Their Majesties as I Knew Them

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Title: Their Majesties as I Knew Them

Author: Xavier Paoli

Translator: Alexander Teixeira de Mattos

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Most recently updated: October 24, 2024

Language: English

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[Illustration: QUEEN AMELIE OF PORTUGAL]

THEIR MAJESTIES AS I KNEW THEM

Personal Reminiscences of the Kings and Queens of Europe

XAVIER PAOLI

Translated into English by A. Teixeira De Mattos

Illustrated

New York
Sturgis & Walton Company
1911

Set up and electrotyped. Published March, 1911

[Illustration: M. XAVIER PAOLI]

CONTENTS

CHAPTER PAGE

INTRODUCTION v

I THE EMPEROR AND EMPRESS OF AUSTRIA 3

II KING ALFONSO XIII 41

III THE SHAH OF PERSIA 81

IV THE TSAR NICHOLAS II AND THE TSARITSA ALEXANDRA FEODOROVNA 127

V THE KING AND QUEEN OF ITALY 165

VI GEORGE I, KING OF THE HELLENES 199

VII QUEEN WILHELMINA OF THE NETHERLANDS 229

VIII THE LATE KING OF THE BELGIANS 259

IX THE ENGLISH ROYAL FAMILY 301

X THE KING OF CAMBODIA AND HIS DANCING-GIRLS 329

INTRODUCTION

M. XAVIER PAOLI

THE "CHAMBERLAIN" OF THE FRENCH REPUBLIC AND THE FRIEND OF SOVEREIGNS

It was in 1903, and the King of England was making his first official
journey in France since succeeding Queen Victoria on the throne of
Great Britain. In the court of the British Embassy in Paris, where the
sovereign had taken up his residence, a group of journalists, pencil
and notebook in hand, was crowding importunate, full of questions,
around a vivacious little gentleman, very precisely dressed in black,
wearing the red rosette of the Legion of Honour in the buttonhole of
his silk-faced frock coat. An impressive silk hat, slightly tipped,
sheltered a head of abundant wavy white hair, strikingly in contrast
with the man's still youthful appearance; at the utmost he seemed to be
hardly fifty years old.

His aristocratic bearing might have been that of a diplomat of the
Empire or a Tuscan aristocrat. The sensitive features of his finely
oval face--the straight, delicately formed nose, the piercing eyes,
now bright with shrewd humour, now soft with gentle sympathy--all spoke
the judicial mind, the penetrating observation, which could scrutinise
the most secret thoughts, recognise the slightest shades of feeling.

Calmly, manfully, smilingly, with courtesy, the little gentleman
sustained the assault of the reporters and warded off their indiscreet
curiosity.

"What did the King say to M. Loubet?"

"Gentlemen, the King has told me none of his secrets."

"Did he not come for the purpose of completing a treaty of military
alliance with us, and is he not to have this evening an important
interview with the Minister of Foreign Affairs?"

"His Majesty had a very comfortable journey, is in the best of spirits,
and appears to be delighted to be in Paris."

"But--"

"His Majesty brought with him his little griffon dog, and immediately
on arriving he asked for port wine and sandwiches."

"I beg--"

"I may even say that the King will go to hear Sarah Bernhardt this
evening, and that at the present moment he is busy with his secretary
looking over the voluminous mail which has just arrived from London.
In fact--"

"Pardon me--is it true that yesterday you arrested some suspected
anarchists?"

"Anarchists? What are they?" And with these words the little gentleman
still smiling turned away, to the discomfiture of the journalists,
while certain English and French officers who, full of excitement, were
crossing the great court, saluted him with courteous deference.

This little gentleman, whom I then saw for the first time, was M.
Xavier Paoli.

When the time comes for writing the history of the Third French
Republic--not its political history, which is already sufficiently well
known, but the other, its picturesque, anecdotic, private history, that
which must be sought behind the scenes of a government, and shows the
little causes which often produced the great effects--when that history
comes to be written, it is certain that a long chapter and perhaps the
most interesting, will be devoted to M. Paoli.

He is, in fact, a unique and singular character, a personage "apart,"
extraordinarily attractive, somewhat disconcerting, but wonderfully
interesting in the group of French functionaries who have rendered real
and precious service to their country. His official title was until
very recently, and had been for twenty-five years, that of Special
Commissioner of Railways for the Ministry of the Interior. This title,
somewhat commonplace, is in itself intentionally obscure, tells nothing
of the man or his office. The old proverb says: "The habit does not
make the monk," and it may here be added that the title does not always
designate the function. Attached to the political police, but in no
respect appearing like a policeman, a sort of Sherlock Holmes, but a
very high and particular ideal of Sherlock Holmes until now unknown,
M. Paoli's three-fold and delicate mission was to watch over the
foreign sovereigns and princes who for the past twenty-five years had
been coming to France incognito, to facilitate their relations with
the government, and on the whole, to quote M. Paoli's own words "to
make their stay among us as pleasant as possible." "The guardian of
Kings," as the King of Greece one day called him, was at the same time
a keen diplomat. He, in fact, personified and filled an office which,
notwithstanding its paradoxical aspect, proved to be of incontestible
utility: he was the Grand Chamberlain of the Republic, accredited to
its imperial and royal guests.

How was he brought to take up this important and difficult duty? How
did he come to have all the necessary qualities to perform it, as he
did, with equally remarkable facility, ease and tact? Psychology makes
answer that motives must be sought in the origin, the early experience
and subsequent career of the personality with whom we are concerned.

Like the great Napoleon, for whom he has always felt a touching
adoration, M. Paoli is a Corsican. He was born in 1835 at La Porta,
a picturesque little town perched like an eagle's nest on the crest
of a hill on the eastern slope of the island, overlooking the sea,
with the Island of Elba and the coast of Tuscany in the distance. His
ancestor was that celebrated and fiery General Paoli, who at the close
of the previous century stirred up a patriotic agitation in Corsica;
on his mother's side he was a descendant of Marshal Sebastiani, who
was ambassador and minister of Foreign Affairs in the reign of Louis
Philippe. From his earliest youth, Xavier Paoli, like all Corsicans was
passionately interested in politics. In 1859 a decree of the Emperor
Napoleon III, who greatly esteemed this honourable and popular family,
nominated young Paoli mayor of La Porta. According to custom the young
official went to Ajaccio to pay his respects to the Prefect. This high
functionary, on perceiving him, could not conceal his surprise.

"I am much pleased to make your acquaintance, young man," he said,
"but I had supposed that your father would come himself."

"The trouble is that my father has been dead for several years."

"What! He has not just now been nominated mayor of La Porta?"

"No, Mr. Prefect, it was I."

He was only twenty-five years old.

Two years later, being elected Councillor General of his canton, he
united the two functions, giving to his fellow citizens an example
of precocious administrative ability and a keen appreciation of the
interests of his constituents. Local politics, however, "does not
feed its men" as the proverb says, especially when like M. Paoli, the
politician is thoroughly disinterested. The Paoli family had long been
engaged in the oil trade, but the business which once brought in a
comfortable livelihood had been declining, having been carried on with
less perseverance and attention than formerly. Young Paoli perceived
that he must not count upon the family business to make his fortune; in
fact, politics were swallowing up his modest revenue. He, therefore,
resolved to alter his plan of life, to leave the island where he had
achieved a precocious popularity, where he was esteemed and beloved.

His friends in Paris proposed to obtain for him an under-prefecture,
but he preferred a simple post of Police Magistrate at 1800 francs, to
the great scandal of his family, who considered him to have lowered
himself on entering the police service.

"Let me alone," replied M. Paoli, "I feel that my future is at stake,
and that I shall be safer in being inconspicuous."

And, in fact, when, four years later, the Empire fell, it was due to
the modesty of M. Paoli's position that he was not involved in the
fall. At the time he was police commissary in the railway station at
Modena on the Italian frontier, and he had the tact to make himself so
useful to the new Prefect that although he by no means paid court to
the new government, like so many others, the latter was glad to confirm
him in his functions. The Modena station was an important outpost of
observation and inspection on the great European highway, princes
incognito, statesmen on their travels, Italian anarchists leaving their
country on some mysterious mission--all passed that way. Not one of
them escaped M. Paoli's vigilant eye. This humble position afforded
him the opportunity to show his great qualifications of perspicacity
and tact. He was sent to Nice, and other cosmopolitan centres, where
all classes and peoples meet and mingle; before long he was called to
Paris. It was at this juncture, and thanks to Queen Victoria, that his
mission as "Guardian of Kings" became clear.

The French Republic was at that time by no means "persona grata" at
foreign courts. The daughter of the Commune of 1871, her cap still
vaguely besmirched, her acts problematical, they were all afraid of
her, hardly daring to receive or to visit her. And yet some line of
conduct must be adopted: it was not possible always to keep under ban
the lovely land of France.

A little King of no importance--I think it was the King of
Wurtemburg--was the first to risk himself among us. He was M. Paoli's
first client.

When at last the Queen of England, upon the advice of her physicians,
decided to exchange the chill banks of the Thames for the sunny
gardens of the Côte d'Azur, it was to M. Paoli that the government
of the Republic intrusted the duty of doing the honours of the
French territory and assuring her safety during her sojourn among
us. He acquitted himself of this delicate task with such success as
immediately gained the confidence of the venerable Queen to such
an extent that she desired her ambassador to write to the French
Minister of Foreign Affairs that thenceforth she wished that no other
functionary than M. Paoli should watch over her during her visits to
France. Each year, therefore, she found him faithful to his charge,
awaiting her arrival either at Cherbourg or Calais.

From this time, M. Paoli became the indispensable personage for all
the sovereigns and princes who undertook to visit our country, and
therefore indispensable to the Republican government, who found in
M. Paoli a perfect intermediary between itself and them. During
twenty-five years he successively escorted to our watering places and
seashore resorts fifteen emperors or kings, half a dozen empresses and
queens, and countless numbers of princes of the blood, grand dukes and
other princely globe trotters. He was admitted to their confidences,
understood their impressions. To most of them, who continually saw our
ministers appear and disappear, and who each time they came received
the homage of new personages, M. Paoli personified the Republic which,
with whatever petty quarrels and changes of officials, was always
calm and smiling to its guests in the drawing-room. France, indeed,
profited by the precious friendship which M. Paoli won for himself. "He
is a model functionary, he has made the Republic beloved by Kings,"
exclaimed M. Félix Faure one day in my presence. And I remember another
striking reflection of the regretted President.

As he came out of the hotel of the Empress of Austria where he had been
visiting at Cap Martin, some one asked him what had been the subject
of his interview with the sovereign.

"The Empress, gentlemen, spoke of nothing except of M. Paoli, whose
courtesy and tact she praised without reserve."

What tribute could have been more flattering, indeed, than the
invitation which he received from Queen Victoria to be present at her
jubilee, and to accept the hospitality of Buckingham Palace? And after
her death the royal family begged him to be present at her obsequies,
and during all the sad solemnities treated him as a faithful and
devoted friend.

And finally, what finer recognition of the "Protector of Sovereigns"
than the remark of the King of England--then the Prince of Wales--when
in the railway station of Brussels he was fired upon by the young
anarchist Sipido--"If Paoli had been here," he said, "the rascal would
have been arrested before he could use his weapon."

In fact, M. Paoli was always able to shield his clients from painful
surprises and dramatic dangers. His art was always to appear ignorant
of the fact that there were anarchists in the world, while at the same
time keeping them constantly under the strictest watch. I believe that
he was popular even among them, and that their esteem for this just and
good man was so great that they would not, for anything in the world,
have caused him--annoyance!

It is a curious fact that he never carried a weapon. The King of Siam
was greatly disconcerted when he learned that M. Paoli had been charged
to protect him during his visit to France in 1896.

"But where are your pistols and your poniards?" he would ask him every
few minutes.

M. Paoli appears to cherish no vanity on account of the august
interest with which he has been honoured, and the important part which
during twenty-five years he has performed with as much intelligence
as precision. He is still the affable and simple man which he always
was. He may be the most decorated functionary in France--he possesses
forty-two foreign decorations--but these seem to make him neither
prouder nor happier. His only joy is to live quietly in his retreat,
among his memories. His very modest apartment is a museum such as has
no equal, harbouring all the sovereigns of yesterday and of to-day.
Alphonso XIII and his young wife are in company with the royal pair of
Italy, the Emperor of Russia seems to be conversing with the Emperor of
Austria, the Queen of Saxony receives the salutation of the King of the
Bulgarians, while listening to the poems which the Queen of Roumania
appears to be reciting to her. The aged King Christian is smiling upon
his innumerable grandchildren, the Prince of Wales is talking with his
son, the Shah of Persia gazes upon the Bey of Tunis; and dominating all
these crowned heads, the good Queen Victoria smiling from her golden
frame, looks happily around upon all her family. To these photographs,
each with its precious autograph, are added most touching testimonials
of affection and esteem, letters entirely written by sovereign hands,
jewels of inestimable price, the gifts of august clients. M. Paoli is
in fact the only Frenchman who can at one time wear a cravat pin given
by the Emperor of Austria, a watch offered by the King of Greece, a
chain presented by Queen Victoria, a cane from the King of Sweden, a
cigarette holder from the Emperor of Russia, a match box from the King
of England, and--I cease, for the list would be interminable.

As may easily be perceived, the "Guardian of Kings" has often been
asked to write his memoirs. One cannot have been intimate with
sovereigns for twenty-five years and not have a whole book--many
volumes, indeed--of impressions and memories in the brain. But
precisely because he has been the travelling companion of illustrious
guests of the nation, he has believed himself bound to absolute silence
and a perhaps excessive discretion.

Happily, arguments have at last prevailed over these exaggerated
scruples. M. Paoli has come to perceive that by relating his personal
recollections, he would be making a useful contribution to the history
of our time, correcting many errors which have slipped voluntarily or
involuntarily into accounts of certain contemporary sovereigns.

M. Paoli has therefore yielded to persuasion, and has committed
to writing the story of his many journeys in the company of
Kings, reviving his memories of former days. I have been happy in
collaborating with this interesting and charming man, and I hope that
our readers may enjoy as happy hours in reading these memories as I
myself have enjoyed in hearing them related to me.

RENE LARA.

ILLUSTRATIONS

Queen Amelie of Portugal _Frontispiece_

FACING PAGE

M. Xavier Paoli v

The Empress of Austria 15

The Emperor and Empress of Austria 30

The King of Spain, Princess Henry of Battenberg, Princess
Victoria Eugenia and M. Paoli 47

The King and Queen of Spain and Baby 62

The Shah of Persia 95

The Shah leaving the Élyseé Palace 110

The Emperor and Empress of Russia and the Grand
Duke Alexis 127

The Empress of Russia and the Grand Duchess Marie 142

The King and Queen of Italy 175

The King and Queen of Italy and the Crown Prince 190

King George of Greece in the Streets of Paris 206

Queen Wilhelmina 232

King Leopold II 271

Princess Clémentine 286

King Edward VII 303

King Edward arriving at the Élyseé Palace 318

King Edward on the way to Church 318

The King of Cambodia 328

King Sisowath's Dancers before the President at the
Élyseé Palace 344

THEIR MAJESTIES AS I KNEW THEM

THE EMPEROR AND EMPRESS OF AUSTRIA

The infinitely fascinating and melancholy image of the Empress
Elizabeth of Austria represents a special type among all the royal and
imperial majesties to whose persons I have been attached during their
different stays in France; and this both on account of her life, which
was one long romance, and of her death, which was a tragedy.

Hers was a strong, sad soul; and she disappeared suddenly, as in a
dream of terror. She hovers round my memory crowned with the halo of
unhappiness.

The first time that I saw her was at Geneva; and I cannot recall
this detail without emotion, for it was at Geneva that she was to
die under the assassin's dagger. At the end of August, 1895, the
Government received notice from the French Embassy in Vienna that the
Empress was about to visit Aix-les-Bains in Savoy. She was to travel
from her palace of Miramar through Italy and Switzerland; and, as
usual, I received my formal letter of appointment from the Ministry
of the Interior, instructing me to go and meet the Empress at the
International railway-station at Geneva.

I confess that, when I stepped into the train, I experienced a keen
sense of curiosity at the thought that I was soon to find myself in the
presence of the lady who was already surrounded by an atmosphere of
legend and who was known as "the wandering empress."

I had been told numerous more or less veracious stories of her restless
and romantic life; I had heard that she talked little, that she smiled
but rarely and that she always seemed to be pursuing a distant dream.

My first impression, however, when I saw her alighting from her
carriage on the Geneva platform, was very different from that which I
was prepared to receive. The Empress, at that time, was fifty-eight
years of age. She looked like a girl, she had the figure of a girl,
with a girl's lightness and grace of movement.

Tall and slender, with a touch of stiffness in her bearing, she had
a rather fresh-coloured face, deep, dark and extraordinarily bright
eyes and a wealth of chestnut hair. I realised later that she owed her
vivacious colouring to the long walks which she was in the constant
habit of taking. She wore a smartly-cut black tailor-made dress, which
accentuated her slimness. The beauty of her figure was a matter of
which she was frankly vain; she weighed herself every day.

I was also struck by the smallness of her hands, the musical intonation
of her voice and the purity with which she expressed herself in French,
although she pronounced it with a slightly guttural accent.

One disappointment, however, awaited me; my reception was icy cold. In
spite of the experience which I had acquired during the exercise of my
special functions, it left me none the less disconcerted. My feeling of
discomfort was still further increased when, on reaching Aix-les-Bains,
General Berzeviczy, whom I had asked for an interview in order to
arrange for the organisation of my department, answered drily:

"We sha'n't want anybody."

These four words, beyond a doubt, constituted a formal dismissal, an
invitation, both plain and succinct, to take the first train back to
Paris. My position became one of singular embarrassment. Invested with
a confidential mission, I was beginning by inspiring distrust precisely
in those to whom this mission was addressed; charged to watch and
remove "suspects," I myself appeared to be the most suspected of all!

Nevertheless, I resolved that I would not be denied. I organised my
service without the knowledge of our guests. Every morning, I returned
to see General Berzeviczy. Avoiding any allusion to the real object
of my visit, I did my best to overcome his coldness. The general was
a very kind man at heart and a charming talker. I therefore told him
the gossip of the day, the news from Paris, the tittle-tattle of
Aix. I advised excursions, pointed out the curiosities worth seeing,
conscientiously fulfilled my part as a Baedeker, and, when I carelessly
questioned the general concerning the Empress's intentions as to the
employment of her day, he forgot himself to the extent of telling me.
This was all that I wanted to know.

In a week's time we were the best of friends. The Empress had
condescended to appreciate my frankness in daily covering the table
with newspapers and reviews. She gradually became accustomed to seeing
me appear just in time to forestall her wishes. The game was won; and,
when, later, curious to know the cause of what appeared to me to have
been a misunderstanding, I asked General Berzeviczy to explain the
reason of his disconcerting reception, he replied:

"It was simply because, when we go abroad, they generally send us
officials who, under the pretext of protecting us, terrorise us. They
appear to us like Banquo's ghost, with doleful faces and shifting eyes;
they see assassins everywhere; they poison and embitter our holidays.
That is why you appeared so suspicious to us at first."

"And now?"

"Now," he answered with a smile, "the experiment has been made. You
have fortunately broken with an ugly tradition. In your case, we forget
the official, and remember only the friend."

In the course of the three visits which the Empress Elizabeth paid to
France between 1895 and 1898, I had every opportunity of studying, in
the intimacy of its daily life, that little wandering court swayed
by the melancholy and fascinating figure of its sovereign. She led
an active and solitary existence. Rising, winter and summer, at five
o'clock, she began by taking a warm bath in distilled water, followed
by electric massage, after which, even though it were still dark, she
would go out into the air.

Clad in a black serge gown, ultra-simple in character, she walked at
a smart pace along the paths of the garden, or, if it were raining,
perambulated the long passages which run out of the halls or "lounges"
of most hotels. Sometimes she would venture on the roads and look for
a fine point of view--by preference, the top of a rock--from which she
loved to watch the sunrise.

She returned at seven o'clock and breakfasted lightly on a cup of tea
with a single biscuit. She then disappeared into her apartments and
devoted two hours to her toilet.

Her second meal was taken at eleven and consisted of a cup of clear
soup, an egg and one or two glasses of meat-juice, extracted every
morning out of several pounds of fillet of beef by means of a special
apparatus which accompanied her on her travels. She also tasted a light
dish or two, with a preference for sweets. Immediately after lunch, she
went out again, accompanied, this time, by her Greek reader.

This Greek reader was a very important person. He formed one of the
suite on every journey. Selected from among the young scholars of the
University of Athens, and often appointed by the Greek Government, he
was changed year by year. I, for my part, have known three different
readers. Their duties consisted in talking with the Empress in the
Greek language, ancient and modern, both of which she spoke with equal
facility.

This might have appeared to be a quaint fancy, but it was explained as
soon as the Empress's mental condition was better understood. Haunted
by a melancholy past, romantic by temperament and poetic by instinct,
she had sought a refuge in literature and the arts. Greece personified
in her imagination the land of beauty which her dreams incessantly
evoked; she had a passionate love for antiquity, loved its artists and
its poets; she wanted to be able, everywhere and at all times, when the
obsession of her sorrowful memories became too intense, to escape from
the pitiless phantoms that pursued her and in some way to isolate her
thoughts from the realities of life. The scholarly conversation of the
young Greek _savant_ made this effort easier for her; in the varied and
picturesque surroundings which her æsthetic tastes demanded, she took
Homer and Plato for her companions; and thus to the delight of the eyes
was added the most delicate satisfaction of the mind.

The Greek reader, therefore, was the faithful participator in her
afternoon walks, which lasted until dusk, and the Empress often covered
a distance of fifteen to twenty miles on end. For twenty years, she
had obstinately refused to allow herself to be photographed; she
dreaded the professional indiscretion of amateur photographers;
and no sooner did she perceive a camera aimed in her direction than
she quickly unfurled a black feather fan and modestly concealed her
face, leaving nothing visible above the feathers but her great, wide,
never-to-be-forgotten eyes, which had retained all the splendour and
fire of her youth.

The young Greek's duties, however, were not confined to talking to the
Empress on her walks. Sometimes the reader would read. Carrying a book
which she had selected beforehand, he read a few chapters to her during
the rests by the roadside, on the mountain-tops, or at the deserted
edge of the sea. Later, he added the daily budget of cuttings from the
newspapers and reviews which I prepared for Her Majesty, knowing the
interest which she took in the current events of the day.

He also carried on his arm a dark garment--a skirt, in short. The
Empress had the habit, in the course of her long walks, of changing
the skirt in which she had started for one of a lighter material. It
was a question of health and comfort. This little change of attire was
effected in the most primitive fashion. The Empress would disappear
behind a rock or a tree, while the reader, accustomed to this rapid and
discreet proceeding, waited in the road, taking care to look the other
way. The Empress handed him the skirt which she had cast off; and the
walk was resumed.

On returning to the hotel, she made a frugal dinner, consisting
sometimes merely of a bowl of iced milk and some raw eggs washed down
with a glass of Tokay, an almost savage dietary to which she had forced
herself in order to preserve the slimness of figure which she prized
so highly. She took all her meals alone, in a private room, and seldom
passed the evening with her suite. Its members hardly ever set eyes on
her; sometimes the lady-in-waiting spent day after day without so much
as seeing her imperial mistress.

Of the different places in France which Her Majesty visited, the one
which she loved above all others was Cap Martin, the promontory which
separates the Bay of Monaco from that of Mentone. She came here for
three years in succession and returned to it each time with an equal
pleasure. The softness of the climate, the wild beauty of the views,
the splendour of the luxurious vegetation and the poetic solitude of
the pine-forests and orange-groves, reminded her of her property of
Achilleon in the island of Corfu and of her palace of Miramar on the
shores of the Adriatic. She selected as her residence the enormous
hotel that stands at the end of the point, among the tall pines, the
fields of rosemary, the clusters of myrtle and arbutus.

The furniture of the imperial apartments was marked by extreme
simplicity, combined with perfect taste, most of the pieces being of
English workmanship. Her bed-room was just the ordinary hotel bed-room,
with a brass bedstead surmounted by a mosquito net, a mahogany
dressing-table and a few etchings hanging on the walls. On the other
hand, the management had placed beside the bed, at her request, a
system of electric bells distinguished by their colours--white, yellow,
green and blue, which enabled her to summon that person of her suite
whose presence she required, without having to disturb any of the
others.

In addition to the ground floor, one other room was reserved for her on
every Sunday during her visits. This was the billiard-room, which on
that day was transformed into a chapel. When the Empress came to the
Cap Martin Hôtel for the first time, she inquired after a church, for
she was very religious. There was none in the immediate neighbourhood;
to hear mass one had to go to the village of Roquebrune, the parish
to which Cap Martin belongs. The Empress then decided to improvise
a chapel in the hotel itself and, for this purpose, selected the
billiard-room, to which she could repair without attracting attention.
But the rites of the Church require that every room in which mass
is said should first be consecrated; and none save the bishop of
the diocese is qualified to perform the consecration. A ceremony of
this kind in an hotel and in a billiard-room would have been rather
embarrassing. The difficulty was overcome in a curious and unexpected
manner. There is an old rule, by virtue of which the great dignitaries
of the religious Order of Malta enjoy the privilege of consecrating any
room in which they drop their cloak. It was remembered that General
Berzeviczy, the Empress's chamberlain, occupied one of the highest
ranks in the knighthood of Malta. He was therefore asked to drop his
cloak in the billiard-room. Thenceforward, every Sunday morning, the
Empress's footman put up a portable altar in front of the tall oak
chimney-piece. He arranged a number of gilt chairs before it; and the
old rector of Roquebrune came and said mass, served by a little acolyte
to whom the lady-in-waiting handed a gold coin when he went away....

The Empress was extremely generous; and her generosity adopted the most
delicate forms. Herself so sad, she wished to see none but happy faces
ever about her. And so she always distributed lavish gratuities to all
who served her; and she succoured all the poor of the country-side.
Whenever, in the course of her walks, she saw some humble cottage
hidden in the mountain among the olive-trees, she entered it, talked to
the peasants, took the little children on her knees and, as she feared
lest the sudden offer of a sum of money might offend those whom she
was anxious to assist, she employed the most charming subterfuges. She
would ask leave to taste their fruit, paying for it royally ... or else
she bought several quarts of milk, or dozens of eggs, which she told
them to bring to the hotel next day.

She ended, of course, by knowing all the walks at Cap Martin and the
neighbourhood. She set out each morning with her faithful tramping
companion, the Greek reader. Sometimes, she would go along the rocks
on the shore, sometimes wend her way through the woods; sometimes she
would climb the steep hills, scrambling "up to the goats," as the herds
say.... She never mentioned the destination or the direction of her
excursions, a thing which troubled me greatly, notwithstanding that I
had had the whole district searched and explored beforehand. How was I
to look after her?

"Set your mind at ease, my dear M. Paoli," she used to say, laughing.
"Nothing will happen to me. What would you have them do to a poor
woman? Besides, we are no more than the petal of a poppy or a ripple on
the water!"

[Illustration: THE EMPRESS OF AUSTRIA]

Nevertheless, I was not easy, the more so as she obstinately refused to
let one of my men follow her, even at a distance. One evening, however,
having heard that some Italian navvies, who were at work on the Mentone
road, had spoken in threatening terms of the crowned heads who are in
the habit of visiting that part of the country, I begged the Empress to
be pleased not to go in that direction and was promptly snubbed for my
pains.

"More of your fears," she replied. "I repeat, I am not afraid of them
... and I make no promise."

I was determined. I redoubled my supervision and resolved to send one
of my Corsican detectives, fully armed, disguised and got up like a
navvy, with instructions to mix with the Italians who were breaking
stones on the road. He rigged himself out in a canvas jacket and a
pair of corduroy trousers and made up his face to perfection. Speaking
Italian fluently, he diverted all suspicion on the part of his mates,
who took him for a newly-arrived fellow-countryman of their own.

He was there, lynx-eyed, with ears pricked up, doing his best to break
a few stones, when suddenly a figure which he at once recognised
appeared at a turn in the road. The night was beginning to fall;
the Empress, accompanied by her reader, was on her way back to Cap
Martin. Bending over his heap of stones, the sham navvy waited rather
anxiously. When the Empress reached the group of road-makers, she
stopped, hesitated a moment and then, noticing my man, doubtless
because he looked the oldest, went up to him and said, in her kind way:

"Is that hard work you're doing, my good man?"

Not daring to raise his head, he stammered a few words in Italian.

"Don't you speak French?"

"_No, signora._"

"Have you any children?"

"_Si, signora._"

"Then take this for them," slipping a louis into his hand. "Tell them
that it comes from a lady who is very fond of children." And the
Empress walked away.

That same evening, seeing me at the hotel, she came up to me with
laughing eyes:

"Well, M. Paoli, you may scold me, if you like. I have been
disobedient. I went along the Mentone road to-day and I talked to a
navvy."

It was my faithful Corsican.

Sometimes she ventured beyond the radius of her usual walks. For
instance, one afternoon she sent for me on returning from a morning
excursion:

"M. Paoli, you must be my escort to-day. You shall take me to the
Casino at Monte Carlo; I have never been there. I must really, for
once in my life, see what a gambling-room is like."

Off we went--the Empress, Countess Sztaray, and myself. It was decided
that we should go by train. We climbed into a first-class carriage in
which two English ladies were already seated. The Empress, thoroughly
enjoying her _incognito_, sat down beside them. At Monte Carlo, we made
straight for the Casino and walked into the roulette-room. The august
visitor, who had slipped through the crowd of punters leaning over
the table, followed each roll of the ball with her eyes, looking as
pleased and astonished as a child with a new toy. Suddenly, she took a
five-franc piece from her hand-bag:

"Let me see if I have any luck," she said to us. "I believe in number
33."

She put the big coin on number 33 _en plein_. At the first spin of the
wheel, it lost. She put on another and lost again. The third time,
number 33 turned up. The croupier pushed 175 francs across to her with
his rake. She gathered it up, and then, turning gaily to us, said:

"Let us go away quickly. I have never won so much money in my life."

And she dragged us from the Casino.

Whenever she went to Monte Carlo, she never failed to go and have
tea at Rumpelmayer, the famous Viennese confectioner's, for, as I
have already said, she adored pastry and sweets. The Rumpelmayer
establishments at Mentone, Nice and Monte Carlo were well aware of
the identity of their regular customer; but she had asked them not to
betray her _incognito_. When there were many people in the shop, she
would sit down at a little table near the counter; and nobody would
have suspected that the simple, comely lady in black, who talked so
familiarly with the girls in the pay-box and at the counter, was the
Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary.

The Emperor joined the Empress on three occasions during her visits to
Cap Martin. The event naturally created a diversion in the monotony of
our sojourn. Though travelling _incognito_ as Count Hohenembs, he was
accompanied by a fairly numerous suite, whose presence brought a great
animation into our little colony. I had, of course, to redouble my
measures of protection and to send to Paris for an additional force of
detective-inspectors.

Francis Joseph generally spent a fortnight with his consort. I thus
had the opportunity of observing the touching affection which they
displayed to each other, in spite of the gossip of which certain
sections of the press have made themselves the complacent echo. Nothing
could be simpler or more charming than their meetings. As soon as the
train stopped at Mentone station, where the Empress went to wait its
arrival, accompanied by the members of her suite, the Austrian Consul,
the Prefect of the Alpes-Maritimes, the Mayor of Mentone and myself,
the Emperor sprang lightly to the platform and hastened, bare-headed,
to the Empress, whom he kissed on both cheeks. His expressive face,
framed in white whiskers, lit up with a kindly smile. He tucked the
Empress's arm under his own, and, with an exquisite courtesy, addressed
a few gracious words to each of us individually.

During the Emperor's stay, the Empress emerged for a little while
from her state of timid isolation. They walked or drove together and
received visits from the princes staying on the Côte d'Azur or passing
through, notably the Prince of Wales, the Archduke Regnier, the
Tsarevitch, the Prince of Monaco, the King and Queen of Saxony and the
Grand-duke Michael. Sometimes, they would call on the late Queen of
England, at that time installed at Cimiez, or on the Empress Eugénie,
their near neighbour. It was like a miniature copy of the Court of
Vienna, transferred to Cap Martin.

Francis Joseph, faithful to his habits, rose at five o'clock in the
morning and worked with his secretaries. At half-past six, he stopped
to take a cup of coffee and then closeted himself once more in his
study until ten. The wires were kept working almost incessantly between
Cap Martin and Vienna; as many as eighty telegrams have been known to
be dispatched and received in the space of a single morning. From ten
to twelve, the Emperor strolled in the gardens with the Empress.

Francis Joseph often had General Gebhardt, the Governor of Nice, to
dinner and generally took a keen interest in military affairs. When he
went to Mentone to return the visit which President Faure had paid him
at Cap Martin, the French Government sent a regiment of cuirassiers
from Lyons to salute him. The Emperor, struck by the men's fine
bearing, reviewed them and watched them march past.

It also occurred to me, during his stay in the south in the spring of
1896, to obtain an opportunity for His Imperial Majesty to witness a
sham fight planned by the 87th battalion of Alpine Chasseurs on the
height of Roquebrune. The manoeuvres opened one morning at dawn in
the marvellous circle of hills covered with olive-trees and topped by
the snowy summits of the Alps. For two hours, the Emperor followed
the incidents of the fight with close attention, not forgetting to
congratulate the officers warmly at the finish.

On the next day, he invited the officer in command of the battalion,
now General Baugillot, to luncheon. The major was a gallant soldier,
who was more accustomed to the language of the camp than to that of
courts, and he persisted in addressing the Emperor as "Sire" and
"Monsieur" by turns. Francis Joseph smiled, with great amusement. At
last, not knowing what to do, the major cried:

"I beg everybody's pardon! I am more used to mess-rooms than
drawing-rooms!"

The Emperor at once replied:

"Call me whatever you please. I much prefer a soldier to a courtier."

Cap Martin and Aix were not the only places visited by the Empress
of Austria. In the autumn of 1896 she was anxious to see Biarritz;
she returned there in the following year and I again had the honour
of accompanying her. The inclemency of the weather shortened the
stay which she had at first intended to make; and yet the rough and
picturesque poetry of the Basque coast had an undoubted attraction
for her. She spent her days, sometimes, on the steepest points of the
rocks, from which she would watch the tide for hours, often returning
soaked through with spray; at other times, she would roam about the
wild country that stretches to the foot of the Pyrenees, talking to the
Basque peasants and interesting herself in their work.

She had a mania for buying a cow in every district which she visited
for the first time. She chose it herself in the course of her walks and
had it sent to one of her farms in Hungary. As soon as she saw a cow
the colour of whose coat pleased her, she would accost the peasant, ask
the animal's price and tell him to take it to her hotel.

One day, near Biarritz, she saw a magnificent black cow, bought it
then and there, gave her name of Countess Hohenembs to its owner and
sent him to the hotel with her purchase. When he arrived, however, and
asked for Countess Hohenembs, the porter, who had not been prepared,
took him for a madman and tried to send him away. The peasant insisted,
explained what had happened and ended by learning that Countess
Hohenembs was no other than the Empress of Austria. An empress? But
then he had been cheated! And he began to lament and shout and protest
and lose his temper:

"If I had known it was a queen," he yelled, "I'd have asked more money!
I must have a bigger price!"

The discussion lasted for two hours and I had to be called to put a
stop to it.

This was not the only amusing adventure that occurred during the
Empress's stay at Biarritz. One day, returning from an excursion to
Fuentarabia, she stood waiting for a train on the platform of the
little frontier station at Hendaye. The reader, who was with her, had
gone to ask a question of the station-master. The conversation seemed
never-ending and the train arrived. The Empress, losing patience,
called a porter:

"You see that gentleman in black?" she said. "Go and tell him to hurry,
or the train will leave without us."

The porter ran up to the reader and exclaimed:

"Hurry up, or your wife will go without you!"

The Empress, who rarely laughed, was greatly amused at this incident.

The strange form of neurasthenia from which she suffered, instead
of decreasing with time, seemed to become more persistent and more
painful as the years went on; and it ended by gradually impairing her
health. Not that the Empress had a definite illness--she simply felt an
infinite lassitude, a perpetual weariness, against which she tried to
struggle, with an uncommon display of energy, by pursuing her active
life in spite of it, her wandering life and her long daily walks.

She hated medicine and believed that a sound and simple plan of hygiene
was far preferable to any number of doctors' prescriptions. One day,
however, seeing her more tired than usual, I begged her permission
to present her with a few bottles of Vin Mariani, of the restorative
virtues of which I had had personal experience.

"If it gives you any satisfaction," she replied, with a smile, "I
accept. But you must let me, in return, send you some of our famous
Tokay, which is also a restorative and, moreover, very pleasant to
take."

A little while after, Count von Wolkenstein-Trosburg handed me, on
behalf of the Empress, a beautiful liqueur-case containing six little
bottles of Tokay; and I was talking of drinking it after my meals, like
an ordinary dessert-wine, when the count said:

"Do you know that this is a very costly gift? The wine comes direct
from the Emperor's estates. To give you an idea of what it is worth, I
may tell you that, recently, at a sale in Frankfort, six little bottles
fetched eleven thousand francs.... It stands quite alone."

I at once ceased to treat it as a common Madeira. The proprietor of
the hotel, hearing of the present which I had received, offered me
five thousand francs for the six bottles. I need hardly say that I
refused.... I have four bottles left and am keeping them.

Towards the end of the same year, 1897, when she was staying for
the second time at Biarritz, the Empress, feeling more restless and
melancholy than ever, resolved to make a cruise in the Mediterranean on
board her yacht _Miramar_. But she wished first to spend a few days in
Paris.

She had engaged a suite of rooms at an hotel in the Rue Castiglione and
naturally wanted to preserve the strictest _incognito_. Still, it was
known that she was in Paris; and the protection with which I surrounded
her was even more rigorous than before. She was out of doors from
morning till evening, went through the streets on foot to visit the
churches, monuments and museums and at four o'clock called regularly
at a dairy in the Rue de Surène, where she was served with a glass of
ass's milk, her favourite beverage, after which she returned to the
hotel.

One day, however, we had a great alarm; at seven o'clock she was not
yet back. I anxiously sent to her sisters, the Queen of Naples and the
Countess of Trani, to whom she occasionally paid surprise visits. She
was not there. To crown all, she had succeeded in eluding the vigilance
of the inspector who was charged to follow her at a certain distance.
We had lost the Empress in the midst of Paris! Picture our mortal
anxiety!

I was about to set out myself in search of her, when suddenly we saw
her very calmly appearing.

"I have been gazing at Notre Dame by moonlight," she said. "It was
lovely. And I came back on foot along the quays. I went among the crowd
and nobody took the least notice of me."

I remember that her Greek reader, at that time Mr. Barker, and her
secretary, Dr. Kromar, expressed a wish to see something of the
picturesque and characteristic side of Paris; and I took them one
evening to the central markets. When we had finished our visit, I
invited them, in accordance with the traditional habit, to come
and have a plate of _soupe à l'oignon_ in one of the little common
eating-houses in the neighbourhood. Delighted with this modest banquet,
they described their outing to the Empress next day and sang the
praises of our famous national broth, which she had never tasted.

"M. Paoli," she said enthusiastically, "I must know what _soupe
à l'oignon_ is like. Mr. Barker has given me a most tantalising
description."

"Nothing is easier. I will tell the people of the hotel to make you
some."

"Never! They will send me up a carefully-prepared soup which won't
taste in the least like yours. And I must have it served in the
identical crockery. I want all the local colour."

Here I must make a confession: as I had it at heart (it was a
question of patriotism, nothing less) that the Empress should not be
disappointed, I thought it more prudent to apply to the manager of the
hotel, who, kindly lending himself to my innocent fraud, prepared the
onion soup and sent to the nearest bazaar for a plate and soup-tureen
of the "local colour" in which the imperial traveller took so great
an interest. The illusion was perfect. The Empress thought the soup
excellent and the crockery delightfully picturesque; true, we had
chipped it about a little!

The Empress's only visit to Paris was a short one. As I have said,
she had decided that year to air her melancholy on the blue waters of
the Mediterranean. The projected cruise embraced a number of calls at
different harbours along the Côte d'Azur; and she asked me to accompany
her.

We left Paris on the 30th of December for Marseilles, where the
imperial yacht lay waiting for us, commanded by a very distinguished
officer, Captain Moritz Sacks von Bellenau; and we were at sea,
opposite the tragic Château d'If, on the 1st of January of the year
1898, which was to prove so tragic to Elizabeth of Austria. I offered
her my wishes for happiness and a long life. The Empress seemed to me
sadder and more thoughtful that morning than usual:

"I wish you also," she said, "health and happiness for you and yours."
And she added, with an expression of infinite bitterness, "As for
myself, I have no confidence left in the future."

Had she already received a presentiment of what the year held in store
for her? Who can tell?

She gave us but little of her society during this voyage. She spent
her days on deck, and interested herself in the silent activity, in
the humble, poetic life of the crew. The sailors entertained a sort
of veneration for her. They were constantly feeling the effects of
her discreet and delicate kindness. Like ourselves, they respected
her melancholy and her love of solitude. And, in the evenings, while
the little court collected in the saloon and amused themselves with
different games, or else improvised a charming concert; while, at the
other end of the ship, the sailors, seated under the poop, sang their
Tyrolean or Hungarian songs to an accordion accompaniment, the Empress,
all alone on deck, with her eyes staring into the distance, would dream
of the stars.

After leaving Marseilles, we went to Villafranca, near Nice, skirting
the coast. The Empress also wished to stop at Cannes and to see once
more, from the sea, Monaco, Cap Martin and Mentone. She next proposed
to revisit Sicily, Greece, and Corfu: it was as though she felt a
secret desire to make a sort of pilgrimage to all the ephemeral
landmarks which her sad soul had visited in the course of her wandering
life.

However enjoyable this cruise might be to me, I had to think of
abandoning it. My service with the Empress ended automatically as soon
as she had left French waters.

"Stay on, nevertheless," she said kindly. "You shall be my guest; and I
will show you my beautiful palace in Corfu."

But my duties, unfortunately, summoned me elsewhere. I had to
return to Nice, to receive the King and Queen of Saxony, who were
expected there. It was decided, therefore, that I should leave the
_Miramar_ at San Remo. When the yacht dropped her anchor outside the
little Italian town, I said good-bye to the Empress and my charming
travelling-companions.

"It will not be for long, for I shall come back to France," said
Elizabeth.

She leant over the bulwarks, as the yacht's launch took me on shore,
and I watched her delicate and careworn features, first outlined
against the disc of the setting sun and then merging, little by little,
in the distance and the darkness.

Seven months had elapsed since the day when I left the Empress at
San Remo. I was in Paris and read in the papers that she had just
arrived at Caux, a picturesque little place situated above Montreux,
overlooking the Lake of Geneva. I hastened to write, on chance, to
Mr. Barker, her Greek reader, in order to receive news of her. When I
came home, on the evening of the 9th of September, I was handed Mr.
Barker's reply, in which was conveyed news of the Empress's plans, and
a gracious invitation from her to visit her, should I happen to be in
the neighbourhood of Geneva.

As I was on leave and had nothing to keep me in Paris, I at once
made up my mind and, the next morning, took the train for Geneva. I
calculated that, arriving in the evening, I had a chance of still
finding the Empress at the Hôtel Beau Rivage; besides, nothing need
prevent me from going the next morning to Caux, where I was sure to
see her, and, at the same time, to be able to shake hands with General
Berzeviczy and Mr. Barker. Who would have thought that the train which
carried me through the green fields of Burgundy and Franche-Comté was
taking me straight to the scene of a sad and blood-stained tragedy?

When we drew into the station at Geneva, I noticed an unwonted
animation on the platforms; groups of people stood about in excited
discussion, with a look of consternation on their faces. I paid no
particular attention, however, for I was in a hurry. I hailed a fly and
told the man to drive to the Hôtel Beau Rivage. We had not gone twenty
yards when he turned round on his box:

[Illustration: THE EMPEROR AND EMPRESS OF AUSTRIA]

"What an awful crime!" he said.

"What crime?"

"Haven't you heard? The Empress was murdered this afternoon."

"Murdered!"

Livid and scared, I could hardly listen to the pitiful story of the
tragedy. The Empress, it seemed, had been stabbed to the heart by
an Italian anarchist when about to embark on the 1:40 steamer for
Territet; she sank down on the Quai du Mont Blanc. The people around
her thought that she had fainted, and carried her on board the boat;
when they bent over her, she was dead.

I sprang quickly from the carriage, when it pulled up at the hotel,
rushed into the hall, which was full of people, flew up the crowded
staircase and along a corridor in which English, German and Russian
travellers were hustling one another, with scared faces, all anxious to
see. At last, catching sight of a servant:

"Countess Sztaray?" I asked.

"In there," he replied, pointing to a door standing ajar.

I knocked, the door was opened and Countess Sztaray, red-eyed, her
features distorted with grief, gave me a heart-broken look and, with a
sob, said:

"Our poor Empress!"

"Where is she?"

"Come with me."

Taking me by the hand, she led me and General Berzeviczy, who had
also just arrived, to the next room. There lay the Empress, stiff and
already cold, stretched on a little brass bed under a thin, white gauze
veil. Her face, lit up by the flickering flame of two tall candles,
showed no trace of suffering. A sad smile still seemed to hover over
her pale and lightly-parted lips; two long tresses fell upon her slim
shoulders; the delicate features of her face had shrunk; two purple
shadows under her eyelids threw into relief the sharp outline of her
nose and the pallor of her cheeks.

She appeared as though sleeping peacefully and happily. Her tiny
hands were crossed over an ivory crucifix; some roses, already almost
withered--roses which she had gathered that morning and which she was
carrying in her arms when she received her death-blow--lay scattered at
her feet.

I stood long contemplating the corpse. My self-possession deserted me.
In spite of myself, the tears came to my eyes, and I cried like a child.

* * * * *

Why had fate decreed that the Empress should go to Geneva? Curiously
enough, the idea came to her suddenly, it appeared, on Thursday, the
8th of September. She had arranged to pay a visit to her friend,
Baronne Adolphe de Rothschild, who was staying at her country house,
the Château de Pregny, at the western end of the lake. But it was a
long excursion to make in a single day; and the Empress, contrary
to the advice of Countess Sztaray, decided to sleep at Geneva,
after leaving Pregny, and not to return to Caux until the following
afternoon. She arrived at the Hôtel Beau Rivage in the evening and
went out after dinner. She was up the next day at five o'clock.
After filling a portion of her morning with the complicated cares
of her toilet and her correspondence, she went for a walk along the
shady quays of the Rhone. Returning to the hotel at one o'clock,
she hurriedly drank a glass of milk. Then, accompanied by her
lady-in-waiting, Countess Sztaray, she hastened down to the steamboat
pier, intending to take the Territet boat that started at 1:40. She
had come to within two hundred yards of the footplank connecting the
steamer with the Quai du Mont Blanc, when Lucchini flung himself upon
her and struck her a blow under the left breast with a three-cornered
file clumsily fitted to a wooden handle. The violence of the blow
broke her fourth rib.

Death was not instantaneous. She had the strength to walk as far as the
boat and for this reason: the instrument, in its course, had pierced
the left ventricle of the heart from top to bottom. But, the blade
being very sharp and very thin, the hemorrhage at first was almost
insignificant. The drops of blood escaped very slowly from the heart;
and its action was not impaired so long as the pericardium, in which
the drops were collecting, was not full. This was how she was able to
go a fairly long distance on foot with a stab in her heart. When the
bleeding increased, the Empress sank to the deck.

The poor Empress, therefore, had the energy to drag herself to the
boat, where a band of gipsies was playing Hungarian dances (a cruel
irony of chance), while the steamer began to move away from the
landing-stage. At that moment, she fainted. Countess Sztaray, who
believed her to be stunned by a blow of the fist--for no one had
seen the weapon in the assassin's hand--tried to bring her to with
smelling-salts. The Empress, in fact, recovered consciousness, spoke a
few words, cast a long look of bewildered astonishment around her and
then, suddenly, fell back dead. The dismay and excitement were intense.
The boat at once put back to the pier; and, as there was no litter
at hand, the body was carried to the hotel, shrouded in sails, on an
improvised bier of crossed oars.

Had the Empress received a presentiment of her tragic end, which a
gipsy at Wiesbaden, and a fortune-teller at Corfu had foretold her in
the past? Two strange incidents incline one to think so. On the eve
of her departure for Geneva, she asked Mr. Barker to read her a few
chapters of a book by Marion Crawford, entitled "Corleone," in which
the author describes the abominable customs of the Sicilian Mafia.
While the Empress was listening to this harrowing story, a raven,
attracted by the scent of some fruit which she was eating, came and
circled round her. Greatly impressed, she tried to drive it off, but in
vain, for it constantly returned, filling the echoes with its mournful
croaking. Then she swiftly walked away, for she knew that ravens are
harbingers of death when their ill-omened wings persist in flapping
around a living person.

Again, Countess Sztaray told me that, on the morning of that day, she
went into the Empress's room, as usual, to ask how she had slept, and
found her imperial mistress looking pale and sad.

"I have had a strange experience," said Elizabeth. "I was awakened in
the middle of the night by the bright moonbeams which filled my room,
for the servants had forgotten to draw the blinds. I could see the moon
from my bed; and it seemed to have the face of a woman weeping. I don't
know if it is a presentiment, but I have an idea that I shall meet with
misfortune."

During the three days that preceded the departure of the remains
for Vienna, I stayed at Geneva and shared the funeral watches with
the little court, once so happy and now so pitifully robbed of its
mistress. General Berzeviczy, Countess Sztaray and I sat for long
hours conjuring up the memory of her who was now sleeping her last
sleep beside us. Countless anecdotes were told, countless tiny and
charming details. It already seemed almost a distant past which we were
recalling for the last time, a bright and exquisite past which the
gracious Empress was taking away with her.

I went to see the murderer in his cell. I found a perfectly lucid
being, boasting of his crime as of an act of heroism. When I asked
him what motive had driven him to choose for his victim a woman, a
sovereign living as far removed as possible from politics and the
throne, one who had always shown so much compassion for the humble and
the destitute:

"I struck at the first crowned head," he said, "that came along. I
don't care. I wanted to make a manifestation and I have succeeded."

The unhappy Empress's destiny was to be strange and romantic until the
end, until after her death. Her body, carried to an hotel bed-room,
departed for Austria without pomp or display, amid an immense and
silent crowd. The Swiss Government had not the necessary time to levy a
regiment to show her the last honours.

But it was better so, for she had, as her escort, a respectfully
contemplative nation and, as her salute, the bells of all the towns and
all the villages through which the funeral train passed. And this, I am
certain, was just the simple and poetic homage which her heart would
have desired.

* * * * *

A few days after the tragedy, the Emperor Francis Joseph deigned to
remember my respectful attachment to the consort whom he had loved so
well; and I received the following telegram:

WIENBURG, September 15th, 1898.

_To Monsieur Paoli, Ministry of the Interior, Paris,_--

His Majesty the Emperor, greatly touched by your sincere sympathy,
remembers gratefully the devoted care which you showed the late
Empress and thanks you again with all his heart.

PAAR.
_Principal Aide-de-camp to H. M. the Emperor of Austria._

I also received from the archduchesses, the daughters, a hunting-knife
which their mother, the poor Empress, valued most particularly. I keep
it religiously in my little museum. Sometimes I take it out and look at
it; and it invariably summons up one of the most touching memories of
my life.

KING ALFONSO XIII

"You wanted me to complete your collection, didn't you, M. Paoli?"

The presidential train had left Hendaye; the distant echoes of the
Spanish national anthem still reached our ears through the silence
and the darkness. Leaning from the window of the sleeping-car, I was
watching the last lights of the little frontier-town disappear one by
one.

I turned round briskly at the sound of that gay and bright voice. A
tall, slim young man stood at the door of the compartment, with a
cigarette between his lips and a soft felt hat on his head, and gave
me a friendly little wave of the hand. His long, slender figure looked
very smart and supple in a pale-grey travelling-suit; and a broad smile
lit up his bronzed face, his smooth, boyish face, adorned with a large
Bourbon hooked nose, planted like an eagle's beak between two very
black eyes, full of fire and humour.

"Yes, yes, M. Paoli, I know you, though perhaps you don't yet know me.
My mother has often spoken to me of you and, when she heard that you
had been appointed to watch over my safety, she said, 'With Paoli, I
feel quite at ease.'"

"I am infinitely touched and flattered, Sir," I replied, "by that
gracious mark of confidence. It is true that my collection was
incomplete without your Majesty."

That is how I became acquainted with H. M. Alfonso XIII, in the spring
of 1905, at the time of his first official visit to France. "The little
king", as he was still called, had lately completed his nineteenth
year. He had attained his majority a bare twelve-month before and was
just entering upon his career as a monarch, if I may so express myself.
The watchful eyes of Europe were beginning to observe with sympathetic
interest the first actions of this young ruler who, with the exuberant
grace of his fine and trusting youth, brought an unexpected and amusing
contrast into the somewhat constrained formality of the gallery of
sovereigns. Though he had no history as yet, plenty of anecdotes
were already current about him and a plenty of morals were drawn in
consequence:

"He has a nature all impulse," said one.

"He is full of character," said people who had met him.

"He is like his father: he would charm the bird from the tree," an old
Spanish diplomatist remarked to me.

"At any rate, there is nothing commonplace about him," thought I, still
perplexed by the unconventional, amusing, jocular way in which he had
interrupted my nocturnal contemplations.

No, he was certainly not commonplace! The next morning, I saw him at
early dawn at the windows of the saloon-carriage, devouring with a
delighted curiosity the sights that met his eyes as the train rushed at
full speed through the verdant plains of the Charente. Nothing escaped
his youthful enthusiasm: fields, forests, rivers, things, people.
Everything gave rise to sparkling exclamations:

"What a lovely country yours is, M. Paoli!" he cried, when he saw me
standing near him. "I feel as if I were still at home, as if I knew
everybody: the faces all seem familiar. It's 'stunning'!"

At the sound of this typically Parisian expression (the French word
which he employed was _épatant_) proceeding from the royal lips, it was
my turn to be "stunned." In my innocence, I was not yet aware that he
knew all our smart slang phrases and used them freely.

His spirits were as inexhaustible as his bodily activity; and, upon my
word, we were hard put to it to keep up with him. Now running from one
window to another, so as to "miss nothing," as he said, with a laugh;
now leaning over the back of a chair or swinging his legs from a table;
now striding up and down the carriage, with his hands in his pockets
and the everlasting cigarette between his lips, he questioned us
without ceasing. He wanted to know everything, though he knew a great
deal as it was. The army and navy excited his interest in the highest
degree; the provinces through which we were passing, their customs,
their past, their administrative organisation, their industries
supplied him with the subjects of an exhaustive interrogatory, to
which we did our best to reply. Our social laws, our parliament, our
politicians as eagerly aroused his lively curiosity, and then came the
turn of Paris which he was at last about to see, whose splendours and
peculiarities he already knew from reading and hearsay, that Paris
which he looked upon as a fairyland, a promised land; and the thought
that he was to be solemnly welcomed there sent a slight flush of
excitement to his cheeks.

"It must be wonderful!" he said, his eyes ablaze with pleasurable
impatience.

He also insisted upon our giving him full details about the persons who
were to receive him:

"What is M. Loubet like? And the prime minister? And the governor of
Paris?"

When he was not putting questions, he was telling stories, recalling
his impressions of his recent journeys in Spain.

"Confess, M. Paoli," he said, "that you have never had to look after a
king as young as I."

His conversation, jesting and serious by turns, studded with
judicious reflexions, with smart sallies, with freakish outbursts and
unexpected digressions, revealed a young and keen intelligence, eager
after knowledge, a fresh mind open to effusive ideas, a quivering
imagination, counterbalanced, however, by a reflective brain. I
remember the astonishment of the French officers who had come to
meet him at the frontier, on hearing him discuss matters of military
strategy with the authority and the expert wisdom of an old tactician;
I remember also the surprise of a high official who had joined the
train midway and to whose explanations the King was lending an
attentive ear when we crossed a bridge over the Loire, in which some
water-fowl happened to be disporting themselves.

"Oh, what a pity!" the King broke in. "Why haven't I a gun?" And,
taking aim with an imaginary fowling-piece, "What a fine shot!"

Again, I remember the spontaneous and charming way in which, full
of admiration for the beauties of our Touraine, he tapped me on the
shoulder and cried:

"There's no doubt about it, I love France! France forever!"

What was not my surprise, afterwards, at Orleans, where the first
official stop was made, to see him appear in his full uniform as
captain-general, his features wearing an air of singular dignity,
his gait proud and lofty, compelling in all of us a respect for the
impressive authority that emanated from his whole person! He found the
right word for everybody, was careful of the least shades of etiquette,
moved, talked and smiled amid the gold-laced uniforms with a sovereign
ease, showing from the first that he knew better than anybody how to
play his part as a king.

[Illustration: THE KING OF SPAIN, PRINCESS HENRY OF BATTENBERG,
PRINCESS VICTORIA EUGENIA AND M. PAOLI]

There is one action, very simple in appearance, but in reality more
difficult than one would think, by which we can judge a sovereign's
bearing in a foreign country. This is his manner of saluting the
colours. Some, as they pass before the standard surrounded by its guard
of honour, content themselves with raising their hand to their cap or
helmet; others stop and bow; others, lastly, make a wide and studied
gesture which betrays a certain, almost theatrical affectation. Alfonso
XIII's salute is like none of these: in its military stiffness, it
is at once simple and grave, marked by supreme elegance and profound
deference. On the platform of the Orleans railway-station, opposite the
motionless battalion, in the presence of a number of officers and civil
functionaries, this salute which so visibly paid a delicate homage to
the army and the country, the graceful and respectful salute moved and
flattered us more than any number of boasts and speeches. And, when,
at last, I went home, after witnessing the young King's arrival in the
capital and noticing the impression which he had made on the government
and the people, I recalled the old Spanish diplomatist's remark:

"The King would charm the bird from the tree!"

I saw little of King Alfonso during his first stay in Paris. The
protection of sovereigns who are the official guests of the government
did not come within the scope of my duties. I therefore left him at the
station and was not to resume my place in his suite until the moment
of his departure. The anarchist revolutionary gentry appeared to be
unaware of this detail, for I daily received a fair number of anonymous
letters, most of which contained more or less vague threats against
the person of our royal visitor. One of them, which the post brought
me as I was on the point of proceeding to the gala performance given
at the Opera in his honour, struck me more particularly because of the
plainness of the warning which it conveyed, a warning devoid of any of
the insults that usually accompany this sort of communication:

"In spite of all the precautions that have been taken," it read, "the
King had better be careful when he leaves the Opera to-night."

This note, written in a rough, disguised hand, was, of course,
unsigned. I at once passed it on to the right quarter. The very strict
supervision that was being exercised no doubt excluded the possibility
of a successful plot. But there remained the danger of an individual
attempt, the murderous act of a single person: and I knew by experience
that, to protect one's self against that, one must rely exclusively
upon "the police of Heaven," to use the picturesque expression of Señor
Maura, the Spanish premier.

Haunted by a baneful presentiment, I nevertheless decided on leaving
the Opera, to remain near the King's carriage (as a mere passer-by, of
course) until he had stepped into it with M. Loubet and driven off,
surrounded by his squadron of cavalry. The attempt on his life took
place at the corner of the Rue de Rohan and the Rue de Rivoli; and
both the King and M. Loubet enjoyed a miraculous escape from death. My
presentiment, therefore, had not been at fault.

I need not here recall the coolness which the young monarch displayed
in these circumstances, for it is still present in every memory, nor
the magnificent indifference with which he looked upon the tragic
incident:

"I have received my baptism of fire," he said to me, a couple of days
later, "and, upon my word, it was much less exciting than I expected!"

Alfonso XIII, in fact, has a fine contempt for danger. Like the late
King Humbert, he considers that assassination is one of the little
drawbacks attendant on the trade of king. He gave a splendid proof of
this courage at the time of the Madrid bomb, of which I shall speak
later; and I was able to see it for myself two days after the attempted
assassination in the Rue de Rohan.

On leaving Paris, our royal visitor went to Cherbourg, where I
accompanied him, to embark on board the British royal yacht, which was
to take him to England. As we approached the town in the early morning,
the presidential train was shunted on to the special line that leads
direct to the dockyard. Suddenly, while we were running pretty fast, a
short stop took place, producing a violent shock in all the carriages.
The reader can imagine the excitement. The railway-officials, officers
and chamberlains of the court sprang out on the permanent way and
rushed to the royal saloon.

"Another attempt?" asked the King, calmly smiling, as he put his head
out of the window.

We all thought so at the first moment. Fortunately, it was only a
slight accident: the rear luggage-van had left the rails through a
mistake in the shunting. I hastened to explain the matter to the King.

"You'll see," he at once replied, "they will say, all the same, that it
was an attempt on my life: I must let my mother know quickly, or she
will be frightened."

The King was right. Someone, we never discovered who, had already found
means to telegraph to Queen Maria Christina that a fresh attack had
been made on her son. There are always plenty of bearers of ill-news,
even where sovereigns are concerned and especially when the news is
false!

I took leave of the King at Cherbourg and joined him, the week after,
at Calais, whence I was to accompany him to the Spanish frontier, for
he was returning direct to his own country. This time, the official
journey was over; and I once more found the pleasant, simple young man,
in the pale-grey suit and the soft hat. The warm welcome which he had
received in England had not wiped out his enthusiastic recollection of
France.

"By George," he declared, "how glad I am to see this beautiful country
again, even through the windows of the railway-carriage!"

A violent shower set in as we left Calais. The train went along a line
in process of repair and had to travel very slowly. At that moment,
seeing some gangs of navvies working under the diluvial downpour and
soaked to the skin, the King leant out of the window and, addressing
them:

"Wait a bit!" he said. "I'm going to give you something to smoke. This
will warm you."

And the King, after emptying the contents of his cigarette-case into
their horny hands, took the boxes of cigars and cigarettes that lay on
the tables, one after the other and passed them through the window,
first to the delighted labourers and then to the soldiers drawn up
on either side of the line. They had never known such a windfall: it
rained Upmanns, Henry Clays and Turkish cigarettes. When none were
left, the King appealed to the members of his suite, whom he laughingly
plundered for the benefit of these decent fellows. They, not knowing
his quality, shouted gaily:

"Thank you, sir, thank you! Come back soon!"

We had but one regret, that of remaining without anything to smoke
until we were able, at the next stop, to replenish our provisions of
tobacco which had been exhausted in so diverting a fashion.

When, on the following morning, we reached Hendaye, which is the
frontier station between France and Spain, a very comical incident
occurred that amused the young traveller greatly. By a purely
fortuitous coincidence, they were waiting, as we pulled up, for the
train of King Carlos of Portugal, who was also about to pay an official
visit to France; and the authorities and troops had collected on the
platform in order to show the usual honours to their new guest. Our
sudden arrival, for which nobody was prepared, as Alfonso XIII was not
now travelling officially, utterly disconcerted the resplendent crowd.
Would the King of Spain think that they were there on his account and
would he not be offended when he discovered his mistake? It was a
difficult position, but the prefect rose to the occasion. As the King
of Portugal's train was not yet signalled, he gave orders to pay the
honours to King Alfonso XIII.

The moment, therefore, that our train stopped, the authorities and
general officers hurried in our direction and the band of the regiment,
which had been practising the Portuguese royal anthem, briskly struck
up the Spanish anthem instead. But the King, who knew what he was
about, leant from the window and chaffingly cried:

"Please, gentlemen, please! I know that you are not here for me, but
for my next-door neighbour!"

At Irun, the first Spanish station, where I was to take leave of
our guest, a fresh surprise awaited us. There was not a trace of
police-protection, not a soldier, not a gendarme. An immense crowd
had freely invaded both platforms. And what a crowd! Thousands of
men, women and children shouted, sang, waved their hands, hustled
one another and fired guns into the air for joy, while the King,
calm and smiling elbowed his way from the presidential to the royal
train, patting the children's heads as he passed, paying a compliment
to their mothers, distributing friendly nods to the men who were
noisily cheering him. And I thought of our democratic country, in
which we imprison the rulers of States in an impenetrable circle of
police-supervision, whereas here, in a monarchical country, labouring
under a so-called reign of terror, the sovereign walks about in the
midst of strangers, unprotected by any precautionary measures. It was a
striking contrast.

But my mission was at an end. Still laughing, the King, as he gave me
his hand, said:

"Well, M. Paoli, you can no longer say that you haven't got me in your
collection!"

"I beg your pardon, Sir," I replied. "It's not complete yet."

"How do you mean?"

"Why, Sir, I haven't your portrait."

"Oh, that will be all right!" And, turning to the grand master of his
court, "Santo Mauro, make a note: photo for M. Paoli."

A few days after, I received a photograph, signed and dated by the
royal hand.

Five months later, Alfonso XIII, returning from Germany, where he
had been to pay his accession-visit to the Berlin Court, stopped to
spend a day incognito in Paris. I found him as I had left him; gay,
enthusiastic, full of good-nature, glad to be alive.

"Here I am again, my dear M. Paoli," he said, when he perceived me at
the frontier, where, according to custom, I had gone to meet him. "But
this time I shall not cause you any great worry. I must go home and I
sha'n't stop for more than twenty-four hours--worse luck!--in Paris."

On the other hand, he wasted none of his time while there. Jumping
into a motor-car the moment he was out of the train, he first drove to
the Hôtel Bristol, where he remained just long enough to change his
clothes, after which he managed, during his brief stay, to hear mass in
the church of St. Roch, for it was Sunday, to pay a visit to M. Loubet,
to make some purchases in the principal shops, to lunch with his aunt,
the Infanta Eulalie, to take a motor-drive, in the pouring rain, as far
as Saint-Germain and back, to dine at the Spanish Embassy and to wind
up the evening at the Théâtre des Variétés.

"And it's like that every day, when he's travelling," said one of his
suite to me.

The King, I may say, makes up for this daily expenditure of activity
with a tremendous appetite. I have observed, for that matter, that the
majority of sovereigns are valiant trenchermen. Every morning of his
life, Alfonso XIII has a good rumpsteak and potatoes for his first
breakfast, often preceded by eggs and sometimes followed by salad and
fruit. The King, on the other hand, never drinks wine and generally
confines himself to a tumbler of water and _zucharillos_, the national
beverage, composed of white of egg beaten up with sugar.

In spite of his continual need of movement, his passionate love of
sport in all its forms and especially of motoring, his expansive,
rather mad, but very attractive youthfulness, Alfonso XIII, even
in his flying trips, never, as we have seen, loses the occasion of
improving his mind. He is very quick at seizing a point, possesses a
remarkable power of assimilation and, although he does not read much,
for he has no patience, he is remarkably well-informed as regards the
smallest details that interest him. One day, for instance, he asked me,
point-blank:

"Do you know how many gendarmes there are in France?"

I confess that I was greatly puzzled what to reply, for I have never
cared much about statistics. I, therefore, ventured, on the off-chance,
to say:

"Ten thousand."

"Ten thousand! Come, M. Paoli, what are you thinking of? That's the
number we have in Spain. It's more like twenty thousand."

This figure, as I afterwards learnt, was strictly accurate.

As for business of State, I also noticed that the King devoted more
time to it than his restless life would lead one to believe. Rising
winter and summer at six o'clock, he stays indoors and works regularly
during the early portion of the morning and often again at night. In
this connexion, one of his ministers said to me:

"He never shows a sign of either weariness or boredom. The King's
'frivolity' is a popular fallacy. On the contrary, he is terribly
painstaking. Just like the Queen Mother, he insists upon clear and
detailed explanations, before signing the least document; and he knows
quite well how to make his will felt. Besides, he is fond of work and
he can work no matter where: in a motor-car, in a boat, in the train,
as well as in his study."

But it was especially on the occasion of the event which was to mark
an indelible date in his life, a fair and happy date, that I had
time to observe him and to come to know him better. The reader will
have guessed that I am referring to his engagement. The duties which
I fulfilled during a quarter of a century have sometimes involved
difficult moments, delicate responsibilities, thankless tasks, but they
have also procured me many charming compensations; and I have no more
delightful recollection than that of witnessing, at first hand, the
fresh and touching royal idyll, the simple, cloudless romance, which
began one fine evening in London, was subsequently continued under the
sunny sky of the Basque coast and ended by leading to one of those rare
unions which satisfy the exigencies both of public policy and of the
heart.

Like his father before him, Alfonso XIII, when his ministers began to
hint discreetly about possible "alliances," contented himself with
replying:

"I shall marry a princess who takes my fancy and nobody else. I want to
love my wife."

Nevertheless, diplomatic intrigues fashioned themselves around the
young sovereign. The Emperor William would have liked to see a German
princess sharing the throne of Spain; a marriage with an Austrian
archduchess would have continued a time-honoured tradition; the
question of a French princess was also mooted, I believe. But the
political _rapprochement_ between Spain and England had just been
accomplished under French auspices; an Anglo-Spanish marriage seemed
to correspond with the interests of Spain; and it so happened that the
Princess Patricia of Connaught had lately been seen in Andalusia. Her
name was on all men's lips; already, in the silence of the palace,
official circles were preparing for this union. Only one detail had
been omitted, but it was a detail of the first importance: that of
consulting the two persons directly interested, who did not even know
each other.

When the King went to England, no one thought for a moment but that
he would return engaged--and engaged to Patricia of Connaught. The
diplomatists, however, had reckoned without a factor, which, doubtless,
was foreign to them, but which was all-powerful in the eyes of Alfonso
XIII: the little factor known as love.

As a matter of fact, when the two young people met, they did not
attract each other. On the other hand, at the ball given in the King's
honour at Buckingham Palace, Alfonso never took his eyes off a young,
fair-haired princess, whose radiant beauty shed all the glory of spring
around her.

"Who is that?" asked the King.

"Princess Ena of Battenberg," was the reply.

The two were presented, danced and talked together, met again on the
next day and on the following days.

And, when the King returned to Spain, he left his heart in England.

But he did not breathe a word about it. His little idyll, which took
the form of an interchange of letters and postcards as well as of
secret negotiations with a view to marriage--negotiations conducted
with the English royal family by the King in person--was pursued in the
greatest mystery. People knew, of course, that the princess and the
King liked and admired each other; but they knew nothing of the young
monarch's private plans. Moreover, he took a pleasure in mystifying
his entourage. He who had once been so expansive now became suddenly
contemplative and reserved.

Soon after his return, he ordered a yacht; and, when the time came to
christen her, he made the builders paint on the prow in gold letters:

PRINCESS ...

The comment aroused by these three little dots may be easily imagined.

The moment, however, was at hand when the name of the royal yacht's
godmother and, therefore, of the future Queen of Spain was to be
revealed. One morning in January, 1906, I received a letter from
Miss Minnie Cochrane, Princess Henry of Battenberg's faithful
lady-in-waiting, telling me that the princess and her daughter,
Princess Ena, were leaving shortly for Biarritz, to stay with their
cousin, the Princess Frederica of Hanover, and inviting me to accompany
them. This kind thought is explained by the fact that I had known the
princess and her daughter for many years: I had often had occasions to
see Princess Beatrice with the late Queen Victoria, to whom she showed
the most tender filial affection; I had also known Princess Ena as a
little girl, when she still wore short frocks and long fair curls and
used to play with her doll under the fond, smiling gaze of her august
grandmother. She was then a grave and reflective child; she had great,
deep, expressive blue eyes; and she was a little shy, like her mother.

When at Calais, I beheld a fresh and beautiful young girl, unreserved
and gay, a real fairy princess, whose face, radiant with gladness, so
evidently reflected a very sweet, secret happiness; when, on the day
after her arrival at Biarritz, I unexpectedly saw King Alfonso arrive
in a great state of excitement and surprised the first glance which
they exchanged at the door of the villa, then I understood. I was,
therefore, not in the least astonished when Miss Cochrane, whom I had
ventured to ask if it was true that there was a matrimonial project on
foot between the King and the princess, answered, with a significant
smile:

"I think so; it is not officially settled yet; it will be decided here."

The Villa Mouriscot, where the princesses were staying, was a
picturesque Basque chalet, elegantly and comfortably furnished.
Standing on a height, at two miles from Biarritz, whence the eye
commanded the magnificent circle of hills, and buried in the midst of
luxuriant and fragrant gardens, intersected by shady and silent walks,
it formed an appropriately poetic setting for the romance of the royal
betrothal.

The King came every day. Wrapped in a huge cloak, with a motoring-cap
and goggles, he would arrive at ten o'clock in the morning from San
Sebastian in his double Panhard, which he drove himself, except on the
rare occasions when he entrusted the steering-wheel to his excellent
French chauffeur, Antonin, who accompanied him on all his excursions.
His friends, the Marquis de Viana, the young Conde de Villalobar,
counsellor to the Spanish Embassy in London, Señor Quiñones de Leon,
the charming attaché to the Paris Embassy, the Conde del Grove, his
faithful aide-de-camp, or the Marquis de Pacheco, commanding the
palace halberdiers, formed his usual suite. As soon as the motor had
passed through the gates and stopped before the door, where Baron von
Pawel-Rammingen, the Princess Frederica's husband, and Colonel Lord
William Cecil, Princess Henry of Battenberg's comptroller, awaited him,
the King hurried to the drawing-room, where the pretty princess sat
looking out for his arrival, as impatient for the meeting as the King
himself.

After the King had greeted his hosts at the villa, he and the princess
walked into the gardens and exchanged much lively talk as they strolled
about the paths in which, as Gounod's song says, "lovers lose their
way." They returned in time for the family lunch, a very simple repast
to which the King's tremendous appetite did full honour. He used often
to send for Fraülein Zinska, the Princess Frederica's old Hanoverian
cook, and congratulate her on her culinary capacities, a proceeding
which threw the good woman into an ecstasy of delight. After lunch,
the young people, accompanied by Miss Cochrane as chaperone, went
out in the motor, not returning until nearly dark. On rainy days,
of course, there was no drive; but in the drawing-room of the villa
the Princess Frederica had thoughtfully contrived a sort of recess,
furnished with a sofa, in which the engaged couple could pursue their
discreet flirtation at their ease. When they took refuge there, the
young Prince Alexander of Battenberg, who had joined his family at
Biarritz, used to tease them:

[Illustration: THE KING AND QUEEN OF SPAIN AND BABY]

"Look out!" he would cry to anyone entering the room. "Be careful!
Don't disturb the lovers!"

In the evening, at dinner, the suite were present. The King changed
into evening-clothes, with the collar of the Golden Fleece. At
half-past ten, he left for the station and returned to San Sebastian by
the Sud-Express.

After a few days, although they were not officially engaged, no one
doubted that the event was near at hand.

"She's nice, isn't she?" the King asked me, point-blank.

A significant detail served to show me how far things had gone. One
day, the two young people, accompanied by the Princesses Frederica and
Beatrice and the whole little court, walked to the end of the grounds,
to a spot near the lake, where two holes had been newly dug. A gardener
stood waiting for them, carrying two miniature fir-plants in his arms.

"This is mine," said the King.

"And this is mine," said the princess, in French, for they constantly
spoke French together.

"We must plant the trees side by side," declared the King, "so that
they may always remind us of these never-to-be-forgotten days."

No sooner said than done. In accordance with the old English tradition,
the two of them, each laying hold of a spade, dug up the earth and
heaped it around the shrubs with shouts of laughter that rang clear
through the silent wood. Then, when the King, who, in spite of his
strength of arm, is a poor gardener, perceived that the princess had
finished her task first:

"There is no doubt about it," he said, "I am very awkward! I must put
in a month or two with the Engineers!"

On returning to the villa, he gave the princess her first present: a
heart set in brilliants. It was certainly a day of symbols.

On the following day, things took a more definite turn. The King came
to fetch the princesses in the morning to take them to San Sebastian,
where they met Queen Maria Christina. Nobody knew what happened in
the course of the interview and the subsequent private luncheon at
the Miramar Palace. But it was, beyond a doubt, a decisive day. At
Fuentarabia, the first Spanish town through which they passed on their
way to San Sebastian in the morning, the King said to the princess:

"You are now on Spanish soil."

"Oh," she said, "I am so glad!"

"It will soon be for good."

And they smiled to each other.

The frantic cheering that greeted her entry at San Sebastian, the
hail of flowers that fell at her feet when she passed through the
streets, the motherly kiss with which she was received at the door of
Queen Maria Christina's drawing-room must have given Princess Ena to
understand that all Spain had confirmed its sovereign's choice and
applauded his good taste.

Twenty-four hours after this visit, the Queen Mother, in her turn, went
to Biarritz and took tea at the Villa Mouriscot. The King had gone on
before her. Intense happiness was reflected on every face. When the
Queen, who had very graciously sent for me to thank me for the care
which I was taking of her son, stepped into her carriage, she said to
the princess, with a smile:

"We shall soon see you in Madrid."

Then, taking a white rose from the bouquet with which the Mayor of
Biarritz had presented her, she gave it to the princess, who pressed it
to her lips before pinning it to her bodice.

That same evening, the King, beaming all over his face, cried to me
from a distance, the moment he saw me:

"It's all right, Paoli; the official demand has been granted. You see
before you the happiest of men!"

He was indeed happy, so much so that his gaiety infected everybody
around him. Each of us felt that he had some small part in this
frank happiness, in this touching romance; and we felt all its charm
as though our hearts were but twenty years old again. The English
themselves, forgetting that their princess was about to marry a
Catholic sovereign and that she would have to forswear the Protestant
faith--an essential condition of the marriage--the English, usually so
strict in these matters, greeted this love-match with enthusiasm. One
of the British ministers gave vent to a very pretty phrase. Someone
expressing surprise, in his presence, at the acquiescence shown in this
connexion by King Edward's government:

"Mankind loves a lover," he replied. "Especially in England."

The days that followed upon the betrothal were days of enchantment for
the young couple, now freed from all preoccupation and constraint. One
met them daily, motoring along the picturesque roads of the Basque
country or walking through the streets of Biarritz, stopping before the
shopwindows, at the photographer's or at the pastrycook's.

"Do you know, Paoli," said the King to me, one day, "I've changed the
princess's name. Instead of calling her Ena, which I don't like, I call
her Nini. That's very Parisian, isn't it?"

The royal lover, as I have already said, prided himself with justice on
his Parisianism, as witness the following scrap of dialogue, which took
place one morning in the street at Biarritz:

"M. Paoli."

"Sir?"

"Do you know the tune of the _Maschich_?"

"Upon my word, I can't say I do, Sir!"

"Or of _Viens, Poupoule_?"

"No, Sir."

"Why, then you know nothing. Paoli ... you're a disgrace!"

Thereupon, half-opening the door of the confectioner's shop where
Princess Ena was making a leisurely selection of cakes, he began to hum
the famous air of _Viens, Poupoule_!

It will readily be imagined that the protection of the King was not
always an easy matter. True, it was understood that I should invariably
be told beforehand of the programme of the day; but the plans would be
changed an hour later; and, when the young couple had once set out at
random, nothing was more difficult than to catch them up.

I remember one morning when the King informed me that he did not
intend to go out that day. I thereupon determined to give myself a few
hours' rest. I had returned to my hotel and was beginning to enjoy the
unaccustomed sense of repose when the telephone bell rang:

"The King and the Princess have gone out," said the voice of one of my
detectives. "It's impossible to find them."

Greatly alarmed, I was hurrying to the Villa Mouriscot, when, at a bend
in the road, I saw the fugitives themselves before me, accompanied by
the Princess Beatrice.

"I say!" cried the King, in great glee. "We gave your inspector the
slip!"

And, as I was venturing to utter a discreet reproach:

"Don't be angry with us, M. Paoli," the princess broke in, very
prettily. "The King isn't frightened; no more am I. Who would think of
hurting us?"

The great delight of Alfonso, who is very playfully inclined, was to
hoax people that did not know who he was. One day, motoring into Cambo,
the delicious village near which M. Edmond Rostand's property lies, he
entered the post-office to send off some postcards. Seeing the woman in
charge of the office taking the air outside the door:

"I beg your pardon, madame," he said, very politely. "Could you tell
me if the King of Spain is expected here to-day?"

"I don't know anything about it," said the little post-mistress in an
off-hand way.

"Don't you know him by sight?"

"No."

"Oh, really! They say he's very nice: not exactly handsome, but quite
charming, for all that."

The good lady, of course, suspected nothing; but when the King handed
her his postcards, it goes without saying that she at once read the
superscriptions and saw that they were addressed to the Queen Mother at
San Sebastian, to the Infanta Doña Paz, to the Infanta Maria Theresa,
to the prime minister.

"Why, it's the King himself!" she exclaimed, quite overcome.

Alfonso XIII was already far on his road.

The most amusing adventure, however, was that which he had at Dax. One
morning, he took it into his head to motor away to the parched and
desolate country of the Landes, which stretch from Bayonne to Bordeaux.
After a long and wearing drive, he decided to take the train back from
Dax. Accompanied by his friend Señor Quiñones de Leon, he made for the
station, where the two young men, tired out and soaked in perspiration,
sat down in the refreshment-room.

"Give us some lunch, please," said the King, who was ravenously hungry,
to the woman at the bar.

The refreshment-room, unfortunately, was very meagerly supplied. When
the two travelling-companions had eaten up the sorry fare represented
by a few eggs and sandwiches, which had probably been waiting more than
a month for a traveller to arrive and take a fancy to them, the King,
whose appetite was far from being satisfied, called the barmaid, a fat
and matronly Béarnaise, with an upper lip adorned with a pair of thick
moustachios.

"Have you nothing else to give us?" he asked.

"I have a _pâté de foie gras_, but it's very expensive," said the
decent creature, whose perspicacity did not go to the length of seeing
a serious customer in this famished and dusty young man.

"Never mind, let's have it," said the King.

The woman brought her _pâté_, which was none too fresh; but how great
was her amazement when she saw the two travellers devour not only the
liver, but the fat as well! The pot was emptied and scraped clean in
the twinkling of an eye.

Pleased with her successful morning's trade and encouraged by the
King's ebullient good-humour, the barmaid sat down at the royal table,
and began to tell the King her family affairs and questioned him with
maternal solicitude. When, at last, the hour of departure struck, they
shook hands with each other warmly.

Some time afterwards, the King was passing through Dax by rail and, as
the train steamed into the station, said to me:

"I have an acquaintance at Dax. I'll show her to you: she is charming."

The plump Béarnaise was there, more moustachioed than ever. I will not
attempt to describe her comic bewilderment at recognising her former
customer in the person of the King. He was delighted and, giving her
his hand:

"You won't refuse to say How-do-you-do to me, I hope?" he asked,
laughing.

The thing turned her head; what was bound to happen happened: she
became indiscreet. From that time onwards, she looked into every
train that stopped at Dax, to see if "her friend" the King was among
the passengers; and, when, instead of stepping out on the platform,
he satisfied himself with giving her a friendly nod from behind the
pane, she felt immensely disappointed: in fact, she was even a little
offended.

The Cambo post-mistress and the Dax barmaid are not the only people who
boast of having been taken in by Alfonso XIII. His turn for waggery was
sometimes vented upon grave and serious men. Dr. Moure, of Bordeaux,
who attended the young monarch when his nose was operated upon, has
a story to tell. He was sent for, one day, to San Sebastian and was
waiting for his illustrious patient in a room at the Miramar Palace,
when the door opened quickly and there entered a most respectable
lady, dressed in silk flounces and wearing a wig and spectacles. Not
having the honour of her acquaintance, he made a deep bow, to which she
replied with a stately courtesy.

"It must be the _camerera-major_," he thought to himself. "She looks
tremendously eighteenth-century."

But suddenly a great burst of laughter shook the venerable dowager's
frame from head to foot, her spectacles fell from her nose, her wig
dropped likewise and a clarion voice cried:

"Good-morning, doctor! It's I!"

It was the King.

The chapter of anecdotes is inexhaustible. And it is not difficult
to picture how this playful simplicity, combined with a delicacy of
feeling and a knightly grace to which, in our age of brutal realism, we
are no longer accustomed, made an utter conquest of the pretty English
princess. When, after several days of familiar and daily intimacy, it
became necessary to say good-bye--the princess was returning to England
to busy herself with preparations for her marriage, Alfonso to Madrid
for the same reason--when the moment of separation had come, there
was a pang at the heart on both sides. And, as I was leaving with the
princess for Paris:

"You're a lucky man, M. Paoli, to be going with the princess," said the
King, sadly, as I was stepping into the railway-carriage. "I'd give
anything to be in your place!"

While the Court of Spain was employed in settling, down to the smallest
particular, the ceremonial for the King's approaching wedding, Princess
Ena was absorbed, at one and the same time, in the charming details of
her trousseau and in the more austere preparations for her conversion
to Catholicism. This conversion, as I have already said, was a _sine
quâ non_ to the consent of Spain to her marriage.

The princess and her mother, accompanied by Miss Cochrane and Lord
William Cecil, went and stayed in an hotel at Versailles for the period
of religious instruction which precedes the admission of a neophyte
within the pale of the Roman Catholic Church; and it was at Versailles,
on a cold February morning, that she abjured her Protestantism in a
sequestered chapel of the cathedral. Why did she select the town of
Louis XIV in which to accomplish this important and solemn act of her
life? Doubtless, because of the peaceful silence that surrounded it
and of the past, filled with melancholy grandeur, which it conjured
up; perhaps, also, because of the association of ideas suggested to
her mind by the city of the Great King and the origins of the family
of the Spanish Bourbons of which it was the cradle. The heart of woman
sometimes provides instances of this delicacy of thought.

The last months of the winter of 1906 were spent by the engaged pair in
eager expectation of the great event that was to unite them for good
and all and in the manifold occupations which it involved. The date of
the wedding was fixed for the 31st of May. A few days before that I
went to Calais to meet the princess. It was as though nature, in her
charming vernal awakening, was smiling upon the royal bride and had
hastily decked herself in her best to greet the young princess, as she
passed, with all her youthful gladness. But the princess saw nothing:
she had bidden a last farewell to her country, her family and her home;
and, despite the happiness that called her, the fond memory of all that
she was quitting oppressed her heart.

"It is nothing, M. Paoli," she said, when I asked the cause of her
sadness, "it is nothing: I cannot help feeling touched when I think
that I am leaving the country where I have spent so many happy days to
go towards the unknown."

She did not sleep that night. At three o'clock in the morning, she
was up and dressed, ready to appear before her future husband, before
the nation that was waiting to welcome her, while the King, at the
same hour, was striding up and down the platform at Irun, in a fever
of excitement, peering into the night so as to be the first to see
the yellow gleams of the train and nervously lighting cigarette upon
cigarette to calm his impatience.

Then came the whirlwind of festivals at which the King invited me to
be present, the sumptuous magnificence of the marriage-ceremony in the
ancient church of Los Geronimos. It was as though the old Court of
Spain had regained its pomp of the days of long ago. Once more, the
streets, all dressed with flags, were filled with antiquated chariots,
with heraldic costumes, with glittering uniforms; from the balconies
draped with precious stuffs, flowers fell in torrents; cheers rose from
the serried ranks of the crowd; an intense, noisy, mad gaiety reigned
in all men's eyes, on all men's lips, while, from behind the windows
of the state-coach that carried her to the church, the surprised and
delighted princess, forgetting her fleeting melancholy, now smiled her
acknowledgments of this mighty welcome.

A tragic incident was fated brutally to interrupt her fair young
dream. Finding no seat in the church of Los Geronimos, the dimensions
of which are quite small, I took refuge in one of the Court stands
erected along the route taken by the sovereigns; and I was watching the
procession pass on its return to the palace, when my ears were suddenly
deafened by a tremendous explosion. At first, no one realised where it
came from. We thought that it was the report of a cannon-shot fired to
announce the end of the ceremony. But suddenly loud yells arose, people
hustled one another and rushed away madly, shouting:

"It's a murder! The King and Queen are killed!"

Terrified, I tried to hasten to the street from which the cries came.
A file of soldiers, drawn up across the roadway stopped me. I then ran
to the palace, where I arrived at exactly the same moment as the royal
coach, from which the King and the young Queen alighted. They were
pale, but calm. The King held his wife's hand tenderly in his own and
stared in dismay at the long white train of her bridal dress, stained
with great blotches of blood. Filled with horror, I went up to Alfonso
XIII:

"Oh, Sir!" I cried, "at least both of you are safe and sound!"

"Yes," he replied. Then, lowering his voice, he added, "But there are
some killed. Poor people! What an infamous thing!"

Under her great white veil, the Queen, standing between Queen Maria
Christina and Princess Henry of Battenberg, still both trembling, wept
silent tears. Then the King, profoundly moved, drew nearer to her and
kissed her slowly on the cheek, whispering these charming words:

"I do hope that you are not angry with me for the emotion which I have
involuntarily caused you?"

What she replied I did not hear: I only saw a kiss.

Notwithstanding the warm manifestations of loyalty which the people
of Spain lavished upon their sovereigns on the following day, Queen
Victoria is said to have been long haunted by the horrible spectacle
which she had beheld and to have retained an intense feeling of terror
and sadness from that tragic hour. But, God be praised, everything
passes. When, later, I had the honour of again finding myself in
attendance upon the King and Queen at Biarritz and in Paris, I
recognised once more the happy and loving young couple whom I had known
at the time of their engagement. Alfonso XIII had the same gaiety, the
same high spirits as before; and the Queen's mind seemed to show no
trace of painful memories or gloomy apprehensions.

In the course of the first journey which I took with them a year after
the murderous attempt in Madrid, the King himself acquainted me with
the real cause of this happy quietude so promptly recovered. Walking
into the compartment where I was sitting, he lifted high into the air a
pink and chubby child and, holding it up for me to look at, said, with
more than a touch of pride in his voice:

"There! What do you think of him? Isn't he splendid?"

III

THE SHAH OF PERSIA

Must I confess it? When I was told, a few weeks before the opening of
the International Exhibition of 1900, that I should have the honour
of being attached to the person of Muzaffr-ed-Din, King of Kings and
Shah of Persia, during the whole duration of the official visit which
he contemplated paying to Paris, I did not welcome the news with the
alacrity which it ought doubtless to have evoked.

And yet I had no reason for any prejudice against this monarch: I
did not even know him. My apprehensions were grounded on more remote
causes: I recalled the memories which a former Shah, his predecessor,
had left among us. Nasr-ed-Din was a strange and capricious sovereign,
who had never succeeded in making up his mind, when he came to Europe,
to leave on the further shore, so to speak, the manners and customs
of his country or to lay aside the troublesome fancies in which his
reckless despotism loved to indulge. Was it not related of him that,
while staying in the country, in France, he caused a sheep or two to
be sacrificed every morning in his bed-room, in order to ensure the
Prophet's clemency until the evening? And that he had the amiable habit
of buying anything that took his fancy, but neglecting to pay the bill?

Lastly, this very delicious story was told about him. The Shah had
asked whether he could not, by way of amusement, be present at an
execution of capital punishment during one of his stays in Paris. It so
happened that the occasion offered. He was invited to go one morning
to the Place de la Roquette, where the scaffold had been erected. He
arrived with his diamonds and his suite; but, the moment he saw the
condemned man, his generous heart was filled with a sudden tenderness
for the murderer:

"Not that one. The other!" he ordered, pointing to the public
prosecutor, who was presiding over the ceremony.

Picture the magistrate's face, while the Shah insisted and thought it
discourteous of them not at once to yield to his wishes.

I therefore asked myself with a certain dismay what unpleasant
surprises his successor might have in store for me. He seemed to me to
come from the depths of a very old and mysterious form of humanity,
travelling from his capital to the shores of Europe, slowly, by easy
stages, as in the mediæval times, across deserts and mountains and
blue-domed dead cities, escorted by a fabulous baggage-train of rare
stuffs, of praying-carpets, of marvellous jewels, an army of turbaned
horsemen, a swarm of officials, a harem of dancing-girls and a long
file of camels.

I asked myself if I too would be obliged to assist at sacrifices of
heifers and to console unpaid tradesmen, all to be finally pointed out
by His Majesty as a "substitute" under the knife of the guillotine.

However, I was needlessly alarmed: in Persia, thank goodness, the Shahs
succeed, but do not resemble one another. I became fully aware of this
when I was admitted into the intimacy of our new guest. Muzaffr-ed-Din
had nothing in common with his father. He was an overgrown child,
whose massive stature, great bushy moustache, very kind, round eyes,
prominent stomach and general adiposity formed a contrast with his
backward mental condition and his sleepy intelligence. He had, in fact,
the brain of a twelve-year-old schoolboy, together with a schoolboy's
easy astonishment, candour and curiosity. He busied himself exclusively
with small things, the only things that excited and interested him.
He was gentle, good-natured, an arrant coward, generous at times
and extremely capricious, but his whims never went so far as to take
pleasure in the suffering of others. He loved life, was enormously
attached to it, in fact; and he liked me too with a real affection,
which was spontaneous and, at times, touching:

"Paoli, worthy Paoli," he said to me one day, in an expansive mood,
fixing his round pupils upon me, "you ... my good, my dear domestic!"

When I appeared surprised and even a little offended at the place which
he was allotting me in the social scale:

"His Majesty means to say," explained the grand vizier, "that he looks
upon you as belonging to the family. 'Domestic' in his mind means a
friend of the house, according to the true etymology of the word, which
is derived from the Latin _domus_...."

The intention was pretty enough; I asked no more, remembering that
Muzaffr-ed-Din spoke French with difficulty and employed a sort of
negro chatter to express his thoughts.

At the time of his first stay in Paris, he had the privilege of
inaugurating the famous Sovereigns' Palace, which the government had
fitted up in the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne for the entertainment
of its royal visitors. The house was a comparatively small one;
on the other hand, it was sumptuously decorated. The national
furniture-repository had sent some of the finest pieces to be found
in its historic store-rooms. In fact, I believe that the Shah slept
in the bed of Napoleon I and washed his hands and face in the Empress
Marie-Louise's basin; things that interested him but little. Great
memories were a matter of indifference to him; he infinitely preferred
futile realities in the form of useless objects, whose glitter pleased
his eye, and of more or less harmonious sounds, whose vibrations
tickled his ears.

His tastes were proved on the day of his arrival by two quick
decisions: he ordered to be packed up for Teheran the grand piano which
adorned his drawing-room and the motor-car which awaited his good
pleasure outside, after hearing the one, trying the other and lavishly
paying for both. He would not be denied.

His amazement was great when he visited the exhibition for the first
time. The wonderful cosmopolitan city that seemed to have leapt into
existence in the space of one of the thousand and one nights of the
Persian legend stirred his eastern imagination, strive though he might
to conceal the fact. The splendour of the exotic display exercised an
irresistible attraction upon him; the glass-cases of jewellery also
fascinated his gaze, although he himself, doubtless without realising
it, was a perambulating shop-window which any jeweller might have
longed to possess. On his long Persian tunic with its red edges and
ample skirts creased with folds he wore a regular display of precious
stones and one did not know which to admire the most, the gleaming
sapphires that adorned his shoulder-straps, the splendid emeralds, the
exquisite turquoises that studded the baldrick and the gold scabbard
of his sword, the four enormous rubies that took the place of the
buttons of his uniform, or the dazzling and formidable diamond, the
famous Daria-Nour, the Sea of Light, fastened on to his _Khola_, the
traditional head-dress, whence jutted like a fountain of light a
quivering aigrette in brilliants. Thus decked out, Muzaffr-ed-Din was
valued at thirty-four million francs net; and even then he was far from
carrying the whole of his fortune upon his person: I have in fact been
assured that, in the depths of the iron trunk of which four vigilant
Persians had the keeping, there slumbered an equal number of precious
stones, no less fine than the others and content to undergo the rigour
of a temporary disgrace. At all events, in the guise in which he showed
himself in public, he was enough to excite the admiring curiosity of
the crowds.

In his solemn walks through the various sections of the exhibition,
where my modest frock-coat looked drab and out of place among the
glittering uniforms, he was attended by the grand vizier, the only
dignitary entitled, by the etiquette of the Persian court, to carry a
cane in the presence of his sovereign, who himself always leant upon a
stick made of some precious wood. He was invariably followed by a grave
and attentive Persian carrying a hand-bag. This person puzzled me at
first. His fellow-countrymen treated him with respect and addressed him
in deferential tones. I had concluded from this that he filled some
lofty function or other and felt the more justified in so thinking as
the Shah from time to time made him a little sign, whereupon, promptly,
all three--the Shah, the Persian and the hand-bag--disappeared for
a few moments into a dark corner. However, I soon learnt that these
mysterious meetings had no political significance: the Persian was
merely a confidential body-servant; as for the hand-bag, it held simply
the most homely and the most intimate of all the world's utensils and
the Shah was frequently obliged to have recourse to it. This little
drawback, however, did not damp his eagerness to know, to see and to
buy things. He bought everything indifferently: musical instruments,
old tapestries, a set of table-cutlery, a panorama, a "new-art" ring, a
case of pistols. He looked, touched, weighed the thing in his hand and
then, raising his forefinger, said, "_Je prends_," while the delighted
exhibitor, greatly touched and impressed, took down the order and the
address.

Nevertheless, Muzaffr-ed-Din was not so rich as one would be inclined
to think. Each time, in fact, that he came to Europe, where he spent
fabulous sums, he procured the money needed for his journey, not only
by raising a loan, generally in Russia, but also by a method which
was both ingenious and businesslike. Before leaving his possessions,
he summoned his chief officers of State--ministers, provincial
governors and the like--and proposed the following bargain to them:
those who wished to form part of his suite must first pay him a sum
of money which he valued in accordance with the importance of their
functions. It varied between 50,000 and 300,000 francs. In return, he
authorised them to recoup themselves for this advance in any way they
pleased. Here we find the explanation of the large number of persons
who accompanied the Shah on his travels and the quaint and unexpected
titles which they bore, such as that of "minister of the dockyard,"
though Persia has never owned a navy, and one still more extraordinary,
that of "attorney to the heir apparent." Although they sometimes had
romantic souls, they invariably had terribly practical minds. Eager
to recover as quickly as possible the outlay to which their ambition
to behold the West had induced them to consent, they practised on a
huge scale and without scruple or hesitation what I may describe as the
bonus or commission system. Notwithstanding my long experience of human
frailties, I confess that this proceeding, cynically raised by these
gentlemen to the level of an institution, upset all my notions, while
it explained how the Shah was able to spend eight to twelve million
francs in pocket-money on each of his trips to France.

As soon as the people about him knew what shops His Majesty proposed
to visit in the course of his daily drive, a bevy of courtiers would
swoop down upon the awestruck tradesman and imperiously insist upon his
promising them a big commission, in exchange for which they undertook
to prevail upon His Majesty graciously to honour the establishment with
his custom. The shopkeeper as a rule raised no objection; he was quite
content to increase the price in proportion; and, when the good Shah,
accompanied by his vizier and the famous hand-bag, presented himself a
few hours later in the shop, his suite praised the goods of the house
so heartily that he never failed to let fall the traditional phrase,
"_Je prends_," so as to give no one even the slightest pain. Nor, for
that matter, did any of those who surrounded him dream of making a
secret of the traffic in which he indulged behind his sovereign's back:
it was a right duly acquired and paid for.

I am bound to say, however, that the grand vizier--no doubt because he
was already too well-off--appeared to be above these sordid and venial
considerations. This important personage, whose name on that occasion
was His Highness the Sadrazani Mirza Ali Asghar Khan Emin es Sultan,
combined an acute understanding with a superior cast of mind; the Shah
showed him a very noteworthy affection and treated him as a friend.
These marks of special kindness were due to curious causes, which an
amiable Persian was good enough to reveal to me. It appears that, when
the late Shah Nasr-ed-Din was shot dead at the mosque where he was
making a pilgrimage, the grand vizier of the time, who was none other
than this same Mirza Ali Asghar Khan, pretended that the Shah's wound
was not serious, had the corpse seated in the carriage and drove back
to the palace beside it, acting as if he were talking to his sovereign,
fanning him and asking occasionally for water to quench his thirst, as
though he were still alive.

The death was not acknowledged till some days later. In this way, the
vizier gave the heir-apparent, the present Shah, time to return from
Tanris and avoided the grave troubles that would certainly have arisen
had the truth been known. Muzaffr-ed-Din owned his crown and perhaps
his life to his grand vizier; small wonder that he showed him some
gratitude.

His court minister, Mohamed Khan, could also have laid claim to this
gratitude, for he gave proof of remarkable presence of mind at the time
of the attempted assassination of which Muzaffr-ed-Din was the object
during his stay in Paris in 1900.

The incident is perhaps still in the reader's recollection. The Shah,
with the court minister by his side and General Parent, the chief
French officer attached to his person, seated facing him, had just left
the Sovereign's Palace to drive to the exhibition, when a man sprang
on the step of the open landau, produced a revolver and took aim at
the monarch's chest. Before he had time, however, to pull the trigger,
a hand of iron fell upon his wrist and clutched it with such force
that the man was compelled to let go his revolver, which fell at the
feet of the sovereign, while the would-be murderer was arrested by the
police. Mohamed Khan, by this opportune and energetic interference, had
prevented a shot the consequences of which would have been disastrous
for the Shah and very annoying for the French government, all the more
so inasmuch as the author of this attempt was a French subject, a
sort of fanatic from the South, to whom the recent assassination of
King Humbert of Italy had suggested this fantastic plan of making away
with the unoffending Muzaffr-ed-Din. Here is a curious detail: I had
received that very morning an anonymous letter, dated from Naples, but
posted in Paris, in which the sovereign was warned that an attempt
would be made on his life. Although this kind of communication was
frequent, I had ordered the supervision to be redoubled inside the
palace; as a matter of fact, I did not much fear a surprise outside,
as the Shah never drove out but his carriage was surrounded by a
detachment of cavalry. Now ill-luck would have it that he took it into
his head to go out that day before the time which he himself had fixed
and without waiting for the arrival of the escort: I have shown the
result.

During the whole of this tragic scene, which lasted only a few seconds,
he did not utter a single word; the pallor which had overspread his
cheeks alone betrayed the emotion which he had felt. Nevertheless,
he ordered the coachman to drive on. When, at last, they reached the
Champs Élysées and he perceived numerous groups waiting to cheer him,
he emerged from his stupor:

"Is it going to begin again?" he cried, in accents of terror.

He was given, in fact, to easy and strange fits of alarm. He always
carried a loaded pistol in his trowsers-pocket, though he never used
it. On one of his journeys in France, he even took it into his head to
make a high court-official walk before him when he left the theatre,
carrying a revolver pointed at the peaceable sightseers who had
gathered to see him come out. As soon as I saw this, I ran up to the
threatening body-guard:

"Put that revolver away," I said. "It's not the custom here."

But I had to insist pretty roughly before he consented to put away his
weapon.

The Shah, for that matter, was no less distrustfull of his own
subjects; in fact, I observed that, when the Persians were in his
presence, they adopted a uniform attitude which consisted in holding
their hands crossed on their stomach, no doubt as evidence of their
harmless intentions. It was a guarantee of a very casual sort, we must
admit.

For the rest, his "alarms" displayed themselves under the most diverse
aspects and in the most unexpected circumstances. For instance,
there was no persuading him ever to ascend the Eiffel Tower. The
disappointment of his guides was increased by the fact that he would
come as far as the foot of the pillars; they always thought that he
meant to go up. But no: once below the immense iron framework, he
gazed up in the air, examined the lifts, flung a timid glance at the
staircases, then suddenly turned on his heels and walked away. They
told him in vain that his august father had gone up as far as the first
floor; nothing could induce him to do as much.

I again remember a day--it was at the time of his second stay in
Paris--when, on entering his drawing-room, I found him wearing a very
careworn air.

"Paoli," he said, taking my hand and leading me to the window, "look!"

Look as I might, I saw nothing out of the way. Down below, three
bricklayers stood on the pavement, talking quietly together.

"What!" said the Shah. "Don't you see those men standing still, down
there. They have been there for an hour, talking and watching my
window. Paoli, they want to kill me."

Repressing a terrible wish to laugh, I resolved to reassure our guest
with a lie:

"Why, I know them!" I replied. "I know their names: they are decent
working-men."

Muzaffr-ed-Din's face lit up at once:

"You seem to know everybody," he said, giving me a grateful look.

[Illustration: THE SHAH OF PERSIA]

The most amusing incident was that which happened on the occasion
of an experiment with radium. I had described to the sovereign, in
the course of conversation, the wonderful discovery which our great
_savant_, M. Currie, had just made, a discovery that was called upon
to revolutionise science. The Shah was extremely interested by my
story and repeatedly expressed a desire to be shown the precious magic
stone. Professor Currie was informed accordingly, and, in spite of his
stress of work, agreed to come to the Élysée Palace Hôtel and give an
exhibition. As, however, complete darkness was needed for radium to be
admired in all its brilliancy, I had with endless trouble persuaded
the King of Kings to come down to one of the hotel cellars arranged
for the purpose. At the appointed time, His Majesty and all his suite
proceeded to the underground apartment in question. Professor Currie
closed the door, switched off the electric light and uncovered his
specimen of radium, when, suddenly, a shout of terror, resembling at
one and the same time the roar of a bull and the yells of a man who
is being murdered, rang out, followed by hundreds of similar cries.
Amid general excitement and consternation, we flung ourselves upon the
electric switches, turned on the lights and beheld a strange sight: in
the midst of the prostrate Persians stood the Shah, his arms clinging
to the neck of his howling grand vizier, his round pupils dilated to
their rims, while he shouted at the top of his voice, in Persian:

"Come away! Come away!"

The switching on of the light calmed this mad anguish as though by
magic. Realising the disappointment which he had caused M. Currie, he
tried to offer him a decoration by way of compensation; but the austere
man of science thought right to decline it.

The instinctive dread of darkness and solitude was so keen in the
Persian monarch that he required his bed-room to be filled during the
night with light and sound. Accordingly, every evening, as soon as he
had lain down and closed his eyes, the members of his suite gathered
round his bed, lit all the candelabra and exchanged their impressions
aloud, while young nobles of the court, relieving one another in
pairs, conscientiously patted his arms and legs with little light,
sharp, regular taps. The King of Kings imagined that he was in this
way keeping death at a distance, if perchance it should take a fancy
to visit him in his sleep, and the extraordinary thing is that he did
sleep, notwithstanding all this massage, light and noise.

The need which he felt of having people constantly around him and of
reproducing the atmosphere of his distant country wherever he fixed his
temporary residence was reflected in the picturesque and singularly
animated aspect which the hotel or palace at which he elected to stay
assumed soon after his installation. It was promptly transformed into a
vast, exotic caravanserai, presenting the appearance of a French fair
combined with that of an eastern bazaar. The house was taken possession
of by its new occupants from the kitchens, ruled over by the Persian
master-cook who prepared the monarch's dishes, to the attics, where the
inferior servants were accommodated. One saw nothing but figures in
dark tunics and astrakhan caps, squatting in the passages, leaning over
the staircases; along the corridors and in the halls, the shopkeepers
had improvised stalls as at Teheran, in the hope that the monarch
would let fall from his august lips in passing the "_Je prends_" that
promised wealth. In the uncouth crowd which the desire of provoking
and hearing that blessed phrase attracted to the waiting-rooms of
the hotel, all the professions rubbed shoulders promiscuously;
curiosity-dealers, unsuccessful inventors, collectors of autographs and
postage-stamps, ruined financiers, charlatans, unknown artists, women
of doubtful character.

Their numbers had increased so greatly, on the faith of the legend
that the Shah's treasures were inexhaustible, that a radical step had
to be taken: when Muzaffr-ed-Din returned to Paris in 1902 and 1905,
the applicants for favours were forbidden to resume their little
manoeuvre. Thereupon they changed their tactics: they sat down and
wrote.

I have kept these letters, which the Shah never read and which his
secretary handed me regularly, without having read them either. They
arrived by each post in shoals. One could easily make a volume of
them which would provide psychologists with a very curious study of
the human soul and mind. Among those poor letters are many obscure,
touching, comic, candid and cynical specimens; some also are absurd;
others imprudent or sad. Most of them are signed; and among the
signatures of these requests for assistance are names which one is
surprised to find there. I must be permitted to suppress these names
and to limit myself, in this mad orgie of epistolary literature, to
reproducing the most typical of the letters that fell under my eyes.

First, a few specimens of "the comic note:"

"_To His Majesty, Muzaffr-ed-Din, Shah of Persia._ "_Your Majesty_,--

"Knowing that you look kindly upon French requests, I venture to
address these few lines to you. I am expecting my sister, Mlle.
Crampel, who has a situation in Russia; as she is ill, I would like
her to remain in France. For us to live together, I should have to
start a business with a capital of 3 to 5,000 francs, which I do not
possess and which I cannot possibly find. I am 58 years of age.

"In the hope that you will lend a favourable ear to my request, I am

"Your Majesty's most humble servant,

"MADAME M.

"P. S.--In gratitude, with Your Majesty's permission, I would place a
sign representing Your Majesty over the shop-front."

"_Sire_,--

"The feeling that prompts me to write to you, O noble King, is the
love which I feel for your country. I will come straight to the point:
I will ask you, O Majesty, if I, a plain French subject, may have a
post of some kind in your ideal kingdom.

"Dentist I am; a dentist I would remain, in Your Majesty's service.
All my life long, you would be assured of my complete devotion.

"A future Persian dentist to his future King.

"P. J. L.

"Pray, Sire, address the reply to the _poste restante_ at Post-office
No. 54."

"_Great Shah_,--

"This missive which I have the honour of addressing to Your Majesty
is to tell you that I and my friends, Messieurs Jules Brunel and Abel
Chenet, have the honour of offering you four bottles of champagne and
two bottles of claret.

"In exchange, may we beg for the Order of the Lion and Sun, which it
would give us great pleasure to receive and which we hope that Your
Majesty will confer upon us? We are French citizens and old soldiers.

"We wish you constant good health and prosperity for your country,
Persia. You can send your servant to fetch the bottles.

"We have the honour to greet you and we remain your very humble
servants, crying:

"'Long live H. M. Muzaffr-ed-Din and long live Persia!'

"A. W."

"THORIGNY (ON MY WAY HOME),

"27 August, 1902.

"_Your Majesty_,--

"Yesterday, Tuesday, I was in Paris, waiting to have the pleasure of
seeing you leave your hotel. That pleasure was not vouchsafed me.

"But, on the other hand, a ring set with a diamond, which I was taking
to be repaired, was stolen from me by a pickpocket.

"This ring was the only diamond which my wife possessed. In
consequence of the theft, she now possesses none.

"I put myself the question whether I could not indict you before a
French court, as being the direct cause of the theft.

"I find nothing in our French law-books likely to decide in my favour.

"And so I prefer to come and beseech you to redress the involuntary
injury which you have done me.

"A choice stone, which I could have set as a ring, would make good all
the damage which I have suffered.

"I am well aware that you must have numerous and various requests for
assistance. This is not one of them.

"But I should be infinitely grateful to you if you would understand
that, but for your coming to Paris, I should not have been robbed and
if you would kindly send me a choice stone to replace the one stolen
from me.

"Will Your Majesty pray receive the homage of my most profound respect.

"G. P.

"_Attorney-at-law_,
"BARBEZIEUX (Gironde), France."

"_To His Majesty_,--
"_Muzaffr-ed-Din, Shah of Persia,_
"_At the Élysée Palace Hôtel, Paris_.

"I eagerly congratulate His Majesty on the great honour which he
has paid the French people by making a long stay in the great
international city. And I take advantage of this occasion to beg His
Majesty to initiate a general convocation of all the sovereigns of the
whole world for next month, in order to open a subscription for the
construction of an unprecedented fairy palace (new style and taking
something from planetary nature and its marvels), to be known as the
Sovereign Palace of the Universal Social Congress, symbolising the
whole universe by States, containing the apartments of every sovereign
in the world and situated near the Bois de Boulogne.

"I consider that His Majesty would thus have a good opportunity of
securing a great page in history.

"Hoping for a just appreciation and entire success, I send His
Majesty, the Shah of Persia, the assurance of my greatest respect,
together with my perfect consideration, and I am,

"The most humble Architect-general of the Universal Confederation of
Social Peace,

"At His Majesty's service,

"C. M."

Now comes the touching note:

"A little provincial work-girl, who has not the honour of being known
to His Majesty, kneels down before him and, with her hands folded
together, entreats him to make her a present of a sum of 1,200 francs,
which would enable her to marry the young man she loves.... Oh, what
blessings he would receive day by day for that kind action!

"I beg the Shah to forgive me for the offences of this letter against
etiquette, with which I am not acquainted. I kiss His Majesty's hands
and I am

"His most humble and obedient little servant,

"A. C."

Lastly, is not the following letter an exquisitely candid specimen of
the proper art of "sponging"?

_"Your Majesty_,--

"As you are a friend of France, I propose to write to you as a friend;
you will permit me to do so, I hope.

"The question is this: I have the greatest longing to set eyes on the
sea; my husband has a few days' holiday in the course of October; I
should like to make the most of it and to go away for a little while.

"Our means are very small indeed; my husband has only 105 francs
a month; and I could not do what I wish without encroaching on my
housekeeping money, which is calculated down to the last centime.

"I therefore remembered your generosity and thought that you might be
touched by my request.

"You would not like a little Paris woman to be prevented from enjoying
the sight of the sea which you have doubtless often admired.

"You are very fond of travelling; you will understand my curiosity.

"Will Your Majesty deign to accept the expression of my most
respectful and distinguished sentiments?

"MME. A. A."

A worthy woman sent this rich note:

"_To His Majesty, the King of Persia_,--

"My name is the Widow Bressoy, aged 82. I have lost my husband and
two of my daughters; I am unable to walk and I owe a quarter's rent.
My grandmother washed for His Majesty King Louis-Philippe of France;
H. R. H. the Duc d' Aumale used to help me with my rent; show your
kind heart and do as he did. Should you come to the church of Ste.
Elisabeth du Temple on Sunday next, I should be very glad to see you.

"I am
"Your Majesty's most respectful servant,
"WIDOW BRESSOY."

The following original proposal came from a well-known business-house:

"_Sir_,--

"After the Monza crime and the attempt of which you were the object
yesterday and in view of the solemnities during which you might be too
much exposed to danger, I consider it my duty to bring to your notice
certain particulars which might be of the greatest use to you and
those about your person.

"I refer to secret waistcoats of my own manufacture which I am able to
offer to you and which are absolutely warranted.

"The waistcoat which I am offering is proof against a revolver-bullet
and, of course, against a sword or dagger.

"As an absolute guarantee, I can assure you as follows by experiment:
the fabric consists of a very close and solidly-riveted coat of steel
mail; the shape of the links has been specially studied so as to allow
of great suppleness, while preserving the greatest solidity.

"It resists the 12 _mm._ bullet of the regulation revolver, 1874
pattern.

"I have specimens at which bullets were fired at a distance of 4
yards; they give an exact idea of the resisting power.

"The coat of mail is lined with silk or satin, which gives the
appearance of an ordinary garment and does not for a moment suggest
its special object.

"The waistcoat covers and protects the back, the chest, the stomach
and is continued down the abdomen.

"I must add that the waistcoat is very easy to wear and in no way
inconvenient, on condition that I am supplied with the necessary
measurements or, better still, with an ordinary day-waistcoat of the
wearer's, fitted to his size.

"Hoping in the circumstances to be of some use to you, I beg Your
Majesty to accept the expression of my most profound respect.

"R. G."

Let us pass to the children. Less unreasonable than their parents,
they content themselves with asking for postage-stamps, bicycles or
autographs.

First comes a public schoolboy, quite proud of incidentally showing
that he knows his classics:

"_Sire_,--

"When you first set foot on French soil, you were pleased to take
notice, at Maubeuge railway-station, of a young public schoolboy, who,
not knowing your quality, was only able to give you a very respectful
greeting. That young schoolboy was myself.

"I realised the extent of the signal honour which Your Majesty did me
when I learnt that I had received it from the sovereign of Persia, the
country of Xerxes and Darius, the land whose children have filled the
world with the fame of their exploits. And, descending the course of
the ages, reverting to the lessons of my masters, I hailed in you 'the
wise and enlightened monarch whose reign opens out so many hopes.'

"Sire, I shall never forget that moment, which will probably be the
only one of its kind in my life; but, if I were permitted to express
a desire, I would humbly confess to Your Majesty that my greatest
happiness would be to possess a collection of Persian postage-stamps,
as an official token of the honour which you condescended to do me.

"Deign, Sire, etc.

"R. W.

"_Pupil at The Lycée Faidherbe, Lille_
"(on my holidays)."

The next has not yet learnt the beauties of literary style; he has less
notions of form; but his ambition is more far-reaching:

"_Your Majesty_,--

"I begin by begging your pardon for my presumption; but I have heard
everybody say and I read in the paper that Your Majesty is greatly
interested in motor-cars. I therefore thought that you must also have
ridden the bicycle, which you now, no doubt, care less for; and it
occurred to me that, if you happened to have an old one put by, Your
Majesty might do me the honour to give it to me.

"Papa and my big brother Jean go out riding on their bicycles and I am
left at home with mamma, because I have not a machine and they cannot
afford to buy me one.

"I should be so proud to have a bicycle, given me by Your Majesty.

"I shall not tell papa that I am writing to Your Majesty, because he
would laugh at me, and I shall take three sous from my purse for the
stamp on this letter.

"I pray God not to let those wicked anarchists attack Your Majesty, to
whom I offer my profound respect.

"MAURICE LELANDAIS,

"_aged 9½ years_,

"living with his family, _Faubourg Bizienne_,

"GUÉRANDE (_Loire-Inférieure_)."

Another schoolboy:

"VERVIERS, 3 September.

"_Great King of Persia in France, Sir_,--

"I have read in the paper that you are very rich and have lots of gold.

"My father promised to give me a gold watch for my first communion
next year, if I worked hard at school.

"I did study, Sir, for I was second and the first is thirteen years
old and I am only eleven and a half. To prove it to you, here is
my prize-list. Now, when I ask if I shall have my watch, my father
answers that he has no money and he wants it all for bread. It is not
right, Sir, to deceive me like that. But I hope that you will give me
what they refuse. Do me that great pleasure. I will pray for you.

"I love you very much.

"M. J."

Here is an artless request from a little English girl:

"_Your Majesty_,--

"I hear you are taking a holiday in Paris and I think that this must
be the best time to write to you, for you will not be so busy as in
your own kingdom.

"First of all, I want to tell you that I am an English girl, fourteen
years of age, and my name is Mary. I love collecting autographs and
so far I have been very lucky and have got some of celebrities, but I
have none of a King, except Menelik, who is a black majesty.

"Now I should ever so much like to have a few lines in your
handwriting.

"Do be so very kind as to write to me.

"MARY ST. J."

To conclude with, here are a few lively letters from ladies dark and
fair:

"PARIS, 27 July.

"_Sir_,--

"I won the last beauty-prize at Marienbad and I am simply dying to
make your acquaintance.

"In this hope, I have the honour to greet you.

"FERNANDE DE B."

"MARSEILLES, 1 August.

"_Sire_,--

"It is a pleasure to me to write to you. From my childhood's days,
I have admired Persia, that beautiful country, so dear to my heart.
Since I have heard you mentioned, I love you, Sire; I should like to
be at your service. I do not know the Persian language, but, if you
adopt me, I shall know it in a few days and you shall be my master.

"Receive, Sire, my sincere greetings.

"MIREILLE----.

"P. S.--Please reply. I will start for Paris at once."

"PARIS, 29 July.

"_To Monsieur Muzaffr-ed-Din._

"_Monsieur Le Chah_,--

"Forgive me for taking the liberty of writing to you. I had the
pleasure of seeing you yesterday in the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne and
of receiving a wave of the hand from you and a most gracious smile.

"How I should love to make your acquaintance and to have the pleasure
of pressing your hand!

"You may be certain of my entire discretion. You can, if you do not
mind, appoint whatever time and place you please.

"I should be very happy to see you; and I may venture to add that I am
a very handsome woman.

"Believe me,
"Monsieur le Chah,
"Yours most cordially,
"MADAME MARGUERITE L.

"P. S.--I beg you to destroy this letter."

"_To His Majesty, Muzaffr-ed-Din_,--

"We should be greatly honoured if you would do us the honour to come
and spend a few days in the principality of Monaco.

"A group of ladies:
"BLANCHE.
"JEANNE.
"ADÈLE."

All these efforts of the imagination, all these prodigies of ingenuity,
all these amorous suggestions were wasted. As I have said, the Shah
took no notice whatever of the six hundred and odd begging letters
of different kinds addressed to him during his visits to France.
Pleasure-loving and capricious, careful of his own peace of mind, he
dreaded and avoided emotions. Nevertheless, he was not insensible to
pity nor indifferent to the charms of the fair sex. At certain times,
he was capable of sudden movements of magnificent generosity: he would
readily give a diamond to some humble workwoman whom he met on his way;
he would of his own accord hand a bank-note to a beggar; he freely
distributed Persian gold-pieces stamped with his effigy.

He would also fall a victim to sudden erotic fancies that sometimes
caused me moments of cruel embarrassment. I remember that, one
afternoon, when we were driving in the Bois de Boulogne, near the
lakes, Muzaffr-ed-Din noticed a view which he admired, ordered the
carriages to stop and expressed a desire himself to take some snapshots
of the charming spot. We at once alighted. A little further, a group of
smart ladies sat chatting gaily without taking the smallest heed of our
presence. The Shah, seeing them, asked me to beg them to come closer
so that he might photograph them. Although I did not know them, I went
upand spoke to them and, with every excuse, explained the sovereign's
whim to them. Greatly amused, they yielded to it with a good grace. The
Shah took the photograph, smiled to the ladies and, when the operation
was over, called me to him again:

[Illustration: THE SHAH LEAVING THE ÉLYSEÉ PALACE FOR A WALK]

"Paoli," he said, "they are very pretty, very nice; go and ask them if
they would like to come back with me to Teheran."

Imagine my face! I had to employ all the resources of my eloquence
to make the King of Kings understand that you cannot take a woman to
Teheran, as you would a piano; a cinematograph or a motor-car, and that
you cannot say of her, as of an article in a shop, "_Je prends_."

I doubt whether he really grasped the force of my arguments, for, some
time after, when we were at the Opera in the box of the President
of the Republic, we perceived with dismay that His Persian Majesty,
instead of watching the performance on the stage--consisting of that
exquisite ballet _Coppélia_, with some of our prettiest dancers taking
part in it--kept his opera-glass obstinately fixed on a member of the
audience in the back row of the fourth tier, giving signs of manifest
excitement as he did so. I was beginning to wonder with anxiety
whether he had caught sight of some "suspicious face," when the court
minister, in whose ear he had whispered a few words, came over to me
and said, with an air of embarrassment:

"His Majesty feels a profound admiration for a lady up there. Do you
see? The fourth seat from the right. His Majesty would be obliged to
you if you would enable him to make her acquaintance. You can tell her,
if you like, as an inducement, that my sovereign will invite her to go
back with him to Teheran."

"Again!"

Although this sort of errand did not fall within the scope of my
instructions, I regarded the worthy Oriental's idea as so comical
that I asked one of my detectives who, dressed to the nines, was
keeping guard outside the presidential box, whether he would care to
go upstairs and, if possible, convey the flattering invitation to the
object of the imperial flame. My Don Juan by proxy assented and set out
on his mission.

The Shah's impatience increased from moment to moment. The last act had
begun when I saw my inspector return alone and looking very sheepish:

"Well," I asked, "what did she say?"

"She boxed my ears."

The sovereign, when the grand vizier conveyed this grievous news to
him, knitted his bushy eyebrows, declared that he was tired, and
ordered his carriage.

My duty as a conscientious historian obliges me, however, to mention
the fact that Muzaffr-ed-Din did not always meet with such piteous
rebuffs in the field of gallantry upon which he gladly ventured. He
kept up a very fond and regular flirtation in Paris with a French
favourite, a charming and exceedingly beautiful person, who had
been seduced by the bejewelled opulence of the King of Kings. She
had rooms in the monarch's hotel each time he came to France; and
they retained a sort of affection for each other notwithstanding
the mutual disappointment which they had experienced: she, because
she thought that he was generous; he, because he hoped that she was
disinterested. That she was anxious to turn a great man's friendship to
account can, strictly speaking, be imagined; on the other hand, it is
incomprehensible that the Shah, who was so easily moved to generosity
towards the first comer, should display a sordid avarice towards the
woman whom he himself had selected from among so many. Perhaps he was
ingenuous enough to wish to be loved for his own sake. At any rate,
this continual misunderstanding led to intensely funny scenes. The
young woman, exasperated by obtaining nothing but promises each time
she expressed the desire to possess a pearl necklace or a diamond
ring, ended by resorting to heroic methods: she locked her door when
the Shah announced his coming. The King of Kings stamped, threatened,
implored.

"My diamonds first! My pearls first!" she replied, from behind the
locked door.

In vain he offered the worn-out journey to Teheran: it was no good.
Then, resigning himself, he sent for the necklace or the ring. In this
way, she collected a very handsome set of jewellery.

Although, as I have said, her rooms were next to his own,
Muzaffr-ed-Din saw comparatively little of her; he had not the time;
his days were too full of engagements. Rising very early in the
morning, he devoted long hours to his toilet, to his prayers and to his
political conversations with the grand vizier. He worked as little as
possible, but saw many people; he liked giving audiences to doctors and
purveyors. He always had his meals alone, in accordance with Persian
etiquette, and was served at one time with European dishes, which
were better suited to his impaired digestive organs, and at another
with Persian fare, consisting of slices of Ispahan melon, with white
and flavoursome flesh; of the national dish called _pilaf tiobab_, in
which meat cut up and mixed with delicate spices lay spread on a bed of
rice just scalded, underdone and crisp; of hard-boiled eggs and young
marrows; or else of _stilo_ grill, represented by scallops of mutton
soaked in aromatic vinegar and cooked over a slow fire of pinewood
embers; lastly, of aubergine fritters, of which he was very fond. I am
bound, for that matter, to say that Persian cooking, which I had many
opportunities of tasting, is delicious and that the dishes which I have
named would have done honour to any Parisian bill of fare.

After rising from table, Muzaffr-ed-Din generally devoted an hour to
taking a nap, after which we went out either for a drive round the Bois
or to go and see the shops or the Paris sights. To tell the truth, we
hardly ever knew beforehand what the sovereign's plans were. He seemed
to take a mischievous delight in altering the afternoon programme and
route which I had worked out with his approval in the morning. Thanks
to his whims, I lived in a constant state of alarm.

"I want to see some museums to-day," he would say at eleven o'clock.
"We will start at two."

I at once informed the minister of fine-arts, who told off his
officials to receive him; I telephoned to the military governor of
Paris to send an escort.

At three o'clock, we were still waiting. At last, just about four, he
appeared, with a look of indifference and care on his face, and told me
that he would much prefer to go for a drive in the Bois de Boulogne.

One day, after he had spent the morning in listening to a chapter of
the life of Napoleon I, he beckoned to me on his way to lunch.

"M. Paoli," he said, "I want to go to the Château de Fontainebleau
to-day."

"Well, Sir, you see."

"Quick, quick!"

There was no arguing the matter. I rushed to the telephone, warned the
panic-stricken P. L. M. Co., that we must have a special train at all
costs and informed the keeper of the palace and the dumb-foundered
sub-prefect of our imminent arrival at Fontainebleau.

When the Shah, still under the influence of his morning's course of
reading, stepped from the carriage, two hours later, before the gate of
the palace, he was seized with a strange freak: he demanded that the
dragoons who had formed his escort from the station should dismount and
enter the famous Cour des Adieux after him. Next he made them fall into
line in the middle of the great quadrangle, leant against the steps,
looked at them long and fondly, muttered a few sentences in Persian and
then disappeared inside the palace.

Greatly alarmed, we thought at first that he had gone mad; at last we
understood: he had been enacting the scene in which the emperor takes
leave of his grenadiers. It may have been very flattering for the
dragoons; I doubt if it was quite so flattering for Napoleon.

His visit to the Louvre Museum will also linger in my memory among the
amusing episodes of his stay in Paris. M. Leyques, who was at that
time Minister of Fine Arts and in this capacity did the honours of the
museum to the Shah, had resolved carefully to avoid showing our guest
the Persian room, fearing lest the King of Kings, who perhaps did not
grasp the importance of the priceless collection which Mme. Dieulafoy
and M. Morgan had brought back with them, should show a keen vexation
at finding himself in the presence of jewels and mosaics which he might
have preferred to see in his own country.

The minister, therefore, conducted him through the picture and
sculpture-galleries, trying to befog his mind and tire his legs, so
that he might declare his curiosity satisfied as soon as possible.

Lo and behold, however, the Shah suddenly said:

"Take me to the Persian room!"

There was no evading the command. M. Leyques, obviously worried,
whispered an order to the chief attendant and suggested to the Shah
that he should take a short rest before continuing his inspection. The
Shah agreed.

Meantime, in the Persian room, keepers and attendants hurriedly cleared
away the more valuable ornaments and mosaics, so that Muzaffr-ed-Din
should not feel any too cruel regrets; and at last the King of Kings,
far from revealing any disappointment, declared himself delighted to
find in Paris so well-arranged a collection of curious remains of
ancient Persian architecture and art. And he added, slily:

"When I have a museum at Teheran, I shall see that we have a French
room."

For that matter, he was often capable of administering a sort of
snub when we thought that we were providing him with a surprise. For
instance, one day, when, with a certain self-conceit, I showed him our
three camels in the Jardin d' Acclimatation:

"I own nine thousand!" he replied, with a scornful smile.

Our Zoological gardens did not interest him; he only really enjoyed
himself there twice to my knowledge. The first time was when, at
his own request, he was allowed to witness the repugnant sight of
a boa-constrictor devouring a live rabbit. This produced, the next
morning, the following letter from "a working milliner," which I print
"with all faults:"

"_Monsieur le Chah_,--

"You have been to the Jardin d' Aclimatation (_sic_) and watched the
boa-constrictor eating a live rabbit. This was very interesting, so
you said. Ugh! How could the King of Kings, an excellency, a majesty,
find pleasure in the awful torments of that poor rabbit? I hate people
who like going to bull-fights. Cruelty and cowardice go hand in hand.
Are you one of the company, monsieur le Chah?"

The second time that he seemed to amuse himself was on the occasion of
a wedding-dance that was being held in a room next to that in which he
had stopped to take tea. On hearing the music, he suddenly rose and
opened the door leading to the ball-room. The appearance of the devil
in person would not have produced a greater confusion than that of this
potentate wearing his tall astrakhan cap and covered with diamonds. But
he, without the least uneasiness, went the round of the couples, shook
hands with the bride and bridegroom, gave them pieces of Persian gold
money and made his excuses to the bride for not having a necklace about
him to offer her. I was waiting for him to invite her to accompany him
to Teheran; the husband's presence no doubt frightened him.

He seldom left his rooms at night. Sometimes he went to circus
performances or an extravaganza or musical play; he preferred, however,
to devote his evenings to more domestic enjoyments; he loved the
pleasures of home life: sometimes, he played with his little sons,
"the little Shahs," as they were called, nice little boys of seven
to thirteen; at other times, he indulged in his favourite games,
chess and billiards. He played with his grand vizier, his minister of
the ceremonies or myself. The stakes were generally twenty francs,
sometimes a hundred. We did our best to lose, for, if we had the bad
luck to win, he would show his ill-temper by suddenly throwing up the
game and retiring into a corner, where his servants lit his great
Persian pipe for him, the _kaljan_, a sort of Turkish narghileh, filled
with a scented tobacco called _tombeki_. Often, also, to console
himself for his mortification at billiards, he called for music. I then
heard songs behind the closed hangings, harsh, strange and also very
sweet songs, accompanied on the piano or the violin; it was a sort of
evocation of the East in a modern frame; and the contrast, I must say,
was rather pleasing.

The Shah and I grew accustomed to each other, little by little, and
became the best of friends. He refused to go anywhere without me; I
took part in the drives, in the games at billiards, in the concerts, in
all the journeys. We went to Vichy, to Vittel, to Contrexéville. It
was here, at Contrexéville, where he had come for the cure, that I saw
him for the last time. His eccentricities, his whims and his diamonds,
had produced the usual effect on the peaceful population of the town.

A few days after his arrival, hearing that H. I. H. the grand-duchess
Vladimir of Russia had taken up her quarters at an hotel near his own,
he hastened to call and pay his respects and departed from his habits
to the length of inviting her to luncheon.

On the appointed day, the grand-duchess, alighting from her carriage
before the residence of her host, found the Shah waiting for her on
the threshold in a grey frock-coat with a rose in his buttonhole. He
ceremoniously led her by the hand to the dining-room, making her walk
through his rooms, the floors of which he had had covered with the
wonderful kachan carpets that accompanied him on all his journeys. The
princess, charmed with these delicate attentions on the great man's
part, was beginning to congratulate herself on the pleasant surprise
which Persian civilisation caused her when--we had hardly sat down
to table--a chamberlain went up to the King of Kings, bowed low and
handed him a gold salver on which lay a queer-looking and at first
indescribable object. The Shah, without blinking, carelessly put out
his hand, took the thing between his fingers and, with an easy and
familiar movement, inserted it in his jaw: it was a set of false teeth.
Imagine the consternation!

But it was worse still when, about the middle of the meal, the
sovereign, suddenly interrupting his conversation with Her Imperial
Highness, rose without a word, disappeared and returned in five minutes
to resume his place with a smile, after the court minister had taken
care to announce aloud that "His Majesty had had to leave the room."

The grand-duchess, as may be imagined, retained an unforgettable memory
of this lunch, the more so as the Shah, perhaps in order to wipe out
any unpleasant impression that might linger in her mind, did a very
gallant thing; the next day, the Princess Vladimir received a bale of
Persian carpets of inestimable value, accompanied by a letter from the
grand vizier begging her, in the name of his sovereign, to accept this
present, His Majesty having declared that he would not allow other feet
to tread carpets on which Her Imperial Highness's had rested.

I, less fortunate than the grand-duchess, never, alas, succeeded in
obtaining possession of the one and only carpet which Muzaffr-ed-Din
had deigned--quite spontaneously--to offer me.

"My ministers will see that you get it," he said.

When the day for his departure for Persia drew near, I thought that
it would be wise to ask the court minister for my carpet in my most
respectful manner.

"Oh," he replied, "does it belong to you? The only thing is that it has
been packed up, by mistake, with the others. If you want it, they can
give it to you in the train."

As I was to accompany our guest as far as the German frontier, I waited
until we had left Vichy and discreetly repeated my request at the first
stop.

"Certainly," said the minister, "you shall have it at the next station."

I was beginning to feel uneasy. At the following stopping-place, there
was no sign of a carpet. We were approaching the frontier, where my
mission ended. I, therefore, resolved to apply to the minister of
public-works.

"Your excellency."

"Your carpet?" he broke in. "Quite right, my dear M. Paoli. The orders
have been given and you shall have it when you leave us at the other
station."

But here again, alas, nothing! And, as I complained to a third
excellency of this strange piece of neglect:

"It's an omission. Come with us as far as Strassburg, where you will
receive satisfaction."

At this rate, they would have carried me, by easy stages, to Teheran.
I, therefore, gave up all hopes of my carpet. And, taking leave of
these amiable functionaries, I heard the good Shah's voice crying in
the distance:

"Good-bye, Paoli, worthy Paoli! Till our next meeting!"

* * * * *

I never saw him again.

THE TSAR NICHOLAS II AND THE TSARITSA ALEXANDRA FEODOROVNA

[Illustration: THE EMPEROR AND EMPRESS OF RUSSIA AND THE GRAND DUKE
ALEXIS]

One morning in June, 1901, I had just reached the Ministry of the
Interior and was entering my office, when a messenger came up to me and
said, solemnly:

"The Prime Minister would like to speak to you at once, sir."

When a public official is sent for by his chief,[1] the first thought
that flashes across his brain is that of disgrace, and he instinctively
makes a rapid and silent examination of conscience to quiet his anxious
mind, unless, indeed, he only ends by alarming it. Nevertheless, I
admit that when I received this message, I took it philosophically. The
Prime Minister, at that time, was M. Waldeck-Rousseau. It is not my
business here to pass judgment on the politician; and I have retained
a most pleasant recollection of the man. To attractions more purely
intellectual he added a certain cordiality. He looked upon events and
upon life itself from the point of view of a more or less disillusioned
dilettante; and this made him at once satirical, indulgent and
obliging. He honoured me with a kindly friendship, notwithstanding the
fact that he used to reproach me, in his jesting way, with becoming too
much of a reactionary from my contact with the monarchs of Europe and
that I once took his breath away by telling him that I had dined with
the Empress Eugénie at Cap Martin.

"A republican official at the Empress's table!" he cried. "You're the
only man, my dear Paoli, who would dare to do such a thing. And you're
the only one," he added, slily, "in whom we would stand it!"

For all that, when I entered his room on this particular morning, I was
struck with his thoughtful air; and my surprise increased still further
when I saw him, after shaking hands with me, himself close the door and
give a glance to make sure that we were quite alone.

"You must not be astonished at these precautions," he began. "I have
some news to tell you which, for reasons which you will understand
as soon as you hear what the news is, must be kept secret as long as
possible and you know that the walls of a ministerial office have
very sharp ears. This is the news: I have just heard from the Russian
ambassador and from Delcassé that the negotiations which were on foot
between the two governments in view of a second visit of the Tsar and
Tsaritsa are at last completed. Their Majesties will pay an official
visit of three days to France. They may come to Paris; in any case,
they will stay at the Château de Compiègne, where the sovereigns will
take up their quarters, together with the President of the Republic
and all of us. They will arrive from Russia by sea; they will land
at Dunkerque on the 18th of September; and from there they will go
straight by rail to Compiègne. The festivities will end with a visit to
Rheims and a review of our eastern frontier troops at Bethany Camp."

The minister paused and then continued:

"And now I must ask you to listen to me very carefully. I want _no
accident nor incident_ of any kind to occur during this visit. The Tsar
has been made to believe that his safety and the Tsaritsa's run the
greatest risks through their coming to France. It is important that
we should give the lie in a striking fashion--as we did in 1896--to
this bad reputation which our enemies outside are trying to give
us. They are simply working against the alliance; and we have the
greatest political interest in defeating their machinations. We must,
therefore, take all necessary measures accordingly; and I am entrusting
this task to Cavard, the chief of the detective service, Hennion, his
colleague, and yourself. You are to divide the work among you. Cavard
will control the whole thing and settle the details; Hennion, with his
remarkable activity, will see that they are carried out and devote
himself to the protection of the Tsar; and I have reserved for you the
most enviable part of the task: I entrust the Empress to your special
care."

The Emperor Nicholas II and the Empress Alexandra were very nearly the
only members of the Russian Imperial family whom I did not yet know. At
the time when they made their first journey to Paris, to celebrate the
conclusion of the Franco-Russian alliance, I was in Sweden as the guest
of King Oscar, His Majesty having most graciously invited me to spend a
period of sick-leave with him; and it was on the deck of his yacht, at
the end of a dinner which he gave me in the Bay of Stockholm, that the
news of the triumphal reception of the Russian sovereigns had come to
gladden my patriotism and his faithful affection for the country which,
through his Bernadotte blood, was also his.

On the other hand, I had repeatedly had the honour of attending the
grand-dukes; and I was attached to the person of the Tsarevitch George
at the time of his two stays on the Côte d'Azur, in the villa which
he occupied at the Cap d'Ail, facing the sea, among the orange-trees
and thymes. I had beheld the sad and silent tragedy enacted in the
mind of that pale and suffering young prince, heir to a mighty empire,
whom death had already marked for its own and who knew it! He knew
it, but had submitted to fate's decree without a murmur. Resigning
himself to the inevitable, he strove to enjoy the few last pleasures
that life still held for him: the sunlight, the flowers and the sea; he
sought to beguile the anxiety of those about him and of his doctors by
assuming a mask of playful good-humour and an appearance of youthful
hope and zest. Lastly, at the same Villa des Terrasses, I had known the
Dowager-Empress Marie Feodorovna, whom her great green-and-gold train
had brought to Russia with her children, the Grand-duchess Xenia and
the Grand-duke Michael, at the first news of a slight relapse on the
part of the illustrious patient.

For two long months, I took part in the inner life of that little
court; and more than once I detected the anguish of the mother
stealthily trying to read the secret of her son's hectic eyes, peering
at his pale face, watching for his hoarse, hard cough, as he walked
beside her, or dined opposite her, or played at cards with his sister,
or stroked with his long and too-white hands the head of his lively and
slender greyhound, Moustique.

These memories were already four years old. How much had happened
since then! The Tsarevitch George had gone to the Caucasus to die; the
Franco-Russian alliance, the realisation of which was contemplated in
the interviews that took place at the Cap d'Ail between the Dowager
Empress and Baron de Mohrenheim, the Russian ambassador in Paris; this
alliance might almost already be described as an old marriage, in which
the heart has its reasons, of which the reason itself has become aware.

This new visit of the allied sovereigns, therefore, represented an
important trump in the game of our policy as against the rest of
Europe: it supplied the ready answer which we felt called upon to
make from time to time to those who were anxiously waiting for the
least event capable of disturbing the intimacy of the Franco-Russian
alliance, with a view to exploiting any such event in favour of a
rupture.

The reader will easily, therefore, imagine the importance which M.
Waldeck-Rousseau attached to his watchword: "No accident nor incident
of any kind!"

The measures of protection with which a sovereign is surrounded when
he happens to be Emperor of Russia are of a more complicated and
delicate character than in the case of any other monarch. Guarded in a
formidable manner by his own police, whose brutal zeal, tending as it
does to offend and exasperate, is more of a danger than a protection,
the Tsar is, unknown to himself, enveloped by the majority of those who
hover round him in a network of silent intrigues which keep up a latent
spirit of distrust and dismay.

It does not come within my present scope nor do I here intend to frame
an indictment against the Russian police. For that matter, tragic
incidents and regrettable scandals enough have revealed the sinister
and complex underhand methods of that occult force in such a way as to
leave no doubt concerning its nature in men's minds. I will content
myself with confessing that, although the numberless anonymous letters
which we used to receive at the Ministry of the Interior before the
Tsar's arrival mostly failed to agitate us, the appearance, on the
other hand, of certain tenebrous persons, who came to concert with us
as to "the measures to be taken," nearly always resulted in awakening
secret terrors within us. I became acquainted in this way, with some
of the celebrated "figures" of the Russian secret police: the famous
Harting was one of their number; and it is also possible that I
may have consorted, without knowing it, with the mysterious Azeff.
My clearest recollection of my relations with these gentry--always
excepting M. Raskowsky, the chief of the Russian police in Paris--is
that we thought it wise to keep them under observation and to hide from
them as far as possible the measures which we proposed to adopt for the
safety of their sovereigns!

As I have shown above, the responsibility of organising these measures
on the occasion of the Tsar's journey in 1901 was entrusted to M.
Cavard, the head of the French political police; but the honour of
ensuring their proper performance was due above all to M. Hennion,
his chief lieutenant, who has now succeeded him. In point of fact, M.
Cavard's long and brilliant administrative career had not prepared him
for such rough and tiring tasks. An excellent official, this honest
man, whose high integrity it is a pleasure to me to recognise, had a
better grasp of the sedentary work of the offices. Hennion, on the
contrary, "knew his business" and possessed its special qualities.
Endowed with a remarkable spirit of initiative and an invariable
coolness, eager, indefatigable and shrewd, fond of fighting, with a
quick scent for danger, he was always seen in the breach and he knew
how to be everywhere at one time. This was an indispensable quality
when the zone to be protected extended, as it did in this case, over a
length of several hundred miles and embraced almost half France.

In what did these measures consist? First of all, in doubling the
watch kept on foreigners living in France and notably on the Russian
anarchists. The copious information which we possessed about their
antecedents and their movements made our task an easy one. Paris, like
every other large city in Europe, contains a pretty active focus of
nihilism. This consists mainly of students and of young women, who are
generally more formidable than the men. Still, these revolutionary
spirits always prefer theory to action and were, consequently, less to
be feared than those who, on the pretext of seeing the festivities,
might come from abroad charged with a criminal mission.

We had, therefore, established observation-posts in all the frontier
stations, posts composed of officers who lost no time in fastening
on the steps of any suspicious traveller. But, however minute our
investigations might be, it was still possible for the threads of a
plot to escape us; and we had to prepare ourselves against possible
surprises at places where it was known that the sovereigns were likely
to be. A special watch had to be kept along the railways over which
the imperial train would travel and in the streets through which the
procession would pass. For this purpose, we divided, as usual, the
line from Dunkerque to Compiègne and from Compiègne to the frontier
into sections and sub-sections, each placed under the command of the
district commissary of police, who had under his orders the local
police-force and gendarmery, reinforced by the troops stationed in the
department. Posted at intervals on either side of the line, at the
entrance and issue of the tunnels, on and under the bridges, sentries,
with loaded rifles, prevented anyone from approaching and had orders
to raise an alarm if they saw that the least suspicious object had,
unknown to them, been laid on or near the rails.

We also identified the tenants of all the houses situated either along
the railway-line or in the streets through which our guests were to
drive. As a matter of fact, what we most feared was the traditional
outrage perpetrated or attempted from a window. On the other hand, we
refused (contrary to what has been stated) to adopt the system employed
by the Spanish, German and Italian police on the occasion of any visit
from a sovereign, the system which consists in arresting all the
"suspects" during the period of the royal guest's stay. This proceeding
not only appeared to us needlessly vexatious, for it constitutes a
flagrant attempt upon the liberty of the individual, but we thought
that, with our democracy, there was a danger of its alienating the
sympathy of our population from our august visitors. We had, therefore,
to be content to forestall any possible catastrophes by other and less
arbitrary means.

Our vigilance was naturally concentrated with the greatest attention
upon Compiègne. We sent swarms of police to beat the forest and search
every copse and thicket; and the château itself was inspected from
garret to basement by our most trusted detectives. These precautions,
however, seemed insufficient to our colleagues of the Russian police. A
fortnight before the arrival of the sovereigns, one of them, taking us
aside, said:

"The cellars must be watched."

"But it seems to us," we replied, "that we cannot very well do more
than we are doing: they are visited every evening; and there are men
posted at all the doors."

"Very good; but how do you know that your men will not be bribed and
that the 'terrorists' will not succeed, unknown to you, in placing an
explosive machine in some dark corner?"

"But what do you suggest, then?"

"Put men upon whom you can rely, here and now, in each cellar, with
instructions to remain there night and day until Their Majesties'
departure. And, above all, see that they hold no communication with the
outside. They must prepare their own meals."

The solution may have been ingenious, but we declined to entertain it;
we considered, in point of fact, that it was unnecessary two weeks
before the coming of the Emperor and Empress, to condemn a number of
decent men to underground imprisonment, a form of torture which had not
been inflicted on even the worst criminals for more than a century past.

On the other hand, we mixed some detectives with the numerous staff of
workmen who were engaged in restoring the old château to its ancient
splendour. The erstwhile imperial residence, which had stood empty
since the war, now rose again from its graceful and charming past
as though by the stroke of a fairy's wand. The authorities hastily
collected the most sumptuous remains of the former furniture now
scattered over our museums. Gradually, the deserted halls and abandoned
bed-rooms were again filled, in the same places, with the same objects
that had adorned them in days gone by. The apartments set aside for the
Tsar and Tsaritsa were those once occupied by the Emperors Napoleon
I and Napoleon III and the Empresses Marie-Louise and Eugénie. As we
passed through them, our eyes were greeted by the wonderful Beauvais
tapestries of which the King of Prussia, one day, said that "no
king's fortune was large enough to buy them;" we hesitated before
treading on the exquisite Savonnerie carpets, with which Louis XIV
had covered the floors of Versailles; in the Tsarina's boudoir, we
admired Marie-Louise's cheval-glass; in her bed-room we found the proud
archduchess's four-poster; in Nicholas II's bed-room, we discovered
a relic: the bed of Napoleon I, the beautifully-carved mahogany
bedstead in which the man whom a great historian called "that terrible
antiquarian" and whom no battle had wearied, dreamt of the empire of
Charlemagne. Was it not a striking irony of fate that thus awarded the
conqueror's pillow to the first promoter of peaceful arbitration?

While upholsterers, gardeners, carpenters, locksmiths and painters were
carrying out the amazing metamorphosis, the ministry was drawing up
the programme of the rejoicings and calling in the aid of the greatest
poets, the most illustrious artists, the prettiest and most talented
ballet-dancers. Rehearsals were held in the theatre where, years ago,
the Prince Imperial had made his first appearance; the carriages were
tested in the avenues of the park; a swarm of butlers and footmen
were taught court etiquette in the servants' hall; and certain
ministers' wives, trusting to the discreet solitude of their boudoirs,
took lessons in solemn curtseying. It was so many days and weeks of
feverish expectation, during which everything had to be improvised for
the occasion; for this was the first time since its advent that the
Republic was entertaining in the country.

And then the great day came. One morning, on the platform of the Gare
du Nord, a gentleman dressed in black, with beard neatly-trimmed,
followed by ministers, generals and more persons in black, including
myself, stepped into a special train. He had been preceded by a valet
carrying three bags. The first--is it not a detective's duty to know
everything?--was a dressing-case containing crystal, silver-topped
fittings; the second, which was long and flat, held six white shirts,
twelve collars, three night-shirts, a pair of slippers and two broad
grand-cross ribbons, one red, the other blue; and in the third were
packed a brand-new dress-suit, six pairs of white gloves and three
pairs of patent-leather boots. M. Loubet, calm and smiling, was
starting for Dunkerque to meet his guests.

My first impression of the young sovereigns was very different from
that which I expected. To judge by the fantastic measures taken in
anticipation of their arrival and by the atmosphere of suspicion
and mystery which people had been pleased to create around them, we
were tempted to picture them as grave, solemn, haughty, mystical and
distrustful; and our thoughts turned, in spite of ourselves to the
court of Ivan the Terrible rather than to that of Peter the Great.

Then, suddenly, the impression was changed. When we saw them close at
hand, we beheld a very united couple, very simple and kindly, anxious
to please everybody and to fall in with everybody's wishes, obviously
hating official pomp and ceremony and regretting to be continually
separated by impenetrable barriers from the rest of the world. We
perceived that they liked to be unreserved, that they were capable of
"soulful outbursts" and of endless delicacy of thought, especially
for their humbler fellow-citizens. We detected in the laughter in
_his_ eyes a frank and youthful gaiety that disliked restraint; and
we suspected in the melancholy of _hers_ the secret tragedy of an
ever-anxious affection, of a destiny weighed down by the burden of a
crown in which there were all too many thorns and too few roses. And
I confess, at the risk of being anathematised by our fierce democrats,
that autocracy, as personified by this young couple, who would clearly
have been happier between a samovar and a cradle than between a
double row of bayonets, that autocracy, under this unexpected aspect,
possessed nothing very terrifying and even presented a certain charm.

I think, besides, that an erroneous opinion has been generally formed
of the Tsar's character. He has been said and is still said to be
a weak man. Now I should be inclined, on this point, to think with
M. Loubet that Nicholas II's "weakness" is more apparent than real
and that in him, as formerly in our Napoleon III, there is "a gentle
obstinate" who has very strong ideas of his own, a being conscious of
his power and proud of the glory of his name.

Nicholas II, at the time of his second visit to France, had met M.
Loubet before. When the Emperor first came to France, in 1896, the
future President of the Republic was president of the Senate and,
in this capacity, had not only been presented to the sovereign, but
received a visit from him. In this connexion, the late M. Félix Faure
used to tell an amusing story, which he said that he had from the Tsar
in person.

[Illustration: THE EMPRESS OF RUSSIA AND THE GRAND DUCHESS MARIE]

It was after a luncheon at the Élysée. Nicholas II had told President
Faure that he would like to call on the president of the Senate and
expressed a wish to go to the Palais du Luxembourg, if possible,
_incognito_. A landau was at once provided, without an escort; and the
Emperor stepped in, accompanied by General de Boisdeffre. At that hour,
the peaceful Luxembourg quarter was almost deserted. The people in the
streets, expecting the Tsar to drive back from the Russian Embassy, had
drifted in that direction to cheer him.

Wishing first to find out if M. Loubet was there, General de Boisdeffre
had ordered the coachman to stop a few yards from the palace, opposite
the gate of the Luxembourg gardens. He then alighted to go and enquire
and to tell the president of the Senate that an august visitor was
waiting at his door.

The Tsar, left alone in the carriage and delighted at feeling free
and at his ease, looked out of the window with all the zest of a
schoolboy playing truant. He saw before him one of those picturesque
street-Arabs, who seem to sprout between the paving-stones of Paris.
This particular specimen, seated against the railings, was whistling
the refrain of the Russian national hymn, with his nose in the air.
Suddenly, their eyes met. The wondering street-boy sprang to his feet;
he had never seen the Emperor, but he had seen his photographs; and
the likeness was striking.

"Suppose it is Nicholas?" he said to himself, greatly puzzled.

And, as he was an inquisitive lad, he resolved to make sure without
delay. He took an heroic decision, walked up to within a yard of the
carriage and there, bobbing down his head, shouted in a hoarse voice to
the unknown foreigner:

"How's the Empress?"

Picture his stupefaction--for, in point of fact, he only thought that
he was having a good joke--when he heard the stranger reply, with a
smile:

"Thank you, the Empress is very well and is delighted with her journey."

The boy, then and there, lost his tongue. He stared at the speaker in
dismay; and then, after raising his cap, stalked away slowly, very
slowly, to mark his dignity.

Nicholas II retained a delightful recollection of this private
interview with a true Parisian and long amused himself by scandalising
the formal set around him with the story of this adventure.

If, on his second stay, he did not have the occasion of coming into
contact with the people, he none the less enjoyed the satisfaction of
being admirably received.

The episodes of the first day of this memorable visit, from the
moment when, on the deck of the _Standart_, lying off Dunkerque,
the sovereigns, as is customary whenever they leave their yacht,
received the salute of the sailors and the blessing of the old priest
in his violet cassock: these episodes have been too faithfully
chronicled in the press for me to linger over them here. It was a
magnificent landing, amid the thunder of the guns and the hurrahs of
the enthusiastic populace. Then came the journey from Dunkerque to
Compiègne, a real triumphal progress, in which the cheers along the
line seemed to travel almost as fast as the train, for they were linked
from town to town, from village to village, from farm to farm. At
last came the arrival, at nightfall, in the little illuminated town,
followed by the torch-light procession, in which the fantastic figure
of the red cossack stood out, as he clung to the back of the Empress's
carriage; the entrance into the courtyard of the château all ablaze
with light; the slow ascent of the staircases lined with cuirassiers,
standing immovable, with drawn swords, and powdered footmen, in
blue liveries _à la française_,[2] and, lastly, the presentations,
enlivened, at a certain moment by the artless question which a
minister's wife, in a great state of excitement and anxious to please
addressed to the Empress:

"How are your little ones?"

Although from the time of leaving Dunkerque, I had taken up my duties,
which, as the reader knows, consisted more particularly in ensuring
the personal safety of the Empress, I had as yet only caught a glimpse
of that gracious lady. A few hours after our arrival at the château,
chance made me come across her and she deigned to speak to me. I doubt
whether she observed my state of flurry; and yet, that evening, without
knowing it, she was the cause of a strange hallucination of my mind.

I had left the procession at the entrance to the drawing-rooms, in
order to go and ascertain if our orders had been faithfully carried
out in and around the imperial apartments. Gradually, as I penetrated
into the maze of long silent corridors, filled with my own officers,
impassive in their footmen's liveries, a crowd of confused memories
rose in my brain. I remembered a certain evening, similar to the
present, when the palace was all lit up for a celebration. I, at that
time, still a young student, had come to see my kinsman, Dr. Conneau,
physician to the Emperor Napoleon III. We went along the same corridors
together, when, suddenly holding me back by the sleeve and pointing to
a proud and radiant, fair-haired figure which at that moment passed
through the vivid brightness of a distant gallery, he said:

"The Empress!"

Now, at the same spot, forty years after, another voice, that of one of
my inspectors, came and whispered in my ear:

"The Empress!"

I started; in front of me, at the end of the gallery, a figure, also
radiant and also fair, had suddenly come into view. Was it a dream,
a fairy-tale? No, there was another empress, that was all; in the
same frame in which, as a boy, I had first set eyes upon the Empress
Eugénie, I now saw the Empress Alexandra coming towards me. I was so
much taken aback that, at first, I stood rooted to the spot, seeking to
recover my presence of mind. She continued her progress, proceeding to
her apartments followed by her ladies-in-waiting. When she was at a few
yards from the place where I stood motionless, her eyes fell upon me;
then she came up to me and, holding out her white and slender hand:

"I am glad to see you, M. Paoli," she said, "for I know how highly my
dear grandmother, Queen Victoria, used to think of you."

What she did not know was how often Queen Victoria had spoken of her to
me. That great sovereign, in fact, cherished a special affection for
the child of her idolised daughter, the Grand-duchess Alice of Hesse.
The child reminded her of the happy time when the princess wrote to her
from Darmstadt, on the day after the birth of the future Empress of
Russia:

"She is the personification of her nickname, 'Sunny,' much like Ella,
but a smaller head, and livelier, with Ernie's dimple and expression."

Then, a few days later:

"We think of calling her Alix (Alice they pronounce too dreadfully in
Germany) Helena Louisa Beatrice; and, if Beatrice may, we would like
her to have her for godmother."

And these letters, so pretty, so touching, continued through the years
that followed. The baby had grown into a little girl, the little girl
into a young girl; and her mother kept Queen Victoria informed of the
least details concerning the child. She was anxious, fond and proud by
turns; and she asked for advice over and over again:

"I strive to bring her up totally free from pride of her position,
which is nothing save what her personal merit can make it. I feel so
entirely as you do on the difference of rank and how all important it
is for Princes and Princesses to know that they are nothing better or
above others save through their own merit and that they have only the
double duty of living for others and of being an example, good and
modest."

Next come more charming details. Princess Alice, returning to her
children at Darmstadt after a visit to England, writes to the Queen:

"They eat me up! They had made wreaths over the doors and had no end
of things to tell me....

"We arrived at three and there was not a moment's rest till they were
all in bed and I had heard the different prayers of the six, with all
the different confidences they had to make."

Elsewhere, interesting particulars about the education of Princess
Alix, an exclusively English education, very simple and very healthy,
the programme of which included every form of physical exercise, such
as bicycling, skating, tennis and riding, and allowed her, by way of
pocket-money, 50 pfennigs a week between the ages of 4 and 8; 1 mark
from 8 to 12; and 2 marks from 12 to 16 years.

In the twenty-nine years that had passed since the first of these
letters was written, what a number of events had occurred!

Princess Alice, that admirable mother, had died from giving a kiss
to her son Ernie, when he was suffering from diphtheria; the royal
grandmother, in her turn, had died quite recently. Of the seven
children whose gaiety brightened the domestic charm of the little court
at Darmstadt, two had perished in a tragic fashion: Prince Fritz,
first, killed by an accidental fall from a window, while playing with
his brother; and Princess May, carried off in twenty-four hours, she,
too, by diphtheria caught at the bedside of her sister "Aliky," the
present Empress of Russia. As for the other "dear little ones," as
Queen Victoria called them, they had all been dispersed by fate. "Ella"
had become the Grand-duchess Serge of Russia; "Enric" had succeeded
his father on the throne of Hesse; two of his sisters had married, one
Prince Henry of Prussia, the other Prince Louis of Battenberg; and
the last had become the wearer of the heaviest of all crowns. And now
chance placed her here, before me.

I looked at her with, in my mind, the memory of all the letters which
an august and kindly condescension had permitted me to read and of the
gentle emotion with which the good and great Queen used to speak of
the Princess Alice and of her daughter, the present Empress of Russia.
Her features had not yet acquired, under the imperial diadem, that
settled air of melancholy which the obsession of a perpetual danger was
to give her later; in the brilliancy of her full-blown youth, which set
a gladsome pride upon the tall, straight forehead; in the golden sheen
of her queenly hair; in her grave and limpid blue eyes, through which
shot gleams of sprightliness; in her smile, still marked by the dimples
of her girlish days, I recognised her to whom the fond imagination of a
justly-proud mother had awarded, in her cradle, the pretty nickname of
"Sunny."

She stopped before me for a few moments. Before moving away, she said:

"I believe you are commissioned to 'look after' me?"

"That is so," I replied.

"I hope," she added, laughing, "that I shall not give you too much
worry."

I dared not confess to her that it was not only worry, but perpetual
anguish that her presence and the Tsar's were causing me.

We had to be continually on the watch, to have safe men at every door,
in every passage, on every floor; we had to superintend the least
details. I remember, for instance, standing by for nearly two hours
while the Empress's dresses were being unpacked, so great was our fear
lest a disguised bomb might be slipped into one of the sovereign's
numerous trunks, while the women were arranging the gowns in the
special presses and cupboards intended for them. Lastly, day and night,
we had to go on constant rounds, both inside and outside the château.

On the occasion of one of these minute investigations, I met with a
rather interesting adventure. Not far from the apartments reserved
for the Empress Alexandra's ladies was an unoccupied room, the door
of which was locked. It appeared that, during the Empire, this room
had been used by Madame Bruant, the Pri

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