The Princess Sophia

by E. F. Benson

Her education, so to speak, had been the work of generations of ancestors, accomplished prenatally, and she owed more to them than to her tutors. It was Tamburlaine who had smoked a cigarette on the horse-block, and Lorenzo, more than her masters, who had given her that quick artistic perception that made the great singers of Europe love to sing to her accompaniment. The blood of the great Catherine was hers, too, and hers by inheritance the intolerance of rulers. ‘C’est mon plaisir’ was reason enough with her. Indeed, she needed a clever husband and a loyal people. The former she had got in a way, but his cleverness was more akin to cunning than to wisdom or broadness of vision. To trace the process of thought was to him as valuable as the conception itself, and it pleased him more to make an infinitesimal deduction correctly than to blunder splendidly. She was headstrong, and would never be small; he was a master of finesse, but could never be big. She was royal to her finger-tips, he was only the cadet of a family that happened to be reigning. Her second need—a large loyalty from her people—was more completely hers than he guessed. What she did was right, and how firmly the people of Rhodopé held that creed he was to learn. The spirit preached from Potsdam had possession of their hearts.

Petros sat still on the veranda after she had left him, and smoked contentedly. If Sophia found him irritating, he at any rate bore the knowledge with equanimity. He had not looked for domestic bliss in his marriage; for he did not aim at domesticity, and he did not believe in bliss. But every day found him more thankful that he had married her, for he believed in ambition, especially when it was his own. Rhodopé seemed to him more enviable than ever, and he fully intended to make a bid for it. Rhodopé, he said to himself with sublime self-sufficiency as he was shaving, wanted a master; and he looked at his image in the glass. The very fact that Sophia had chosen to marry him amounted to a guarantee of his excellent qualities in the minds of her subjects; and he was quick enough to see how popular he was, and complacently shallow enough not to guess at the grand reason for his popularity. He was eminently possessed of the power to please, and when he found himself pleasing he not unnaturally referred it to his own power.

A further cause for gratification this morning lay in the fact that Sophia had been so willing to leave to deal with the affairs of the kingdom alone. She had closed with his offer as soon as it had been made, and, as this was the first real step that he had taken since his marriage in the prosecution of his aims, he was pleased that it should have gone forward without a stumble. He intended to use her absence to take several more steps in the same direction.

The Assembly of Rhodopé is peculiarly constituted. In all it numbers sixty members, of whom two-thirds enjoy hereditary seats, and one-third are elected by vote every three years. But there was in those days no sharp division into parties; no socialism as yet masqueraded in the streets under the very penetrable disguise of philanthropy; and those who had only small estates of their own had not yet begun to initiate Bills whereby larger holders should be deprived of their lands. On the other hand, even the hereditary voters were not all of blindly Conservative disposition, and the general tendency of politics was to be mildly progressive. The Prime Minister, elected by the House, was the President, and represented the monarch in his absence; but when the hereditary Prince or Princess was present, he took his seat in the body of the House. The Crown, however, possessed the power of deposing the Prime Minister and appointing a one at discretion. This prerogative had not since the great political crisis of 1793, and generally considered obsolete. But it had never been repealed, and nothing stood in the way of its being exercised should the Sovereign decide to do so.

Princess Sophia left on the first of August in the royal yacht Felatrune. Her departure had been made somewhat hurriedly, and she had given but scanty attention to the discussion of the management of the affairs of State in her absence. Prince Petros, however, insisted that he should be given some clear notion of how far he was to be considered Regent, and how far he was to telegraph for her instructions. He had made a copy on a sheet of foolscap of the Bills which would come before the House before it broke up in September, and she ran her eye quickly over them.

‘Tobacco, potatoes—potatoes, tobacco,’ she said; ‘there is nothing there that I cannot leave completely to you. I will write a short address to the House, if I have time, in which I nominate you as my Regent, and Malakopf will read it out to them. Here, I will do it now; give me a bit of paper.’

Sophia scribbled some half-dozen lines, signed them, and addressed the envelope to the Prime Minister, Malakopf.

‘I understand that I am to take your place in every way,’ said Petros, to whom she had not shown the note.

‘Yes, I have said that,’ said Sophia. ‘Don’t introduce a Bill for deposing me, you know; and if there is any unexpected crisis, let me know by telegraph. Of course there won’t be, for crises never happen in Rhodopé, and the unexpected never happens anywhere. I have complete confidence in you, Petros. And don’t be terribly conscientious; if possible, let me not hear a word of these three-halfpenny concerns till you join me. I want an entire holiday.’

‘A holiday will do you good, dear Sophia,’ said he; ‘I am afraid the heat has tired you. In turn, let me ask you not to make the State bankrupt at Monte Carlo.’