The Fall of Prince Florestan of Monaco

I was not sorry to leave Cambridge. My rooms in the new court overlooked Caius, where they had typhoid fever; and between the fear of infection and the noise of the freshmen’s wines in Trinity Hall, I was beginning to have enough of Cambridge. My bedmaker and tutor were the only people to whom I bid goodbye. The men were all in hall and out at wines, and I left notes for my friends instead of looking them up in their rooms. I caught my tutor as he was going into hall. I told him of the news, and I could see the idea of an invitation for next winter to the castle at Monaco pass through his mind as he assured me that my rule would be a blessing to my country, and that nothing could better fit me for a sceptre than the training of an English gentleman. He added, with a return of the grim humour of a don, that he supposed that as a sovereign prince I need scarcely “take an exeat.” My poor old bed-maker, who had read the telegram in my absence from my room, called me “your imperial majesty” three times while she packed my shirts, but in half-an-hour I was off to London; and on the evening of the 3rd of February I met M. de Payan and Lieutenant Gasignol by appointment at the Grand Hotel at Paris.

From M. de Payan I obtained my first accurate ideas as to the State of Monaco. I found that I was not more independent under the supremacy of France than is the Emperor William independent under the domination of Prince von Bismarck. I had not only the Code Napoléon, and a Council of State dressed in exact copies of their Versailles namesakes, but French custom-house officers levying French custom-house duties in my dominions. At the beginning of our conversation I had said to M. de Payan, “Between ourselves, and fearing though I do that like Charles I. of England I may be committing high treason against myself, I feel bound to tell you that my only ideas of my principality are derived from M. Sardou’s Rabagas.”

Why is it that inhabitants of small and isolated communities never can see a joke? M. de Payan, slightly drawing himself up and speaking with as much stiffness as he could assume towards his prince, gravely answered me, “Your Serene Highness is not aware, I presume, that Rabagas was a satire directed against France in her decline, and not against your Highness’s principality.”

M. Sardou wasting his hours on satirising Monaco. I will never joke again, I said to myself, unless I should suffer the modern fate of kings and be deposed.

“M. de Payan,” I replied, “I am aware of what you say, and I was joking.”

“We have no Gambettas at Monaco, your Highness; that is all I meant.”

“Perhaps, Sir, the country would be happier if you had. Rabagas was not Gambetta, but Emile Olivier – not the man who never despaired of France, but the man who sacrificed his opinions to his advancement. I admire M. Gambetta, who is at this moment the first man in France, in my estimation, and the second political man in Europe. His figure will stand out in history, daubed as even it is with the mud that French politicians are ceaselessly flinging at each other.”

“M. Gambetta is, as your Serene Highness says, a man of extraordinary powers; but his father was a tradesman at Cahors, and is retired and lives at Nice, near your Serene Highness’s dominions.”

What more could I say? There was nothing to be made of M. de Payan.

On the 5th of February I reached Nice by the express, and after reading the telegram which announced the return of Mr. Gladstone by a discerning people as junior colleague to a gin distiller, was presented with an address by the Gambettist mayor at the desire of the legitimist préfêt. The mayor, being a red-hot republican in politics but a carriage-builder by trade, lectured me on the drawbacks of despotism in his address, but informed me in conversation afterwards that he had had the honour of building a Victoria for Prince Charles Honoré – which was next door to giving me his business card. The address, however, also assumed that the Princes of Monaco were suffered only by Providence to exist in order that the trade of Nice, the nearest large French town, might thrive.

In the evening at four we reached the station at Monaco, which was decked with the white flags of my ancestors. What a pity, was my thought, that M. de Chambord should not be aware that if he would come to stay with me at the castle he would live under the white flag to which he is so much attached all the days of his life. My reception was enthusiastic. The guards, in blue uniforms not unlike the Bavarian, but with tall shakoes instead of helmets, and similar to that which during the stoppage of the train at Nice I had rapidly put on, were drawn up in line to the number of thirty-nine – one being in hospital with a wart on his thumb, as M. de Payan told me. What an admirable centralisation that such a detail should be known to every member of the administration! Two drummers rolled their drums French fashion. In front of the line were four officers, of whom – one fat; Baron Imberty; the Vicar General; and Père Pellico of the Jesuits of the Visitation, brother as I already knew to the celebrated Italian patriot, Silvio Pellico, of dungeon and spider fame.

“Where is M. Blanc?” I cried to M. de Payan, as we stopped, seeing no one not in uniform or robes.

“M. Blanc,” said M. de Payan, severely, “though a useful subject of your Highness is neither a member of the household of your Highness, a soldier of His army, nor a functionary of His government. M. Blanc is in the crowd outside.”

Had I ventured to talk slang to M. de Payan, of whom I already stood in awe, I should have replied, “Elle est salée, celle là; puisque sans M. Blanc mon pays ne marcherait pas.” But I held my tongue.

I have seen many amusing sights in the course of my short life. I have seen an Anglican clergyman dance the cancan – I have seen Lord Claud Hamilton, the elder, address the English House of Commons – I have watched with breathless interest the gesticulations of French orators in the tribune of the Assembly, when not a word could reach my ears through the din of Babel that their colleagues made. But the oddest sight I ever saw was the bow with which Colonel Jacquemet, conscious even at the glorious moment that history would not forget his name, assured me that “the devoted army of a Gallant and a Glorious Prince would follow him to the death, when Honour led and Duty called.”

At this moment Père Pellico slipped round to my side and said, “A word with your Highness. A most unfortunate report has got abroad that your Highness is a heretic. What is to be done?”

“I very much fear I am,” I replied.

“But surely your Highness has never formally joined a Protestant body?”

“Protestant? Oh, no. I am a freethinker; a follower of Strauss rather than of Dr. Cumming.”

“How your Highness has relieved my mind! Only a freethinker – but that is nothing. I feared that possibly your Highness might have suffered a perversion to some of the many schisms.” He bowed and hurried off into the town, while taking the arm of Baron Imberty I said, “Introduce me to M. Blanc.”

“Your Highness wishes that M. Blanc should be presented to your Highness, but there are three hundred and ten or three hundred and twenty gentlemen who take precedence of M. Blanc. Nevertheless, your Highness has only to command.”

“Well, then, touch my arm as we pass him in the crowd, and I will speak to him informally.”

My ideas of etiquette would have horrified Madame von Biegeleben, the lady-in-waiting to my poor mother; still, I was improving already, as may be seen.

As we left the station building a little man in black, who when he is twenty years older will be as like M. Thiers in person as he already is in tact, in power of talk, and in the combination of a total absence of fixed opinions with a decided manner, made a low bow, accompanied with the shrewdest smile that I had seen.

“That,” I said, halting before him, “is M. Blanc. I am glad to have so early an opportunity of commencing an acquaintance, which I hope to improve.”

“Your Serene Highness does me too much honour.”

Thus I passed the man who played Haussmann to my Emperor, but who had the additional advantage which the costly baron of demolishing memory certainly did not possess, of being a magnificent source of revenue to my state.

Mounting the really fine horse that they had sent me down, and escorted by the sixteen mounted carbineers (who do police duty on foot in ordinary times at Monte Carlo and in the town), I rode off at a sharp trot by the winding road.

“Will your Serene Highness graciously please to go at a walk, for otherwise the guards will not have time to get up by the military road and to form again to receive your Highness at the Place.”

I did as I was bid, of course. Bouquets of violets were showered on me as we passed through the narrow street, and the scene on the public square in front of the castle was really fine. The sun was setting in glory over the Mediterranean in the west; on the north the Alpes Monégasques were beginning to take the deep red glow which nightly in that glorious climate they assume. On the east the palms at Monte Carlo stood out sharply against the deep still blue sky, and in the far distance the great waves of the ground swell were rolling in upon the coast towards Mentone and the Italian frontier, with thousands of bright white sea-gulls speckling the watery hills with dots of light. At the palace gate I was received by the old dowager princess. She bent and kissed my hand. I threw my arms round her neck and kissed her on both cheeks.

“That was kindly meant, Highness,” she said, “but your Serene Highness is now the reigning prince, and in the presence of the mob your dignity must be kept up.”

Passing the two great Suisses who, arrayed in gala costume, stood magnificently at the gate – but whose wages I afterwards discovered were supplemented by showing my bedroom when I was out to English tourists at a franc a head – we entered the grand courtyard, ascended the great stairs, and passed straight into the reception hall known as the Salle Grimaldi. There, standing on a dais, opposite to the magnificent fireplace and chimney-piece, with the baron at my side, I held a levee, and received the vicar-general, père de Don; the curé of the cathedral, l’abbé Ramin; the chevalier de Castellat, vice-president of the council of state; the chevalier Voliver, member of council of state, and president of the council of public education; the Marquis de Bausset-Roquefort, president of the high court of justice and member of the council of state; the treasurer-general, M. Lombard; Monsignore Theuret, the first almoner of the household; Monsignore Ciccodicola, the honorary almoner; Colonel the Vicomte de Grandsaigne, my first aide-de-camp; Major Pouget d’Aigrevaux, commandant of the palace; the two attachés of M. de Payan in his office of secretary-general, MM. Stephen Gastaldi and John Blanchi; my doctor, M. Coulon, a leading member of the council of education, and evidently a most intelligent man; the curés of the six smaller churches; the five professors of the Jesuit college of La Visitation; three aides-de-camp; the chef du cabinet; the chamberlain himself, who had introduced the others; and four officers of guards and one of carbineers, in addition to Colonel Jacquemet, whom I have already named. No conversation took place, and the presentations being over in five minutes, I got out in the garden before dark for a quiet stroll by myself before dinner.

I was struck by the scene. The tall palms, the giant tree geraniums blooming in masses down the great cliffs to the very edge of the dark blue sea, the feathery mimosas, the graceful pepper trees laden with crimson berries, the orange grove, the bananas fruiting and flowering at the same time, the passion flowers climbing against the rugged old castle walls, all were new to me – unused to the south, and brought up in Buckinghamshire, in Cambridgeshire, and in central Germany. The scene saddened me, I know not why, and I asked myself whether, with the odd combination of my opinions and my position, I could be of any use in the world except to bring Monarchy into contempt. Here was I, a freethinker, called upon to rule a people of bigoted Catholics through a Jesuit father – for I had already seen that Père Pellico was the real vice-king. Here was I, an ardent partisan of the doctrine of individuality, placed suddenly at the head of the most centralized administration in the world. What was to be done? Reform it? Yes, but no reformer has so ill a time of it as a reforming prince. Sadly I went in to a sad dinner tête-à-tête with my crape-covered great aunt in a gloomy room, and so to bed, convinced that unhappiness may co-exist with the possession of a hall porter as big as Mrs. Bischoffsheim’s.