Her Majesty's Minister

Whew! the heat there was insufferable!

In my search for Sibyl I passed through the antechamber. The footmen wore new livery. I saw none of those restaurant waiters who used, in the time of ce pauvre Monsieur Faure, to be employed at twenty francs the evening, supper included. Yes, things had slightly improved, but the crush was terrific. I made my way to the Salon des Aides-de-Camp, that historic chamber where, in the armchairs still furnishing the room, on the night of the coup d’état, sat, a prey to mortal anxiety, Morny, Persigny, Saint Arnaud, Piétri, Rouher, King Jérôme, and the Prince President.

The Japanese military attaché, walking before me, mixed himself up somehow with his sabre, and fell. This contretemps was greeted, as at a theatre, with laughter. Someone cried, “Oh, la la!” as if the stumble were a very clever bit of clowning indeed. The unhappy Japanese looked as if he wished the floor would swallow him.

I struggled up and paid my respects to the President, who was standing in the centre of the salon. Smiling, affable, displaying a simplicity that was real and unaffected, and yet devoid of mere familiarity, his bow and hand-shake were perfect. He struck the right note. I was impressed, moreover, by his sense of proportion. A little more cordiality, and he would cease to be Chief of the State. A little more solemnity, and he would be stilted. It is a little hard to convey the distinction; but imagine, on the one hand, a host who wants to make you forget his official position, and on the other a President of the Republic who is determined to be a good host. For well-bred people there is always a well-defined shade of difference between these two; and the President was the latter.

While turning away I suddenly came face to face with Monsieur Mollard, the chef-adjoint of the Protocol, who greeted me affably and commenced to tell me the latest story of General de Galliffet, Minister of War.

“It is amusing,” he laughed. “You must hear it, M’sieur Ingram. The General arrived at his club, the Union, last night, and for some reason or another his former friends were more than usually cold in their treatment of him. After saying a bonjour to one and the other of them, and receiving a curt reply here and a snub there, the Minister of War realised this. But he took their coolness coolly. With his back to the fireplace he said quietly, by way of bringing home to his friends the absurdity of their attitude: ‘You may come near me. Je ne sens pas mauvais – I don’t smell bad. You see, there was no Cabinet to-day!’ Is it not excellent?”

I smiled. It was a purely French joke. Mollard was always full of droll stories. Every diplomatist in Paris knew him as the keeper of the Elysée traditions, as guardian of its unwritten law by inheritance, his father having been, under other presidencies, the official known as introducteur des ambassadeurs. When a question of precedence puzzled the plebeian bigwigs at the Quai d’Orsay – the Foreign Office – it was Monsieur Mollard who would run to the archives to look it up. Nature had not, however, endowed him with a demeanour befitting his office, for he wore his uniform as awkwardly as a middle-aged volunteer officer, and looked more like a clerk than a chamberlain. But when he spoke he dragged on the mute syllables as French actors are taught to do in delivering Racine. He put three “l’s” in “Excellence” and four “r’s” in “Protocol.” For the rest, he was a good fellow, much liked in the diplomatic circle, although many jokes had from time to time been played at his expense. Presently, after we had been talking for a few moments, I inquired whether he had seen Sibyl.

“Ah, no! I regret, m’sieur,” he answered. “But a lady who is sitting over in the Salon Diplomatique has just inquired of me whether you are present.”

“A lady? What is her name?”

“I know her by sight, but cannot recall her name,” he responded. “She is a grande dame, however.”

“Young or old?”

“Young. You will find her in the salon talking with Count Tornelli, the Italian Ambassador. You will easily recognise her. She is wearing a costume of black, trimmed with silver. She told me that she desired to speak with you particularly, and that I was to tell you of her presence.”

“But you don’t know her?” I laughed.

“Go and see,” he answered. “You probably know her;” and, smiling, he turned away.

My curiosity being aroused, I struggled through the throng until I reached the spot indicated. Only the diplomatic corps and distinguished guests were allowed there, and the other guests, huddled together before the open door, were pointing out well-known personages.

I looked in, and in a moment saw before me the striking figure in black and silver. No second glance was needed to recognise who she was. For a moment I stood in hesitation; then, with a sudden resolve, entered, and, walking straight up, bowed low before her.

Chapter Twenty Three

Princess Léonie

“Princess,” I said, “permit me to offer my félicitations on your return to Paris. This is indeed an unexpected pleasure.”

“Ah, M’sieur Ingram!” she cried in charming English, holding forth her white-gloved hand, “at last! I have been hunting for you all the evening. All Paris is here, and the crush is terrible. Yes, you see I am back again.”

The Italian Ambassador had risen, bowed, and turned to speak to another acquaintance; therefore, with her sanction, I dropped into his place.

“And are you pleased to return?” I inquired, glancing at her beautiful and refined face, which seemed to me just a trifle more careworn than when I had last met her eighteen months ago.

“Ah!” she answered, “I am always pleased to come back to France. I went to America for a few months, you know; thence to Vienna, and for nearly a year have been living at home.”

“At Rudolstadt?”

She nodded.

“Well,” I said, “it was really too bad of you to hide your existence from your friends in that manner. Everyone has been wondering for months what had become of you. Surely you found Rudolstadt very dull after life here?”

“I did,” she sighed, causing the magnificent diamonds at her throat to sparkle with a thousand fires. “But I have departed from my hermitage again, you see. Now, sit here and tell me all that has happened during my absence. Then if you are good, I will, as a reward, give you just one waltz.”

“Very well,” I laughed. “Remember that I shall hold you to your bargain;” and then I commenced to gossip about the movements of people she had known when, two years before, she had been the most admired woman in Paris.

The Princess Léonie-Rose-Eugénie von Leutenberg was, according to the Almanach de Gotha– that red, squat little volume so dreaded by the ladies – only thirty years of age, and was certainly extremely good-looking. Her pale, half-tragic beauty was sufficient to arrest attention anywhere. Her noble features were well-moulded and regular, her eyes of a clear grey, and her hair of flaxen fairness, while her bearing was ever that of a daughter of the greatest of the Austrian houses. Her goodness of heart, her gracefulness, her conversational esprit, and her genuine Parisian chic had rendered her popular everywhere; while, as with the Duchesse de Berri, one strong point of her beauty was her charming little foot, which two years ago had been declared to be the loveliest foot in France, or, in Paris, simply “Le pied de la Princesse.” Her shoes and hosiery were perfect marvels of fineness and neatness, and when she walked, or rather glided, along the Avenue des Acacias, the other promenaders formed long rows on each side to behold and admire le pied de la Princesse.

I had heard it declared, too, with mysterious smiles, how le pied de la Princesse had been seen more than once at the masked balls at the Opera, and many an amusing little story had gone the round, and many a piquant tale had been told of how the Princess had been recognised here and there by the extreme smallness of her foot. One was that for a wager she had disguised herself as a work-girl with a bandbox on her arm, and, attended by her valet, likewise disguised, appeared before the Hôtel de Ville awaiting an omnibus. The vehicle stopped, and the conductor exclaimed in an indifferent tone, “Entrez, mademoiselle,” without taking any further notice. Then, however, his wandering eye caught sight of a pair of tiny feet, and, looking into her face in surprise, he enthusiastically exclaimed: “Ah! ah! le pied de la Princesse!” and doffed his hat respectfully. The Princess lost her wager, but was in no little measure proud of the conquest which her foot had won over the plain omnibus-conductor.

Her life had been a somewhat tragic one. The only daughter of Prince Kinsky von Wchinitz und Tettau, the Seigneur of Wchinitz, in Bohemia, Léonie had, when scarcely out of her teens, been forced to marry the old Prince Othon von Leutenberg, a man forty years her senior. The marriage proved an exceedingly unhappy one, for he treated her brutally, and after five years of a wretched existence, during which she bore herself with great patience and forbearance, the Prince died of alcoholism in Berlin, and her release brought her into possession of an enormous fortune, together with the mansion of the Leutenbergs in the Frieung at Vienna, one of the finest in the Austrian capital, the castle and extensive estates in Schwazbourg-Rudolstadt, that had belonged to the family from feudal days, as well as the hôtel in the Avenue du Bois de Boulogne, and the beautiful Château de Chantoiseau, deep in the forest of Fontainebleau.

She was very charming, and there was an air of sadness in her beauty that made her the more interesting. We were friends of long standing. Indeed, I had known her in the days when I was junior attaché and fancied myself in love with every woman. I had admired her, and a firm friendship existed between us, although I think I can say honestly that I had never fallen in love with her. More than once, when those false and scandalous tales had been whispered about her – as they are whispered about every pretty woman in Paris – I had constituted myself her champion, and challenged her traducers to prove their words.

As we sat there chatting, watching the gaily uniformed corps diplomatique, and bowing ever and anon as some man or woman came up to congratulate her on her return to Paris, she told me of the dreariness of her life in the gloomy, ancestral Castle of Rudolstadt, and how, finding it unendurable at last, she had suddenly resolved to spend the remainder of the summer at Chantoiseau.

“I have been there already a fortnight, and everything is in order,” she said. “I am inviting quite a number of people. You must come also.”

“But I scarcely think it is possible for me to be absent from Paris just now,” I answered in hesitation.

“I will take no refusal,” she said decisively. “I will talk to Lord Barmouth to-night before I leave. Me never refuses me anything. Besides, in two hours you can always be at the Embassy. You will remember, the last time you were my guest, how easy you found the journey to and from Paris. Why, you often used to leave in the morning and return at night. No, you cannot refuse.”

“I must consult His Excellency before accepting,” I replied. “In the meantime, Princess, I thank you for your kind invitation.”

“Princess?” she exclaimed, raising her eyebrows. “Why not Léonie? I was Léonie to you always in the days gone by. Is there any reason why you should be so distant now? Unless – ” and she paused.

“Unless what?” I inquired, looking at her swiftly.

“Unless you have a really serious affair of the heart,” she said.

“I have none,” I answered promptly, suppressing a sigh with difficulty.

“Then do not use my title. I hate my friends to call me Princess. Recollect that to you I am always Léonie.”

“Very well,” I laughed, for she was full of quaint caprice.

I had pleasant recollections of my last visit to the château, and hoped that if the theft of the instructions contained in the despatch I had brought from London produced no serious international complication, I should obtain leave to join her house-party, which was certain to be a smart and merry one.

She told me the names of some she had invited. Among those known to me were the Baroness de Chalencon, Count de Hindenburg, the German Ambassador, and his wife, and Count de Wolkenstein, Austrian Ambassador, as well as several other men and women of the smartest set in Paris.

“You will be a real benefactress,” I laughed. “Everyone here is stifled; while Dieppe is too crowded; Aix, with its eternal Villa des Fleurs, is insupportable; and both Royat and Vichy are full to overflowing.”

“Ah, mon cher Gerald!” cried the Princess, lifting her small hands, “it is your English tourists who have spoilt all our summer resorts. If one has no place of one’s own in which to spend the summer nowadays, one must herd with the holders of tourist tickets and hotel coupons.”

I admitted that what she said was in a great measure true. Society, as the grande dame knows it, is being expelled by the tourists from the places which until a year or two ago were expensive and exclusive. Even the Riviera is fast becoming a cheap winter resort, for Nice now deserves to be called the Margate of the Continent.

Having arranged that I should do my best to accept her invitation, our conversation drifted to politics, art, and the drama. She seemed in utter ignorance of recent events, except such as she had read about in the newspapers.

“I know nothing,” she laughed. “News reaches Rudolstadt tardily, and then only by the journals; and you know how unreliable they are. How I’ve longed time after time to spend an evening in Paris to hear all the gossip! It is charming, I assure you, to be back here again.”