Alas, I felt that my hints were misunderstood! I must needs speak more directly. Without further circumlocution, therefore, I said:
"The fact is, it appears that the King did not deign to occupy his apartment."
The officer looked at me and smiled:
"But the King never leaves the Queen!" he exclaimed. "With us, married couples seldom have separate rooms, unless when they are on bad terms. And that is not the case here!..."
They never were parted, in fact, except at early breakfast. The King was accustomed to take café au lait, the Queen chocolate; the first was served in the small sitting-room, where the King, already dressed in his general's uniform, went through his letters; the second in the boudoir, where the Queen, in a pink surat dressing-gown, trimmed with lace, devoted two hours, after her toilet, every morning, to her correspondence, or to the very feminine pleasure of trying on frocks and hats.
I twice again had the honour of seeing her shopping, as on a former celebrated occasion; but this time I accompanied her in the course of my professional duties. She bought no gloves, but made up for it by purchases of linen, jewels, numerous knick-knacks and toys; and one would have thought that she was buying those china dolls, with their tiny sets of tea-things, for herself, so great was the child-like joy which she showed in their selection.
"This is for Yolanda; this is for Mafalda," she said, as she pointed to the objects that were to be placed on one side.
I saw her for the first time grave and thoughtful at the Palace at Versailles, which she and the King visited in the company of M. and Madame Loubet. I think that she must have retained a delightful recollection of this excursion to the palace of our kings, an excursion which left a lively impression on my mind. It seemed as though Nature herself had conspired to accentuate its charm. The ancestral park was as it were shrouded in the soft rays of the expiring autumn: the trees crowned their sombre tops with a few belated leaves of golden brown; the distances were mauve, like lilac in April; and the breeze that blew from the west scattered the water of the fountains and changed it into feathery tufts of vapour.
The sovereigns, escorted by the distinguished keeper of the palace, M. de Noblac, first visited the state apartments, stopping for some time before the portraits of the princes and princesses of the House of France. And, in those great rooms filled with so many precious memories, Queen Helena listened silently and eagerly to the keeper's explanations. She lingered more particularly in the private apartments of Marie Antoinette, where the most trifling objects excited her curiosity; obviously her imagination as a woman and a queen took pleasure in this feminine and royal past. Sometimes, obeying a discreet and spontaneous impulse, when the overpowering memory of some tragic episode weighed too heavily upon our silent thoughts, she pressed herself timidly against the King, as a little girl might do. And once we heard her whisper:
"Ah, if things could speak!"