We waited for the procession in the dining-room of the Paris, a comfortable low-ceiled room with a suggestion of a ship’s dining cabin about it. A table had been engaged for us in the window. The last guest to arrive was Don Jaime, who strolled in leisurely after the streets had been closed to other people for two hours. The Don had on a new coat, a white waistcoat and a gardenia in his buttonhole; it was pleasant to see him dressed for once as he deserved.
“I passed the nuncio of the holy Pap driving to the church,” he said. “They will not tardy greatly now.”
A few minutes later the first of the fifty gala wedding coaches came in sight. Though of varying degrees of splendor they were all on the same general plan of those we had seen when Sir Maurice de Bunsen presented his credentials. That day one Ambassador and his suite had been escorted in state to the palace; to-day the whole court and all the wedding guests must be transported from the palace to the church. Could the wonderful carriages, the proud horses, the ostrich plumes, the trappings, wigs, galloons and silk stockings hold out?
They did; they grew finer and finer. One coach was of tortoise shell, one blue and silver, one purple and gold lacquer. All the shining company of princes, grandees, ambassadors extraordinary, court ladies, maids of honor, was magnificently conveyed in gala coaches drawn by noble horses with nodding feathered head-dresses, all attended by grooms in satin liveries. It was a torrent of dazzling splendor that wearied the eyes and stunned the imagination.
“I have been forty years in diplomacy,” said a dapper old gentleman with a single eyeglass, who sat at the next table; “I have seen most of the royal marriages of my time; I never saw anything to compare to this.”
The bride rode with her mother in the tortoise-shell coach; they were talking together as they passed. Princess Beatrice looked pale and grave, the bride happy, expectant, calm, as every bride should look. In the last coach, a marvel of crystal and gold, rode the King behind eight proud cream-colored horses. They ambled daintily along, tossing and tossing their heads so the long ostrich plumes nodded in time to their high stepping. Where, when, had we seen horses like these before? While we waited for the wedding party to come back from church, I remembered.
It was in Scotland just ten years ago this August, the season when Ben Marone puts on his imperial purple veil of heather, that we stood together outside the inn at Braemar waiting to see the royal carriage from Balmoral pass. Soon four, perfectly matched, cream-colored ponies—very like the King of Spain’s horses—came racing in sight at the top of their speed, drawing a large, plain, old-fashioned carriage. On the box sat a Highlander in tartan and filibegs.
“’Twull be the Queen and Princess Beatrice,” said one of the villagers.
The carriage came within our line of vision. “Ay, ’tis her Majesty.”
On the back seat sat an old woman in a shabby black cloak and bonnet, a younger lady in black beside her. The Queen was old and very tired of state and ceremony; she looked neither to the right nor to the left, but straight before her, as the villagers pulled forelock or curtsied. She seemed to be thinking deeply, was perhaps looking into the future. If she could have foreseen that her little granddaughter—the one for whose future she might have felt the most concern—would assume the name she had made illustrious, would she have been pleased?