she had decided that year to air her melancholy on the blue waters of
the Mediterranean. The projected cruise embraced a number of calls at
different harbours along the Côte d'Azur; and she asked me to accompany
her.
We left Paris on the 30th of December for Marseilles, where the
imperial yacht lay waiting for us, commanded by a very distinguished
officer, Captain Moritz Sacks von Bellenau; and we were at sea,
opposite the tragic Château d'If, on the 1st of January of the year
1898, which was to prove so tragic to Elizabeth of Austria. I offered
her my wishes for happiness and a long life. The Empress seemed to me
sadder and more thoughtful that morning than usual:
"I wish you also," she said, "health and happiness for you and yours."
And she added, with an expression of infinite bitterness, "As for
myself, I have no confidence left in the future."
Had she already received a presentiment of what the year held in store
for her? Who can tell?
She gave us but little of her society during this voyage. She spent
her days on deck, and interested herself in the silent activity, in
the humble, poetic life of the crew. The sailors entertained a sort
of veneration for her. They were constantly feeling the effects of
her discreet and delicate kindness. Like ourselves, they respected
her melancholy and her love of solitude. And, in the evenings, while
the little court collected in the saloon and amused themselves with
different games, or else improvised a charming concert; while, at the
other end of the ship, the sailors, seated under the poop, sang their
Tyrolean or Hungarian songs to an accordion accompaniment, the Empress,
all alone on deck, with her eyes staring into the distance, would dream
of the stars.
After leaving Marseilles, we went to Villafranca, near Nice, skirting
the coast. The Empress also wished to stop at Cannes and to see once
more, from the sea, Monaco, Cap Martin and Mentone. She next proposed
to revisit Sicily, Greece, and Corfu: it was as though she felt a
secret desire to make a sort of pilgrimage to all the ephemeral
landmarks which her sad soul had visited in the course of her wandering
life.
However enjoyable this cruise might be to me, I had to think of
abandoning it. My service with the Empress ended automatically as soon
as she had left French waters.
"Stay on, nevertheless," she said kindly. "You shall be my guest; and I
will show you my beautiful palace in Corfu."
But my duties, unfortunately, summoned me elsewhere. I had to
return to Nice, to receive the King and Queen of Saxony, who were
expected there. It was decided, therefore, that I should leave the
_Miramar_ at San Remo. When the yacht dropped her anchor outside the
little Italian town, I said good-bye to the Empress and my charming
travelling-companions.
"It will not be for long, for I shall come back to France," said
Elizabeth.
She leant over the bulwarks, as the yacht's launch took me on shore,
and I watched her delicate and careworn features, first outlined
against the disc of the setting sun and then merging, little by little,
in the distance and the darkness.
4.
Seven months had elapsed since the day when I left the Empress at
San Remo. I was in Paris and read in the papers that she had just
arrived at Caux, a picturesque little place situated above Montreux,
overlooking the Lake of Geneva. I hastened to write, on chance, to
Mr. Barker, her Greek reader, in order to receive news of her. When I
came home, on the evening of the 9th of September, I was handed Mr.
Barker's reply, in which was conveyed news of the Empress's plans, and
a gracious invitation from her to visit her, should I happen to be in
the neighbourhood of Geneva.
As I was on leave and had nothing to keep me in Paris, I at once
made up my mind and, the next morning, took the train for Geneva. I
calculated that, arriving in the evening, I had a chance of still
finding the Empress at the Hôtel Beau Rivage; besides, nothing need
prevent me from going the next morning to Caux, where I was sure to
see her, and, at the same time, to be able to shake hands with General
Berzeviczy and Mr. Barker. Who would have thought that the train which
carried me through the green fields of Burgundy and Franche-Comté was
taking me straight to the scene of a sad and blood-stained tragedy?
When we drew into the station at Geneva, I noticed an unwonted
animation on the platforms; groups of people stood about in excited
discussion, with a look of consternation on their faces. I paid no
particular attention, however, for I was in a hurry. I hailed a fly and
told the man to drive to the Hôtel Beau Rivage. We had not gone twenty
yards when he turned round on his box:
[Illustration: THE EMPEROR AND EMPRESS OF AUSTRIA]
"What an awful crime!" he said.
"What crime?"
"Haven't you heard? The Empress was murdered this afternoon."
"Murdered!"
Livid and scared, I could hardly listen to the pitiful story of the
tragedy. The Empress, it seemed, had been stabbed to the heart by
an Italian anarchist when about to embark on the 1:40 steamer for
Territet; she sank down on the Quai du Mont Blanc. The people around
her thought that she had fainted, and carried her on board the boat;
when they bent over her, she was dead.
I sprang quickly from the carriage, when it pulled up at the hotel,
rushed into the hall, which was full of people, flew up the crowded
staircase and along a corridor in which English, German and Russian
travellers were hustling one another, with scared faces, all anxious to
see. At last, catching sight of a servant:
"Countess Sztaray?" I asked.
"In there," he replied, pointing to a door standing ajar.
I knocked, the door was opened and Countess Sztaray, red-eyed, her
features distorted with grief, gave me a heart-broken look and, with a
sob, said:
"Our poor Empress!"
"Where is she?"
"Come with me."
Taking me by the hand, she led me and General Berzeviczy, who had
also just arrived, to the next room. There lay the Empress, stiff and
already cold, stretched on a little brass bed under a thin, white gauze
veil. Her face, lit up by the flickering flame of two tall candles,
showed no trace of suffering. A sad smile still seemed to hover over
her pale and lightly-parted lips; two long tresses fell upon her slim
shoulders; the delicate features of her face had shrunk; two purple
shadows under her eyelids threw into relief the sharp outline of her
nose and the pallor of her cheeks.
She appeared as though sleeping peacefully and happily. Her tiny
hands were crossed over an ivory crucifix; some roses, already almost
withered--roses which she had gathered that morning and which she was
carrying in her arms when she received her death-blow--lay scattered at
her feet.
I stood long contemplating the corpse. My self-possession deserted me.
In spite of myself, the tears came to my eyes, and I cried like a child.
* * * * *
Why had fate decreed that the Empress should go to Geneva? Curiously
enough, the idea came to her suddenly, it appeared, on Thursday, the
8th of September. She had arranged to pay a visit to her friend,
Baronne Adolphe de Rothschild, who was staying at her country house,
the Château de Pregny, at the western end of the lake. But it was a
long excursion to make in a single day; and the Empress, contrary
to the advice of Countess Sztaray, decided to sleep at Geneva,
after leaving Pregny, and not to return to Caux until the following
afternoon. She arrived at the Hôtel Beau Rivage in the evening and
went out after dinner. She was up the next day at five o'clock.
After filling a portion of her morning with the complicated cares
of her toilet and her correspondence, she went for a walk along the
shady quays of the Rhone. Returning to the hotel at one o'clock,
she hurriedly drank a glass of milk. Then, accompanied by her
lady-in-waiting, Countess Sztaray, she hastened down to the steamboat
pier, intending to take the Territet boat that started at 1:40. She
had come to within two hundred yards of the footplank connecting the
steamer with the Quai du Mont Blanc, when Lucchini flung himself upon
her and struck her a blow under the left breast with a three-cornered
file clumsily fitted to a wooden handle. The violence of the blow
broke her fourth rib.
Death was not instantaneous. She had the strength to walk as far as the
boat and for this reason: the instrument, in its course, had pierced
the left ventricle of the heart from top to bottom. But, the blade
being very sharp and very thin, the hemorrhage at first was almost
insignificant. The drops of blood escaped very slowly from the heart;
and its action was not impaired so long as the pericardium, in which
the drops were collecting, was not full. This was how she was able to
go a fairly long distance on foot with a stab in her heart. When the
bleeding increased, the Empress sank to the deck.
The poor Empress, therefore, had the energy to drag herself to the
boat, where a band of gipsies was playing Hungarian dances (a cruel
irony of chance), while the steamer began to move away from the
landing-stage. At that moment, she fainted. Countess Sztaray, who
believed her to be stunned by a blow of the fist--for no one had
seen the weapon in the assassin's hand--tried to bring her to with
smelling-salts. The Empress, in fact, recovered consciousness, spoke a
few words, cast a long look of bewildered astonishment around her and
then, suddenly, fell back dead. The dismay and excitement were intense.
The boat at once put back to the pier; and, as there was no litter
at hand, the body was carried to the hotel, shrouded in sails, on an
improvised bier of crossed oars.
Had the Empress received a presentiment of her tragic end, which a
gipsy at Wiesbaden, and a fortune-teller at Corfu had foretold her in
the past? Two strange incidents incline one to think so. On the eve
of her departure for Geneva, she asked Mr. Barker to read her a few
chapters of a book by Marion Crawford, entitled "Corleone," in which
the author describes the abominable customs of the Sicilian Mafia.
While the Empress was listening to this harrowing story, a raven,
attracted by the scent of some fruit which she was eating, came and
circled round her. Greatly impressed, she tried to drive it off, but in
vain, for it constantly returned, filling the echoes with its mournful
croaking. Then she swiftly walked away, for she knew that ravens are
harbingers of death when their ill-omened wings persist in flapping
around a living person.
Again, Countess Sztaray told me that, on the morning of that day, she
went into the Empress's room, as usual, to ask how she had slept, and
found her imperial mistress looking pale and sad.
"I have had a strange experience," said Elizabeth. "I was awakened in
the middle of the night by the bright moonbeams which filled my room,
for the servants had forgotten to draw the blinds. I could see the moon
from my bed; and it seemed to have the face of a woman weeping. I don't
know if it is a presentiment, but I have an idea that I shall meet with
misfortune."
During the three days that preceded the departure of the remains
for Vienna, I stayed at Geneva and shared the funeral watches with
the little court, once so happy and now so pitifully robbed of its
mistress. General Berzeviczy, Countess Sztaray and I sat for long
hours conjuring up the memory of her who was now sleeping her last
sleep beside us. Countless anecdotes were told, countless tiny and
charming details. It already seemed almost a distant past which we were
recalling for the last time, a bright and exquisite past which the
gracious Empress was taking away with her.
I went to see the murderer in his cell. I found a perfectly lucid
being, boasting of his crime as of an act of heroism. When I asked
him what motive had driven him to choose for his victim a woman, a
sovereign living as far removed as possible from politics and the
throne, one who had always shown so much compassion for the humble and
the destitute:
"I struck at the first crowned head," he said, "that came along. I
don't care. I wanted to make a manifestation and I have succeeded."
The unhappy Empress's destiny was to be strange and romantic until the
end, until after her death. Her body, carried to an hotel bed-room,
departed for Austria without pomp or display, amid an immense and
silent crowd. The Swiss Government had not the necessary time to levy a
regiment to show her the last honours.
But it was better so, for she had, as her escort, a respectfully
contemplative nation and, as her salute, the bells of all the towns and
all the villages through which the funeral train passed. And this, I am
certain, was just the simple and poetic homage which her heart would
have desired.
* * * * *
A few days after the tragedy, the Emperor Francis Joseph deigned to
remember my respectful attachment to the consort whom he had loved so
well; and I received the following telegram:
WIENBURG, September 15th, 1898.
_To Monsieur Paoli, Ministry of the Interior, Paris,_--
His Majesty the Emperor, greatly touched by your sincere sympathy,
remembers gratefully the devoted care which you showed the late
Empress and thanks you again with all his heart.
PAAR.
_Principal Aide-de-camp to H. M. the Emperor of Austria._
I also received from the archduchesses, the daughters, a hunting-knife
which their mother, the poor Empress, valued most particularly. I keep
it religiously in my little museum. Sometimes I take it out and look at
it; and it invariably summons up one of the most touching memories of
my life.
II
KING ALFONSO XIII
1.
"You wanted me to complete your collection, didn't you, M. Paoli?"
The presidential train had left Hendaye; the distant echoes of the
Spanish national anthem still reached our ears through the silence
and the darkness. Leaning from the window of the sleeping-car, I was
watching the last lights of the little frontier-town disappear one by
one.
I turned round briskly at the sound of that gay and bright voice. A
tall, slim young man stood at the door of the compartment, with a
cigarette between his lips and a soft felt hat on his head, and gave
me a friendly little wave of the hand. His long, slender figure looked
very smart and supple in a pale-grey travelling-suit; and a broad smile
lit up his bronzed face, his smooth, boyish face, adorned with a large
Bourbon hooked nose, planted like an eagle's beak between two very
black eyes, full of fire and humour.
"Yes, yes, M. Paoli, I know you, though perhaps you don't yet know me.
My mother has often spoken to me of you and, when she heard that you
had been appointed to watch over my safety, she said, 'With Paoli, I
feel quite at ease.'"
"I am infinitely touched and flattered, Sir," I replied, "by that
gracious mark of confidence. It is true that my collection was
incomplete without your Majesty."
That is how I became acquainted with H. M. Alfonso XIII, in the spring
of 1905, at the time of his first official visit to France. "The little
king", as he was still called, had lately completed his nineteenth
year. He had attained his majority a bare twelve-month before and was
just entering upon his career as a monarch, if I may so express myself.
The watchful eyes of Europe were beginning to observe with sympathetic
interest the first actions of this young ruler who, with the exuberant
grace of his fine and trusting youth, brought an unexpected and amusing
contrast into the somewhat constrained formality of the gallery of
sovereigns. Though he had no history as yet, plenty of anecdotes
were already current about him and a plenty of morals were drawn in
consequence:
"He has a nature all impulse," said one.
"He is full of character," said people who had met him.
"He is like his father: he would charm the bird from the tree," an old
Spanish diplomatist remarked to me.
"At any rate, there is nothing commonplace about him," thought I, still
perplexed by the unconventional, amusing, jocular way in which he had
interrupted my nocturnal contemplations.
No, he was certainly not commonplace! The next morning, I saw him at
early dawn at the windows of the saloon-carriage, devouring with a
delighted curiosity the sights that met his eyes as the train rushed at
full speed through the verdant plains of the Charente. Nothing escaped
his youthful enthusiasm: fields, forests, rivers, things, people.
Everything gave rise to sparkling exclamations:
"What a lovely country yours is, M. Paoli!" he cried, when he saw me
standing near him. "I feel as if I were still at home, as if I knew
everybody: the faces all seem familiar. It's 'stunning'!"
At the sound of this typically Parisian expression (the French word
which he employed was _épatant_) proceeding from the royal lips, it was
my turn to be "stunned." In my innocence, I was not yet aware that he
knew all our smart slang phrases and used them freely.
His spirits were as inexhaustible as his bodily activity; and, upon my
word, we were hard put to it to keep up with him. Now running from one
window to another, so as to "miss nothing," as he said, with a laugh;
now leaning over the back of a chair or swinging his legs from a table;
now striding up and down the carriage, with his hands in his pockets
and the everlasting cigarette between his lips, he questioned us
without ceasing. He wanted to know everything, though he knew a great
deal as it was. The army and navy excited his interest in the highest
degree; the provinces through which we were passing, their customs,
their past, their administrative organisation, their industries
supplied him with the subjects of an exhaustive interrogatory, to
which we did our best to reply. Our social laws, our parliament, our
politicians as eagerly aroused his lively curiosity, and then came the
turn of Paris which he was at last about to see, whose splendours and
peculiarities he already knew from reading and hearsay, that Paris
which he looked upon as a fairyland, a promised land; and the thought
that he was to be solemnly welcomed there sent a slight flush of
excitement to his cheeks.
"It must be wonderful!" he said, his eyes ablaze with pleasurable
impatience.
He also insisted upon our giving him full details about the persons who
were to receive him:
"What is M. Loubet like? And the prime minister? And the governor of
Paris?"
When he was not putting questions, he was telling stories, recalling
his impressions of his recent journeys in Spain.
"Confess, M. Paoli," he said, "that you have never had to look after a
king as young as I."
His conversation, jesting and serious by turns, studded with
judicious reflexions, with smart sallies, with freakish outbursts and
unexpected digressions, revealed a young and keen intelligence, eager
after knowledge, a fresh mind open to effusive ideas, a quivering
imagination, counterbalanced, however, by a reflective brain. I
remember the astonishment of the French officers who had come to
meet him at the frontier, on hearing him discuss matters of military
strategy with the authority and the expert wisdom of an old tactician;
I remember also the surprise of a high official who had joined the
train midway and to whose explanations the King was lending an
attentive ear when we crossed a bridge over the Loire, in which some
water-fowl happened to be disporting themselves.
"Oh, what a pity!" the King broke in. "Why haven't I a gun?" And,
taking aim with an imaginary fowling-piece, "What a fine shot!"
Again, I remember the spontaneous and charming way in which, full
of admiration for the beauties of our Touraine, he tapped me on the
shoulder and cried:
"There's no doubt about it, I love France! France forever!"
What was not my surprise, afterwards, at Orleans, where the first
official stop was made, to see him appear in his full uniform as
captain-general, his features wearing an air of singular dignity,
his gait proud and lofty, compelling in all of us a respect for the
impressive authority that emanated from his whole person! He found the
right word for everybody, was careful of the least shades of etiquette,
moved, talked and smiled amid the gold-laced uniforms with a sovereign
ease, showing from the first that he knew better than anybody how to
play his part as a king.
[Illustration: THE KING OF SPAIN, PRINCESS HENRY OF BATTENBERG,
PRINCESS VICTORIA EUGENIA AND M. PAOLI]
There is one action, very simple in appearance, but in reality more
difficult than one would think, by which we can judge a sovereign's
bearing in a foreign country. This is his manner of saluting the
colours. Some, as they pass before the standard surrounded by its guard
of honour, content themselves with raising their hand to their cap or
helmet; others stop and bow; others, lastly, make a wide and studied
gesture which betrays a certain, almost theatrical affectation. Alfonso
XIII's salute is like none of these: in its military stiffness, it
is at once simple and grave, marked by supreme elegance and profound
deference. On the platform of the Orleans railway-station, opposite the
motionless battalion, in the presence of a number of officers and civil
functionaries, this salute which so visibly paid a delicate homage to
the army and the country, the graceful and respectful salute moved and
flattered us more than any number of boasts and speeches. And, when,
at last, I went home, after witnessing the young King's arrival in the
capital and noticing the impression which he had made on the government
and the people, I recalled the old Spanish diplomatist's remark:
"The King would charm the bird from the tree!"
2.
I saw little of King Alfonso during his first stay in Paris. The
protection of sovereigns who are the official guests of the government
did not come within the scope of my duties. I therefore left him at the
station and was not to resume my place in his suite until the moment
of his departure. The anarchist revolutionary gentry appeared to be
unaware of this detail, for I daily received a fair number of anonymous
letters, most of which contained more or less vague threats against
the person of our royal visitor. One of them, which the post brought
me as I was on the point of proceeding to the gala performance given
at the Opera in his honour, struck me more particularly because of the
plainness of the warning which it conveyed, a warning devoid of any of
the insults that usually accompany this sort of communication:
"In spite of all the precautions that have been taken," it read, "the
King had better be careful when he leaves the Opera to-night."
This note, written in a rough, disguised hand, was, of course,
unsigned. I at once passed it on to the right quarter. The very strict
supervision that was being exercised no doubt excluded the possibility
of a successful plot. But there remained the danger of an individual
attempt, the murderous act of a single person: and I knew by experience
that, to protect one's self against that, one must rely exclusively
upon "the police of Heaven," to use the picturesque expression of Señor
Maura, the Spanish premier.
Haunted by a baneful presentiment, I nevertheless decided on leaving
the Opera, to remain near the King's carriage (as a mere passer-by, of
course) until he had stepped into it with M. Loubet and driven off,
surrounded by his squadron of cavalry. The attempt on his life took
place at the corner of the Rue de Rohan and the Rue de Rivoli; and
both the King and M. Loubet enjoyed a miraculous escape from death. My
presentiment, therefore, had not been at fault.
I need not here recall the coolness which the young monarch displayed
in these circumstances, for it is still present in every memory, nor
the magnificent indifference with which he looked upon the tragic
incident:
"I have received my baptism of fire," he said to me, a couple of days
later, "and, upon my word, it was much less exciting than I expected!"
Alfonso XIII, in fact, has a fine contempt for danger. Like the late
King Humbert, he considers that assassination is one of the little
drawbacks attendant on the trade of king. He gave a splendid proof of
this courage at the time of the Madrid bomb, of which I shall speak
later; and I was able to see it for myself two days after the attempted
assassination in the Rue de Rohan.