2.
The next evening, I was dining at a friend's house, where the guests belonged, for the most part, to the official and political world. When I related my adventure and expressed my astonishment at having met the sovereign making her own purchases in town, accompanied by a stern lady-in-waiting:
"Did that surprise you?" I was asked. "It does not surprise us at all. One of our haughty princesses of the House of Savoy said, sarcastically, that we had gone back to the times when kings used to mate with shepherdesses. This was merely a disrespectful sally. The truth is that both our King and Queen have very simple tastes and that they like to live as ordinary people, in so far as their obligations permit them. Let me give you an instance in point; whenever they come to Milan—and they never stay for more than two or three days—they go to the royal palace, of course, but, instead of living in the state apartments and bringing a large number of servants, they prefer to occupy just a few rooms, have their meals sent in from the Ristorante Cova and order the dishes to be all brought up at the same time and placed on a sideboard. Then they dismiss the servants, shut the doors and wait upon themselves."
In our sunny countries—I can speak for them, as a Corsican—we love pomp and ceremony. I seemed to observe in the friends who gave me this striking illustration of the royal simplicity a touch of bitterness, perhaps of regret. Remarks that came to my ears later led me to the conclusion that the aristocracy, if not the people, disapproved of their sovereign's democratic tendencies, which contrasted with the ways of the old court, of which Queen Margherita had been the soul and still remained the living and charming embodiment.
No doubt. Queen Helena's "manner" was entirely different from that of Margherita of Savoy, whose highly-developed and refined culture, whose apposite wit, whose engaging mode of address, built up of shades that appealed to delicate minds, had attracted to the Quirinal the pick of intellectual, artistic and literary Italy and held it bound in fervent admiration. Educated at the court of her father, Prince Nicholas, Helena of Montenegro had grown up amid the austere scenery of her native land, in constant contact with the rugged simplicity of the Montenegrin highlanders; her wide-open child-eyes had never rested on other than grave and manly faces; her girlhood was decked not with fairy-tales, but with the old, wild legends of the mountains, or else, with epics extolling the heroism of those who, in the days of old, had driven the foreign invader from the valleys of Antivari or the lofty plateaux of Cetinje. At the age of twelve, she was sent to St. Petersburg to finish her studies. There, in the promiscuous intercourse of a convent confined to young ladies of gentle birth, she had known the charm of friendships that removed all differences of social rank between her fellow schoolgirls and herself, while her mind opened to the somewhat melancholy beauties of Slav literature. On returning to her country, she enjoyed, in the fulness of an independence wholly undisturbed by the demand of etiquette, the healthy delights of an open-air life, which she divided between water-colour drawing, in which she excelled, and sport in which she showed herself fearless.
When, therefore, she saw Italy for the first time in 1895 and saw it through the gates of Venice, where her father had taken her on the occasion of an exhibition; when, one evening, in the midst of the fanciful and to her novel scene of the lagoon arrayed in its holiday attire, she saw the homage of a glowing admiration in the eyes of the then Prince of Naples, it will readily be conceived that she was flurried and a little dazzled. When, lastly, in the following year, she bade farewell to her craggy mountains and to the proud highlanders, the companions of her childhood, and saw the gay and enthusiastic nation of Italy hastening to welcome her, the twenty-years-old bride, with the hopes and promises which she brought with her, it will be understood that she at first experienced a sense of confusion and shyness.
The shyness, I am told, has never completely worn off. On the other hand, in the absence of more brilliant outward qualities, Queen Helena has displayed admirable domestic virtues; she has known how to be a queen in all that this function implies in regard to noble and delicate missions of devotion and goodness to the poor and lowly. And she has done better than that: she has realised her engrossing duties as wife and mother; and they are sweet and dear to her.
Had this been otherwise, the King's character, which is quick to take offence, and his jealous fondness would have suffered cruelly. He too is shy, he too is a man of domestic habits, who has always avoided society and pleasure. Possessing none of the physical qualities that attract the crowd, endowed with an unimaginative, but, on the other hand, a reflective and studious mind, remarkably well-informed, highly-intelligent, passionately enamoured of social problems and the exact sciences, none was readier than he to enjoy the charm of a peaceful home which he had not known during his youth. Touching, in fact, though the attachment between the son and mother was, they nevertheless remained separated by the differences in their character, their temperament and their ideas. Whereas Queen Margherita kept all her enthusiasm for art and literature, the Prince of Naples displayed, if not a repugnance, at least a complete indifference to such matters. When he was only ten years of age, he said to his piano-mistress, Signora Cerasoli, who was appointed by his mother and who vainly struggled to instil the first principles of music into his mind:
"Don't you think that twenty trumpets are more effective than that piano of yours?"
To make amends, he showed from his earliest youth a marked predilection for military science. He had the soul of a soldier and submitted, without a murmur, to the strict discipline imposed upon him by his tutor, Colonel Osio. He is still fond of relating, as one of the pleasantest memories of his life, the impression which he felt on the day when King Humbert first entrusted him with the command of a company of foot at the annual review of the Roman garrison:
"The excitement interfered so greatly with my power of sight," he says, "that the only people I recognised in the cheering crowd were my dentist and my professor of mathematics."
His keen love of the army became manifest when, as heir apparent, he received the command of the army-corps of Naples. Frivolous and light-headed Neapolitan society looked forward to receiving a worldly-minded prince and rejoiced accordingly; but it soon discovered its mistake; the prince, scorning pleasure, devoted himself exclusively to his profession and left his barracks only to go straight back to the Capodimonte Palace, where he spent his spare time in perfecting himself in the study of military tactics.
When, at last, the tragedy of Monza called him suddenly to the throne, the manliness of his attitude, the firmness of his character and the soberness of his mind impressed the uneasy and scattered world of politics. He insisted upon drawing up his first proclamation to the Italian people with his own hand and in it proved himself a man of the times, thoroughly acquainted with the needs and aspirations of modern Italy.
"I know," he said to Signor Crispi, a few days after his accession, "I know all the responsibilities of my station and I would not presume to think that I can remedy the present difficulties with my own unaided strength. But I am convinced that those difficulties all spring from one cause. In Italy, there are few citizens who perform their duty strictly: there is too much indolence, too much laxity. Italy is at a serious turning-point in her history; she is eaten up with politics; she must absolutely direct her energies towards the development of her economic resources. Her industries will save her by improving her financial position and employing all the hands at present lying idle in an inactivity that has lasted far too long. I shall practise what I preach by scrupulously following my trade as king and by encouraging initiative, especially by encouraging the social and economic evolution of the country."
Let me do him this justice: he has kept his promises. A will soon made itself conspicuous under that frail exterior. He applied to the consideration of every subject the ardour of an insatiable curiosity and his wish to know things correctly and thoroughly. He studied the confused conditions of Italian parliamentary life with as much perseverance as the social question. It is possible that, by democratising the monarchy, he has forestalled popular movements which, in a country so passionate in its opinions and so exuberant in its manifestations as Italy, might have caused irreparable disorders and delayed the magnificent progress of the nation.
Pondering over these serious problems, his vigilant and studious mind sought relaxation and, at times, consolation and encouragement for its rough task in the ever-smiling intimacy of the home. It resolved that this home should be impenetrable to others, so impenetrable that it excluded the sovereign and à fortiori his official "set": the husband and father alone are admitted. This is the secret of that close union which has made people say of the Italian royal couple that they represent the perfect type of a middle-class household which found its way by accident into a king's palace.
I have tried to give a psychological picture of the two sovereigns arising from the impressions which I picked up in the course of my trip to Italy. Their visit to Paris was destined to confirm its accuracy and to complete its details.