“People talk of the ingratitude of princes,” said the Queen, last night. “But what of the ingratitude of nations? The Monterossans hated me because I dismissed M. Tsargradev; and then, when they saw him revealed in his true colours, they still hated me, in spite of it. They are quick to resent what they imagine to be an injury; but they never recognise a benefit. Oh, the folly of universal suffrage! The folly of constitutional government! I used to say, ’Surely a good despot is better than a mob.’ But now I’m convinced that a bad despot, even, is better. Come, Florimond, let us sing.... you know.... that song....”
“God save—the best of despots?” suggested Florimond.
COUSIN ROSALYS
Isn’t it a pretty name, Rosalys? But, for me, it is so much more; it is a sort of romantic symbol. I look at it written there on the page, and the sentiment of things changes: it is as if I were listening to distant music; it is as if the white paper turned softly pink, and breathed a perfume—never so faint a perfume of hyacinths. Rosalys, Cousin Rosalys.... London and this sad-coloured February morning become shadowy, remote. I think of another world, another era. Somebody has said that old memories and fond regrets are the day-dreams of the disappointed, the illusions of the age of disillusion. Well, if they are illusions, thank goodness they are where experience can’t touch them—on the safe side of time.
Cousin Rosalys—I call her cousin. But, as we often used to remind ourselves, with a kind of esoteric satisfaction, we were not “real” cousins. She was the niece of my Aunt Elizabeth, and lived with her in Rome; but my Aunt Elizabeth was not my “real” aunt—only my great-aunt by marriage, the widow of my father’s uncle. It was Aunt Elizabeth herself however, who dubbed us cousins, when she introduced us to each other; and at that epoch, for both of us, Aunt Elizabeth’s lightest words were in the nature of decrees, she was such a terrible old lady.
I’m sure I don’t know why she was terrible, I don’t know how she contrived it; she never said anything, never did anything, especially terrifying; she wasn’t especially wise or especially witty—intellectually, indeed, I suspect she might have passed for a paragon of respectable commonplaceness: but I do know that everybody stood in awe of her. I suppose it must simply have been her atmosphere, her odylic force; a sort of metaphysical chill that enveloped her, and was felt by all who approached her—some people are like that. Everybody stood in awe of her, everybody deferred to her: relations, friends, even her Director, and the cloud of priests that pervaded her establishment and gave it its character. For, like so many other old ladies who lived in Rome in those days, my Aunt Elizabeth was nothing if not Catholic, if not Ecclesiastical. You would have guessed as much, I think, from her exterior. She looked Catholic, she looked Ecclesiastical. There was something Gothic in her anatomy, in the architecture of her face: in her high-bridged nose, in the pointed arch her hair made as it parted above her forehead, in her prominent cheek-bones, her straight-lipped mouth and long attenuated chin, in the angularities of her figure. No doubt the simile must appear far-sought, but upon my word her face used to remind me of a chapel—a chapel built of marble, fallen somewhat into decay. I’m not sure whether she was a tall woman, or whether she only had a false air of tallness, being excessively thin and holding herself rigidly erect.
She always dressed in black, in hard black silk cut to the severest patterns. Somehow, the very jewels she wore—not merely the cross on her bosom, but the rings on her fingers, the watch-chain round her neck, her watch itself, her old-fashioned, gold-faced watch—seemed of a mode canonical.