Père Pellico, to my astonishment, exclaimed, “But on the contrary; my opinions are not different from those of your Highness. They are the same. But as a democrat I do not venture, although I may be wrong, to force them upon the people.”
Here was a change of base.
“If I were your Highness,” he continued, “I would dismiss the Council of State and call an elected parliament to frame a constitution. That would be a more regular method of proceeding than limiting your own prerogative by the exercise of that very prerogative itself.”
“Father,” I replied, “is not the country somewhat small for the complicated machinery of parliament?”
“Why then not try a Plebiscite, ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ upon certain written propositions, as in Zurich?”
“How liberal a politician can afford to be when he has the people with him,” I thought to myself as I bowed out Father Pellico.
For the next three weeks, until the end of February, things went smoothly with me. My great aunt bothered me so to marry a “nice steady young lady who would maintain the dignity of the Court, check the extravagance of the steward, and count the linen,” that I got Dr. Coulon to tell her that she would die unless she removed to Nice. She preferred a short remove to a long one, and took herself off to my great relief. She was a very fussy, but a clever and a really good old lady. My army reform went well enough, and the church edict was fulminated without meeting with opposition. I bought, through Mr. Gambart, who often came to Nice, a charming Leighton and a glorious Watts, and a fine Verboeckhoven from M. Blanc, as a beginning of the public collection. I moved the councils to the palace, and fitted up the public offices thus rendered vacant as my museum. I got M. Lucas at the Casino to improve his already admirable orchestra, to start a free school for instrumental music, and to play once a week in the town of Monaco instead of at Monte Carlo. I wrote to M. Gounod, whom I had the honour to count among my friends, to offer him the Louis Quinze rooms beyond the Chambre d’York, at the north-west corner of the Castle, with the most lovely view in both directions, and the prettiest decorations to my mind in all the palace, if he would come and stay with me as a permanent visitor, and countenance our musical efforts. I founded a school for modelling in clay, a class in decorative art which I taught myself, and I made the arrangements for the reception of a troop of actors in the winter, and for the production of Gounod’s “Jeanne d’Arc”—a piece which was suggested by Père Pellico. In the palace itself I made many improvements. Of the Chambre d’York I left nothing but the pretty mosaic floor, but the room itself, which had been gilt from top to bottom, bed and all, by my great-grandfather to take out the taste of the Great French Revolution, during which the palace had been a poor-house, I turned into a meeting room for the Council of State. My steam yacht had come with a temporary crew of English tars, and my two great 15-inch 60-ton Krupp guns—one for the terrace, seawards, and one for the garden, landwards—were ordered. The “reports” had been abolished; the nagging surveillance of the police had been abolished; the Church establishment had been abolished; and I then had nothing left to abolish but myself, the abolition of myself being a measure from which I shrank although, like King Leopold, I was ready to go if my subjects wished it.
The only one of my reforms which was really popular was the national army, which afforded all the young married men in the principality a weekly holiday away from their wives. But Major Gasignol, who had a “soul above buttons,” used on parade when he was acting as adjutant to take an opportunity of reminding me of the days of glory when one of my ancestors, Grimaldi II., about the time of the Norman conquest of England, had delivered at Rome the Pope from the forces of no less a personage than the Emperor.
All this time, however, my education scheme and my substitution of an elective for a nominated council were in abeyance, the first on account of Père Pellico’s opposition, the second I might almost say on account of his support.
Dr. Coulon, consulted by me, often used to say, “Why does not your Highness throw the responsibility upon a parliament of leaving matters where they are?”