The journey, I need hardly say, passed off without a hitch. The Empress, with her suite, entered the private saloon-carriage of her brother, the Prince of Wales, which was coupled to the Paris mail-train and afterwards transferred to the Nice express, for the Empress was travelling to Bordighera, on the Italian Riviera.
She dared not leave her carriage during the short stop which was made in Paris; but, when we arrived at Marseilles the next morning, she said:
"I should awfully like to take a little exercise. I have been eighteen hours in this carriage!"
"But please do, Ma'am," I at once replied. "I promise you that nothing disagreeable will happen to you."
She thereupon decided to take my advice. She stepped down on the platform and walked about among the passengers. She was received on every side with marks of deferential respect—for, of course, her incognito had been betrayed, as every incognito should be—and suddenly felt encouraged to such an extent that, from that moment, she alighted at every stop. Gradually, indeed, as her confidence increased, she took longer and longer in returning to her carriage, so much so that she very nearly lost the train at Nice; and, when I took leave of her at Bordighera, she said, as she gave me her hand to kiss:
"Forgive me, my fears were absurd. Now, I have but one wish, to make a fresh stay in France. Who knows? Perhaps next year."
I do not know what circumstances prevented her from fulfilling her hopes; and the next time I heard of her was at Queen Victoria's funeral. I was astonished not to see her there and asked the reason of her chamberlain, Count Wedel, who sat beside me in St. George's Chapel at Windsor.
"Alas," he said, "our poor Empress is confined to her bed by a terrible illness! Think how she must suffer: her body is nothing but a living sore!"
A few months later, she was dead.