He signed his name in my autograph book simply “Louis Napoléon.” I should have liked him to have written more but he declined, saying: “It would be commented upon,” and that was the reason for his refusal. He told me he would be forty in a few days’ time.
He paid long visits to my aunt lasting often more than two hours; she had known him for a long time and had made many things easier for him. In Russia he enjoyed the privileges of a Grand Duke and was treated as such at Court; but as he was not really a Grand Duke many of his brother officers were madly jealous at seeing him already enjoying such an important position and rank which would only be accorded to them when their heads were bald and their joints stiffened by the service and toil of years—if ever!
Luckily for us we had arrived in the Caucasus comparatively fresh after four nights in the train; Russian trains are not so fast as ours and in consequence not so tiring.
My introduction to Princess Orbeliani was, to say the least of it, original in the extreme. I found my hostess with all the other ladies in the room lying face downward on the floor, while the gentlemen of the party stood contemplating with more or less knowledge the somewhat uneven surfaces before them; the rotundity of the female sex is not rare and is much admired in the Caucasus.
The beauty of the average Caucasian woman is by no means a negligible quantity, the type being usually dark with large black eyes; but they grow old prematurely, often becoming very fat. The men are usually tall with wasp-like waists; their features are good, but their expression is very often decidedly savage.
In the mountain districts there exists a fair ruddy type amongst some of the tribes; the women are very pretty and are much admired.
It was subsequently explained to me that these ladies on the floor were really practising a Russian dance and they were taking the parts which should have been allotted to their male partners.
I often met Princess Murat, née Princess de Mingrélie, and her daughter Antoinette; her eldest son Lucien had married a daughter of my cousin the late Duc de Rohan, to whom the lovely Castle of Jocelyn in Brittany belongs, while her second son Napoléon, generally called Napo, was fighting on the side of the Russians at the war.
Her daughter Antoinette was looking after her mother’s vast estates with the knowledge of a man—and although not dressed in khaki could have shown some of our present-day girls on the land what real hard work means.
Some years previously the Duchesse de Rohan had, much to every one’s surprise, married her daughter to Prince Murat, whose ancestors do not date farther back than Napoléon, while the Rohans’ motto for generations has been: “Roy ne puis, Prince ne daigne, Rohan suis.”