Colonel Jacquemet made his way to me and said, “Sir, I can count on twenty of the sergeants and corporals who are in the courtyard, ex-soldiers of your Highness’s ex-garde. They are grand old soldiers, and with the strong walls to help them will hold this canaille in check.”
He might have said, “Sir, I don’t like your ways, and have disapproved of everything that you have done, but after all you are the rightful Prince of Monaco, as well as a good fellow, saving your Highness’s presence, and I am ready to die for you.” He didn’t. He only spoke the words that I have set down.
My answer was an unhesitating one.
“I, Prince Florestan the Reformer, am not going to hold my throne by force if I can’t hold it by love; and, moreover, if I wished to do so it is doubtful whether I could succeed.”
As I spoke the crowd parted asunder, and I saw advancing through it in a wedge the English blue-jackets from my yacht, armed with cutlasses. A few stones were thrown at them, but of these they took not the smallest notice. At their head was the captain of the port, a native Monegascan, the very man who years before had saved my sailor cousin from the waves. They entered the courtyard, and I at once asked them to make their way, with General Garibaldi in the midst, back to the yacht, and steam with him to Mentone, land him, and return. At the same time I sent for Father Pellico. It was lucky the sailors had come, for I soon discovered that the carbineers had made common cause with the mob, and that the sergeants who were ready to die for me would not have escorted Garibaldi.
The mob howled dismally as he left, but he was embarked safely just before Father Pellico reached the palace gate. I told him that the General had left, and asked him whether this concession would satisfy the crowd. He asked whether I was prepared at the same time to give way about the schools. I told him that if I thought that after doing so I could continue to reign with advantage to the country and credit to myself I would willingly give way, but that if he thought that in the event of my abdication the public peace could be maintained until a vote was taken to decide the future of the country, I should prefer to return to my books and to my boat. He said that he hoped that I should stop, but that if, on the other hand, I went he thought that order would be maintained.
I bowed to him and said, “Père Pellico, you may if you please occupy the throne of the Grimaldis. I shall leave in an hour when the yacht returns.”
I went on to the balcony and attempted to address the crowd. If they would have listened to a word I said I might have turned them, but not a syllable could be heard. I could not “address my remarks to the reporters,” because owing to the wise precautions of my predecessor with regard to the press there were none. I retired amid a shower of small stones.
Colonel Jacquemet’s language was fearful to listen to. The air was thick with his curses. I was reminded of the question of a little girl friend of mine, who having been taken out one day to an inspection by the Commander-in-Chief of the garrison of Portsmouth upon Southsea common, asked on her return home if “the Duke of Cambridge wasn’t a very pious man,” explaining that she had heard him “say his prayers”—alluding doubtless to His Royal Highness’s favourite expression of “God bless my body and soul!” If he had ever read history the colonel would have known that the fire-eating d’Artagnan of “Three Musketeers” renown once commanded the fortress of Monaco for Louis the Fourteenth, under my ancestor the Marshal, and he might have been inspired by a desire to emulate his fame, but, as it was, he seemed chiefly moved by a loathing for his tattered fellow-subjects. He wanted to mow them with grape—of which we had none; he wanted to blow them into the air—but to reason with him was useless, and I was unable even to fix his attention enough to bid him farewell.
As I left the palace, surrounded by the tars and preceded and followed by the sergeants of the ex-garde, Abbé Ramin came running up and seized me by the hand.