JET. 43.] HER FUNERAL. 425 



all her troubles, and behaving on every occasion with, 

 the most admirable delicacy, as well as tact. But she 

 could not control her fancy for Wood's child, which 

 amounted almost to a craze. She would have it 

 brought to play with her, not only at all hours of the 

 day, but even of the night, as she often sat up till a 

 very late hour. This was the cause of her making way 

 for the Woods, just as the Petite Victorine had been 

 the cause of her taking Bergami into her service, and 

 the sailmaker's child at Deptford, who was called 

 Billy Austin, but for whom another was substituted 

 after a few years, the child of one of her ladies in Ger- 

 many, by Prince Louis of Prussia. She had often 

 mentioned this to Lady Charlotte Lindsay and Mrs 

 Darner, but they supposed it was a jest. However, 

 when Lushington and Wilde went with the funeral to 

 Germany, and one of them presented the other to the 

 general who came to receive the body, and then said, 

 "And here is Mr Austin, of whom you have often 

 heard ;" he said, "Yes, I have often heard of Billy 

 Austin, but this is not he : this is the son of my old 

 general, Prince William, and so like him that I at once 

 knew him before you named him/' This poor lad, to 

 whom Leach, by his decision in the affair of the 

 Queen's estate, gave a considerable legacy, became a 

 good-for-nothing person, and after going to Italy, 

 where he lived near Victorine, then respectably mar- 

 ried to an Italian count, became deranged, and died 

 in a lunatic asylum. 



The funeral was attended by most of those in town 

 who had been the Queen's friends. I took Sir Eobert 

 Wilson to Hammersmith, where she lay in state, and 

 from whence the procession took place. His son. 



