  Time would show; and in the meantime she scribbled down another letter.  “Lord Melbourne must not think the Queen rash in her conduct...  The Queen felt this was an attempt to see whether she could be led and managed like a child."(*) The Tories were not only wicked but ridiculous.  Peel, having, as she understood, expressed a wish to remove only those members of the Household who were in Parliament, now objected to her Ladies.  “I should like to know,” she exclaimed in triumphant scorn, “if they mean to give the Ladies seats in Parliament?”

(*) The exclamation “They wished to treat me like a girl, but I will show them that I am Queen of England!” often quoted as the Queen’s, is apocryphal.  It is merely part of Greville’s summary of the two letters to Melbourne.  It may be noted that the phrase “the Queen of England will not submit to such trickery” is omitted in “Girlhood,” and in general there are numerous verbal discrepancies between the versions of the journal and the letters in the two books.

The end of the crisis was now fast approaching.  Sir Robert returned, and told her that if she insisted upon retaining all her Ladies he could not form a Government.  She replied that she would send him her final decision in writing.  Next morning the late Whig Cabinet met.  Lord Melbourne read to them the Queen’s letters, and the group of elderly politicians were overcome by an extraordinary wave of enthusiasm.  They knew very well that, to say the least, it was highly doubtful whether the Queen had acted in strict accordance with the constitution; that in doing what she had done she had brushed aside Lord Melbourne’s advice; that, in reality, there was no public reason whatever why they should go back upon their decision to resign.  But such considerations vanished before the passionate urgency of Victoria.  The intensity of her determination swept them headlong down the stream of her desire.  They unanimously felt that “it was impossible to abandon such a Queen and such a woman.”  Forgetting that they were no longer her Majesty’s Ministers, they took the unprecedented course of advising the Queen by letter to put an end to her negotiation with Sir Robert Peel.  She did so; all was over; she had triumphed.  That evening there was a ball at the Palace.  Everyone was present.  “Peel and the Duke of Wellington came by looking very much put out.”  She was perfectly happy; Lord M. was Prime Minister once more, and he was by her side.

VIII

Happiness had returned with Lord M., but it was happiness in the midst of agitation.  The domestic imbroglio continued unabated, until at last the Duke, rejected as a Minister, was called in once again in his old capacity as moral physician to the family.  Something was accomplished when, at last, he induced Sir John Conroy to resign his place about the Duchess of Kent and leave the Palace for ever; something more when