The total receipts were two hundred thousand francs, or about the same as
the total expense of government.
I dismissed M. de Payan; and without telling anyone where I was going I
walked up to the Casino by myself.
I was little known by sight at present in the town, as those who had seen
me enter it in uniform and on horseback the day before would hardly
recognize me in deep mourning and on foot. I passed unnoticed by the
guards, and on reaching the Casino, hot and dusty, was stopped by one of
the employés of the bank, I said, “Take me to M. Blanc.”
Under similar circumstances the Prince of Wales is introduced as “Captain
White,” but then he is not a _sovereign_ prince; and I preferred to give
no name at all than to assume an alias.
I found him literally “a counting out his money.” That is to say, two
clerks were counting rouleaus of gold while he at a small table was
quietly playing patience with two packs of cards. At a bureau was a
third clerk, an Englishman, translating into French for his benefit one
of Mr. Bagehot’s leaders in the _Economist_.
He knew me at once, although he had seen me but for a moment and in a
wholly different dress. Bowing low, and speaking not to me but to his
clerks, he said, “Qu’on nous laisse.” The moment they had left the room
he bowed to the ground again, and said, “Ah monseigneur, votre
seigneurerie me fait trop d’honneur! J’allais écrire à monsieur le
chambellan pour lui demander de vouloir bien solliciter une audience en
mon nom, afin de déposer mes respectueux hommages aux pieds de votre
Altesse. Elle me comble en venant chez moi incognito.”
M. Blanc, whose appearance I described before, is well known to gambling
Europe as a distinguished political economist, the keeper of the greatest
“hell” on earth, and the loving father of a pair of pretty and
accomplished daughters, living upon roulette, but himself innocent
nowadays of all games but the mildest patience—of which he knows sixty
kinds. At Monaco he is more than a public character: he is a benefactor
and a prince. Attacks may be made upon gambling establishments even
conducted as his is, but I am disposed to agree with the Jesuit fathers
of the Visitation that the Monaco roulette—forbidden to the inhabitants
of Monaco and of the neighbouring parts of France—does not do much harm
to anyone, although I could hardly go with Père Pellico so far as to
prohibit the building of a Protestant church while he tolerates a “hell,”
and even permits his students to visit the musical portion of its rooms.
I had no wish in my proposed reforms to reform out of existence my
roulette revenue. I wished indeed to make good use of it; better use
than my predecessors had done. I wanted to make of Monaco a Munich and a
Dresden all in one. I would have a gallery of the greatest modern
pictures—great ancient ones are not now to be obtained—a magnificent
orchestra, a theatre of the first rank; art, in short, of all kind of the
highest class by which to raise the culture of my people, who, excluded
from the gambling side of the Casino by a wise ordinance of my
predecessor, would reap the benefit without drinking the poison of the
roulette.
I found M. Blanc’s mind running upon the question of whether English
families would be most attracted to Monaco by pigeon-shooting or by an
English church. The church he fancied most, but owing to the opposition
of Père Pellico it would have to be built upon the hill a mile off from
the Casino, in the territory of France.
“I will authorise you to disregard Père Pellico’s bigotry, and to build
it where you please,” I cried.
M. Blanc smiled, and said, “If your Serene Highness will excuse me, I had
sooner not go against the Jesuits.”
I wasn’t king in my own country, as it appeared. Expel the Jesuits, the
tempter within me suggested; but then I wasn’t Bismarck, and I hadn’t a
“national liberal” party at my back.
I rapidly exposed my views to M. Blanc. I was much struck by the fact
that his practical mind insisted on viewing my reforms as questions not
of principles but of men.
“You have no men to back you,” he kept saying; “and if you turn out your
present set and get some clever Germans you will be deposed.” He had
dropped the excessive formality of speech with which he had begun.
Several times he used the phrase, “Dr. Coulon is the only man you have.”
Then, after thinking for a time, “What do you propose to gain by your
reforms? You are rich. Your people are contented. Why trouble
yourself? As for works of art, as for theatre, as for orchestra, these
things are matters of money, and I will do my best to help. I am not
sure that as a mere investment they will not pay, and at all events I
will do my best to make them do so; but as for your reforms of army,
church, and education that you talk about, I beg your Highness to leave
it all alone. The shares in the bank will fall ten per cent. when it is
known. My shares here are like the funds at Paris, they hate liberty.
The less liberty, the higher they stand. It is just the same at Paris.
Suppress a journal, and the _rente_ rise a franc. Suppress all the
journals, and they would rise five francs! Suppress the Assembly, and
they would rise ten! Does your Serene Highness take part in
pigeon-shooting?”
Making nothing of M. Blanc, except as to art matters, I returned slowly
to the Castle, where I found the Council of State assembled to take the
oaths.
I chatted with the members of the Council, but arranged to develope my
plans in the first place to a few carefully-selected individuals. I
fixed hours at which I would receive M. de Payan; Dr. Coulon; the curé of
the cathedral; l’abbé Ramin; Père Pellico; and Colonel Jacquemet; after
seeing the Governor General, Baron Imberty, and talking matters over with
him. Baron Imberty I only saw because not to see him would be to pass a
slight upon him; but I had no hope of help from him, and none from
Colonel Jacquemet. From Père Pellico I knew that I should meet with
opposition, and I received him only to see how strong and of what nature
the opposition would be. I built my hopes upon M. de Payan, Dr. Coulon,
and l’abbé Ramin.
To Baron Imberty I said only that I contemplated a reform in the army, a
gradual liberation of the church from state control, and the
re-organization of the schools. He answered that my wish was law, but
that the church was very well as she stood.
To Colonel Jacquemet I explained in detail my military re-organization
scheme, which was the best of my reforms. I pointed out to him that his
force of forty men, now reduced to thirty-eight by the unfortunate wart
and cold, was only preserved from becoming the laughing-stock of Europe
by its exceptional discipline and courage. It was absolutely necessary
for me to say this or he would have had a fit upon the spot. I directed
that a list should be prepared of all the male inhabitants aged from
sixteen to thirty, and numbering, as I calculated, about eight hundred.
That of them those physically fit—some six hundred, as I should
suppose—were to receive drill, and ultimately uniforms. The gallant
forty men were to become sergeants, corporals, and inferior officers of
the new national regiment. Captain Ruggeri and Lieutenant Gasignol were
named its majors, and Lieutenants Plati and De la Rosière the senior
captains. Four other captains were to be selected from among the
privates and non-commissioned officers of the guard. The new levy was to
be unpaid, and the only increased expense would be the uniforms and
rifles, and at first the additional pay of the ten new officers. As
vacancies occurred in company officers they were to be filled up by
election by the company, but the majors were to be appointed by the
colonel. The cost of the uniforms and arms I proposed to meet by selling
for old iron our twenty magnificent, but useless pieces of old artillery.
Modern artillery for the fortress I proposed to provide out of my private
income, and as defence of the town was our only possible service, of
field artillery I decided to have none. The night sentry duty at the
palace was to be performed by the paid sergeants only, and the regiment
was to parade but once a week. I could see that Colonel Jacquemet did
not like it, but he bowed and left the room.
My next interview was with M. de Payan. He heartily concurred in my army
reform, and said that no measure could be better for the country,
educationally, than my plan of universal service of this limited
character. When I came to talk of church reforms, however, M. de Payan
was very cold and hard to fire. He advised me to talk the matter over
with the curé, l’abbé Ramin, a most moderate man, and to beware of Father
Pellico. From this negative position I could not move him.
The curé was my next visitor. He also agreed heartily in the wisdom of
my army reform. He listened without dissent to my proposal for the
gradual cessation of the small grant to the priests, including that to
himself. On the other hand, when I spoke about the necessity of
procuring lay teachers for the schools, he began to weep. I changed the
subject, and when I allowed him to leave the room he said, with a
singularly sweet smile, that he would go with my reforms as far as he
could, that so just a man as my Highness would not harm his country, that
God would watch over his church. I was touched by Abbé Ramin.
Dr. Coulon was then shown in. A man of intellect, as I could see at the
first glance. I set before him my army reform, and he was delighted with
it. I touched upon the separation of church and state, and he said that
it was not hard to be done at Monaco—in name, that is, but difficult
indeed to be done in fact. Still he supposed the name of separation was
what I wanted, and the gradual cessation of the stipends, which would put
Monaco in accord with the modern movement. I then referred to education.
He shook his head, and answered, “I should be your Highness’s sole
supporter, and I am a materialist, and only tolerated here on account of
my medical skill, and placed on the Council of Education because, as I am
not in the habit of running my head against stone walls, I always side
with the Jesuits.”
I insisted on the vast improvement in the standard of secular education
to be expected from the introduction of highly trained lay teachers, and
said that the priests should be absolutely free to teach the children out
of school hours.
His reply was a singular one, and shook me.
“Your Highness is a democrat,” he said. “How then can your Highness
impose your will in this matter upon a people who are unanimous? If your
Highness wishes to escape individual responsibility for the existence of
the present state of things, your Highness can dissolve the council of
state and institute an elective parliament. That parliament would
consist, let us say, of twelve members. If so, eleven would be priests
or Jesuits, and the twelfth M. Blanc of the Casino—a body which would
resemble in complexion some of the school boards in your Highness’s
favourite England. Your Highness has a heavy task, and if that task be
persevered in, I fear that the state of your Highness’s nerves will be
such as to require my prescriptions.”
He was very free in his conversation, the old doctor, but it was a
pleasing change after Baron Imberty and M. de Payan; not but what Abbé
Ramin had much attracted me.
I did my best to charm Père Pellico. I courted him as my other subjects
courted me. He was expansive in manner; but I am not a fool, and though
only twenty-four, I knew enough of human nature to see that there was
another Père Pellico underneath the smiling case-work which talked to me.
To my military reform he had no objection, provided I exempted Jesuit
students from service. I answered that I would exempt all those at
present in Monaco, to which he replied that he feared then that I should
never have the pleasure of seeing any others. I thought to myself “here
is”—but Père Pellico smiled and slowly spoke again.
“Your Highness was thinking, I venture to imagine, that that would be an
additional reason for hurrying your military reform. But I must crave
the pardon of your Highness for speaking except in reply to your
Highness. I have not the habit of courts.”
I spoke then of the Church; he was indifferent—the salaries of his four
professors could easily be got from Italy. I then touched upon
education.
Père Pellico, to my astonishment, exclaimed, “But on the contrary; my
opinions are not different from those of your Highness. They are the
same. But as a democrat I do not venture, although I may be wrong, to
force them upon the people.”
Here was a change of base.
“If I were your Highness,” he continued, “I would dismiss the Council of
State and call an elected parliament to frame a constitution. That would
be a more regular method of proceeding than limiting your own prerogative
by the exercise of that very prerogative itself.”
“Father,” I replied, “is not the country somewhat small for the
complicated machinery of parliament?”
“Why then not try a Plebiscite, ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ upon certain written
propositions, as in Zurich?”
“How liberal a politician can afford to be when he has the people with
him,” I thought to myself as I bowed out Father Pellico.
For the next three weeks, until the end of February, things went smoothly
with me. My great aunt bothered me so to marry a “nice steady young lady
who would maintain the dignity of the Court, check the extravagance of
the steward, and count the linen,” that I got Dr. Coulon to tell her that
she would die unless she removed to Nice. She preferred a short remove
to a long one, and took herself off to my great relief. She was a very
fussy, but a clever and a really good old lady. My army reform went well
enough, and the church edict was fulminated without meeting with
opposition. I bought, through Mr. Gambart, who often came to Nice, a
charming Leighton and a glorious Watts, and a fine Verboeckhoven from M.
Blanc, as a beginning of the public collection. I moved the councils to
the palace, and fitted up the public offices thus rendered vacant as my
museum. I got M. Lucas at the Casino to improve his already admirable
orchestra, to start a free school for instrumental music, and to play
once a week in the town of Monaco instead of at Monte Carlo. I wrote to
M. Gounod, whom I had the honour to count among my friends, to offer him
the Louis Quinze rooms beyond the Chambre d’York, at the north-west
corner of the Castle, with the most lovely view in both directions, and
the prettiest decorations to my mind in all the palace, if he would come
and stay with me as a permanent visitor, and countenance our musical
efforts. I founded a school for modelling in clay, a class in decorative
art which I taught myself, and I made the arrangements for the reception
of a troop of actors in the winter, and for the production of Gounod’s
“Jeanne d’Arc”—a piece which was suggested by Père Pellico. In the
palace itself I made many improvements. Of the Chambre d’York I left
nothing but the pretty mosaic floor, but the room itself, which had been
gilt from top to bottom, bed and all, by my great-grandfather to take out
the taste of the Great French Revolution, during which the palace had
been a poor-house, I turned into a meeting room for the Council of State.
My steam yacht had come with a temporary crew of English tars, and my two
great 15-inch 60-ton Krupp guns—one for the terrace, seawards, and one
for the garden, landwards—were ordered. The “reports” had been
abolished; the nagging surveillance of the police had been abolished; the
Church establishment had been abolished; and I then had nothing left to
abolish but myself, the abolition of myself being a measure from which I
shrank although, like King Leopold, I was ready to go if my subjects
wished it.
The only one of my reforms which was really popular was the national
army, which afforded all the young married men in the principality a
weekly holiday away from their wives. But Major Gasignol, who had a
“soul above buttons,” used on parade when he was acting as adjutant to
take an opportunity of reminding me of the days of glory when one of my
ancestors, Grimaldi II., about the time of the Norman conquest of
England, had delivered at Rome the Pope from the forces of no less a
personage than the Emperor.
All this time, however, my education scheme and my substitution of an
elective for a nominated council were in abeyance, the first on account
of Père Pellico’s opposition, the second I might almost say on account of
his support.
Dr. Coulon, consulted by me, often used to say, “Why does not your
Highness throw the responsibility upon a parliament of leaving matters
where they are?”
“But I wish to change them,” I as often replied.
“I can understand that your Highness should wish to be thought to wish to
change them, but further than that point I can not follow your Highness.”
I seriously thought of clapping Dr. Coulon into prison for his
impertinence, but then he was the only liberal in Monaco, and I was a
liberal prince. How I wished, though, that my uncle had not been such a
fool as to invite the Jesuits, harassed in Italy in 1862, to take refuge
in his dominions.
I was no further advanced than my grandfather, Florestan I., who when
overtaken by the events of 1848, which lost him Mentone and Roquebrune,
contemplated a parliament, which however he never formed. It was a funny
constitution was that one which he posted on the walls, and over which I
had often mused. It had not gone further than being posted on the walls,
I should add, because my grandfather found that it would not bring back
Mentone, and as he was strong enough to keep Monaco with or without it he
had, very sensibly, put it in the fire. The 11th article of it was the
oddest:—“La presse sera libre, mais sujette à des lois répressives.” But
the first article gave the tone to the whole:—“The sole religion of the
State is the Catholic, Apostolic, Roman.”
I strolled up the terraces of Monte Carlo, which always reminded me of
John Martin’s idea of heaven, and consulted M. Blanc. He was in
especially good humour that day, because “Madame Brisebanque” and “the
Maltese” had both been losing money. Still, when I talked of my
parliament and my education reform, he talked of “Jacob’s ladder” and of
other infallible systems of ruining him which never had any result except
that of beggaring their authors. He told me a long-winded story of how
at Homburg a company called “La Contrebanque” had won twenty-four days in
succession, and how on the twenty-fifth they had sent for a watchman and
an iron chest to guard their winnings, how that afternoon their secretary
had lost the whole capital in eighteen _coups_, and how the innocent
watchman had marched up and down all night religiously guarding an empty
chest. I tried to hark back to my subject, when off he went again at a
tangent, and told me how the day before on opening the “bienfaisance”
collection-box in the hall of the hotel they had found no money, but all
the letters of an American gentleman who had posted them there the year
before. Another of his anecdotes was of a lady who, having lost, had
eaten a thousand-franc note on a slice of bread and butter to improve her
luck. M. Blanc left the Casino in his carriage just after I had ridden
off, and without seeming to look I saw well enough out of the corner of
my eyes after he had passed me on the road, that the people uncovered to
him more universally and for a longer time than to myself. There was,
however, one difference between us—I returned the bows and he did not.
I gave up M. Blanc and pursued my reforming course, abandoning, however,
the idea of a parliament and fearing to touch education. My government,
now in working order, resembled in no way that which you English think
the best of all possible polities—“constitutional monarchy”—which with
you appears to me to mean a democratic republic tempered by snobbism and
corruption. Mine was a socialistic autocracy, which, in spite of my
failure, I maintain to be the best of governments, provided only that you
can secure the best of autocrats.
I had no one to back me in what I did. Major Gasignol and some of the
other officers were strongly favourable to the army reform, which gave
them service and promotion. Dr. Coulon was half favourable to my views,
and a quarter favourable to my ways of working them out in action.
L’Abbé Ramin was conciliatory and kind. M. de Payan was grimly neutral.
Every other functionary was an active, though veiled, enemy to
nine-tenths of my proposals. The people were abjectly passive, and I
almost wished that the auberge of the “_Crapaud Volant_” of _Rabagas_ had
had a real existence. At last, however, I conjured up the spirit to
found a school with lay teachers, arranging to pay its cost over and
above the expected fees out of my own purse. No one came to it, and the
Jesuit schools and the schools of the _frères de la doctrine_ continued
to be thronged. The Catholic schools were supported by the state. Mine
were supported by myself. I went a step further, and I offered Father
Pellico the alternatives of stopping the state contributions to all
schools, or of continuing them, provided that lay teachers only were
employed during the principal hours of the day. He coldly said that an
agreement of the nature proposed by me would be contrary to his duty, and
that if I chose to stop the state contributions to his schools the effect
of my action would be to shake my throne without harming them. He added
that if he was to go to prison he was at the service of my officer of the
guard. I replied that he was welcome to his opinion.
The next day the edict appeared. It was countersigned by Baron Imberty,
who disapproved of it, but not by M. de Payan, who had resigned and left
for Nice to consult the Bishop. As I drove through the town in the
afternoon, I was coldly received by the people, and the proclamation was
torn down on the following night. The weekly parade of the militia was
put off for fear of a hostile demonstration; and on the day on which it
would have taken place I received, instead of the muster-roll of the
national regiment, a vote of thanks from the Executive Committee of the
English National Education League, and notice of my unanimous election to
membership of the Council of that body.
A strange event occurred in the afternoon, (it was the 11th of March), to
distract my thoughts. General Garibaldi, who had been travelling
_incognito_, and with the permission of the French Government, given
conditionally on the _incognito_ being strictly preserved, to visit his
birthplace—Nice, applied to me to know whether I would receive him if he
stopped at Monaco for a day on his return. I replied that I should be
glad to see him, the more so as I had met his son Ricciotti at Greenwich
in June 1870, at the dinner of the Cobden Club, to which orgy he and I
had both been lured by the solicitations of the arch-gastronomist, the
jovial Mr. T. B. Potter. I did not add that our acquaintance had been
interrupted by the war in which the same clever and conceited officer had
cut up my cousin’s (the King of Wurtemberg) troops at
Châtillon-sur-Seine.
On the 12th the old General came, and I met him at the station and drove
him to the palace. The news that he was with me soon spread through the
town, and a mob collected at the palace gates. The General, to whom I
had given the “bishop’s rooms,” which had once been occupied by
Monseigneur Dupanloup, his arch enemy, imagined that the crowd was
composed of his admirers, and, leaning upon his stick, he proceeded to
harangue them from the window of the private apartments. Some hundreds
of my subjects, I was afterwards informed, had listened to him languidly
enough until he began to attack the Jesuits, when arose the uproar which
brought me to his room, and all my household into the courtyard. I
begged him to remember where he was, but the howling of the mob had
excited the old lion, and the more they threatened the more violently he
declaimed. When he was pulled into a chair by Major Gasignol the
mischief was done, and a maddened crowd was raging on the _place_ crying
“à bas Garibaldi,” “à bas les Communistes,” “à bas le Prince.”
Colonel Jacquemet made his way to me and said, “Sir, I can count on
twenty of the sergeants and corporals who are in the courtyard,
ex-soldiers of your Highness’s ex-garde. They are grand old soldiers,
and with the strong walls to help them will hold this _canaille_ in
check.”
He might have said, “Sir, I don’t like your ways, and have disapproved of
everything that you have done, but after all you are the rightful Prince
of Monaco, as well as a good fellow, saving your Highness’s presence, and
I am ready to die for you.” He didn’t. He only spoke the words that I
have set down.
My answer was an unhesitating one.
“I, Prince Florestan the Reformer, am not going to hold my throne by
force if I can’t hold it by love; and, moreover, if I wished to do so it
is doubtful whether I could succeed.”
As I spoke the crowd parted asunder, and I saw advancing through it in a
wedge the English blue-jackets from my yacht, armed with cutlasses. A
few stones were thrown at them, but of these they took not the smallest
notice. At their head was the captain of the port, a native Monegascan,
the very man who years before had saved my sailor cousin from the waves.
They entered the courtyard, and I at once asked them to make their way,
with General Garibaldi in the midst, back to the yacht, and steam with
him to Mentone, land him, and return. At the same time I sent for Father
Pellico. It was lucky the sailors had come, for I soon discovered that
the carbineers had made common cause with the mob, and that the sergeants
who were ready to die for me would not have escorted Garibaldi.
The mob howled dismally as he left, but he was embarked safely just
before Father Pellico reached the palace gate. I told him that the
General had left, and asked him whether this concession would satisfy the
crowd. He asked whether I was prepared at the same time to give way
about the schools. I told him that if I thought that after doing so I
could continue to reign with advantage to the country and credit to
myself I would willingly give way, but that if he thought that in the
event of my abdication the public peace could be maintained until a vote
was taken to decide the future of the country, I should prefer to return
to my books and to my boat. He said that he hoped that I should stop,
but that if, on the other hand, I went he thought that order would be
maintained.
I bowed to him and said, “Père Pellico, you may if you please occupy the
throne of the Grimaldis. I shall leave in an hour when the yacht
returns.”
I went on to the balcony and attempted to address the crowd. If they
would have listened to a word I said I might have turned them, but not a
syllable could be heard. I could not “address my remarks to the
reporters,” because owing to the wise precautions of my predecessor with
regard to the press there were none. I retired amid a shower of small
stones.
Colonel Jacquemet’s language was fearful to listen to. The air was thick
with his curses. I was reminded of the question of a little girl friend
of mine, who having been taken out one day to an inspection by the
Commander-in-Chief of the garrison of Portsmouth upon Southsea common,
asked on her return home if “the Duke of Cambridge wasn’t a very pious
man,” explaining that she had heard him “say his prayers”—alluding
doubtless to His Royal Highness’s favourite expression of “God bless my
body and soul!” If he had ever read history the colonel would have known
that the fire-eating d’Artagnan of “Three Musketeers” renown once
commanded the fortress of Monaco for Louis the Fourteenth, under my
ancestor the Marshal, and he might have been inspired by a desire to
emulate his fame, but, as it was, he seemed chiefly moved by a loathing
for his tattered fellow-subjects. He wanted to mow them with grape—of
which we had none; he wanted to blow them into the air—but to reason with
him was useless, and I was unable even to fix his attention enough to bid
him farewell.
As I left the palace, surrounded by the tars and preceded and followed by
the sergeants of the ex-garde, Abbé Ramin came running up and seized me
by the hand.
“Your Serene Highness must not leave us,” he cried; “the people are
irritated for a moment against their prince, but happier days will come.”
“I can stop if I please, Abbé Ramin,” I replied, “but only either by
firing upon the people, or by blockading them and depriving the women and
children of the upper town of their daily bread. I will do neither.”
“History will speak of your Highness as your Highness deserves!”
“My dear friend—for I believe you are my only friend in Monaco—I thank
you for coming to bid me farewell, but don’t talk of history, for history
will only declare me to have been an obstinate young fool.”
We moved off slowly down the hill amid the hisses of the crowd. The
sergeants formed square upon the quay, I embraced Colonel Jacquemet and
the Abbé, stepped into the gig, and in a minute was on board. Steam was
up, and the next evening I landed at Marseilles.
By a telegram from the Abbé I learnt that an informal vote of the adult
male inhabitants of the principality had been taken that day, and that
the result was this:—