“Will your Serene Highness graciously please to go at a walk, for otherwise the guards will not have time to get up by the military road and to form again to receive your Highness at the Place.”
I did as I was bid, of course. Bouquets of violets were showered on me as we passed through the narrow street, and the scene on the public square in front of the castle was really fine. The sun was setting in glory over the Mediterranean in the west; on the north the Alpes Monégasques were beginning to take the deep red glow which nightly in that glorious climate they assume. On the east the palms at Monte Carlo stood out sharply against the deep still blue sky, and in the far distance the great waves of the ground swell were rolling in upon the coast towards Mentone and the Italian frontier, with thousands of bright white sea-gulls speckling the watery hills with dots of light. At the palace gate I was received by the old dowager princess. She bent and kissed my hand. I threw my arms round her neck and kissed her on both cheeks.
“That was kindly meant, Highness,” she said, “but your Serene Highness is now the reigning prince, and in the presence of the mob your dignity must be kept up.”
Passing the two great Suisses who, arrayed in gala costume, stood magnificently at the gate—but whose wages I afterwards discovered were supplemented by showing my bedroom when I was out to English tourists at a franc a head—we entered the grand courtyard, ascended the great stairs, and passed straight into the reception hall known as the Salle Grimaldi. There, standing on a dais, opposite to the magnificent fireplace and chimney-piece, with the baron at my side, I held a levee, and received the vicar-general, père de Don; the curé of the cathedral, l’abbé Ramin; the chevalier de Castellat, vice-president of the council of state; the chevalier Voliver, member of council of state, and president of the council of public education; the Marquis de Bausset-Roquefort, president of the high court of justice and member of the council of state; the treasurer-general, M. Lombard; Monsignore Theuret, the first almoner of the household; Monsignore Ciccodicola, the honorary almoner; Colonel the Vicomte de Grandsaigne, my first aide-de-camp; Major Pouget d’Aigrevaux, commandant of the palace; the two attachés of M. de Payan in his office of secretary-general, MM. Stephen Gastaldi and John Blanchi; my doctor, M. Coulon, a leading member of the council of education, and evidently a most intelligent man; the curés of the six smaller churches; the five professors of the Jesuit college of La Visitation; three aides-de-camp; the chef du cabinet; the chamberlain himself, who had introduced the others; and four officers of guards and one of carbineers, in addition to Colonel Jacquemet, whom I have already named. No conversation took place, and the presentations being over in five minutes, I got out in the garden before dark for a quiet stroll by myself before dinner.
I was struck by the scene. The tall palms, the giant tree geraniums blooming in masses down the great cliffs to the very edge of the dark blue sea, the feathery mimosas, the graceful pepper trees laden with crimson berries, the orange grove, the bananas fruiting and flowering at the same time, the passion flowers climbing against the rugged old castle walls, all were new to me—unused to the south, and brought up in Buckinghamshire, in Cambridgeshire, and in central Germany. The scene saddened me, I know not why, and I asked myself whether, with the odd combination of my opinions and my position, I could be of any use in the world except to bring Monarchy into contempt. Here was I, a freethinker, called upon to rule a people of bigoted Catholics through a Jesuit father—for I had already seen that Père Pellico was the real vice-king. Here was I, an ardent partisan of the doctrine of individuality, placed suddenly at the head of the most centralized administration in the world. What was to be done? Reform it? Yes, but no reformer has so ill a time of it as a reforming prince. Sadly I went in to a sad dinner tête-à-tête with my crape-covered great aunt in a gloomy room, and so to bed, convinced that unhappiness may co-exist with the possession of a hall porter as big as Mrs. Bischoffsheim’s.
The next morning when I dreamily called for my coffee there was brought to me along with it a gigantic envelope sealed with soft wax stamped with my arms, and containing a terrific despatch of twenty-three pages. “Rapport Hebdomadaire.” “Weekly report” of what, I asked myself. Why, I have but five thousand subjects—the same number that Octavia Hill rules in Marylebone with such success. I began to read.
“On Monday night a man named Marsan called the carbineer Fissori a fool. He was not arrested (see Order No. 1142 and correspondence 70, 10, 102), but a private report was addressed to the Council of State, on which the Secretary General decided to recommend that Marsan should be watched for a week; referred to the Sub-Committee on Public Order.”
“M. Blanc on Tuesday visited the tunnel in the commune of Turbie (France) by which he hopes to obtain an additional water supply for the Casino. As M. Blanc had not had the courtesy to inform the secretarial office of his excursion it was impossible to send an agent to obtain details of what took place.”
So on for twenty and more pages, the last informing me of the names of the fishing boats that had come in and gone out, of the time of sunrise, and of the fact that a private in my guards had caught a cold in his head.
It was unbearable. These formalities should be suppressed at once. The administration should be decentralised. I rang and sent to the secretarial office for M. de Payan. I addressed him thus:—
“I gather from this tedious document that my principality of five thousand persons possesses every appliance and every excrescence of civilized government except a parliament. The perfection of bureaucracy and of red tape has been reached in a territory one mile broad and five miles long. No doubt centralisation is less hurtful than it is elsewhere in a country so small that it is virtually all centre, but I intend that this state of things (for which you are in no way responsible) shall cease. In the first place kindly inform me of the facts. What are the expenses and what are the revenues of the state, and what is the number of its officials?”