4.

When the Queen had visited all the places in the immediate neighbourhood of the Corbières and tasted sufficiently of the pleasure of looking upon herself as a new Little Red Riding-hood in her wild solitudes, or a new Sleeping Beauty (whose Prince Charming was not to come until many years later), she expressed the wish to go on the longer excursions which the country-side afforded. We therefore set out, one fine morning, for the Abbey of Hautecombe, situated on the banks of the poetic Lac du Bourget, which inspired Lamartine with one of his most beautiful meditations.

Although standing on French territory, the old Abbey occupied by the Cistercian monks continues to belong to Italy, or, at least, remains the property of the royal house by virtue of an agreement made between the two governments at the time of the French annexation of Savoy in 1860. It contains forty-three tombs of Princes and Princesses of the House of Savoy. All the ancestors of King Victor-Emanuel, from Amadeus V to Humbert III lie under the charge of the White Fathers in this ancient monastery full of silence and majesty. Their mausoleums are carved, for the most part, by the chisels of illustrious sculptors; they stand side by side in the great nave of the chapel, which is in the form of a Latin cross, with vaults painted sky-blue and transepts peopled with upwards of three-hundred statues in Carrara marble. These, crowded together within that narrow fabric, form as it were a motionless and reflective crowd watching over the dead.

The visitor bends over the tombs and reads the names inscribed upon them; and all the adventurous, chivalrous, heroic and gallant history of the House of Savoy comes to life again. Here lies Amadeus, surnamed the Red Count, and Philibert I the Hunter; further on, we come to Maria Christina of Bourbon-Savoy, Joan of Montfort, and Boniface of Savoy, the prince who became Archbishop of Canterbury;[6] further still is the tomb of the young and charming Yolande of Montferrat, who sleeps beside her father, Aymon the Peaceful. Lastly, at the entrance of the church, in the chapel of Our Lady of the Angels, stands the sarcophagus of Charles Félix, King of Sardinia, who restored Hautecombe in 1842. The old standard of the Bodyguards of the Savoy Company shelters him beneath its folds, which have ceased to flutter many a long century ago.

This fine historical lesson within a monastic sanctuary interested the two Dutch Queens greatly. It made Queen Wilhelmina very thoughtful, especially at a given moment when the monk who acted as her guide said, with a touch of pride in his voice:

"The House of Savoy is a glorious house!"

After a second's pause, the little Queen replied:

"So is the House of Orange!..."

A few days after our excursion to Hautecombe, we went to visit the Cascade de Grésy, a sort of furious torrent in which Marshal Ney's sister, the Baronne de Broc, was drowned in 1818 before the eyes of Queen Hortense, the mother of Napoleon III. We also drove to the Gorges du Fier, in which no human being had dared to venture before 1869. Queen Wilhelmina, ever eager for emotional impressions, insisted on penetrating at all costs through the narrow passage that leads into the gorges. The Queen Mother lived through minutes of agony that day, although I did my best to persuade Her Majesty that her daughter was not really incurring any danger. But there is no convincing an anxious mother!

Stimulated by these various excursions, the little Queen said to me, one morning:

"M. Paoli, I have formed a great plan. My mother approves. I want to go and see the Grande Chartreuse."

"That is easily done," I replied, "but it will take a whole day, for the monastery is a good distance from here."

"Well, M. Paoli, arrange the excursion as you think best: with the snow on the ground, it will be magnificent!"

I wrote to the Father Superior to tell him of the Queen's wish. He answered by return that, to his great regret, he was unable to open the doors of the monastery to women, even though they were Queens, without the express authorisation of the Pope. And indeed I remembered that the same objection had arisen some years earlier, when I wanted to take Queen Victoria to the Grande Chartreuse: I had to apply to Rome on that occasion also.

I therefore hastened to communicate the answer to General Du Monceau, who at once telegraphed to Cardinal Rampolla, at that time Secretary of State to the Holy See. Cardinal Rampolla telegraphed the same evening that the Pope granted the necessary authority.

These diplomatic preliminaries gave an additional zest to our expedition. For it was a genuine expedition. We left Aix-les-Bains at eight o'clock in the morning, by special train, for Saint-Béron, which was then the terminus of the railway, before entering the great mountain. Here, two landaus with horses and postilions awaited us. The two Queens and their ladies stepped into one of the carriages; General Du Monceau, the officers of the suite and I occupied the other; and we started. It was eleven o'clock in the morning and we had a three hours' drive before us. Notwithstanding the intense cold, a flood of sunshine fell upon the immense frozen and deserted mountain-mass and lit up with a blinding flame the long sheets of snow that lay stretching to the horizon, where they seemed to be merged in the deep blue of the sky. No sign of life appeared in that sea of mountains, amid the throng of dissimilar summits, some blunt, some pointed, but all girt at their base with huge pine-forests. Only the rhythmical tinkling of our harness-bells disturbed the deep silence.

We began to feel the pangs of hunger after an hour's driving. I had foreseen that we should find no inn on the road and had taken care to have baskets of provisions stored in the boot of each carriage at Saint-Béron.

"That's a capital idea," said Queen Wilhelmina. "You shall lunch with us. I will lay the cloth!"

The carriages had stopped in the middle of the road, in the vast solitude, opposite the prodigious panorama of white mountains and gloomy valleys. The little Queen spread a large table-napkin over our knees. From the depths of a hamper, she produced a cold chicken, rolls and butter and solemnly announced:

"Luncheon is served."

Served by a Queen, in a carriage, on a mountain-top: that was an incident lacking to my collection, as King Alfonso would have said! I need hardly add that this picturesque luncheon was extremely lively and that not a vestige of it remained when, at two o'clock, we approached the Grande Chartreuse.

We caught sight first of the square tower, then of the great slate roofs, then of the countless steeples, until, at last, in the fold of a valley, the impressive block of buildings came into view, all grey amidst its white setting and backed by the snow-covered forests scrambling to the summit of the Col de la Ruchère. Perched amidst this immaculate steppe, among those spurs bristling with contorted and threatening rocks, as though in some apocalyptic landscape, the cold, stern, proud convent froze us with a nameless terror: it seemed to us as though we had reached the mysterious regions of a Wagnerian Walhalla; the fairy-tale had turned into a legend, through which the flaxen-haired figure of the little Queen passed like a light and airy shadow.

All the inhabitants of the monastery stood awaiting the Queens at the threshold of the gateway. The monks were grouped around their superior; their white frocks mingled with the depths of the immense corridor, the endless straight line of which showed through the open door.

The Father Superior stepped forward to greet the two Queens. Tall in stature, with the face of an ascetic, a pair of piercing eyes, an harmonious voice and a cold dignity combined with an exquisite courtesy, lie had the grand manner of the well-bred man of the world:

"Welcome to Your Majesties," he said, slowly, with a bow.

The Queens, a little awestruck, made excuses for their curiosity; and the inspection began. The monks led their royal visitors successively through the cloister, the refectories, the fine library, which at that time contained over twenty-thousand volumes, the rooms devoted to work and meditation, each of which bore the name of a country or province, because formerly they served as meeting-places for the priors of the charter-houses of each of those countries or provinces. They showed their kitchen, with its table formed of a block of marble nine yards long and its chimney of colossal proportions. They threw open the great chapter-house decorated with twenty-two portraits of the generals of the order from its foundation and furnished with lofty stalls in which the monks used to come and sit when, twice a year, they held their secret assembly. They showed their exiguous cells, with their tiled floors and whitewashed walls, each containing a truckle-bed, a praying-chair, a table, a crucifix and a window opening upon the vast and splendid horizon of the fierce mountains beyond. Lastly, they showed their church, with its Gothic carvings surmounted by a statue of death, and their desolate and monotonous cemetery, in which only the graves of the priors are distinguished by a wooden cross. But they did not show their relics and their precious sacred books. I expressed my astonishment at this; and one of the fathers replied, coldly:

"That is because the Queens are heretics. We only show them to Catholics."

Queen Wilhelmina, who had gradually recovered her assurance, plied the superior with questions, to which he replied with a perfect good grace. When, at last, the walk through the maze of passages and cloisters was finished, the Queen hesitated and then asked:

"And the chartreuse? Don't you make that here?"

"Certainly, Ma'am," said the prior, "but we did not think that our distillery could interest Your Majesty."

"Oh, but it does!" answered the Queen, with a smile. "I want to see everything."

We were then taken to the "Mill," situated at an hour's distance from the monastery, where the Carthusians, with their sleeves turned back, prepared the delicious liqueur the secret of which they have now taken with them in their exile. The Queens put their lips to a glass of yellow elixir offered to them by the superior and accepted a few bottles as a present. The visit had interested them prodigiously.

Half an hour later, we had left the convent far behind us in its stately solitude and were driving down the other slope of the mountain to Grenoble, where we were to find a special train to take us back to Aix-les-Bains. When we approached the old Dauphiné capital, the day had turned into a night of black and icy darkness; in front of us, in the depths of the valley, all the lamps of the great city displayed their thousands of twinkling lights; and Queen Wilhelmina kept on exclaiming:

"How beautiful! How delighted I am!"

She was not so well pleased—nor was I—when, at the gate of the town, we saw cyclists who appeared to be on the lookout for our carriages and who darted off as scouts before our landaus as soon as they perceived us. These mysterious proceedings were all the more insoluble to me as I had taken care not to inform the authorities of Grenoble that the Queens intended to pass through their city, knowing as I did, on the one hand, that the municipal council was composed of socialists and, on the other, that Their Majesties wished to preserve the strictest incognito. But I had reckoned without the involuntary indiscretion of the railway staff, who had allowed the fact to leak out that a special train had been ordered for the sovereigns; and, as no one is more anxious to receive a smile from royalty than the stern, uncompromising adherents of Messrs. Jaurès & Co., the first arm that was respectfully put out to assist Queen Wilhelmina to alight from the carriage was that of the socialist senator who, that year, was serving as Mayor of Grenoble. He was all honey; he had prepared a speech; he had provided a band. Willy-nilly, we had to submit to an official reception. True, we were amply compensated, as the train steamed out of the station, by hearing cries of "Long live the Queen!" issuing from the throats of men who spent the rest of the year in shouting, "Down with tyrants!"

Such is the eternal comedy of politics and mankind.