Maria Carolina was supposed to be concealing her chagrin and drowning her cares in a turmoil of pleasure, with a questionable entourage made more questionable by the prominence of My Lady. But all this elaborate frivolity, besides serving the immediate purpose of passing the time agreeably, left My Lady in constant attendance on the Queen. They might be for hours together on a water picnic to eat the fine oysters fattened in the Lucrine Lake of the ancients, and the making up of the party might involve My Lady driving up to the Palace twice or thrice in the course of a few hours to consult with the Queen for a few minutes.
Never for an instant did the French party suspect that My Lady was the go-between from the Queen to the British Ambassador or British naval officers; but we know now that this was in progress for many months. And the assumed intimacy led to a real and deep friendship, for the Queen was astonished with My Lady’s masculine capacity and still more masculine courage in this difficult business, and touched by her devotion to the Royal House of Naples. Accordingly she lost no opportunity of showing her attachment to her friend by lending her presence to My Lady’s entertainments, especially when the Admiral’s victory allowed her to throw off the mask and display openly her sympathies for the English against the French.
At this birthday ball given in honour of the Admiral, she was present for the greater part of the evening, surrounded by a glittering bevy of courtiers; and her presence gave My Lady the opportunity of showing her brilliant courage and resourcefulness. I learn from the Journals, in a passage full of admiration for the well-bred serenity with which she met such a terrible ordeal, that no sooner had she left the Admiral after she had recovered from her emotion at the outrageous accusations of Lieutenant Nisbet, than he received a summons from the Queen graciously commanding his attendance.
Not having any sufficient excuse to decline, he went, and found My Lady tattling with Her Majesty as if nothing had happened.
“Shall I interpret for your Majesty and his Excellency?” she inquired in the most ordinary way; and when the Queen replied in the affirmative, informed the Admiral that this was Her Majesty’s wish, and added that she had prompted Her Majesty to send for him, and that it would not be usual for him to take his leave until Her Majesty gave the signal, thus securing him from doing anything hastily in connection with the incident. At the door the Admiral found Will waiting for orders, and, with characteristic command, showing a face devoid of any expression but the smiling respect with which he invariably greeted his chief when he met him or was sent for. Telling him to attend, the Admiral waited on Her Majesty, when, finding that they were to converse privately, My Lady interpreting, Will fell back among the less important members of the royal party, and seeing at a glance that there were no English among them to whom courtesy demanded that he should pass a few remarks, he retired within his shell, as it were, and stood with unseeing eyes. He was glad to keep silence, for the events which had just happened had shocked him even more than the Admiral himself. Impressionable and emotional as the Admiral was, an attack was in itself calculated to make his spirits rise, though the nature of this attack, from the fact that it was levelled chiefly against a lady for whom he felt such an attachment and respect, stood in the way of his natural tendency on this occasion. Neither had Will the Admiral’s philosophy, deeply tinged with a religiousness on the one hand and lightened with an intermittent gaiety on the other. Will, except in action, had a slow-moving mind, which many things failed to reach, but when they did reach it, or were of a serious nature, he could not easily shake them off. As he stood giving the rein to his thoughts, he took little note of those among whom he was standing until he heard himself addressed, and found that he was next the Prince of Favara and his sister. There was a genuine ring in the Prince’s voice, as if bygones were really bygones, and the salutations were not merely a piece of duellists’ etiquette when the combatants happened to meet again. Donna Rusidda, too, greeted him as if she were glad to see him.
Under ordinary circumstances Will would, as likely as not, have found some well-bred way of escaping from a position which threatened to be awkward for both of them; but he was so agitated about the affair with Lieutenant Nisbet that he had not his usual collectedness, nor was it easy for him, being in attendance upon the Admiral, to place a distance between himself and the Favaras who were in attendance upon the Queen.
The topic of conversation started by the Prince was, naturally, the battle, in which it was already bruited about Naples how Will had distinguished himself. After repeated congratulations, in which Donna Rusidda joined very prettily, they talked to him for a long time about the battle, Donna Rusidda asking most particularly about the Admiral, and how he was now, and about his wound, and how he looked in the action, and so on, in infinite detail. The topic was a fortunate one; for Will so warmed up on the subject of his beloved Admiral that they left off quite kindled into friendship.
It was against Will’s notions of good breeding to question them very particularly about themselves; but in reply to his query whether they would be in Naples long, the Prince volunteered the information that a certain number of the Queen’s ladies had always to be from the island, and that his sister had lately been chosen to fill a vacancy. He himself had long been attached to Ferdinand I.’s household. He further showed his disposition to be friendly by making a jest of his poverty. “If one cannot afford to live in one’s own palace, the next best thing is to live in the King’s.”
A Further Extract from the Journal.
[Note.—The letter herein referred to as having been written by the Admiral to her Ladyship on October 3rd, 1798, was duly sent, and is preserved in autograph among the Nelson papers.]