I never dreamed of such clothes even in my dreams of heaven. But the

French are an extravagant race. There was hardly a gown worn last

season which was not of the most delicate texture, garnished with

chiffon and illusion and tulle—the most crushable, airy, inflammable,

unserviceable material one can think of. Now, I am a utilitarian. When

I see a white gown I always wonder if it will wash. If I see lace on

the foot ruffle of a dress I think how it will sound when the wearer

steps on it going up-stairs. But anything would be serviceable to wear

driving in a victoria in the Bois between five and seven, and as that

is where I have seen the most beautiful costumes I have no right to

complain, or to thrust at them my American ideas of usefulness. This

rage of theirs for beauty is what makes a perpetual honeymoon for the

eyes of every inch of France. The way they study color and put greens

together in their landscape gardening makes one think with horror of

our prairies and sagebrush.

The eye is ravished with beauty all over Paris. The clean streets, the

walks between rows of trees for pedestrians, the lanes for bicyclists,

the paths through tiny forests, right in Paris, for equestrians, and on

each side the loveliest trees—trees everywhere except where there are

fountains—but what is the use of trying to describe a beauty which has

staggered braver pens than mine, and which, after all, you must see to

appreciate?

The Catholic observances one sees everywhere in Paris are most

interesting. When a funeral procession passes, every man takes off his

hat and stands watching it with the greatest respect.

In May the streets are full of sweet-faced little girls on their way to

their first communion. They were all in white, bareheaded, except for

their white veils, white shoes, white gloves, and the dearest look of

importance on their earnest little faces. It was most touching.

In all months, however, one sees the comical sight of a French bride

and bridegroom, in all the glory of their bridal array—white satin,

veil, and orange blossoms—driving through the streets in open cabs, and

hugging and kissing each other with an unctuous freedom which is apt to

throw a conservative American into a spasm of laughter. Indeed, the

frank and candid way that love-making goes on in public among the lower

classes is so amazing that at first you think you never in this world

will become accustomed to it, but you get accustomed to a great many

strange sights in Paris. If a kiss explodes with unusual violence in a

cab near mine it sometimes scares the horse, but it no longer disturbs

me in the least. My nervousness over that sort of thing has entirely

worn off.

I have had but one adventure, and that was of a simple and primitive

character, which seemed to excite no one but myself. They say that

there is no drunkenness in France. If that is so then this cabman of

mine had a fit of some kind. Perhaps, though, he was only a beast. Most

of the cabmen here are beasts. They beat their poor horses so

unmercifully that I spend quite a good portion of my time standing up

in the cab and arguing with them. But the only efficacious argument I

have discovered is to tell them that they will get no _pourboire_ if

they beat the horse. That seems to infuse more humanity into them than

any number of Scripture texts.

On this occasion my cabman, for no reason whatever, suddenly began to

beat his horse in the hatefulest way, leaning down with his whip and

striking the horse underneath, as we were going downhill on the Rue de

Freycinet. I screamed at him, but he pretended not to hear. The cab

rocked from side to side, the horse was galloping, and this brute

beating him like a madman. It made me wild. I was being bounced around

like corn in a popper and in imminent danger of being thrown to the

pavement.

People saw my danger, but nobody did anything—just looked, that was

all. I saw that I must save myself if there was any saving going to be

done. So with one last trial of my lungs I shrieked at the cabman, but

the cobblestones were his excuse, and he kept on. So I just stood up

and knocked his hat off with my parasol!—his big, white, glazed hat. It

was glorious! He turned around in a fury and pulled up his horse, with

a torrent of French abuse and impudence which scared me nearly to

death. I thought he might strike me.

So I pulled my twitching lips into a distortion which passed muster

with a Paris cabman for a smile, and begged his pardon so profusely

that he relented and didn’t kill me.

I often blush for the cheap Americans with loud voices and provincial

speech, and general commonness, whom one meets over here; but with all

their faults they cannot approach the vulgarities at table which I have

seen in Paris. In all America we have no such vulgar institution as

their _rince-bouche_—an affair resembling a two-part finger-bowl, with

the water in a cup in the middle. At fashionable tables, men and women

in gorgeous clothes, who speak four or five languages, actually rinse

their mouths and gargle at the table, and then slop the water thus used

back into these bowls. The first time I saw this I do assure you I

would not have been more astonished if the next course had been stomach

pumps.

And as for the toothpick habit! Let no one ever tell me that that

atrocity is American! Here it goes with every course, and without the

pretended decency of holding one’s _serviette_ before one’s mouth,

which, in my opinion, is a mere affectation, and aggravates the

offence.

But the most shameless thing in all Europe is the marriage question. To

talk with intelligent, clever, thinking men and women, who know the

secret history of all the famous international marriages, as well as

the high contracting parties, who will relate the price paid for the

husband, and who the intermediary was, and how much commission he or

she received, is to make you turn faint and sick at the mere thought,

especially if you happen to come from a country where they once fought

to abolish the buying and selling of human beings. But our black slaves

were above buying and selling themselves or their children. It remains

for civilized Europe of our time to do this, and the highest and

proudest of her people at that.

It is not so shocking to read about it in glittering generalities. I

knew of it in a vague way, just as I knew the history of the massacre

of Saint Bartholomew. I thought it was too bad that so many people were

killed, and I also thought it a pity that Frenchmen never married

without a _dot_. But when it comes to meeting the people who had thus

bargained, and the moment their gorgeous lace and satin backs were

turned to hear some one say, “You are always so interested in that sort

of thing, have you heard what a scandal was caused by the marriage of

those two?”—then it ceases to be history; then it becomes almost a

family affair.

“How could a marriage between two unattached young people cause a

scandal?” I asked, with my stupid, primitive American ideas.

“Oh, the bride’s mother refused to pay the commission to the

intermediary,” was the airy reply. “It came near getting into the

papers.”

At the Jubilee garden party at Lady Monson’s I saw the most beautiful

French girl I have seen in Paris. She was superb. In America she would

have been a radiant, a triumphant beauty, and probably would have

acquired the insolent manners of some of our spoiled beauties. Instead

of that, however, she was modest, even timid-looking, except for her

queenly carriage. Her gown was a dream, and a dream of a dress at a

Paris garden party means something.

“What a tearing beauty!” I said to my companion. “Who is she?”

“Yes, poor girl!” he said. “She is the daughter of the Comtesse N——.

One of the prettiest girls in Paris. Not a sou, however; consequently

she will never marry. She will probably go into a convent.”

“But why? Why won’t she marry? Why aren’t all the men crazy about her?

Why don’t you marry her?”

“Marry a girl without a _dot_? Thank you, mademoiselle. I am an expense

to myself. My wife must not be an additional encumbrance.”

“But surely,” I said, “somebody will want to marry her, if no nobleman

will.”

“Ah, yes, but she is of noble blood, and she must not marry beneath

her. No one in her own class will marry her, so”—a shrug—“the convent!

See, her chances are quite gone. She has been out five years now.”

I could have cried. Every word of it was quite true. I thought of the

dozens of susceptible and rich American men I knew who would have gone

through fire and water for her, and who, although they have no title to

give her, would have made her adoring and adorable husbands, and I

seriously thought of offering a few of them to her for consideration!

But alas, there are so many ifs and ands, and—well, I didn’t.

I only sighed and said, “Well, I suppose such things are common in

France, but I do assure you such things are impossible in America.”

“Such things as what, mademoiselle?”

“This cold-blooded bartering,” I said. “American men are above it.”

“Are American girls above selling themselves, mademoiselle? Do you see

that poor, pitifully plain little creature there, in that dress which

cost a fortune? Do you see how ill she carries it? Do you see her

unformed, uncertain manner? Her husband is the one I just had the honor

of presenting to you, who is now talking to the beauty you so much

admire.”

“He shows good taste in spite of his marriage,” I said.

“Certainly. But his wife is your countrywoman. That is the last famous

international marriage, and the most vulgar of the whole lot. Listen,

mademoiselle, and I will tell you the exact truth of the whole affair.

“She came over here with letters to Paris friends, and when it became

known that one of the richest heiresses in America was here, naturally

all the mammas with marriageable sons were anxious to see her. She was

invited everywhere, but as she could not speak French, and as she was

as you see her, her success could not be said to be great. No, but that

made no difference. The Duchesse de Z—— was determined that her son

should marry the rich heiress. As she expected to remain here a year or

more, and the young Duc de Z—— made a wry face, she did not press the

matter. Then the heiress went into a convent to learn French, and the

Duchesse went to see her very often and took her to drive, and did her

son’s part as well as she could.

“Suddenly, to the amazement of everybody, the heiress sailed for

America without a word of warning. The Duchesse was furious. ‘You must

follow her,’ she said to her son. ‘We cannot let so much money escape.’

The son said he would be hanged if he went to America, or if he would

marry such a monkey, and as for her money, she could go anywhere she

pleased with it, or words to that effect. So that ended the affair of

the Duc de Z——. When the other impecunious young nobles heard that the

Duchesse no longer had any claims upon the American’s money they got

together and said, ‘Somebody must marry her and divide with the rest.

We can’t all marry her, but we can all have a share from whoever does.

Now we will draw lots to see who must go to America and marry her.’ The

lot fell to the Baron de X——, but he had no money for the journey. So

all the others raised what money they could and loaned it to him, and

took his notes for it, with enormous interest, payable after his

marriage. He sailed away, and within eight months he had married her,

but he has not paid those notes because his wife won’t give him the

money! And these gentlemen are furious! Good joke, I call it.”

“What a shameful thing!” I said. “I wonder if that girl knew how she

was being married!”

“Of course she knew! At least, she might have known. She was rich and

she was plain. How could she hope to gain one of the proudest titles in

France without buying it?”

“I wonder if she could have known!” I said, again.

“It would not have prevented the marriage, would it, mademoiselle, if

she had?”

“Indeed it would!” I said (but I don’t know whether it would or not).

He shrugged his shoulders.

“America is very different from Europe, then, mademoiselle. Here it

would have made no difference. When a great amount of money is to be

placed, one must not have too many scruples.”

“If she did know,” I said, with a fervor which was lost upon him,

“believe this, whether you can understand it or not: she was not a

typical American girl.”

I had, as usual, many more words which he deserved to have had said to

him, but education along this line takes too much time. I ought to have

begun this great work with his great-grandparents.

What any one can see about Dinard to like is a mystery to me! Is it

possible that one who has spent a month there could ever be lured back

again? There is a beautiful journey from Paris across France

southwesterly to the coast, through odd little French villages,

vineyards, poppy-fields, and rose-gardens, across shining rivulets and

through an undulating landscape, all so lovely that it is no wonder

that one expects all this beauty to lead up to a climax. But what a

disappointment Dinard is to one’s enthusiastic anticipations! This

famous watering-place has to my mind not one solitary redeeming

feature. It has no excuse for being famous. It has not even one happy

accident about it as a peg to hang its fame upon, like some writers’

first novels. Dinard simply goes on being famous, nobody knows why. And

to go there, after reading pages about it in the papers and hearing

people speak of Dinard as Mohammedans whisper sacredly of Mecca, is

like meeting celebrities. You wonder what under the sun—what in the

world—how in the name of Heaven such ugly, stupid, uninteresting,

heavy, dull, and insufferably ordinary persons are allowed to become

famous by an overruling and beneficent Providence! I have met many

celebrities, and I have been to Dinard. I have had my share of

disappointments.

To begin with, Dinard is not sufficiently picturesque. There are but

one or two pretty vistas and three or four points of view. Then it is

not typically French. It is inhabited partly by English families who

cross the Channel yearly from Southampton and Portsmouth, and who take

with them their nine uninteresting daughters, with long front teeth and

ill-hanging duck skirts, and partly by Americans who go to Dinard as

they go to the Eiffel Tower; not that either is particularly

interesting, but they had heard of these places before they came over.

The only really interesting thing within five miles of Dinard is that,

off St. Malo, on the island of Grand Bé, Châteaubriand is buried. But

as this really belongs more to the attractions of St. Malo than to

Dinard, and nobody who spends summers at Dinard ever mentioned

Châteaubriand in my presence, or honored his tomb by a visit, it is

pure charity on my part to ascribe this solitary point of real interest

to Dinard. For, after all, Châteaubriand does not belong to it. Which

logic reminds me forcibly of the plea entered by the defence in a suit

for borrowing a kettle: “In the first place, I never borrowed his

kettle; in the second place, it was whole when I returned it; and, in

the third place, it was cracked when I got it.”

So with Châteaubriand and Dinard. Then Dinard has none of the dash and

go of other watering-places. There is nothing to do except to bathe

mornings and watch the people win or lose two francs at _petits

chevaux_ in the evenings. Not wildly exciting, that. Consequently, you

soon begin to stagnate with the rest.

You grow more and more stupid as the weeks pass, and at the end of a

month you cease to think. From that time on you do not have such a bad

time—that is to say, you do not suffer so acutely, because you have now

got down to the level of the people who go back to Dinard the next

year.

We came away. The hotels are among the worst on earth—musty,

old-fashioned, and villainously expensive—and one of the happiest

moments in my life was the day when I left Dinard for Mont St. Michel.

Mont St. Michel is one of the most out-of-the-way, un-get-at-able

places I found in all Europe; but, oh, how it rewards one who arrives!

Mont St. Michel is too well known to need a description. But to go from

Dinard requires, first of all, that one must go by boat over to St.

Malo, thence by train; change cars, and alight finally at a lonely

little station, behind which stands a sort of vehicle—a cross between a

London omnibus and a hay-wagon. You scramble to the top of this as best

you may. Nobody helps you. The Frenchman behind you crowds forward and

climbs up ahead of you and holds you back with his umbrella while he

hauls his fat wife up beside him. Then you clamber up by the hub of the

wheel and by sundry awkward means which remind you of climbing a stone

wall when you were a child. You take any seat left, which the Frenchmen

do not want, the horses are put to, and away you go over a smooth sandy

road for eleven miles, with the sea crawling up on each side of you

over the dunes.

Suddenly, without warning, you come squarely upon Mont St. Michel,

rising solidly five hundred feet from nowhere. There is a whole town in

this fortress, built upon this rock, street above street, like a flight

of stairs, and house piled up behind house, until on the very top there

is one of the most famous cathedrals in the world; and as you thread

its maze of vaulted chambers and dungeons and come to its gigantic

tower you are lost in absolute wonder at the building of it.

Where did they get the material? And when got, what human ingenuity

could raise those enormous blocks of stone to that vast height? How

those cannon swept all approach by land or sea as far as the eye could

reach! It would require superb courage in an enemy to come within reach

of that grim sentinel of France, manned by her warrior monks. What

secrets those awful dungeons might relate! Here political crimes were

avenged with all the cruelty of Siberian exile. Here prisoners wore

their lives away in black solitude, no ray of light penetrating their

darkness.

The story is told that one poor wretch was eaten alive by gigantic

rats, and they have a ghastly reproduction of it in wax, which makes

you creepy for a week after you have seen it. Nowhere in all Europe did

I see a place which impressed its wonder and its history of horror upon

me as did the cathedral dungeon of Mont St. Michel. Its situation was

so impregnable, its capacity so vast, its silence and isolation from

the outer world so absolute.

All Russia does not boast a situation so replete with possible and

probable misery and anguish such as were suggested to my mind here.

But the wonder and charm of the compact little town which clings like a

limpet to its base are more than can be expressed on the written page.

It is like climbing the uneven stairs of some vast and roofless ancient

palace, upon each floor of which dwell families who have come in and

roofed over the suites of rooms and made houses out of them. The stairs

lead you, not from floor to floor, but from bakery to carpenter-shop,

from the blacksmith’s to the telegraph-office.

The streets are paved with large cobblestones, to prevent cart-wheels

from slipping, and are so narrow that I often had to stand up at

afternoon tea with my cup in one hand and my chair in the other, to let

a straining, toiling little donkey pass me, gallantly hauling his load

of fagots up an incline of forty-five degrees.

The famous inn here is kept by Madame Poularde, who can cook so

marvellously that she is one of the wonders of Normandy. Her kitchen

faces the main street; you simply step over the threshold as you hear

the beating of eggs, and there, over an immense open fire, which roars

gloriously up the chimney, are the fowls twirling on their strings and

dripping deliciously into the pans which sizzle complainingly on the

coals beneath.

Presently the roaring ceases, the fresh coals are flattened down, and

into a skillet, with a handle five feet long, is dropped the butter,

which melts almost instantly. A fat little red-faced boy pushes the

skillet back and forth to keep the butter from burning. The frantic

beating of eggs comes nearer and nearer. The shrill voice of Madame

Poularde screams voluble French at her assistants. She boxes somebody’s

ears, snatches the eggs, gives them one final puffy beating, which

causes them to foam up and overflow, and at that exciting moment out

they bubble into the smoking skillet, the handle of which she seizes at

the identical moment that she lets go of the empty bowl with one hand

and pushes the red-faced boy over backward with the other. It is

legerdemain! But then, _how_ she manages that skillet! How her red

cheeks flush, her black eyes sparkle, and her plump hands guide that

ship of state!

We are all so excited that we get horribly in her way and almost fall

into the fire in our anxiety. She stirs and coaxes and coquettes with

the lovely foamy mass until it becomes as light as the yellow down on a

fledgling’s wings. She calls it an omelette, but she is scrambling

those eggs! Then when it is almost done she screams at us to take our

places. The red-faced boy rings a huge bell, and we all tumble madly up

the narrow stairs to the dining-room, where a score of assorted

tourists are seated. _They_ get that first omelette because they

behaved better than we did, and were more orderly. There are half a

dozen little maids who attend us. They give us bread and bring our wine

and get our plates all ready, for, behold, we can hear below the

beating of the eggs and the sizzling of the butter, and presently

Madame Poularde’s scream and slap, and we know that our omelette is on

the way!

There were scores of bridal parties there when we were, for Mont St.

Michel seems to be the Niagara of France, and really one could hardly

imagine a more charming place for a honeymoon. Indeed, for a newly

married couple, for boy and girl, for spinsters and bachelors, ay, even

for Darby and Joan, Mont St. Michel has attractions. All sorts and

conditions of men here find the most romantic and interesting spot to

be found in the whole of France.

While here we got telegrams telling us of the assembling of our friends

at a house-party at a château in the south of France which once had

belonged to Charles VII. So without waiting for anything more we wired

a joyful acceptance and set out. We did, however, stop over a few hours

at Blois, in order to see the château there. We really did Blois in a

spirit of Baedeker, for we were crazy to see Velor, in order not to

miss an inch of the good times which we knew would riot there. But

virtue was its own reward, for as we were looking into the depths of

the first real oubliette which I ever had seen, and I was just

shivering with the vision of that fiendish Catharine de’ Medici who

used to drop people into these holes every morning before breakfast,

just as an appetizer, we heard a most blood-curdling shriek, and there

stood that wretched Jimmie watching us from an open door, waving his

Baedeker at us, with Mrs. Jimmie’s lovely Madonna smile seen over his

shoulder.

No one who has not felt the awful pangs of homesickness abroad has any

idea of the joy with which one greets intimate friends in Europe. I

believe that travel in Europe has done more toward the riveting of

lukewarm American friendships than any other thing in the world.

The Jimmies have often appeared upon my pathway like angels of light,

and at Blois we simply loved them, for Blois is not only gloomy, but it

has a most ghastly history. The murder of the Duc de Guise and his

brother, by order of King Henry III., took place here. They show one

the rooms where the murder was committed, the door through which the

murderer entered, and the private _cabinet de travail_ where the king

waited for the news.

Here, also, Margaret of Valois married Henry of Navarre, and Charles,

Duc d’Alençon, married Margaret of Anjou. But one hardly ever thinks of

the weddings which occurred here for the horrors which overshadow them.

How fitting that Marie de’ Medici should have been imprisoned here, and

my ancient enemy, Catharine, that queen-mother who perched her children

on thrones as carelessly and as easily as did Napoleon and Queen Louise

of Denmark—that Catharine should have died here, “unregretted and

unlamented,” was too lovely!

Then we left the magnificent old castle and took the train for

Port-Boulet, where the Marquise met us with her little private omnibus,

holding eight, drawn by handsome American horses. They were new horses

and young, and the Marquise said that Charles found them quite

unmanageable. Jimmie watched him drive them around a moment or two

before they could be made to stand, then he broke out laughing. The

Marquise was so disgusted at the way they see-sawed that she said she

was going to sell them.

“Sell them!” cried Jimmie. “Why, all in the world that’s the matter

with those poor brutes is that they don’t speak French! Let _me_ drive

them!”

So the Marquise saved Charles’s vanity by saying that monsieur wished

to try the new horses. Jimmie climbed upon the box, and gathered up the

reins, saying, “So, old boy, you don’t like the dratted language any

better than I do. Steady now, boy! _Giddap_!” Whereat the pretty

creatures pricked up their ears, pranced a little, then sprang into

their collars, and we were off along the lovely river road at a

spanking pace and with as smooth and even a gait as the most

experienced roadsters.

We could hear Charles’s polite compliments to Jimmie on his driving,

and Jimmie’s awful French, as he assured Charles that the horses were

all right, “_très gentils_” and “_très jolis_.” “_Ne dites jamais

‘doucement’ aux chevaux américains. Dites ‘whoa,’ et ils arrêteront, et

quand vous dites ‘Giddap,’ ils marcheront bien. Savez?_” At which

Charles obediently practised “Whoa!” and “Giddap!” while we felt

ourselves pulled up and started off, as the object-lesson demanded, but

amid shrieks of laughter which quite upset Charles’s dignity.

Finally, we whirled in across the moat and under the great gate to the

château, and found ourselves in the billiard-room of Velor, with a big

open fire, in front of which lay a pile of dogs and around which we all

gathered shiveringly, for the day was chilly.

That charming billiard-room at Velor! It is not so grand as the rest of

the château, but everybody loves it best of all. It is on the ground

floor, and it has a writing-desk and two or three little work-tables

and several sofas and heaps of easy-chairs, and here everybody came to

read or write or sew or play billiards. And as to afternoon tea! Not

one of us could have been hired to drink it in the salons up-stairs. In

fact, so many of us insisted upon being in the billiard-room that there

never was room for a free play of one’s cue, for somebody was always in

the way, and it was rather discouraging to hear a woman doing

embroidery say, “Don’t hit this ball. Take some other stroke, can’t

you? Your cue will strike me in the eye.”

Dunham, the eighteen-year-old son of the Marquise, was teaching me

billiards, but his manners were so beautiful that he always pretended

that to stick to one’s own ball was a mere arbitrary rule of the game,

so he permitted me to play with either ball, which made it easiest for

me, or which caused least discomfort to those sitting uncomfortably

near the table. A dear boy, that Dunham! He had but one fault, and that

was that he _would_ wear cerise and scarlet cravats, and his hair was

red—so uncompromisingly red, of such an obstinate and determined red,

that his mother often said, “Come here, Dunham, dear, and light up this

corner of the room with your sunny locks. It is too dark to see how to

thread my needle!” Such was his amiability that I am sure he enjoyed

it, for he always went promptly, and called her “_Mon amour_,” and

slyly kissed her when he thought we were not looking.

All our remarks upon his red ties fell upon unheeding ears, until one

day I bribed his man to bring me every one of them. These I distributed

among the women guests, and when, the next morning, Dunham came in

complaining that he couldn’t find any of his red ties, lo! every woman

in the room was wearing one; and to our credit be it spoken that he

failed to get any of them back, and never, to my knowledge at least,

wore a scarlet tie again.

Velor is historic. After it passed out of the hands of Charles VII.—I

have slept in his room, but I must say that he was unpleasantly short

if that bed fitted him!—it was bought by the old miser Nivelau, whose

daughter, Eugénie Belmaison, was the girl Balzac wished to marry. In a

rage at being rejected by her father he wrote _Eugénie Grandet_, and

several of the articles, such as her work-box, of which Balzac makes

mention, are in the possession of the Marquise.

Every available room in the Velor was filled with our party. Each day

we drove in the brake to visit some ancient château, such as

Azay-le-Rideau, Islette, Chinon, or the Abbey of Fontevreault, finding

the roads and scenery in Touraine the most delightful one can imagine.

Fontevreault was originally an abbey, and a most powerful one, being

presided over by daughters of kings or women of none but the highest

rank, and these noble women held the power of life and death over all

the country which was fief to Fontevreault.

Velor was once fief to Fontevreault, but the abbey is now turned into a

prison.

They took away our cameras before they allowed us to enter, but we saw

some of the prisoners, of whom there were one thousand. The real object

of our visit, however, was to see the tombs of Henry II. and of my

beloved Richard the Lion-hearted, who are both buried at Fontevreault.

To go to Fontevreault, we were obliged to cross the river Vienne on the

most curious little old ferry, which was only a raft with the edges

turned up. Charles drove the brake on to this raft, but we preferred,

after one look into the eyes of the American horses, to climb down and

trust to our own two feet.

We gave and attended breakfasts with the owners of neighboring

châteaux, drove into Saumur to the theatre or to dine with the officers

of the regiment stationed there, and had altogether a perfect visit. I

have made many visits and have been the guest of many hostesses, most

of them charming ones, hence it is no discourtesy to them and but a

higher compliment to the Marquise when I assert that she is one of the

most perfect hostesses I ever met.

A thorough woman of the world, having been presented at three courts

and speaking five languages, yet her heart is as untouched by the taint

of worldliness, her nature as unembittered by her sorrows, as if she

were a child just opening her eyes to society. One of the cleverest of

women, she is both humorous and witty, with a gift of mimicry which

would have made her a fortune on the stage.

Her servants idolize her, manage the château to suit themselves, which

fortunately means to perfection, and look upon her as a beloved child

who must be protected from all the minor trials of life. She has

rescued the most of them from some sort of discomfort, and their

gratitude is boundless. Like the majority of the nobility, the peasants

of France are royalists. The middle class, the _bourgeoisie_, are the

backbone of the republic.

The servants are stanch Catholics and long for a monarchy again. The

Marquise apologized to them for our being heretics, and told them that

while we were not Christians (Catholics), yet we tried to be good, and

in the main turned out a fair article, but she entreated their clemency

and their prayers for her guests. So we had the satisfaction of being

ardently prayed for all the time we were there, and of being

complimented occasionally by her maid, Marie, an old Normandie peasant

seventy years old, for an act on our part now and then which savored of

real Christianity. And once when we had private theatricals, and I

dressed as a nun, Marie never found out for half the evening that I was

not one of the Sisters who frequently came to the château, but kept

crossing herself whenever she saw me; and when she discovered me she

told me, with tears in her eyes, it really was a thousand pities that I

would not renounce the world and become a Christian, because I looked

so much like a “religieuse.”

We went in oftenest to Chinon—always on market day; some of us on

horseback, some on wheels, while the rest drove. Chinon is the fortress

château where Jeanne d’Arc came to see Charles VII. to try to interest

him in her plans. Its ruins stand high up on a bluff overlooking the

town, and beneath it in an open square is the very finest and most

spirited equestrian statue I ever saw. It is of Jeanne d’Arc, and I

only regret that the photograph I took of it is too small to show its

fire and spirit and the mad rush of the horse, and the glorious,

generous pose of the noble martyr’s outstretched arms, as she seems to

be in the act of sacrificing her life to her country. There is the

divinest patriotism in every line of it.

We saw it on a beautiful crisp day in November. It was our Thanksgiving

day at home. We drove along the lovely river-road from Chinon to Velor,

and upon our arrival we discovered that the Marquise had arranged an

American Thanksgiving dinner for us, sending even to America for

certain delicacies appropriate to the season. It was a most gorgeous

Thanksgiving dinner, for, aside from the turkey, lo! there appeared a

peacock in all its magnificent plumage, sitting there looking so dressy

with all his feathers on that we quite blushed for the state of the

turkey.

A month of Paris, and then I long for fresh fields and pastures new. Of

course there is nowhere like Paris for clothes or to eat. But when one

has got all the clothes one can afford and is no longer hungry, having

acquired a chronic indigestion from too intimate a knowledge of

Marguery’s and Ledoyen’s, what is there to do but to leave?

Paris is essentially a holiday town, but I get horribly tired of too

long a holiday, and after the newness is worn off one discovers that it

is the superficiality of it all that palls. The people are superficial;

their amusements are feathery—even the beauty of it all is “only skin

deep.”

Therefore, after one glimpse of Poland, the pagan in my nature called

me to the East, and six months of Paris have only intensified my

longing to get away—to get to something solid; to find myself once more

with the serious thinkers of the world.

In the mean time Bee has deserted me for the more interesting society

of Billy, and now she writes me long letters so filled with his sayings

and doings that I must move on or I shall die of homesickness. I have

decided on Russia and the Nile, taking intermediate countries by the

way. This is entirely Billy’s fault.

When I first decided to go to Russia, I supposed, of course, that I

could induce the Jimmies to go with me, but, to my consternation, they

revolted, and gently but firmly expressed their determination to go to

Egypt by way of Italy. So I have taken a companion, and if all goes

well we shall meet the Jimmies on the terrace of Shepheard’s in

February.

I packed three trunks in my very best style, only to have Mrs. Jimmie

regard my work with a face so full of disapproval that it reminded me

of Bee’s. She then proceeded to put “everything any mortal could

possibly want” into one trunk, with what seemed to me supernatural

skill and common-sense, calmly sending the other two to be stored at

Munroe’s. I don’t like to disparage Mrs. Jimmie’s idea of what I need,

but it does seem to me that nearly everything I have wanted here in

Berlin is “stored at Munroe’s.”

My companion and I, with faultless arithmetic, calculated our expenses

and drew out what we considered “plenty of French money to get us to

the German frontier.” Then Jimmie took my companion and Mrs. Jimmie

took me to the train.

Their cab got to the station first, and when we came up Jimmie was

grinning, and my companion looked rather sheepish.

“I didn’t have enough money to pay the extra luggage,” she whispered.

“I had to borrow of Mr. Jimmie.”

“That’s just like you,” I said, severely. “Now _I_ drew more than you

did.”

Just then Jimmie came up with _my_ little account.

“Forty-nine francs extra luggage,” he announced.

“What?” I gasped, “on that _one_ trunk?” How grateful I was at that

moment for the two stored at Munroe’s!

“Oh, Jimmie,” I cried, “I haven’t got _near_ enough! You’ll _have_ to

lend me twenty francs!”

My companion smiled in sweet revenge, and has been almost impossible to

travel with since then, but we are one in our rage against paying extra

luggage. Just think of buying your clothes once and then paying for

them over and over again in every foreign country you travel through!

Our clothes will be priceless heirlooms by the time we get home. We can

never throw them away. They will be too valuable.

The Jimmies have been so kind to us that we nearly choked over leaving

them, but we consoled ourselves after the train left, and proceeded to

draw the most invidious comparisons between French sleeping-cars and

the rolling palaces we are accustomed to at home. I am ashamed to think

that I have made unpleasant remarks upon the discomforts of travel in

America. Oh, how ungrateful I have been for past mercies!

My companion is very patient, as a rule, but I heard her restlessly

tossing around in her berth, and I said, “What’s the matter?”

“Oh, nothing much. But don’t you think they have arranged the knobs in

these mattresses in very curious places?”

Well, it _was_ a little like sleeping on a wood-pile during a

continuous earthquake. But that was nothing compared to the news broken

to us about eleven o’clock that our luggage would be examined at the

German frontier at five o’clock in the morning. That meant being

wakened at half past four. But it was quite unnecessary, for we were

not asleep.

It was cold and raining. I got up and dressed for the day. But my

companion put her seal-skin on over her dressing-gown, and perched her

hat on top of that hair of hers, and looked ready to cope with Diana

herself.

“They’ll ruin my things if they unpack them,” I said.

“You just keep still and let me manage things,” she answered. So I did.

I made myself as small as possible and watched her. She selected her

victim and smiled on him most charmingly. He was tearing open the trunk

of a fat American got up in gray flannel and curl-papers. He dropped

her tray and hurried up to my companion.

“Have you anything to declare, madam?” he asked.

“Tell him absolutely nothing,” she whispered to me. I obeyed, but he

never took his eyes from her. She was tugging at the strap of her trunk

in apparently wild eagerness to get it open. She frowned and panted a

little to show how hard it was, and he bounded forward to help her.

Then she smiled at him, and he blinked his eyes and tucked the strap in

and chalked her trunk, with a shrug. He hadn’t opened it. She kept her

eye on him and pointed to my trunk, and he chalked that. Then seven

pieces of hand luggage, and he chalked them all. Then she smiled on him

again, and I thanked him, but he didn’t seem to hear me, and she nodded

her thanks and pulled me down a long stone corridor to the dining-room

where we could get some coffee.

At the door I looked back. The customs officer was still looking after

my companion, but she never even saw it.

The dining-room was full of smoke, but the coffee and my first taste of

zwieback were delicious. Then we went out through a narrow doorway to

the train, where we were jostled by Frenchmen with their habitual

“_Pardon!_” (which partially reconciles you to being walked on), and

knocked into by monstrous Germans, who sent us spinning without so much

as a look of apology, and both of whom puffed their tobacco smoke

directly in our faces. It was still dark and the rain was whimpering

down on the car-roof, and, take it all in all, the situation was far

from pleasant, but we are hard to depress, and our spirits remain

undaunted.

It was so stuffy in our compartment that I stood in the doorway for a

few moments near an open window. My companion was lying down in my

berth. We still had nineteen hours of travel before us with no prospect

of sleep, for sleep in those berths and over such a rough road was

absolutely out of the question.

Near me (and spitting in the saddest manner out of the open window)

stood the meek little American husband of the gray flannel and

curl-papers, whose fury at my companion for her quick work with the

customs officer knew no bounds.

The gray flannel had gone to bed again in the compartment next to ours.

The precision of this gentleman’s aim as he expectorated through the

open window, and the marvellous rapidity with which he managed his

diversion, led me to watch him. He looked tired and cold and ill. It

was still dark outside, and the jolting of the train was almost

unbearable. He had not once looked at me, but with his gaze still on

the darkness he said, slowly,

“They can have the whole blamed country for all of me! _I_ don’t want

it.”

It was so exactly the way I felt that even though he said something

worse than “blamed,” I gave a shriek of delight, and my companion

pounded the pillow in her cooperation of the sentiment.

“You are an American and you are Southern,” I said.

“Yes’m. How did you know?”

“By your accent.”

“Yes’m, I was born in Virginia. I was in the Southern army four years,

and I love my country. I hate these blamed foreigners and their blamed

churches and their infernal foreign languages. I am over here for my

health, my wife says. But I have walked more miles in picture-galleries

than I ever marched in the army. I’ve seen more pictures by Raphael

than he could have painted if he’d ’a’ had ten arms and painted a

thousand years without stopping to eat or sleep. I’ve seen more ‘old

masters,’ as they call ’em, but _I_ call ’em _daubs_, all varnished

till they are so slick that a fly would slip on ’em and break his neck.

And the stone floors are so cold that I get cold clean up to my knees,

and I don’t get warm for a week. Yet I am over here for my health! Then

the way they rob you—these blamed French! Lord, if I ever get back to

America, where one price includes everything and your hotel bill isn’t

sent in on a ladder, and where I can keep warm, won’t I just be _too_

thankful.”

Just then the gray-flannel door banged open and a hand reached out and

jerked the poor little old man inside, and we heard him say, “But I was

only blaming the French. I ain’t happy over here.” And a sharp voice

said, “Well, you’ve said enough. Don’t talk any more at all.” Then she

let him out again, but he did not find me in the corridor. He found his

open window, and he leaned against our closed door and again aimed at

the flying landscape, as he pondered over the disadvantages of Europe.

The sun was just rising over the cathedral as we reached Cologne.

“Let’s get out here and have our breakfast comfortably, see the

cathedral, and take the next train to Berlin,” I said to my companion.

She is the courier and I am the banker. She hastily consulted her

_indicateur_ and assented. We only had about two seconds in which to

decide.

“Let’s throw these bags out of the window,” she said. “I’ve seen other

people do it, and the porters catch them.”

“Don’t _throw_ them,” I urged. “You will break my toilet bottles. Poke

them out gently.”

She did so, and we hopped off the train just at daybreak, perfectly

delighted at doing something we had not planned.

A more lovely sight than the Cologne cathedral, with the rising sun

gilding its numerous pinnacles and spires, would be difficult to

imagine. The narrow streets were still comparatively dark, and when we

arrived we heard the majestic notes of the organ in a Bach fugue, and

found ourselves at early mass, with rows of humble worshippers kneeling

before the high altar, and the twinkle of many candles in the soft

gloom. As we stood and watched and listened, the smell of incense

floated down to us, and gradually the first rays of the sun crept

downward through the superb colored-glass windows and stained the

marble statues in their niches into gorgeous hues of purple and scarlet

and amber.

And as the priests intoned and the fresh young voices of an invisible

choir floated out and the magnificent rumble of the organ shook the

very foundation of the cathedral, we forgot that we were there to visit

a sight of Cologne, we forgot our night of discomfort, we forgot

everything but the spirit of worship, and we came away without

speaking.

From Cologne to Dresden is stupid. We went through a country punctuated

with myriads of tall chimneys of factories, which reminded us why so

many things in England and America are stamped “Made in Germany.”

We arrived at Dresden at five o’clock, and decided to stop there and go

to the opera that night. The opera begins in Dresden at seven o’clock

and closes at ten. The best seats are absurdly cheap, and whole

families, whole schools, whole communities, I should say, were there

together. I never saw so many children at an opera in my life. Coming

straight from Paris, from the theatrical, vivacious, enthusiastic

French audiences, with their abominable _claqueurs_, this first German

audience seemed serious, thoughtful, appreciative, but unenthusiastic.

They use more judgment about applause than the French. They never

interrupt a scene or even a musical phrase with misplaced applause

because the soprano has executed a flamboyant cadenza or the tenor has

reached a higher note than usual. Their appreciation is slow but hearty

and always worthily disposed. The French are given to exaggerating an

emotion and to applauding an eccentricity. Even their subtlety is

overdone.

The German drama is much cleaner than the French, the family tie is

made more of, sentiment is encouraged instead of being ridiculed, as it

too often is in America; but the German point of view of Americans is

quite as much distorted as the French. That statement is severe, but

true. For instance, it would be utterly impossible for the American

girl to be more exquisitely misunderstood than by French and German

men.

Berlin is so full of electric cars that it seemed much more familiar at

first sight than Paris. It is a lovely city, although we ought to have

seen it before Paris in order fully to appreciate it. Its Brandenburg

Gate is most impressive, and I wanted to make some demonstration every

time we drove under it and realized that the statue above it has been

returned. Their statue of Victory in the Thiergarten is so hideous,

however, that I was reminded of General Sherman’s remark when he saw

the Pension Office in Washington, “And they tell me the —— thing is

fireproof!”

The streets are filled with beautiful things, mostly German officers.

The only trouble is that they themselves seem to know it only too well,

and as they will not give us any of the sidewalk, we are obliged to

admire them from the gutters. The only way you can keep Germans from

knocking you into the middle of the street is to walk sideways and

pretend you are examining the shop windows.

In the eyes of men, women are of little account in England compared to

the way we are treated in America; of less in France; and of still less

in Germany. We have not got to Russia yet.

Paris seems a city of leisure, Berlin a city of war. The streets of

Paris are quite as full of soldiers as Berlin, but French soldiers look

to me like mechanical toys. I have sent Billy a box of them for

Christmas—of mechanical soldiers, I mean. The chief difference I

noticed was that Billy’s were smaller than the live ones, although

French soldiers are small enough. That portion of the French army which

I have seen—at Longchamps, Châlons-sur-Marne, Saumur, and at various

other places—are, as a rule, undersized, badly dressed, and badly

groomed. They do not look neat, nor even clean, if you want the truth.

The uniform is very ugly, and was evidently designed for men thirteen

feet high; so that on those comical little toy Frenchmen it is

grotesque in the extreme.

Their trousers are always much too long, and so ample in width that

they seem to need only a belt at the ankle to turn them into perfect

Russian blouses. But English and German soldiers not only appear, but

_are_, in perfect condition, as though they could go to war at a

moment’s notice, and would be glad of the chance.

I am keeping my eyes open to see how America bears comparison with

other nations in all particulars. In point of appearance the English

army stands first, the German second, the American third, and the

French fourth. I put the American third only because our uniforms are

less impressive. In everything else, except in numbers, they might

easily stand first. But uniforms and gold lace, and bright scarlet and

waving plumes, make a vast difference in appearance, and every country

in the world recognizes this, except America. I wish that everybody in

the United States who boasts of democracy and Jeffersonian simplicity

could share my dissatisfaction in seeing our ambassadors at Court balls

and diplomatic receptions in deacons’ suits of modest black, without

even a medal or decoration of any kind, except perhaps that gorgeous

and overpowering insignia known as the Loyal Legion button, while every

little twopenny kingdom of a mile square sends a representative in a

uniform as brilliant as a peony and stiff with gold embroidery.

No matter how magnificent a man, personally, our ambassador may be, no

matter how valuable his public services, no matter how unimpeachable

his private character, I wish you could see how small and miserable and

mean is the appearance he presents at Court functions, where every man

there, except the representative of seventy millions of people, is in

some sort of uniform. If it really were Thomas Jefferson whose

administration inaugurated the disgusting simplicity which goes by his

name, I wish the words had stuck in his throat and strangled him.

“Jeffersonian simplicity!” How I despise it! Thomas Jefferson, I

believe, was the first Populist. We had had gentlemen for Presidents

before him, but he was the first one who rooted for votes with the

common herd by catering to the gutter instead of to the skyline, and

the tail end of his policy is to be seen in the mortifying appearance

of our highest officials and representatives. _Hinc illae lachrymae_!

I looked at the servant who announced our names in Paris at General

Porter’s first official reception, and even he was much more gorgeous

in dress than the master of the house, the Ambassador Extraordinary and

Minister Plenipotentiary representing seventy millions of people! Not

even in his uniform of a general! The only man in the room in plain

black. The United States ought to treat her representatives better.

When Mr. White at Berlin was received by the Emperor, he, too, was the

only man in plain black.

No wonder we are taken no account of socially when we don’t even give

our ambassador a house, as all the other countries do, and when his

salary is so inadequate. Every other ambassador except the American has

a furnished house given him, and a salary sufficient to entertain as

becomes the representative of a great country. All except _ours_! Yet

none of them is obliged to entertain as continuously as our ambassador,

because _only_ Americans travel unremittingly, and _only_ Americans

expect their ambassador to be their host.

O wad some power the giftie gie us

To see oursels as ithers see us!”

Of course I notice such things immensely more in Berlin than in Paris,

because the glory of a Court is much more than the twinkle of a

republic.

I have worked myself into such a towering rage over this subject that

there is no getting down to earth gracefully or gradually. I have not

polished off the matter by any manner of means. I have only just

started in, but a row of stars will cool me off.

Before I came to Berlin I heard so much about Unter den Linden, that

magnificent street of the city, that I could scarcely wait to get to

it. I pictured it lined on both sides with magnificent linden-trees,

gigantic, imposing, impressive. I had had no intimate acquaintance with

linden-trees—and I wouldn’t know one now if I should see it—but I had

an idea from the name—linden, linden—that it was grand and waving; not

so grand as an oak nor so waving as a willow, but a cross between the

two. I knew that I should see these great monarchs making a giant arch

over this broad avenue and mingling their tossing branches overhead.

What I found when I arrived was a broad, handsome street. But those

lindens! They are consumptive, stunted little saplings without

sufficient energy to grow into real trees. They are set so far apart

that you have time to forget one before you come to another, and as to

their appearance—we have some just like them in Chicago where there is

a leak in the gas-pipes near their roots.

On the day before Christmas we felt very low in our minds. We had the

doleful prospect ahead of us of eating Christmas dinner alone in a

strange country, and in a hotel at that, so we started out shopping.

Not that we needed a thing, but it is our rule, “When you have the

blues, go shopping.” It always cures you to spend money.

Berlin shop-windows are much more fascinating even than those of Paris,

because in Berlin there are so many more things that you can afford to

buy that Paris seems expensive in comparison. We became so much

interested in the Christmas display that we did not notice the flight

of time. When we had bought several heavy things to weigh our trunks

down a little more and to pay extra luggage on, I happened to glance at

the sun, and it was just above the horizon. It looked to be about four

o’clock in the afternoon, and we had had nothing to eat since nine

o’clock, and even then only a cup of coffee. I felt myself suddenly

grow faint and weak. “Heavens!” I said, “see what time it is! We have

shopped all day and we have forgotten to get our luncheon.”

My companion glanced at her watch.

“It’s only half past eleven o’clock by my watch. I couldn’t have wound

it last night. No, it is going.”

“Perhaps the hands stick. They do on mine. Whenever I wind it, I have

to hit it with the hair-brush to start it; and even then it loses time

every day.”

“Let’s take them both to a jeweller,” she said. “We can’t travel with

watches which act this way.”

So we left them to be repaired, and as we came out, I said, “It will

take us half an hour to get back to the hotel. Don’t you think we ought

to go in somewhere and get just a little something to sustain us?”

“Of course we ought,” she said, in a weak voice. So we went in and got

a light luncheon. Then we went back to the hotel, intending to lie down

and rest after such an arduous day.

“We must not do this again,” I said, firmly. “Mamma told me

particularly not to overdo.”

My companion did not answer. She was looking at the clock. It was just

noon.

“Why, _that_ clock has stopped too,” she said.

But as we looked into the reading-room _that_ clock struck twelve. Then

it dawned on me, and I dropped into a chair and nearly had hysterics.

“It’s because we are so far _north_!” I cried. “Our watches were all

right and the sun’s all right. That is as high as it can get!”

She was too much astonished to laugh.

“And you had to go in and get luncheon because you felt so faint,” she

said, in a tone of gentle sarcasm.

“Well, you confessed to a fearful sense of goneness yourself.”

“Don’t tell anybody,” she said.

“I should think not!” I retorted, with dignity. “I hope I have _some_

pride.”

“Have you presented your letter to the ambassador?” she asked.

“Yes, but it’s so near Christmas that I suppose he won’t bother about

two waifs like us until after it’s over.”

“My! but you _are_ blue,” she said. “I never heard you refer to

yourself as a waif before.”

“I am a worm of the dust. I wish there wasn’t such a thing as

Christmas! I wonder what Billy will say when he sees his tree.”

“You might cable and find out,” she said. “It only costs about three

marks a word. ‘What did Billy say when he saw his tree?’—nine words—it

would cost you about eight dollars, without counting the address.”

Dead silence. I didn’t think she was at all funny.

“Don’t you think we ought to have champagne to-morrow?” she asked.

“What for? I hate the stuff. It makes me ill. Do _you_ want it?”

“No, only I thought that, being Christmas, and very expensive, perhaps

it would do you good to spend—”

A knock on the door made us both jump.

“His Excellency the Ambassador of the United States to see the American

ladies!”

It was, indeed, Mr. White and Mrs. White, and Lieutenant Allen, the

Military Attaché!

“Oh, those blessed angels!” I cried, buckling my belt and dashing for

the wash-stand, thereby knocking the comb and hand-glass from the grasp

of my companion.

They had come within an hour of the presentation of my letter, and they

brought with them an invitation from Mrs. Allen for us to join them at

Christmas dinner the next day, as Mrs. White said they could not bear

to think of our dining alone.

I had many beautiful things done for me during my thirty thousand miles

travel in Europe, but nothing stands out in my mind with more

distinctness than the affectionate welcome I received into the homes of

our representatives in Berlin. And, in passing, let me say this, I am

distinctly proud of them, one and all. I say this because one hears

many humiliating anecdotes of the mistakes made by the men and women

sent to foreign Courts, appointed because they had earned some

recognition for political services. Those of us who have strong

national pride and a sense of the eternal fitness of things, are

obliged to hear such things in shamed silence, and offer no retort, for

there can be no possible excuse for mortifying lapses of etiquette. And

these things will continue until our government establishes a school of

diplomacy and makes a diplomatic career possible to a man.

As long as it is possible for an ex-coroner or sheriff to be appointed

to a secretaryship of a foreign legation—a man who does not speak the

language and whose wife understands better how to cope with croup and

measles than with wives of foreign diplomats who have been properly

trained for this vocation, just so long shall we be obliged to bear the

ridicule heaped upon us over here, which our government never hears,

and wouldn’t care if it did!

Imagine the relief with which I met our Berlin representatives! At the

end of four years there will be no sly anecdotes whispered behind fans

at _their_ expense, for they have all held the same office before and

are well equipped by training, education, and native tact to bear

themselves with a proud front at one of the most difficult Courts of

Europe. I look back upon that little group of Americans with feelings

of unmixed pride.

Mr. White invited us to go with him that afternoon to see the tombs of

the kings at Charlottenburg; and when his gorgeous-liveried footman

came to announce his presence, the hotel proprietor and about forty of

his menials nearly crawled on their hands and knees before us, so great

is their deference to pomp and power.

I wish to associate Berlin with this beautiful mausoleum. It is

circular in shape, and the light falls from above through lovely

colored-glass windows upon those recumbent marble statues. The dignity,

the still, solemn beauty of those pale figures lying there in their

eternal repose, fill the soul with a sense of the great majesty of

death.

When we got back to the hotel we found that the same good fortune which

had attended us so far had ordained that the American mail should

arrive that day, and behold! there were all our Christmas letters timed

as accurately as if they had only gone from Chicago to New York.

Christmas letters! How they go to the heart when one is five thousand

miles away! How we tore up to our rooms, and oh! how long it seemed to

get the doors unlocked and the electric light turned up, and to plant

ourselves in the middle of the bed to read and laugh and cry and

interrupt each other, and to read out paragraphs of Billy’s funny

baby-talk!

While we were still discussing them, the proprietor came up to announce

to us that there was to be a Christmas Eve entertainment in the main

dining-room that evening, and would the American ladies do him the

honor to come down? The American ladies would.

When we went down we found that the enormous dining-room was packed

with people, all standing around a table which ran around two sides of

the room. A row of Christmas trees, covered with cotton to represent

snow, occupied the middle of the room, and at one end was a space

reserved for the lady guests, and in each chair was a handsome bouquet

of violets and lilies-of-the-valley.

This entertainment was for the servants of the hotel, of whom there

were three hundred and fifty.

First they sang a Lutheran hymn, very slowly, as if it were a dirge.

Then there was a short sermon. Then another hymn. Then the manager made

a little speech and called, for three cheers for the proprietor, and

they gave them with a fervor that nearly split the ears of the

groundlings.

Then a signal was given, and in less than one minute three hundred and

fifty paper bags were produced, and three hundred and fifty plates full

of oranges, apples, buns, and sweetened breads were emptied into them.

The table looked as if a plague of grasshoppers had swept over it.

Then each servant presented a number and received a present from the

tree, and that ended the festivity. But so typical of the fatherland,

so paternal, so like one great family!

Participating in this simple festival brought a little of the Christmas

feeling home to us and made us almost happy. We knew that our American

parcels would not be delivered until the next day, so we had but just

time to reread our precious letters when the clock struck twelve, and

with much solemnity my companion and I presented each other with our

modest Christmas present—which each had announced that she wanted and

had helped to select! But, then, who would not rather select one’s own

Christmas presents, and so be sure of getting things that one wants?

On Christmas morning registered packages began to arrive for both of

us. The first ten presents to arrive for my companion were

pocket-handkerchiefs. My first ten were all books. Evidently the dear

family had thought that American books would be most acceptable over

here, and I could see, with a feeling that warmed my heart, how

carefully they had consulted my taste, and had tried to remember to

send those I wanted. But I am of a frugal mind, and thoughts of the

extra luggage to be paid on bound books would intrude themselves.

However, I made no remark over the first ten, but before the day was

over I had received twenty-two books and one pen-wiper, and my

vocabulary was exhausted. My companion continued to receive

handkerchiefs until the room was full of them. Take it all together,

there was a good deal of sameness about our presents, but they have

been useful as dinner anecdotes ever since. Now that I have sent all

mine to be stored at Munroe’s, together with all my other necessities,

I feel lighter and more buoyant both in mind and trunk.

A Christmas dinner in a foreign land, in the midst of the diplomatic

corps, is the most undiplomatic thing in the world, for that is the one

time when you can cease to be diplomatic and dare to criticise the

government and make personal remarks to your heart’s content.

It was a beautiful dinner, and after it was over we were all invited to

the children’s entertainment at Mrs. Squiers’s. She had gathered about

fifty of the American colony for Christmas carols and a tree.

Immediately after the ambassador arrived the children marched in and

recited in chorus the verses about the birth of Christ, beginning, “Now

in the days of Herod the King.” Then they sang their carols, and then

“Stille Nacht,” and they sang them beautifully, in their sweet,

childish voices.

After these exercises the doors were thrown open, and the most

beautiful Christmas-tree I ever beheld burst upon the view of those

children, who nearly went wild with delight.

After everybody had gone home except “the diplomatic family,” which for

the time being included us, we picnicked on the remains of the

Christmas turkey for supper, and there was as little ceremony about it

as if it had been at an army post on the frontier. We had a beautiful

time, and everybody seemed to like everybody very much and to be

excellent friends.

Then Mr. and Mrs. White escorted us back to our hotel, which wasn’t at

all necessary, but which illustrates the way in which they treated us

all the time we were there.

This ended a truly beautiful Christmas, for, aside from being

unexpected and in striking contrast to the forlornness we had

anticipated, we had been taken into the families of beautiful people,

whose home life was an honor and an inspiration to share.

On New Year’s day we started early and went to Potsdam to visit the

palace of Sans Souci.

A most curious and interesting little old man who had been a guide

there for thirty years showed us through the grounds, where the King’s

greyhounds are buried, and where he pleaded to be buried with them. The

guide had no idea that he possessed a certain dramatic genius for

pathos, for, parrot-like, he was repeating the story he had told

perhaps a thousand times before. But when he showed us the graves of

the greyhounds which ate the poisoned food which had been prepared for

the King, he said:

“And they lie here. Not there with the other dogs, the favorites of the

King, but here, alone, disgraced, without even a headstone. Without

even their names, although they saved the great King from death and

gave their lives for his. Yet they lie here, and the others lie there.

It is the way of the world, ladies.”

Then he took us to the top of the terrace facing the palace, and,

pointing to the entrance, he said:

“In the left wing were the chambers of the King’s guests. In the right

wing were his own. Therefore, he placed a comma between those two words

‘Sans’ and ‘Souci,’ to indicate that those at the left were ‘without,’

while with himself was—‘Care.’”

While we were there the Emperor drove by and spoke to our cabman,

saying, “How is business?” Seeing how much pleasure it gave the poor

fellow to repeat it, we kept asking him to tell vis what the Kaiser

said to him.

First my companion would say:

“When was it and what happened?”

And when he had quite finished, I would say:

“It wasn’t the Emperor himself, was it? It must have been the coachman

who spoke to you.”

“No, not so, ladies. It was the great Kaiser himself. He said to me—”

And then we would get the whole thing over again. It was charming to

see his pleasure.

When we returned home we entered the hotel between rows of palms, and

we dropped money into each of them. It seemed to me that fifty servants

were between me and the elevators. However, it was New Year’s, and we

tried not to be bored by it.

People talk so much of the expense of foreign travel, but to my mind

the greatest expenditures are in paying for extra luggage and in fees.

Otherwise, I fancy that travel is much the same if one travels

luxuriously, and that in the long run things would be about equal. The

great difference is that in America all travel luxuries are given to

you for the price of your ticket, and here you pay for each separate

necessity, to say nothing of luxury, and your ticket only permits you

to breathe. But the annoyance of this continuous habit of feeing makes

life a burden. One pays for everything. It is the custom of the

country, and no matter if you arrange to have “service included,” it is

in the air, in the eyes of the servants, in the whole mental

atmosphere, and you fee, you fee, you fee until you are nearly dead

from the bother of it. In Germany they raise their hats and rise to

their feet every time you pass, even if you pass every seven minutes,

and when the time comes for you to go, you have to pay for the wear and

tear of these hats.

In Paris, at the theatre, you fee the woman who shows you to your seat,

you fee the woman who opens the door and the woman who takes your

wraps. One night in midsummer we stepped across from the Grand Hôtel to

the opera without even a scarf for a wrap, and the woman was so

disappointed that we were handed from one attendant to another some

half dozen times as “three ladies without wraps.” And the next one

would look us over from head to foot and repeat the words, “Three

ladies without wraps,” until we laughed in their faces.

French servants are the cleverest in the world if you want versatility,

but they are absolutely shameless in their greed, and look at the size

of your coin before they thank you. In fact, the words in which they

thank you indicate whether your fee was not enough, only modest, or

handsome.

“It is not too much, madam,” or “thanks, madam,” or “I thank you a

thousand times” show your status in their estimation.

If you are an American they reserve the right to rob you by the

impudence of their demands, until rather than have a scene, you give

them all they ask. I have followed in the footsteps of a French woman

and given exactly what she did, and had my money flung in derision upon

the pavement.

German servants seem to have more self-respect, for while they expect

it quite as much, they smile and thank you and never look at the coin

before your eyes. Perhaps they know from the feeling of it, but even if

you place it upon the table behind them they thank you and never look

at it or take it until you turn away.

However, you fee unmercifully here too. You fee the man at the bank who

cashes your checks, you fee the street-car conductor who takes your

fare, you fee every uniformed hireling of the government, whether he

has done anything for you or not.

The only persons whom I have neglected to fee so far are the

ambassadors.

But then, they do not wear uniforms!

IV

ON BOARD THE YACHT “HELA”

I am just able to sit up, and I couldn’t think of a thing I wanted to

eat if I thought a week. I came on this yachting trip because my

friends begged me to. They said it would be an experience for me. It

has been.

The _Hela_ started out with a party of ten on board, who were on

pleasure bent. We have come up the English Channel from Dinard to

Ostend, but before we had been out an hour we struck a gale, to which

veterans on seasickness will refer for many a long day as “that fearful

time on the Channel.”

On the whole, I don’t know but that I myself might be considered a

veteran on seasickness. I have averaged crossing the Channel once a

month ever since I’ve been over here. I have got into the habit of

crossing the Channel, and I can’t seem to stop. It always appears that

I am in the wrong place for whatever is going on, for just as sure as I

go to London somebody sends for me to come to Paris, and I rush for the

Channel, and I have no sooner unpacked my trunks in Paris, and

bargained that service and electric lights shall be included, than

somebody discovers that I am imperatively needed in England, and I make

for the Channel again. The Channel is like Jordan. It always rolls

between.

But even in crossing the Channel there is everything in knowing how. I

have discarded the private state-room. It is too expensive, and I am

not a bit less uncomfortable than when occupying six feet of the settee

in the ladies’ cabin, with my feet in the flowers of another woman’s

hat. In fact, I prefer the latter. The other woman is always too ill to

protest or to move. I have now, by long and patient practice, proved to

my own satisfaction what serves me best in case of seasickness. I will

not stay on deck. I will not eat or drink anything to cure it. I will

not take anything to prevent it. I will not sit up, and I will not keep

my hat on. When I go on board of a Channel steamer my first act is to

shake hands with my friends and to go below. There I present the

stewardess with a modest testimonial of my regard. I also give her my

ticket. Then I select the most desirable portion of the settee, near a

port-hole, from which I can get fresh air. I take off my hat and lie

down. The steamer may not start for an hour. No matter. There I am, and

there I stay. The Channel may be as smooth as glass, but I travel

better flat. Like manuscript, I am not to be rolled. Sometimes I am not

ill at all, but I freely confess that those times are infrequent and

disappointing.

Now, of course, this is always to be expected in crossing the Channel,

but my friends said in going up the Channel we would not get those

choppy waves, and that I would find that the _Hela_ swam like a duck.

In analyzing that statement since, with a view to classifying it as

truth or otherwise, I have studied my recollections of ducks, and I

have come to the conclusion that in a rough sea a duck has every right

to be seasick, for she wobbles like everything else that floats. For

real comfort, give me something that’s anchored. Nevertheless, I was

persuaded to join the party.

Everybody came down at Dinard to see us off, and quite a number even

went over to St. Malo with us in the electric launch, for the _Hela_

drew too much water to enter the harbor at Dinard at low tide.

We were a merry party for the first hour on board the _Hela_—until we

struck the gale. It has seemed to me since that our evil genius was

hovering over us from the first, and simply waited until it would be

out of the question to turn back before emptying the vials of her wrath

on our devoted heads. It did not rain. The sun kept a malevolent eye

upon us all the time. It simply blew just one straight, unrelenting,

unswerving gale. And it came so suddenly. We were all sitting on deck

as happy as angels, when, without a word of warning, the _Hela_ simply

turned over on her side and threw us all out of our chairs. I caught at

a mast as I went by and clung like a limpet. There was tar on the mast.

It isn’t there any more. It is on the front of my new white serge

yachting dress. Jimmie coasted across the deck, and landed on his hands

and knees against the gunwale. If he had persisted in standing up he

would have gone overboard. The women all shrieked and remained in a

tangled heap of chairs, and rugs, and petticoats, waiting for the yacht

to right herself, and for the men to come and pick them up. But the

yacht showed no intention of righting herself. She continued to careen

in the position of a cab going round Piccadilly Circus on one wheel.

The sailors were all running around like ants on an ant-hill, and the

captain was shouting orders, and even lending a hand with the ropes

himself. I don’t know the nautical terms, but they were taking down the

middle sail—the mainsail, that’s it. It did not look dangerous, because

the sun kept shining, and I never thought of being frightened. I just

clung to the mast, watching the other people right themselves, and

laughing, when suddenly everything ceased to be funny. The decks of the

_Hela_ took on a wavy motion, and I blinked my eyes in order to see

better, for everything was getting very indistinct, and there were

green spots on the sun. Suddenly I realized that I was a long way from

home, and that I was even a long way from my state-room. I only had

just about sense enough left to remember that the mast was my very best

friend and that I must cling there.

After that, I remember that somebody came up behind me and pried my

hands loose from the mast.

The doctor’s voice said, “Can you walk?”

I smiled feebly and said, “I used to know how.” But evidently my

efforts were not highly successful, for he picked me up, white serge,

tar, green spots on the sun, and all, and carried me below, a limp and

humiliated bit of humanity.

Mrs. Jimmie and Commodore Strossi followed with more anxiety than the

occasion warranted.

Then Mrs. Jimmie sent the men away, and I felt pillows under my head,

and camphor under my nose, and hot-water bags about me; and I must have

gone to sleep or died, or something, for I don’t remember anything more

until the next day.

They were very nice to me, for I was such a cheerful invalid. It seemed

to surprise them that I could even pretend to be happy. I knew that it

must be an uncommon gale from the way Commodore Strossi studied the

charts, and because even his wife, for whom the yacht was named, was

ill, and she had spent half her life on the sea. The poor little French

cabin-boy was ill, too, and went around, with a Nile-green countenance,

waiting on people, before he was obliged to retire from active service.

The pitching of the yacht was something so terrible that it got to be

hysterically funny. It couldn’t seem dangerous with the sun streaming

down the companion-way and past my state-room windows. About five

o’clock on the second day they began to tack, and then I heard shrieks

of laughter and the crash of china, and groans from the saloon settee,

where young Bashforth was lying ghastly ill.

At the first lurch my trunk tipped over, and all the bottles on the

wash-stand bounded across to the bed, and most of them struck me on the

head. It frightened me so that I shrieked, and Jimmie came running down

to see if I was killed.

As I raised my head I saw his horrified gaze fairly riveted to my face,

and I felt something softly trickling down. I touched it, and then

looked at my hand and discovered that it was wet and red.

“Good heavens, your face is all cut open,” gasped Jimmie, in a voice

that revealed his terror.

Mrs. Jimmie was just behind him, and I saw her turn pale. In a flash I

saw myself disfigured for life, and probably having to be sewed up. The

pain in my face became excruciating, and I began to think yachting

rather serious business.

“Run for the doctor, Jimmie,” said his wife. Jimmie obediently ran.

“Does it hurt very much, dear?” she said, sitting on the edge of the

bed.

“Awfully,” I murmured.

The doctor came, followed by François, with a basin of hot water and

sponges, and a nasty-looking little case of instruments. Mrs. Jimmie

held my hand. They turned on the electric lights and opened the

windows. Jimmie had my salts. The doctor carefully wet a sponge and

tenderly bathed my cheek, and I held my breath ready to shriek if he

hurt me. Commodore Strossi stood at the door with an anxious face.

Suddenly the doctor reached for a broken bottle half hidden under my

pillow.

“Oh, what is it, doctor?” asked Mrs. Jimmie. “What makes you look so

queer?”

“This is iodine on her face. Her bottle has emptied itself. That is

all.”

We gazed at each other for a moment or two, then I nearly went into

hysterics. Jimmie’s face was a study.

“You said it was blood, Jimmie,” I said.

“Well, you said it hurt,” he retorted.

“Well, it did. When you said I was covered with blood it hurt awfully.”

The doctor went out much chagrined that he had not been called upon to

sew up a wound. I had a relapse, brought on by young Bashforth’s

jeering remarks as he frantically clung to the handles of the locker

which formed the back of the settee where he lay prostrate.

I was too utterly done up to reply, for two days’ violent seasickness

rather takes the mental ginger out of one’s make-up. But Fate avenged

me in this wise. The door of my state-room opened into the dining-room,

and my bed faced the door. Opposite to me was the settee on which

Bashforth was coiled, and back of him was the locker for the tinned

mushrooms, sardines, lobster, shrimp, caviar, deviled ham, and all the

things which well people can eat. This locker had brass handles let

into the mahogany, and to these handles the poor fellow clung when the

yacht lurched.

His cruel words of derision had hardly left his pale lips before they

tacked again. He was not holding on, but he hastily snatched at the

handles. He was too late, however, for he was tossed from the settee to

the legs of the dining-room table (which, fortunately, were anchored)

without touching the floor at all. He described a perfect parabola. It

was just the way I should have tossed him had I been Destiny. He

gripped the table-legs like a vise, coiling himself around them like a

poor navy-blue python with a green face. He thought the worst was over,

but in his last clutch at the locker he had accidentally opened it, and

at the next lurch of the yacht all the cans bounded out and battered

his unprotected back like a shower of grape-shot. The yacht lurched

again and the cans rolled back. She pitched forward, and again the

mushrooms and deviled ham aimed for him. The noise brought everybody,

and at first nobody tried to help him. They just couldn’t see because

of the tears in their eyes from laughing. As for me, I managed to crawl

to the foot of the bed and cling to a post, so weak I couldn’t wipe the

tears away, but laying up an amount of enjoyment which will enrich my

old age.

Finally, Jimmie got sorry for him, and went and tried to pick him up.

But he was laughing so, he dropped him.

“Oh, Jimmie,” I pleaded. “Don’t drop anybody who is seasick. Drop well

people if you must. But put him on the settee carefully.”

“I’ll put him there,” said Jimmie, wiping his eyes on his coat-sleeve.

“But I don’t say I’ll do it the first time I try. I’ll get him there by

dinner-time—I hope.”

It was dangerous to ridicule anybody in that gale, for the doctor in

the companion-way was leaning in at my window and laughing in his big

English voice, when the _Hela_ lurched and pitched him half-way into my

state-room. There he balanced with his hands on my trunk.

He was rather a tight fit, which interested Jimmie more than young

Bashforth, so he left the boy and came around and pried the doctor back

into the companion-way.

The _Hela_ was a fickle jade, for no sooner would she shake us up in

such an alarming manner than she would seem to regret her violence, and

would skim like a bird for an hour or so, with no perceptible motion.

She would not even flap her big white wings, but she cut through the

water with a whir and a rush which exhilarated me as flying must stir

the heart of a sea-gull.

She behaved so well after five o’clock that they decided to try to eat

dinner from the dinner-table—a thing they had not done since we

started. There were only four of them able to appear—Mr. and Mrs.

Jimmie, the doctor, and the Commodore.

They put the racks up and took every precaution. The only mistake they

made was in using the yacht’s lovely china, which bore the Strossi

crest under the _Hela’s_ private flag.

Jimmie and his wife sat opposite each other. I put three pillows under

my head, the better to watch them, when suddenly the yacht tilted Mrs.

Jimmie and her chair over backward. Jimmie saw her going and reached to

save her. But he forgot to set down his soup-plate. The result was that

she got Jimmie’s soup in her face, and that he slid clear across the

table on his hands and knees, taking china and table-cloth with him,

and they all landed on top of poor Mrs. Jimmie (who, even as I write,

is in her stateroom having her hair washed).

Her chief wail, when she could speak, was not that her head ached from

the blow, or that she was half strangled with tepid soup, but that

Jimmie had broken all the china. She could not be comforted until the

Commodore proved that some of the china had been broken previously, by

showing her the fragments wrecked on the first day out.

That last catastrophe has apparently settled things. Everybody has

turned in to repair damages, and, perhaps, afterwards to sleep.

The Commodore is studying the charts on the dining-room table, and the

captain, an American, has just put his head in at the door and said:

“She’s sailing twelve knots an hour under just the fores’l, sir, and

she’s running like a scairt dog.”

Americans are so accustomed to outrageous distances that a journey of

fifty hours is mere play. But I sincerely believe that no other trait

of ours causes the European to regard our nation with such suspicion as

our utter unconcern of long journeys. Nothing short of accession to a

title or to escape being caught by the police would induce the

Continental to travel over a few hours. So when I decided to go to

Poland in order to be a member of a gorgeous house-party, I might as

well have robbed a bank and given my friends something to be suspicious

of. They never believed that I would do such a fatiguing and unheard-of

thing until I really left.

But Poland has always beckoned me like a friend—a friend which combined

all the poetry, romance, fascination, nobility, and honor of a first

love. If the Pole is proud, he has something to be proud of. His honor

has dignity. His country’s sorrows touch the heart. Polish literature

has sentiment, her music has fire, her men of genius stand out like

heroes, her women are adorable. Balzac describes not only one but a not

infrequent type when he dedicates _Modeste Mignon_ “To a Polish Lady”

in the most exquisite apostrophe which ever graced the entrance-hall to

one of the noblest novels of this inimitable master.

“Daughter of an enslaved land, angel through love, witch through fancy,

child by faith, aged by experience, man in brain, woman in heart, giant

by hope, mother through sorrow, poet in thy dreams, to Thee belongs

this book, in which thy love, thy fancy, thy experience, thy sorrow,

thy hope, thy dreams, are the warp through which is shot a woof less

brilliant than the poesy of thy soul, whose expression when it shines

upon thy countenance is, to those who love thee, what the characters of

a lost language are to scholars.”

Such a tribute as this would of itself be sufficient to turn the heart

expectantly towards Poland, to say nothing of the interest her history

has for the brain. The history of Poland is one long struggle for home

and country. The Pole is a patriot by inheritance. His patriotism, goes

deeper than his love.

His country comes first in his soul, and for that reason the Poles have

in me an enthusiastic ally, an ardent admirer, and a sympathetic

friend.

In speaking of the story of Poland with a cold-blooded reader of

history I expressed my appreciation of the noble proportions of their

struggles and my sympathy for their present unfortunate plight, to

which she replied: “Yes, but it is so entirely their own fault. They

are so fiery, so precipitate, so romantic. They got _themselves_ into

it! Their poesy and romance and folly make them charming as

individuals, but ridiculous as a nation. I like the Poles, but I have

no patience with Poland.” How exactly the world’s verdict on the

artistic temperament! There is a round hole, and, lo and behold! all

squares must be forced into it!

Suppose that everything resolved itself into the commonplace; where

would be your imagination, your fancy, your rich experience of the

heart and soul? Poland furnishes just this element in history. Her

struggles are so romantic, her follies so charmingly natural to a

high-strung nation, her despair so profound, her frequent revolutions

so buoyant in hope, that she reminds me of a brilliant woman striving

to make dull women understand her, and failing as persistently and

completely as the artistic temperament always fails.

A frog spat at a glowworm. “Why do you spit at me?” said the glowworm.

“Why do you shine so?” said the frog.

Poland’s singers have voices so piercingly sweet; her novelists have

pens touched with such divine fire; her actors portray so much of the

soul; her patriots have always shown such reckless and inspiring

bravery; and now, in her desolation and subjection, there is still so

much pride, such noble dignity under her losses, that of all the

countries in the world Poland holds both the heart and mind by a

fascination of which she herself is unconscious, marking a noble

simplicity of soul which is in itself an added indication of her

queenly inheritance.

Julia Marlowe in her _Countess Valeska_ is a Pole to her finger-tips.

Her acting is superb. Cleopatra herself never felt nor inspired a

diviner passion than Valeska; but when it came to a question of her

love or her country she rose above self with an almost superhuman

effort and saved her country at the expense of her love.

No American who has not the same awful passion of patriotism; no one

who is not a lover of his country above home or friends or wife or

children; who does not love his America second only to his God; whose

blood does not prickle in his veins at the sound of “The Star-Spangled

Banner,” and whose eyes do not fill with tears at the sight of “Old

Glory” floating anywhere, can understand of what patriotism the Pole is

capable.

Nor can one who has not the foolish, romantic, nervous, high-strung,

artistic temperament understand from within Poland’s national history.

For that reason one is apt to find famous places in Europe which have

only an historical significance somewhat disappointing. One fails to

find in a battle fought for the sake of conquest by an overweening

ambition such soul-stirring pathos as in the leading of a forlorn hope

from the spirit of patriotism, or of a woman’s pleadings where a man’s

arguments have failed. For that reason Austerlitz touches one not so

nearly as the struggle around Memel. As we drew near Memel things began

to look lonely and foreign and queer, and its picturesque features were

enhanced by recollection of Napoleon and Queen Louise.

Memel is near Tilsit, and the river Niemen, or Memel, empties into the

Baltic just below here. The conference on the raft appeals to me as one

of the most thrilling and yet pitiably human events in all history.

Its sickening anticlimax to poor Queen Louise was so exactly in keeping

with the smaller disappointments which assail her more humble sister

women in every walk of life that it takes on the air of a heart

tragedy. I tried to imagine the feelings of the Queen when _she_

journeyed to Memel to hold her famous interview with Napoleon. How her

pride must have suffered at the thought of lowering herself to plead

for her husband and her country at Napoleon’s hands! How she hated him

before she saw him! How she more than hated him after she left him! How

she must have scorned the beauty upon which Napoleon commented so idly

when a nation’s honor was at stake! A typical act of the emperor of the

French nation! Napoleon proved by that one episode that he was more

French than Corsican.

In the Queen’s illness at Memel she was so poorly housed that long

lines of snow sifted in through the roof and fell across her bed. But

that was as nothing to her mental disquiet while the fate of her

beloved Prussia hung in the balance.

There is a bridge across the Memel at the exact spot where the famous

raft conference is said to have taken place. As we crossed this bridge

it seemed so far removed from those stormy days of strife that it was

difficult to imagine the magnificent spectacle of the immense armies of

Napoleon and Alexander drawn up on either bank, while these two

powerful monarchs were rowed out to the raft to decide the fate of

Frederick William and his lovely queen.

And although to them Prussia was the issue of the hour, how like the

history of individual lives was this conference! For Prussia’s fate was

almost ignored, while the conversation originally intended to consume

but a few moments lengthened into hours, and Napoleon and Alexander,

having sworn eternal friendship, proceeded to divide up Europe between

them, and parted with mutual expressions of esteem and admiration,

having quite forgotten a trifle like the King and Queen of Prussia and

their rage of anxiety.

But all these memories of Napoleon and Prussia gave way before the

vital fact that we were to visit a lovely Polish princess and see some

of her charming home life. I had been duly informed by my friends of

the various ceremonies which I would encounter, and which, I must

confess, rendered me rather timid. I only hoped my wits would not

desert me at the crucial moment.