Supper had been waiting for a long time, and the performance ended then and there.
The King asked, I remember, if I could dance “Home, Sweet Home.” I had never tried it, but it did not seem to me difficult—with the accompaniment of the exquisite melody—to express the words, “There’s no place like home.”
DANCE TO GOUNOD’S “AVE MARIA”
I had danced that evening Gounod’s Ave Maria some bacchanal dances, some other dances, based upon slow movements of Mendelssohn’s concertos for the dances of death, and on Chopin’s Marche, Funèbre for the funeral dances. My excellent orchestra leader, Edmond Bosanquet, had, furthermore, composed some perfect music for dances of joy and of grief. In brief, I must have danced at least twenty times, and we had ended with the radiant dances, which the King had never seen. Everyone, it is needless to say, congratulated me in a most charming way, but the loveliest of all was Princess Marie, who brought me a large photograph of herself, on which she had written: “In memory of an evening during which you filled my heart with joy.”
The day before our departure from Bucharest some money, which was to have been wired me, had not arrived, and I found myself in a genuine predicament. I had twelve people and several thousand pounds of baggage to get to Rome, where I was to make my first appearance on Easter Day.
To arrive there in time we should have to take the train next morning. I went accordingly to the princess, who was the only person whom I knew in Roumania, to ask her if she would come to my assistance.
I called on her at nine o’clock in the morning. I was taken to the second storey of the palace, to a room that was even prettier, if possible, than the one in which I had been received the first time.
The princess received me. She was in her night-robe, and had put on a dressing-gown of white silk over which her beautiful dishevelled hair hung. She was still engaged in her toilet when I arrived, but in order not to make me wait, she bade me come into her little boudoir, where no one would disturb us. The room, filled with well-chosen first editions, was in charming taste. Everywhere there were little draped statuettes on pedestals. Beside the fireplace was a very comfortable corner. In the midst of all these beautiful objects one might have thought oneself in a miniature museum.
I asked her what she liked best among all the things there and she replied, “the rosaries,” of which she had quite a collection. What an artist she must be to bring together all these beautiful things.