I put the question to General Du Monceau, who explained to me that the doctors had recommended Queen Wilhelmina to take a three-week's cure of pure, keen air; and that was why they had selected Aix, or rather the Corbières, a spot situated at 2,000 feet above Aix, on the slope of the Grand Revard.
It goes without saying that there was no hotel there; and the only villa in the neighbourhood had to be hired for the Queens' use. This was a large wooden chalet, standing at the skirt of a pine-forest, close to the hamlet. The wintry wind whistled under the doors and howled down the chimneys; there was no central heating-apparatus and huge fires were lit in every room. From the windows of this rustic dwelling, the eye took in the amphitheatre of the mountains of Savoy and their deep and beautiful valleys; and, above the thatched roofs ensconced among the trees, one saw little columns of blue smoke rise trembling to the sky.
Snow began to fall on the day after our arrival. It soon covered the mountains all around with a cloak of dazzling white, spread a soft carpet over the meadows before the house and powdered the long tresses of the pines with hoar-frost. A great silence ensued; I seemed to be living more and more in the midst of a fairy-tale.
The court settled down as best it could. The two Queens occupied three unpretending rooms on the first floor; the royal suite divided the other apartments among them; some of the servants were lodged in a neighbouring farm-house. As for myself, I was bound to keep in daily telegraphic touch with Paris and with the prefect of the department; and I found it more convenient to sleep at Aix. I went up to the Corbières every morning by the funicular railway, which had been reopened for the use of our royal guests, and went down again, every evening, by the same route.
The two Queens, who appeared to revel in this stern solitude, had planned out for themselves a regular and methodical mode of life. They were up by eight o'clock in the morning and walked to the hamlet, chatted with the peasants and cowherds and, after a short stroll, returned to the villa, where Queen Emma, who, at that period, was still exercising the functions of regent, dispatched her affairs of State, while little Queen Wilhelmina employed her time in studying or drawing, for she was a charming and gifted draughtswoman. She loved nothing more than to jot down from life, so to speak, such rustic scenes as offered: peasant-lads leading their cows to the fields, or girls knitting or sewing on the threshold of their doors. The people round about came to know of this; they also knew that Her Majesty was in the habit of generously rewarding her willing models. And so, as soon as she had installed herself by the roadside, or in her garden, with her sketch-book and pencils, cows or little pigs accompanied by their owners, would spring up as though by magic!
I have said that the Queens were in the habit of taking their meals alone. Nevertheless, outside meals, they mingled very readily with the members of their suite, whom they honoured with an affectionate familiarity.
The afternoons—whatever the weather might be—were devoted to long walks, on which Queen Wilhelmina used to set out accompanied generally by one or two ladies-in-waiting and a chamberlain; sometimes I would go with her myself. Queen Emma, knowing her daughter's indefatigable venturesomeness, had given up accompanying her on her expeditions. We often returned covered with snow, our faces blue with the cold, our boots soaked through; but it made no difference; the little Queen was delighted. She dusted her gaiters, shook her skirt and her pale golden hair that hung over her shoulders and said:
"I wish it were to-morrow and that we were starting out again!"