Her dear warm heart! He kissed that letter as he laid it aside, and dreamed of a visit to Naples to bask in her sunshine, a dream that melted into nothing.
So they set out to Naples, Ambassador and Ambassadress of England, visiting on the way the sad, foreboding Marie Antoinette of France, and bearing with them in Emma’s bosom her last letter to her sister Marie Caroline of the Two Sicilies. To such honour is the once forlorn Emma come! It would have been much to witness the meeting of those two beautiful creatures, on whom the hand of Destiny was so strangely laid.
And they returned to the Palazzo Sessa. To live happy ever after? At least it began with all due splendour. Marie Caroline redeemed her promise and broke, in Lady Hamilton’s favour, the rule which forbids any sovereign to receive a woman who cannot be presented at her native Court. Not only so—Mrs. Hart was forgotten. That lady had, for social purposes, never existed, and the daughter of the Hapsburgs took the daughter of the blacksmith to her bosom on the footing of closest, most intimate friendship. Her keen eyes were fixed steadily on the storm blackening in France, rolling up the sky and slowly extinguishing the sun. Let who would doubt its coming, she would be prepared. She could not do enough for the representatives of England, and all the world followed her example. Surely the past was buried under the radiant present as the drowned corpses lie beneath the blue Mediterranean, and if a memory, like a white face, ever floated up to the sparkling surface, it was easy for Emma Hamilton to forget it when the next ripple carried it out to sea. All the English ladies, even their young daughters, were at her feet now. Perhaps she did not quite realize that the English in foreign countries live by a different code from the English in England. She was to understand that later.
It was for the first time worth Hamilton’s while to train her in politics, for the quick wit that aided him at every turn could be made useful in his diplomatic work also. It grew more irksome as he grew older, and as France, sinister, menacing as Vesuvius itself, threatened to break forth in ruining flames and lava. Emma could spare him a little here and there on the lighter side, he thought. Certainly she could and did copy and rewrite some of his despatches and was developing into a capable secretary.
It puzzled her, wearied her a little at first, but when she understood that it helped him, that even the Queen’s chance words to her repeated to him (but were they ever chance?) were of interest and value, she caught up that rôle of stateswoman, and played it as she did all the others. After all, an ambassadress should be in the secrets of her trade. She would show them that there too she was at home. Not for nothing had Greville written to Sir William in the early days of the plot against her, “Emma’s passion is admiration, and it is capable of aspiring to any line which will be celebrated, and it would be indifferent when on that key whether she was Lucretia or Sappho or Scævola or Regulus, anything grand, whether masculine or feminine she could take up.”
She could, indeed. She would show them now, King, Queen, Hamilton, Greville, the World, that there was nothing beyond her, and the more difficult the better. She would win the Royal admiration, and with it under the Queen’s and Hamilton’s tuition she studied her new rôle—the politics of Europe. There, too, she would be prima donna, and Marie Caroline, used to the choice of instruments, tested this one in little things, and her heart rejoiced within her. For the day of great things was drawing on.
PART III