The next day a fresh bit of local colour was provided for the royal guests. The Queen was taken out driving with posters in the forest. The postilions, with their clubbed and powdered hair and gaily beribboned hats, started at a fairly steady pace, but once they were clear of the crowd they went off at full tear, with loose reins and a great cracking of whips. The pace was so severe that it was as much as I could do, with my horse at full gallop, to keep my place beside the carriage door. The fun was flavoured with a touch of uneasiness, which increased its charm. The whole period of the Queen's visit was thus spent in drives and excursions, from which we did our best to banish any touch of official formality and constraint.
In the evenings there would be a concert, with the artists from the Conservatoire to sing the chorus from Armide, "Jamais en ces beaux lieux," the orchestra performing the symphony in A, and a solo on the horn by Vivier; or else Auber would bring the Opera Comique troupe, Roger, Chollet, and Anna Thillon; or else Arnot played L'Humonste with Mdme. Doche. There were Cabinet Ministers there as well. Lord Aberdeen and M. Guizot held conversations, during which they may or may not have confided political secrets to each other. Marshal Soult, the President of the Council, spoke but little, and when he did, the words that fell from his lips were not always of the most good-tempered sort, as one unlucky general found out to his cost. This worthy man, no longer young, who was in command in a neighbouring department, held the grade of brigadier-general, and, feeling the moment of his retirement was approaching, he was passionately anxious, before it struck, to make sure of the three stars that mark the rank of lieutenant-general. He had been watching his opportunity to try and get the marshal to look favourably on his request, and he fancied he had found it one morning when he met him after luncheon, at the entrance of the Galerie des Guise. The marshal was walking along, limping from an old wound, with one hand behind his back, and plunged in a meditation which was the reverse of rose-colour, to judge by the pouting under-lip, which he always wore when this was the case.
The general approached him, and he stopped short, knitting his brows.
"I am very lucky, Monsieur le Marechal, to have this opportunity of paying you my respects."
"Pooh!" said the marshal, but the poor wretch went on:
"And as I have this lucky chance, Monsieur le Marechal, I take advantage of it to inform you of the satisfactory state of the public mind in my department, and the good results of my work there. Do you know that only the day before yesterday I had sitting at my own dinner table, with several people who are devoted to the present order of things, a Legitimist and … a Republican!"
"Oh, had you indeed? Then let me tell you you asked them to dine to meet an idiot!"
And off the marshal went, leaving his unlucky interlocutor aghast at the sudden collapse of his hopes. I have even heard it said he died of it!
On her return from Eu, the Queen landed at Brighton, whither I had the honour of accompanying her, and where she was received with that general enthusiasm which has never failed to greet her. I remained for a day as her Majesty's guest in that hideous Pavilion at Brighton, in those days a royal residence, where nobody could move about or open a window without being exposed to the fire of all the opera glasses in the houses opposite This masterpiece of bad taste has been turned into a casino. It is the one thing it was fitted to be. Then I took those of our ships which had escorted the Queen to Brighton back to Treport to act as guardships while the King remained at Eu.
Some years previously a comical scene took place on board one of these guardships. The King had gone, according to his usual custom, to inspect the ship in question and her crew, accompanied by the then Minister for Marine Affairs, a gallant officer who shall be nameless, but who was better fitted for giving words of command than for extemporising speeches. Once on board the… Pelican (I will use that name, though it is not the real one), and the inspection of the crew being over, the King told the minister he desired to commemorate his visit by the bestowal of at least one Cross of Honour. The idea was quite unexpected, but after some consideration it was decided to give the decoration to the surgeon-major, who had behaved with great devotion during a recent cholera epidemic. The crew was still assembled, the King took up his position aft, but the minister, being perfectly ignorant as to the course the ceremony should take, did not open his lips. So the scene opened thus: