Part 3

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.

4.

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:

"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.

II

KING ALFONSO XIII

1.

"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.

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!"

2.