librrry OF CONGRESS 
 
 009 941 985 4 . 
 
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 E8 
 
 Opy 1 
 
 CABBAGES AND KINGS 
 
 ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH, THE KAISER 
 AND HIS COURT, THE SCANDINAVIAN DEM- 
 OCRACIES, THE CZAR AND HIS PEOPLE, AND 
 THE COURTS OF ITALY : : : 
 
 BY 
 
 H.R. H. THE INFANTA 
 EULALIA OF SPAIN 
 
 iW? <U*,H!;-V>.}j 
 
 NEW YORK 
 THE CENTURY CO, 
 
 1914 
 
Copyright, 1914, by 
 The Century Co. 
 
 DEC 23 1914 
 
 'CI.A'JJJ1085 
 %0j 
 
1 
 
 ,7 
 £8 
 
 England and the English 
 
 IN 1887, Queen Christina ordered me 
 to go to England to represent her at 
 the festivities with which the Jubilee of 
 Queen Victoria's reign was celebrated. 
 Wearing a mantilla, in order to make it 
 plain to the public that Spain was taking 
 a part in the national rejoicings, I was 
 taken through the streets of London in the 
 triumph of the great queen. 
 
 As a rule, on such occasions, one fixes 
 one's face in a smile, tries to think of some- 
 thing agreeable, and bows from side to 
 side with the regularity of a clockwork 
 figure. As it was, I was interested to 
 watch the crowd lining the streets through 
 which the procession passed, for I had not 
 been in England before, and was curious 
 to see all I could of the English people. 
 And as I looked at the sea of faces, it 
 seemed to me that they were thousands of 
 masks, the changeless expression of which 
 gave no clue to the thoughts of the wear- 
 ers. And whenever I have seen an Eng- 
 lish crowd, even at a foot-ball match, the 
 expressionless faces have baffled me, and I 
 have felt my inability to understand it. 
 Indeed, although I have spent a great part 
 of my life in England, I have never been 
 able to understand the English people. I 
 have been at court, stayed in fashionable 
 houses, hidden myself for weeks at a time 
 in the homes of middle-class people. I 
 know Cornwall and Yorkshire, have stayed 
 in London, Tunbridge Wells, Brighton, 
 and a dozen other places, but all the same 
 England remains for me a puzzle which I 
 cannot understand. 
 
 Certain features of English life, how- 
 ever, have impressed me. To begin with, 
 I was amazed at the extravagance and 
 luxury of the wealthy and the stupidity 
 of the lives the majority of them lead. 
 History teaches that luxury is the death 
 of a nation, and unless the improbable 
 happens and the upper classes set to work 
 to simplify their lives, there is nothing to 
 save England from ruin. The nobility 
 
 has been corrupted by cosmopolitan finan- 
 ciers, and now demands a standard of lux- 
 ury unknown in the households of great 
 nobles on the Continent. Country houses 
 are turned into hotels, at which board and 
 lodging are supplied free of charge, and 
 the guests make their own arrangements 
 with as much freedom as they would were 
 a bill presented at the end of their visit. 
 
 Accustomed to this mode of life, Eng- 
 lishmen do not usually realize that in for- 
 eign countries customs are different, and 
 that, as a rule, the luxury they are used to 
 at home is beyond the means of even the 
 rich. I well remember the consternation 
 that reigned in the palace at Madrid when 
 some of the gentlemen who attended the 
 present queen, when she came to Spain 
 for her marriage with my nephew, King 
 Alfonso, behaved as if they were in an 
 English country house, and ordered the 
 court lackeys to bring bottles of royal port 
 and other delicacies to their rooms. There 
 was not a grandee about the court to 
 whom it had ever occurred that guests 
 could behave in such a fashion. When I 
 say that Spaniards were shocked at such 
 conduct, I am speaking mildly. 
 
 With luxury has come a great decline 
 in English manners; in fact, so far as I 
 am able to judge, it appears to be consid- 
 ered smart to affect bad manners, if one 
 has not the good luck to have them natu- 
 rally. Good form now requires that the 
 little courtesies of life, the dignity which 
 used to be considered a sign of good breed- 
 ing, should be set aside and forgotten. 
 Here is a case in point. I was staying in 
 a country house, and one morning had oc- 
 casion to pass through the smoking-room, 
 where I remarked a well-known duke 
 sprawling on a sofa, with his feet propped 
 up on the cushions at the end. 
 
 "Good morning, ma'am," he said when 
 he saw me enter, and he continued to read 
 his paper without making any effort to 
 change his ungainly attitude. 
 
 3 
 
CABBAGES AND KINGS 
 
 It is not because I am a princess, but 
 because I am a woman, that I consider the 
 duke ill mannered. I am not likely to for- 
 get the look of horror and amazement on 
 the face of a Spanish lady who saw the 
 little scene. She was not well acquainted 
 with the manners of the "best people" in 
 England. 
 
 In most countries people go to their 
 estates to be at their ease, to enjoy them- 
 selves simply, and to lead a healthier and 
 more rational life than in the towns. Dur- 
 ing my brother's reign, for instance, it 
 never entered the heads of any of us to 
 put on low dresses for dinner when the 
 court was in the country. In England 
 things are ordered differently. The elab- 
 oration of life in a country house is as 
 great as it is in Park Lane; indeed, it ap- 
 pears to me that the women spend most 
 of their time in dressing up. 
 
 I w r ould be generous to the woman 
 whose chief aim in life is to be pretty. I 
 would allow her three hours in the morn- 
 ing for her toilet, ample time for bath and 
 massage and coiffure, and one hour in the 
 evening. No woman ought to allow herself 
 a minute more. The English country- 
 house girl seems to have no time to settle 
 down to any serious work, because she is 
 perpetually changing her clothes. After 
 her maid has finished the long process of 
 beautifying her for the day, she appears at 
 breakfast in a simple frock, and contrives 
 to look an ingenuous, breezy, open-air per- 
 son. By luncheon-time she has metamor- 
 phosed herself into a slightly bored woman 
 of the world, and is wearing a rather more 
 elaborate gown. At tea one finds her in a 
 floppy confection of lace and filmy fabrics 
 and, with this costume, she puts on a new 
 manner. One forgets that in the morning 
 she was an energetic, athletic person, for 
 her tea-gown manner suggests lassitude 
 and inability to do anything but recline on 
 a sofa or lean back in a great chair. Span- 
 iards are greatly surprised the first time 
 that they see the way in which English- 
 women flop about on sofas, and I have 
 heard foreigners laughingly and a little 
 disdainfully talk of les odalisques an- 
 glaises. Even when abroad English la- 
 
 dies display a freedom of manyer which 
 foreigners consider simply vulgar. 
 
 One summer day when the Spanish 
 court was in the country, Queen Chris- 
 tina came to me with a look of sheer con- 
 sternation on her face. . 
 
 "Eulalia," she said, "I have seen an ap- 
 palling sight— the Englishwoman lying on 
 the grass in the park." 
 
 The culprit was a lady-in-waiting w T ho 
 had been brought to Spain by an English 
 princess then visiting the court. 
 
 "That 's nothing," I said, laughing; 
 "they all do that sort of thing in England." 
 
 Queen Christina was an Austrian arch- 
 duchess before her marriage with my 
 brother, accustomed to a court in which a 
 rigid code of manners obtains, and I do 
 not think that anybody could have con- 
 vinced her that a woman who was really 
 well-bred would allow herself to lie down 
 outside the privacy of her own boudoir. 
 
 But to return to the fashionable Eng- 
 lishwoman's arduous day. Before dinner 
 she discards her tea-gown and appears in 
 the drawing-room with a new T manner and, 
 so it always seems to me, a new face. She 
 is not in the least like the breezy young 
 person of the morning, the elegant woman 
 of the world one saw at luncheon, or- the 
 languid creature who wearily drank tea. 
 She enters the room, looking alert, a little 
 like an actress cast to play the part of an 
 adventuress. The look on her face indi- 
 cates that she feels her power. She poses 
 as the temptress, aware of her seductive 
 charm and the effect of her frankly sug- 
 gestive frock. And her conversation is 
 often what the French call inconvenable. 
 She deliberately creates the impression that 
 she herself and all her friends are pro- 
 foundly immoral. On Sundays, with neat 
 books of devotion in their hands, the cha- 
 meleon-like English ladies ornament spe- 
 cial pews in village churches. Apart from 
 its extraordinary variations, English re- 
 ligion is a puzzle to the foreigner. That 
 the upper classes are sincere in their re- 
 ligion I have no doubt ; but habit and sen- 
 timent, rather than serious conviction, ap- 
 pear to be the basis of their attachment to 
 the Established Church. 
 
ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 The stupidity of fashionable English so- 
 ciety is extraordinary. To speak of serious 
 subjects appears to be considered bad form, 
 and the daring person who begins to speak 
 of some question of serious interest in an 
 English country house runs the risk of 
 being crushed by frowns or contemptuous 
 silence. As the English lack the vivacity 
 and wit of Latin peoples, conversation is 
 reduced to an interchange of vapid re- 
 marks. 
 
 "I had a green ice because it looks so 
 dreadfully immoral," remarked an Eng- 
 lish hostess at a dinner-table. 
 
 Could anything more silly or inane have 
 been said ? Yet the remark was typically 
 English, for the only relief allowed to the 
 banality of conversation is perpetual in- 
 sistence that everybody present is pro- 
 foundly immoral. 
 
 The royal family sets an example of 
 sobriety of manners to the country, but it 
 is not able to exercise any great influence 
 on society, which goes its way uncon- 
 cerned. Humanity is so perverse that vir- 
 tuous princes are usually less popular than 
 those who set a less edifying example, and 
 although King George and Queen Mary 
 have won the respect of the middle classes 
 and the sober elements of the nation, they 
 are hardly likely to stem the torrent of 
 corrupting luxury which is ruining the no- 
 bility. The influence of the other mem- 
 bers of the royal family is not great. I 
 have found that the middle classes take a 
 profound interest in the domestic habits 
 of English princesses, but as the life-work 
 of these ladies consists primarily in open- 
 ing bazaars, their opportunities of useful- 
 ness are strictly limited. 
 
 My own recollections of the English 
 court are extremely agreeable. My first 
 acquaintance with the English royal fam- 
 ily was in Madrid, when King Edward, 
 then Prince of Wales, came with his 
 brother, the Duke of Connaught, one of 
 the most charming princes in Europe, to 
 be present at the festivities given in honor 
 of the marriage of my brother. Both the 
 princes were lively and full of fun, and I 
 was impressed with the cleverness and 
 shrewdness displayed by the Prince of 
 
 Wales. He was, above all, a man of the 
 world. He knew instinctively how to deal 
 with people of every sort, and his tact was 
 unfailing. It certainly did not fail him 
 on one occasion when I saw him placed in 
 a very comical and embarrassing situation. 
 We were both at a dinner-party in a great 
 London house, and among the guests was 
 a lady who bore an historic Italian title. 
 She was English by birth, and before her 
 marriage had been famous in London so- 
 ciety for her great beauty and her charm 
 of manner. A wealthy Jew, who shall be 
 disguised under the name of Abraham, 
 was madly in love with her, and her 
 friends, including King Edward, saw his 
 growing infatuation with concern. 
 
 "Don't you marry that man," was the 
 advice given her, peremptorily, but good- 
 naturedly, by King Edward. 
 
 But marry him she did ; not, however, 
 before he had been to Italy and bought the 
 palace and the pompous title of an impov- 
 erished Florentine noble. Of this fact the 
 king was unaware, and when the lady was 
 presented to him at the dinner-party as 
 
 the Marchesa di X , he smiled and 
 
 said : 
 
 "I am delighted to meet you again as 
 
 the Marchesa di X , and so thankful 
 
 you did n't marry that awful Abraham." 
 
 A few moments later the king observed 
 that the "awful Abraham" was standing 
 close by and had heard the unfortunate 
 remark. Without turning a hair, he 
 smiled at him and congratulated him heart- 
 ily on his marriage. 
 
 The king was an extremely punctual 
 man, and when I stayed with him and 
 Queen Alexandra at Sandringham, some- 
 body used always to come and warn me 
 ten minutes before meal-times that I must 
 not keep him waiting. For some unknown 
 reason, he had all the clocks in the house 
 set half an hour in advance of the right 
 time, and one of the first things that 
 guests at Sandringham learned was the 
 existence of this curious practice. The 
 king liked to be amused, and as English- 
 men are not as a rule witty or good racon- 
 teurs, there used to be one or two foreign- 
 ers about the court who, although they did 
 
6 
 
 CABBAGES AND KINGS 
 
 not wear the cap and bells which would 
 have defined their functions in an earlier 
 age, played the part of court jester admira- 
 bly, and enlivened conversation at the din- 
 ner-table with praiseworthy persistence. 
 
 The Russian princess, known best in 
 England as the Duchess of Edinburgh, 
 and now Duchess of Coburg, was unable 
 to adapt herself to life in a strange coun- 
 try. It is a canon of court etiquette that 
 imperial personages take precedence of 
 royal personages, and consequently it was 
 held in Russia that the Duchess of Edin- 
 burgh, being a daughter of the Emperor 
 of Russia, should take precedence of the 
 Princess of Wales, who was merely the 
 daughter of a king. Queen Alexandra is 
 so amiable that I believe she would have 
 contentedly allowed the duchess and any- 
 body else who wanted to do so to pass be- 
 fore her; but obviously the wife of the 
 heir to the throne could not be permitted 
 to take any place but the first after the 
 sovereign. What was to be done ? Queen 
 Victoria solved the difficulty very cleverly. 
 She caused herself to be proclaimed Em- 
 press of India, and the claims put forward 
 for the duchess immediately fell to the 
 ground. The assumption of imperial rank 
 by the queen was undoubtedly dictated by 
 political considerations, but the solution of 
 the difficulty created by the exasperating 
 conservatism of court etiquette was an 
 argument which weighed with her when 
 she took the decisive step. 
 
 In no country is the veneration of roy- 
 alty carried to greater lengths than in 
 England. The English cease to be a prac- 
 tical people when royalty is concerned, 
 and it was foreigners, and not English- 
 men, who were able to see the amusing 
 side of the elaborate arrangements made 
 for the coronation of Edward VII. The 
 only coronations which can still be re- 
 garded seriously are those of the pope and 
 of the czar, for in both cases the ceremony 
 fitly symbolizes the great power with 
 which both these sovereigns is invested. 
 The King of England is a constitutional 
 sovereign denuded of power, and he has 
 already been in full enjoyment of the priv- 
 ileges he possesses for a year before he is 
 
 crowned. His coronation gives him ro 
 new rights or privileges, and the kings of 
 Spain do not find their position affected 
 by dispensing with the ceremony alto- 
 gether. In the twentieth century a cere- 
 mony that has no raison d'etre is a mas- 
 querade, and it is therefore impossible for 
 an outsider to regard a modern English 
 coronation in any other light. For months 
 before King Edward was crowned, the 
 newspapers published news about the com- 
 ing ceremony, and the decisions of the 
 court which heard the claims of various 
 persons to play a part in it were chronicled 
 as if they were matters of enormous im- 
 portance. It did not appear to strike any- 
 body that nobody would be a penny the 
 worse whether the Duke of Newcastle or 
 somebody else touched the king's heels 
 with the royal spurs, and not the boldest 
 would have dared to whisper that it was 
 actually a matter of supreme indifference 
 whether this detail of a medieval ceremony 
 was performed or not. 
 
 Apart from their odd superstitions in 
 regard to royalty, the middle classes, which 
 form the backbone of the nation, are, to 
 my mind, far more worthy of esteem than 
 the so-called nobility. I have stayed a 
 good many times in pleasant middle-class 
 homes, and enjoyed myself immensely. 
 The old-fashioned courtesy shown in such 
 homes is delightful. When I once make 
 it clear to host and hostess that I desire 
 them to forget that I am Infanta of Spain 
 and wish to be treated as an ordinary per- 
 son, their tact and innate politeness does 
 the rest, and, etiquette banished, I am al- 
 lowed to do as I like. I have my English 
 breakfast, I occupy my time as I wish, I 
 play at tennis and ride, and I find myself 
 one of the family. Then I forget about 
 the smart people and feel myself in the Old 
 England I love and respect— the England 
 which is vanishing, poisoned by the flood 
 of corruption from the upper classes. 
 Their example is ruining the nation and, 
 although there is a good deal of talk about 
 democratic principles in England, the 
 democratic spirit which might serve as an 
 antidote to the influence of the rich is 
 hardly to be found. Everybody wants to 
 
ENGLAND AND THE ENGLISH 
 
 be a gentleman or lady, to be dressed in 
 the height of fashion, to talk and act like 
 the silliest section of the nation. Were the 
 democratic spirit strong, the finer elements 
 of the nation would pride themselves on 
 being more sensible than the frivolous rich, 
 and disdain to imitate them. 
 
 As I have said, the middle classes form 
 the backbone of English society, but even 
 they have not entirely escaped from the 
 devastating influence of smart society. 
 The middle-class woman does not waste 
 so much time on her toilet as the society 
 woman and she usually refrains from 
 painting her face, an art which is more 
 elaborately practised in England than 
 abroad, but even she appears to consider 
 that it is improper to dine in a high dress. 
 She does not particularly mind what sort 
 of gown she wears, provided the bodice is 
 cut low, and it does not appear to strike 
 her that a woman who has not a pretty 
 neck looks more charming in a high frock 
 than in a low one. 
 
 So imperious is fashion that people will 
 not venture into the stalls of a theater if 
 they are not in evening dress. In Ger- 
 many a man goes straight from his work 
 to the opera, where he meets his wife, and 
 the two sup together afterward. Doubt- 
 less numbers of Englishmen would visit 
 the theater more often were it not that 
 when they arrive home, tired after the 
 day's work, they are disinclined to change 
 into what they call "glad rags," on which 
 the decolletee wife insists, and so they pre- 
 fer to stay at home or to spend the eve- 
 ning at a club. 
 
 In the great English schools, boys learn 
 how to play cricket and foot-ball, they are 
 taught a smattering of the classics, while 
 modern languages are greatly neglected 
 and numbers of boys leave school without 
 having learned to write their own lan- 
 guage gracefully and with distinction. I 
 once went to an entertainment at one of 
 the great English schools, and the boys 
 performed a little play. 
 
 "I hope your royal Highness has been 
 pleased with the acting," remarked the 
 head master to me, when the curtain fell. 
 
 "Charming!" I said. "But unfortu- 
 
 nately I could not follow the action, as I 
 do not understand Greek." 
 
 "But it was in French," replied the 
 head master. 
 
 The answer startled me, for French is 
 the language I speak best. And after that 
 experience I am no longer surprised to find 
 that educated Englishmen are often un- 
 able to make themselves understood when 
 they cross the channel. 
 
 It is perhaps the poverty of the educa- 
 tion given them that makes Englishmen so 
 deficient in that souplesse which distin- 
 guishes the conversation of Frenchmen. 
 The people one meets in England who can 
 talk gracefully have usually foreign blood 
 in their veins. 
 
 "I hope you do not mind my smoking 
 your cigarettes, ma'am," said a man to me 
 one day in the hall of a country house. 
 
 "My cigarettes!" I said. "But I have 
 n't any." 
 
 He showed me the box which contained 
 them. On the cover was written the name 
 of the brand, Royal Beauties. It was a 
 pretty and, at the same time, witty com- 
 pliment which he had made me. 
 
 "You are not English," I exclaimed, 
 laughing. 
 
 And he had to admit that his mother 
 was American. 
 
 But most women will be inclined to for- 
 give most of the Englishman's faults be- 
 cause he is so adorably handsome. And he 
 does not trade on his beauty or appear to 
 consider its advantages; in point of fact, 
 your athletic, good-looking Englishman is 
 the timidest creature in the world when 
 faced by a pretty woman. The young man 
 in Goldsmith's play who could make love 
 to barmaids and housemaids, but was bash- 
 ful and frightened in the presence of la- 
 dies, is an essentially English type. 
 
 I have drawn, to my mind, a sad, a dis- 
 quieting picture of English society ; yet I 
 see a hope of the regeneration of the na- 
 tion. That hope lies in the labor party. 
 Little by little the workers are strengthen- 
 ing their position and making their power 
 felt by the upper strata of society. If they 
 are animated by a truly democratic spirit, 
 the working-classes may save Old Eng- 
 
8 
 
 CABBAGES AND KINGS 
 
 land. To envy the rich is treason to de- 
 mocracy. The true democrat looks at their 
 useless lives, their splendor and luxury, 
 with contempt. He pities them. If the 
 workers of England will make the rich 
 envy the splendor and strength of those 
 
 who toil and force them to see that their 
 lives are stupid and empty, they'will bring 
 salvation to the country. But the question 
 that I ask myself, and to which I cannot 
 see the answer is, Will the workers of 
 England be true to democracy ? 
 
The Kaiser and His Court 
 
 A GREAT crowd filled an immense 
 hall of the gray castle which the past 
 has left in the heart of modern Berlin. 
 People of every rank stood shoulder to 
 shoulder, for it was the one day of the year 
 when the imperial court sets courage and 
 faithful service before birth and noble an- 
 cestry, the day of the Ordensfest. 
 
 I was young, and I felt joyous and 
 happy as I passed up the hall in the im- 
 perial procession, with a page bearing my 
 long manteau de cour. And every time 
 that I turned from side to side to bow to 
 the people, I caught a glimpse of the kaiser 
 at the head of the procession, a silver fig- 
 ure, like Lohengrin, on whose cuirass and 
 helmet the light flashed. Before him 
 walked four heralds in medieval dress, 
 sounding silver trumpets, and when he 
 reached the dais and stood before the 
 throne, looking down the castle hall, I saw 
 in his steel-blue eyes that look of exalta- 
 tion which his profound and unshakable 
 belief in the divinity of kings gives him. 
 
 Was I a princess born in a democratic 
 age, or was I living in the age of chivalry, 
 or at the vanished Court of Versailles? 
 Before me, as I went to the dais, stood an 
 emperor as aware of his godlike qualities 
 as Charlemagne when a pope set the unex- 
 pected crown upon his brow, or as the Roi 
 Soleil, unflattered by worship he believed 
 to be his due. It seemed that I should 
 have been one of those infantas of Velas- 
 quez in a brocade dress and fluttering a 
 little fan. 
 
 The impression the kaiser made on me 
 that morning of the Ordensfest was not 
 new, though it came with fresh, almost 
 startling, force. I had known him years 
 before as Prince Wilhelm, simple, unaf- 
 fected, joyous. Then he became crown 
 prince, and I noted a change. His man- 
 ner became more imperious, less spon- 
 taneous. I felt that he was schooling 
 himself, holding himself in check, aware of 
 the burden of coming responsibilities, fear- 
 
 ing, yet longing for, the golden irksome- 
 ness of the imperial crown. Since he has 
 ascended the throne, I have never met him 
 without realizing that he is dominated by 
 the belief that he is an instrument in the 
 hands of the Almighty, divinely appointed 
 to reign. Yet the emperor has still the 
 charm of manner which made Prince 
 Wilhelm so attractive, and there are mo- 
 ments when he can unbend, when one may 
 forget the 'sovereign and feel the charm of 
 the man. 
 
 As he conferred orders and decorations 
 on the stream of men who humbly ap- 
 proached his throne at the Ordensfest, I 
 could see from their reverence and from 
 the look of awe on their faces that his 
 manner, his regal pose, his glance, had 
 forced them to accept his own belief in the 
 majesty and righteousness of kingship. 
 But when we had passed to the great ban- 
 queting-hall, he forgot for a moment to be 
 godlike and became the charming Prince 
 Wilhelm of the past. We sat at a table 
 on a dais, looking down on the great com- 
 pany invited to enjoy the emperor's hos- 
 pitality, and we were served by young 
 nobles. The page who had carried my 
 train, a handsome boy who looked about 
 twenty, stood behind my chair and handed 
 dishes or filled my glass with the skill of a 
 practised footman. It was the first time 
 that a foreign princess had been present at 
 the Ordensfest, and I had received a hint 
 that it was customary to send the page, 
 who served one, a present the following 
 day, and I had learned that there was an 
 unwritten law that the present should be 
 a watch. I was sitting next the emperor, 
 and suddenly he turned to my page with 
 an almost roguish smile. 
 
 "You are a happy boy," he said, "to 
 have the privilege to serve the beautiful 
 infanta" — sovereigns always know how to 
 flatter— "What present would you like 
 her to give you ?" 
 
 "Sire," answered the page, "there is 
 
 9 
 
10 
 
 CABBAGES AND KINGS 
 
 nothing I should like her royal Highness 
 to give me so much as the flower that 
 caresses her neck." 
 
 It was a courtly and charming reply. 
 
 That was a little incident that relieved 
 the tedium of a visit to the Schloss at Ber- 
 lin ; for, despite the charm of host and 
 hostess, I felt then, as I do in all palaces, 
 that I was in prison. Indeed, to me the 
 palace life is so irksome that when I hear 
 the sentry pacing up and down outside my 
 windows, I always feel that he is there to 
 prevent me from going out more than to 
 prevent other people from coming in. 
 Whenever I have stayed with the kaiser 
 and kaiserin, I have been given a beautiful 
 suite of rooms ; but a prison is still a 
 prison, however thick the gilding on the 
 bars. Everything one does or says is 
 noticed and talked about and criticized 
 and spread abroad. All day long my 
 Spanish lady-in-waiting sat in an ante- 
 chamber with the German lady-in-waiting 
 and the German chamberlain appointed to 
 attend me. It was intolerable to think 
 that these three persons were sitting there 
 with nothing whatever to do but to specu- 
 late on what I should take it into my head 
 to do next and to exchange court gossip. 
 In an outer chamber was another group of 
 idlers, servants whose chief duty was to 
 conduct me processionally from one part 
 of the castle to another. 
 
 Madame la Princesse appears in the 
 antechamber, and the ladies make pro- 
 found curtsies and the gentleman a pro- 
 found bow. She smiles — princesses must 
 always appear to be radiantly happy — and 
 she tries to find something agreeable to say 
 to each and not to make bad blood by 
 being more agreeable to one than to an- 
 other. She announces her desire to go to 
 the kaiserin's apartments. The chamber- 
 lain passes on that interesting information 
 to the footmen in the outer antechamber. 
 A procession is formed, and Madame la 
 Princesse is conducted, with the pomp of a 
 bishop entering a cathedral to say mass, to 
 the other side of the castle. The proces- 
 sion passes through the kaiserin's ante- 
 chambers, where another army of servants 
 is idling, and the ladies-in-waiting, who 
 
 make profound curtsies and ^e gentle- 
 men-in-waiting, who make profound bows, 
 expect Madame la Princesse to smile and 
 to repeat the gracious remarks about the 
 state of the weather she has already made 
 to the members of her own suite. The 
 doors of the kaiserin's apartments are 
 thrown open with becoming reverence, 
 and Madame la Princesse disappears, leav- 
 ing her suite to gossip with the kaiserin's, 
 and probably to speculate on the nature of 
 the royal conversation across the sacred 
 threshold they may not pass unless bidden. 
 A quarter of an hour elapses, and Madame 
 la Princesse emerges, smiles at the bowing 
 courtiers and curtseying ladies, and, feel- 
 ing more like an idol than a human being, 
 is solemnly conducted back and enshrined 
 in her own apartments. 
 
 The etiquette at Versailles in the time 
 of Louis XVI could hardly be more exas- 
 perating to a modern woman than that of 
 Berlin in the twentieth century. Before 
 luncheon and dinner processions converge 
 from all parts of the castle, conducting 
 members of the imperial family and royal 
 guests to the drawing-room. 
 
 "The kaiser will be in the drawing- 
 room in ten minutes," was the regular 
 warning I used to receive from a lady-in- 
 waiting, fearful that I should be late and 
 knowing the value the kaiser sets on 
 punctuality. In point of fact, I never was 
 late, and, indeed, punctuality almost ceases 
 to be a virtue at the Schloss, where one 
 lives under a rule as inexorable and as 
 precise as that obtaining in a nunnery. 
 
 On the way from the drawing-room to 
 the dining-room the kaiser and kaiserin 
 and their guests pass through the apart- 
 ment in which the ladies and gentlemen in 
 attendance have been discarded. They 
 stand in a great circle, and it is the invari- 
 able custom to make the tour of the circle 
 with the usual smile and the usual banal 
 remarks. That duty performed, the royal 
 personages go into the dining-room and the 
 suites retire to eat in another room. In 
 Madrid the persons in attendance on the 
 royal family dine with them. When I first 
 went to Berlin the kaiser's children were 
 young, and, although they lunched with 
 
THE KAISER AND HIS COURT 
 
 11 
 
 us, they were not permitted to speak unless 
 first spoken to. After the meal the royal 
 party returns to the drawing-room ; but it 
 must not be thought that when alone royal 
 persons unbend and behave naturally. 
 The daily discipline of relentless etiquette 
 has its effect on them ; they cannot forget 
 that they are royal and therefore obliged to 
 mask their feelings more rigorously than is 
 necessary for ordinary people. Indeed, 
 most princesses I know are reduced by this 
 inexorable discipline to nonentities whose 
 mouths are twisted in an eternal smile. At 
 Berlin we conversed politely for the regu- 
 lation time and, after making the circle of 
 the suites again, were conducted back to 
 our apartments in half a dozen processions. 
 
 Back in one's rooms, it is impossible to 
 emerge without a repetition of wearisome 
 ceremonies. To go out for half an hour's 
 walk by one's self is a relaxation the poor- 
 est can enjoy; it is forbidden to a palace 
 prisoner. The etiquette of Berlin requires 
 a princess to be accompanied by a lady-in- 
 waitintr. And usually the lady-in-waiting 
 cannot w T alk fast, so that the enjoyment of 
 a little vigorous exercise in the open air is 
 impossible. Moreover, people about courts 
 are usually uninteresting companions. 
 Obviously, intelligent persons would not 
 consent to lead such aimless lives and to 
 conform to such an inexorable code. How 
 inexorable is that code may be judged from 
 the fact that one of the court ladies in 
 Berlin was confined to her room for three 
 days as a punishment for walking across 
 the courtyard in an indecorous manner ; 
 that is to say, with one hand ungloved. 
 
 The Emperor William is an excellent 
 host, and his personal kindness compen- 
 sates in a great measure for the restraint of 
 palace discipline. He studies his guests' 
 wishes, finds out their whims, and does his 
 best to gratify them. For instance, he 
 knows that I like to begin the day with 
 something more substantial than the coffee 
 and rolls most Continentals take in the 
 morning. Accordingly, whenever I have 
 stayed at the Schloss he has himself given 
 orders that an English breakfast should be 
 served in my apartments, and I have al- 
 ways been indulged with the eggs and 
 
 bacon and marmalade I am accustomed to. 
 At first sight it may seem a little odd that 
 an emperor should be at the pains to ar- 
 range the menu of a guest's breakfast. 
 The kaiser evidently knows as well as I 
 do that a princess in a palace is less happily 
 situated than a visitor in an English coun- 
 try house, who gives his orders and gets 
 what he likes served in his room. It 
 would never occur to me to ask for a 
 boiled egg at breakfast in a palace where 
 people are not accustomed to have boiled 
 eggs for breakfast, because the order 
 would pass through so many persons be- 
 fore it reached the kitchen that my egg 
 would probably be an omelette au surpris 
 or a terrine of foie gras before it arrived in 
 my dining-room. That a man immersed 
 in affairs of state should trouble about any- 
 thing so unimportant as a princess's break- 
 fast is characteristic of the kaiser's con- 
 sideration for those about him. His 
 attention to details, which far less busy 
 people would never find time to trouble 
 about, is extraordinary. I once remarked 
 to Count Eulenburg that the perfection 
 with which every detail of life in the castle 
 is managed astonished me, and I congratu- 
 lated him on the success of his manage- 
 ment. 
 
 "I assure your royal Highness," he an- 
 swered, "that all the credit is due to his 
 Majesty, who looks after everything him- 
 self." 
 
 But above and beyond the kaiser's love 
 of seeing that things work smoothly in his 
 home is his love of his capital. To him 
 Berlin is a daughter, whom he likes to 
 see beautiful and well turned-out, just as 
 he likes to see the kaiserin and the Duch- 
 ess of Brunswick charmingly dressed. 
 
 "It has been raining hard," he said, 
 coming into my room one morning, "and 
 it has just stopped. I want you to come 
 out with me, because I have something 
 interesting to show you." 
 
 I put on my hat at once, and we went 
 down to a carriage which was waiting, 
 and drove away. I was w r ondering what 
 sight I was going to see and what surprise 
 the kaiser had in store for me. 
 
 "Look," he cried suddenly — "look at 
 
12 
 
 CABBAGES AND KINGS 
 
 the streets! There have been torrents of 
 rain, and the weather cleared up only a 
 few minutes ago ; but do you see that there 
 is not a speck of mud on the road?" 
 
 It was true. The streets were surpris- 
 ingly and absolutely clean. 
 
 "You appear to dry as well as to sweep 
 them," I said. 
 
 "I have an army of road-sweepers," he 
 said. "Here they are," and he pointed to 
 a group of men energetically plying their 
 brooms. "I wanted you to see how clean 
 I keep Berlin." 
 
 "And is that all you have brought me 
 out to see?" I said teasingly. 
 
 "Yes, all," he said ; we both laughed. 
 
 The kaiser knows that I am passion- 
 ately fond of dancing, and he used to 
 make a point of arranging small dances 
 when I was at the castle, so that I could 
 enjoy myself without the restraint imposed 
 on royal personages at the formal court 
 balls. They used to call these small dances 
 les bals de VInfante. At court balls we 
 walked round the circle of guests, — at all 
 courts people seem eternally standing in 
 smiling circles, — and the foreign ladies, 
 penned behind their ambassadors, used to 
 afford me considerable amusement, espe- 
 cially the Americans, who used to appear 
 in larger numbers than they do at present. 
 There they stood in the glory of expen- 
 sive court trains, which could be no possi- 
 ble use to them afterward, and curtsied to 
 the ground when the ambassadors had re- 
 cited their names to each of us. I often 
 wondered why they came and what plea- 
 sure they could possibly derive from seeing 
 us smile and from curtseying to us. Obvi- 
 ously, sensible and representative women 
 would not be among them unless, indeed, 
 their husbands held official positions which 
 necessitated their presence. After circling 
 the circle, we went to the dais and sat for 
 a few moments in gilt arm-chairs, facing 
 the general company, before descending 
 to dance the quadrille d'honneur. When 
 that ceremony was ended, one's partner, a 
 prince or an ambassador, handed one back 
 to the dais, made a low bow, and retired. 
 At courts etiquette does not allow a prin- 
 cess to choose a partner because he happens 
 
 to waltz well or to be amusing. At Ber- 
 lin chamberlains had lists of partners for 
 princesses, and one of them would bring 
 me the card on which their names were in- 
 scribed, just as a waiter brings one a bill 
 of fare in a restaurant, and I gave my or- 
 ders. Each partner came to the dais, 
 made a very low bow, and, when the dance 
 was over, consigned me to my golden arm- 
 chair with another low bow. The kaiser 
 has caused the minuet to be revived at his 
 court, and when I watched that stately 
 dance from the dais I used to feel certain 
 that I was at the court of the Roi Soleil. 
 But les bals de I'Infante were far more 
 charming, for then I could dance with 
 whom I liked and waltz to my heart's 
 content. 
 
 It was very good of the kaiser to ar- 
 range them for me, and, indeed, he has al- 
 ways shown me great consideration. "Ma- 
 dame, vos desirs so/it des ordres pour Guil- 
 lauine," he telegraphed to me once, and 
 that was an answer to a letter I had sent, 
 begging him to ask the Sultan Abdul- 
 Hamid not to chop off the head of Izet 
 Pasha, who was lying in prison under sen- 
 tence of death. A Turkish lady, whom I 
 knew in Paris, had been to see me and had 
 begged me to ask the kaiser, who was 
 about to visit Constantinople, to intercede 
 with the sultan for the unfortunate man. 
 I knew nothing about Izet Pasha, but my 
 friend was so distressed and so confident 
 that I would help her, that I was very 
 much touched, and immediately wrote to 
 the kaiser. The lady was overjoyed when 
 I showed her the courtly reply I had re- 
 ceived, and the sultan, of course, granted 
 the kaiser's request. 
 
 The matter did not end there. Two 
 years later, when I had entirely forgotten 
 it, I arrived one day in Madrid, and the 
 instant I had got out of the train, the 
 queen mother and my sister, the Infanta 
 Isabella, who were waiting on the plat- 
 form to receive me, began to question me 
 about some mysterious Turk in whom they 
 evidently supposed I was deeply interested. 
 "Who is this Turk you have sent us, 
 Eulalia?" asked the queen. 
 
 "But I do not know any Turk." I said. 
 
THE KAISER AND HIS COURT 
 
 13 
 
 "But this Turk who has arrived in Ma- 
 drid because you want to have him near 
 you," said my sister. 
 
 "What crazy nonsense!" I cried. "Are 
 you both out of your minds?" 
 
 "Certainly not," said the queen, "seeing 
 that I have a letter from the sultan, say- 
 ing that he has sent the man here as Turk- 
 ish minister entirely to please you." 
 
 Then the truth dawned on me. Abdul- 
 Hamid must have asked the German em- 
 peror why he desired the prisoner he had 
 pleaded for to be pardoned, and the kaiser 
 must have told him that it was the wish 
 of the Infanta Eulalia. Mohammedan 
 ideas of feminine psychology made the sul- 
 tan see a tale of the Arabian Nights, and, 
 determining to humor me to the top of 
 my bent, he sent the hero of the imaginary 
 romance to Madrid, where, as he ex- 
 pressly stated in the letter the queen 
 mother showed me at the palace, he hoped 
 he would remain as permanent minister, 
 to be for long years an ornament of the 
 court of the Infanta Eulalia. 
 
 The charm and grace with which the 
 kaiser turned the reply I have already 
 quoted to my letter about Izet Pasha 
 seemed to me more Latin than Teutonic. 
 And the truth is that, although the Em- 
 peror William is a Teuton by birth, he 
 has the Latin temperament. He is ex- 
 traordinarily restless in private, and lacks 
 the characteristic calmness of the imper- 
 turbable and phlegmatic Teuton. He 
 moves from chair to chair, or walks up 
 and down the room, talking quickly and 
 apparently incapable of being still. There 
 is fire and vivacity, the quality the French 
 call spiritualite, in his conversation, and I 
 think he liked to talk to me because, despite 
 my Spanish name and title, I am au fond 
 French. One memorable day he took me 
 to the old palace of Sans-Souci at Potsdam 
 to show me the apartments of Frederick 
 the Great and the relics of the king's 
 friend, Voltaire, which are preserved 
 there. We went into Frederick's library 
 and when the door was closed, I found 
 myself in a circle of book-shelves from 
 which there seemed no exit. And all the 
 books were French. The kaiser smiled. 
 
 "Here you are again in your dear 
 France," he said. 
 
 "Yes," I answered, "I am very proud 
 of my French ancestry, and you yourself 
 are very proud to let me see that Frederick 
 lived in a French atmosphere and to show 
 me all these French books with which he 
 surrounded himself." 
 
 The emperor laughed ; but his eyes spar- 
 kled, and I saw that I was right. French 
 art, literature, and the stage, all appeal to 
 him as they did to his great ancestor. 
 
 But however great the Emperor Wil- 
 liam's admiration for French culture may 
 be, there is no sovereign who loves his 
 country and its institutions more than he 
 does and no monarch who works with 
 greater energy and persistence to further 
 the interests of his subjects and to secure 
 their welfare. We have discussed a thou- 
 sand things together, but above all I like 
 to hear him talk about the progress of 
 modern Germany. His face lights up 
 when he speaks of the increase of German 
 commerce and of German influence, and 
 his expression and the tone of his voice 
 make it evident that he is speaking of the 
 subject that is nearest his heart. And 
 when he mentions his army or his navy, 
 his steel-blue eyes shine. 
 
 His enthusiasm for Germany has often 
 caused him to be misunderstood. I should 
 like those who misjudge him to see him, as 
 I have seen him, singing psalms. To do 
 so is to realize that he is a mystic. The 
 intensity of his faith and his power of see- 
 ing into a supernatural world, hidden from 
 most, is indeed his most striking charac- 
 teristic. I have naturally never attended 
 service in the chapel of the castle, but at 
 those ceremonies of the court in which 
 prayers and the singing of psalms formed a 
 part I have seen how real worship is to the 
 kaiser and his power of throwing aside the 
 cares of the moment to be completely 
 absorbed in contemplation of the Creator. 
 It became clear to me that he felt himself 
 caught up into the life of the divinity, just 
 as did our Santa Teresa. He feels himself 
 to be the exponent of the divine will to 
 the German people and, when he claims 
 to rule of divine right, he is sincere. 
 
The Scandinavian Democracies 
 
 1AM so glad that I am queen of a 
 country in which everybody loves sim- 
 plicity." 
 
 This was the testimony to the charm of 
 Norway which Queen Maud gave me 
 when I saw her in her little home near 
 Christiania last autumn. She spoke with 
 enthusiasm of her adopted country, and I 
 was not in the least surprised, for Norway 
 is undoubtedly the happiest and most pro- 
 gressive country in Europe. Indeed, if 
 anybody wants to know what life will be 
 like in the good time that is coming when 
 capitalism will be dead and democracy 
 triumphant on both sides of the Atlantic, 
 let him go to Norway and study its insti- 
 tutions and the life of its people. 
 
 "When I am at Lourdes," said a de- 
 vout Catholic, "I do not believe; I know." 
 And when I was in Norway, I did not 
 need to make an act of faith in democ- 
 racy, as I must in Paris or New York or 
 London ; I saw for myself that a nation is 
 happier when its. life is based on demo- 
 cratic principles. 
 
 "How deadly dull!" said a fashionable 
 woman to me when I told her of the sim- 
 plicity of life in Christiania. "Surely your 
 royal Highness does not want to eliminate 
 the color and brilliancy of life!" 
 
 She had never realized that the glitter 
 and magnificence of society in great capi- 
 tals can exist only against a background of 
 misery and starvation. Norway is not a 
 wealthy country and it does not afford 
 capitalists opportunities for piling up for- 
 tunes. Nobody is very rich, and every- 
 body appears to have a sufficiency. The 
 cosmopolitan plutocrats, who corrupt the 
 society of Western Europe, would be 
 wretched there and, in point of fact, they 
 avoid a country in which they are perfectly 
 well aware they would be unable to dis- 
 play their wealth. And if the citizens of 
 Christiania are deprived of the sight of 
 millionaires darting about the town in il- 
 luminated motor-cars, with jeweled wives 
 
 n 
 
 and daughters, they are compensated for 
 the loss by the knowledge that, thanks to 
 the equitable distribution of such wealth 
 as the country possesses, crime and robbery 
 are virtually unknown. Education and 
 common sense have broken down the bar- 
 riers of pride of purse and pride of rank, 
 which separate man and man in other 
 countries, and the king himself is simply 
 the first among equals. 
 
 When the Norwegian people deter- 
 mined that the industrial and commercial 
 life of the country should no longer be 
 hampered by Sweden, and declared their 
 independence, they placed a king at the 
 head of the state. They were clever 
 enough to see that the country would 
 have more prestige in the eyes of Europe 
 as a monarchy than as a republic, and 
 they were wise enough to give the king no 
 power. Possibly they thought that a 
 prince who, if the expression be allowed 
 me, was born to the business would make 
 a more effective figurehead than a com- 
 moner, and they might have considered 
 that the peaceful succession of hereditary 
 monarchs is less agitating to the nerves 
 of the nation than recurring presidential 
 elections. However this may be, their 
 king is to them what their flag is — a sym- 
 bol of national unity. Both are saluted 
 with respect, but neither one nor the other 
 is invested with power. 
 
 King Haakon's fine figure and hand- 
 some face make him look the part he has 
 to play. He is a man of great tact and 
 kindliness, and has the simple tastes char- 
 acteristic of the Danish royal family. To 
 these advantages the king adds the su- 
 preme one of having a clever queen, who 
 helps him wisely and loyally in his work. 
 Their son, little Prince Olaf, is utterly 
 charming and, despite being an only child, 
 not the least spoiled. 
 
 I had not seen Queen Maud in her 
 kingdom until I went to Norway last au- 
 tumn, and I wondered whether her rise 
 
THE SCANDINAVIAN DEMOCRACIES 
 
 15 
 
 from the rank of a mere royal Highness to 
 that of a Majesty would have altered or 
 spoiled her. She was staying at a little 
 chateau near Christiania when I arrived 
 in the city, and she asked me to come out 
 and have luncheon with her. When a 
 royal carriage arrived at my hotel to take 
 me to the country, and I noticed that the 
 servants wore plain, dark liveries instead 
 of the regal scarlet, I began to feel that 
 the charming Maud had not changed. 
 Half-an-hour's drive brought me to the 
 chateau, and as the queen welcomed me, 
 I felt ashamed of the suspicions I had en- 
 tertained, and realized that she remains 
 the same simple and unaffected girl I used 
 to know in England. 
 
 "I 'm so glad you 've come," she said, 
 and as she spoke I heard in her voice and 
 saw in her manner the charm she has in- 
 herited from her mother, Queen Alexan- 
 dra. 
 
 The chateau was a small house of one 
 story, standing in a public park. A plot 
 of ground has been railed off round the 
 house, so that the king and queen may 
 have a garden in which they can enjoy 
 privacy. Not that they are annoyed, like 
 most kings and queens, with demonstra- 
 tive manifestations of loyalty. The Nor- 
 wegians contrive to make life agreeable for 
 the royal family by allowing them to go 
 about the countryside or through the 
 streets of the capital as freely as ordinary 
 citizens. Queen Maud revels in her new 
 liberty. 
 
 "I find it so nice to be able to go out 
 shopping without any fuss," she said, and 
 told me that she could go into a shop in 
 Christiania without anybody taking any no- 
 tice of her, buy what she wants, and leave, 
 with her parcels tucked under her arm, to 
 walk back to the palace. 
 
 I could understand her delight better 
 than most people, for in Madrid I have 
 experienced the misery of knowing that I 
 cannot get in or out of a carriage without 
 attracting a small crowd. To find oneself 
 perpetually a public show is beyond words 
 exasperating. 
 
 Queen Maud's court consists of two 
 ladies-in-waiting and a grand mistress, a 
 
 suite which is no larger than that of the 
 least important of the numerous Austrian 
 archduchesses. Moreover, these ladies do 
 not make deferential curtsies to her Maj- 
 esty. The queen shakes hands with them 
 when she meets them, and treats them not 
 as glorified servants, but as friends. The 
 point may appear trivial, but it is worth 
 mentioning, for it shows with what tact 
 a princess, accustomed to the etiquette and 
 the splendor of the English court, has 
 adapted herself to the spirit of a demo- 
 cratic people. 
 
 "You were perfectly right," she said to 
 me, "in what you used to tell me about 
 the happiness of simplicity." 
 
 "Of course I was right," I said, "and I 
 do not believe you would care to go back 
 to the old court life." 
 
 "I am much happier in this life," she 
 said, and then it was that she told me how 
 glad she was to be queen of a country in 
 which everybody loves simplicity. 
 
 It was obvious to me that both the king 
 and queen adore the fascinating little 
 Olaf, but I noticed that he has been very 
 well brought up and is very obedient. He 
 is being educated with Norwegian boys 
 of his own age and leads a healthy out-of- 
 door life. 
 
 "I want you to see Olaf driving the 
 motor-car his grandmother has sent him," 
 said the queen; and Queen Alexandra's 
 present, the tiniest and most dainty little 
 car imaginable, was brought round to the 
 door of the chateau. The little prince 
 made a splendid chauffeur, and evidently 
 thoroughly enjoyed rushing round the 
 park in his car. 
 
 I left the chateau feeling that I had had 
 a glimpse of ideal family life, and thor- 
 oughly convinced that the democratic 
 Norwegian court is the nicest in Europe. 
 
 I do not in the least mind confessing 
 that when I advocate democratic princi- 
 ples I have the interests of royal person- 
 ages at heart as well as those of their peo- 
 ples. There are plenty of princes and 
 princesses, bound hand and foot by eti- 
 quette and galling restrictions, who, what- 
 ever their present views may be, will wel- 
 come the liberty democracy will bring 
 
16 
 
 CABBAGES AND KINGS 
 
 them. Happy King Haakon and Queen 
 Maud ! Although they are addressed as 
 your Majesties, they are allowed to live in 
 a tiny red bungalow, up in the mountains 
 at Holm Kelm, when winter comes, and 
 there they and Prince Olaf dart about on 
 skis, talking to everybody, making every 
 one happy, happy themselves in being 
 three Norwegian citizens. 
 
 And beyond the circle of the court the 
 constitution of Norwegian society is ut- 
 terly different to that of society in the 
 most powerful European countries. Both 
 the law and society regard woman as in 
 every respect the equal of man. Women 
 have the same civic rights as men, and use 
 them. At the last parliamentary elections, 
 in 191 3, seventy-five per cent, of the wo- 
 men of the towns who had the right to 
 vote used it; indeed, the proportion of 
 women who did their duty as citizens and 
 recorded their votes was higher than that 
 of men. All the higher professions are 
 open to women, and at the present time 
 the most important of the professors at 
 the university is a woman, and the leading 
 lawyer connected with the supreme tribu- 
 nal is also a woman. The Norwegians 
 refuse to tolerate cheap female labor ; if a 
 woman does the same work as a man, she 
 gets the same pay. Society is equally just. 
 It does not apply one standard of morals 
 to man and another to woman. Both are 
 judged by the same standard, and a girl 
 does not lose her position in society for 
 conduct which in other countries is blamed 
 in a woman and condoned in a man. Some 
 Norwegian couples prefer to contract free 
 unions instead of legal marriages, and, 
 now that the influence of Lutheranism on 
 the life of the country is virtually dead, so- 
 ciety does not look at such unions askance. 
 Married and unmarried couples live in 
 peace and associate freely. In a country 
 where everybody works there is little time 
 or opportunity for the development of 
 crimes passionels, so, if a couple finds that 
 they have made a mistake and that life in 
 common is too difficult, they just part 
 without quarreling, and build up their 
 lives anew. 
 
 The happy relations existing between 
 
 the men and women of Norway are, I am 
 convinced, largely due to the fact that 
 they are educated together at school and 
 in the university. The equality of male 
 and female students at the university 
 seems to be symbolized by the wearing of 
 identical caps of the same gay colors. 
 From childhood they grow up together 
 and become good comrades, understand- 
 ing each other thoroughly and without 
 arriere pensee, having the same moral code 
 and the same views of life. In most coun- 
 tries boys and girls are segregated apart, 
 and allowed to meet only under the super- 
 vision of their elders. The system is not 
 a good one. Indeed, I have often thought 
 that nothing gives a girl's brain such a 
 wrong twist as the false view given her at 
 school about the companionship of men. 
 Why perpetually dread man and see in 
 him only the seducer? By doing so I be- 
 lieve you very often awake in him instincts 
 that might otherwise lie dormant. 
 
 And the education the girls and boys 
 receive together is an excellent one. Nor- 
 wegians understand the importance of ac- 
 quiring foreign languages, which they 
 require in commerce and for dealing with 
 the numerous foreign tourists who make 
 their beautiful fiords and mountains a 
 holiday playground. Hence both English 
 and German are taught in all the schools, 
 and the instruction given is so good that 
 the children actually learn to converse in 
 these languages. More than once I was 
 astonished to find that a cabman could an- 
 swer me in English or German. 
 
 The Norwegians are a vigorous and 
 hardy race. In their veins flows the blood 
 of vikings, and they are determined that 
 the nation shall not deteriorate physically. 
 With this end in view the law provides for 
 the protection of the mother during her 
 time of expectation and for her support 
 and comfort during the six weeks follow- 
 ing the birth of her child. Moreover, 
 careful provision is made for the upbring- 
 ing of children born outside wedlock, and 
 neither father nor mother is allowed to 
 shirk the responsibility of parentage. 
 
 The separation of Norway and Sweden 
 was due to the desire of the Norwegians, 
 
THE SCANDINAVIAN DEMOCRACIES 
 
 17 
 
 whose merchant fleet is twice the size of 
 the Swedish, to have their commercial in- 
 terests abroad properly looked after by an 
 independent consular service. This was 
 the formal cause of separation, but un- 
 doubtedly the marked difference between 
 the social organization of the two coun- 
 tries facilitated the unloosing of the bonds 
 that held them together. Sweden still has 
 an aristocracy, and the nobles who sit in 
 the Upper House of the Swedish parlia- 
 ment are able to check in some degree the 
 advance of democracy. Yet in their love 
 of simplicity the two nations are alike. 
 This was made clear to me in rather an 
 amusing way soon after my arrival in 
 Stockholm during my autumn tour. I was 
 going to the theater with a friend, and 
 when she arrived to fetch me, I was get- 
 ting into an evening gown. 
 
 "Is your royal Highness going to wear 
 a low dress?" she said in a manner that 
 made me feel I was doing something thor- 
 oughly unconventional. 
 
 "Ought n't I to?" I asked. 
 
 "We do not go in evening dress to the 
 theater," she said. 
 
 "Then what am I to wear?" I asked. 
 
 "Just a skirt and blouse," she said. 
 
 And accordingly in a skirt and blouse I 
 went. It was rather a pretty blouse, — I 
 confess that I love pretty things, — and 
 when I got into the theater I felt just a 
 trifle overdressed. 
 
 "What sensible people you Swedish wo- 
 men are!" I said to my friend when I 
 looked round the theater and saw how 
 simply the women were dressed. "You 
 save hours and hours which women in 
 London and Paris fritter away at their 
 toilet-tables." 
 
 In point of fact, the Swedish woman 
 has not usually either the time or money 
 required to turn herself into a woman of 
 fashion. And even if she had, she is too 
 sensible to make her appearance the absorb- 
 ing care of life. Careers which are closed 
 to women in other lands are open to her, 
 and she prefers to be independent and to 
 earn her living. At the present time the 
 Swedish women have not been granted 
 electoral rights, but there can be no doubt 
 
 that they will obtain the same right as 
 men in the course of time. The Conser- 
 vative party in the Upper House shrinks 
 from yielding to the demands of the wo- 
 men, fearing that their votes will 
 strengthen the Socialists in the Lower 
 House. But the nobles are certain to do 
 justice to women sooner or later, and at 
 the present time there is only a majority 
 of twelve in the Upper House against the 
 granting of the suffrage to women. 
 
 As it is, that Upper House puts too 
 strong a brake on the wheels of progress. 
 At one Swedish railway-station I saw a 
 number of emigrants who were starting 
 for America. They did not display the 
 least sorrow at leaving their native land ; 
 on the contrary, they were bearing wreaths 
 of flowers and singing joyfully, as if they 
 were onlv too thankful to get away from 
 Sweden. It was a sad and eloquent tes- 
 timony to the evils that still mar the social 
 structure of Sweden. Indeed, the stream 
 of emigrants who cross the Atlantic to 
 enrich the life of America with their work 
 is so great and so constant that a royal 
 commission has been endeavoring to find 
 out its causes. In their report the com- 
 missioners state that the principal cause of 
 emigration is the failure of the Govern- 
 ment to accelerate legislation for the im- 
 provement of the conditions of the work- 
 ing-classes. In the circumstances, it is 
 only natural that there should be a power- 
 ful Socialist party in the country. The 
 crown prince is clever enough to see that 
 this party is one which will increase in 
 power with the lapse of time, but his ef- 
 forts to establish friendly relations with 
 its leaders have not been well received. He 
 talks good-humoredly and shakes hands 
 with prominent Socialists, but the party 
 appears to see in these little attentions 
 nothing more than a symptom of the fu- 
 ture king's fear of the rising power of the 
 working-classes. 
 
 The court of Sweden is, however, 
 characterized by Scandinavian simplicity, 
 although this is naturally not so strongly 
 marked as at the ideal court of King Haa- 
 kon and Queen Maud. The Queen of 
 Sweden's health is too bad to allow her to 
 
18 
 
 CABBAGES AND KINGS 
 
 appear in public, and her mother-in-law, 
 Queen Sophie, lives in a retirement dic- 
 tated by her advanced age and personal 
 tastes. Hence the principal figure at court, 
 apart from the king, is the crown princess, 
 before her marriage Princess Margaret of 
 Connaught, and she has contrived to give 
 to it just a touch of the elegance of the 
 Court of St. James. I lunched with her 
 when I was in Stockholm, and she told me 
 how much she loves her Swedish life. Her 
 marriage is a very happy one and in strik- 
 ing contrast to that of Prince William, 
 whose Russian wife has deserted him to 
 amuse herself in Paris. An attempt has 
 been most unjustly made to place the 
 blame for this escapade on the prince. As 
 a matter of fact, he is a charming boy, and 
 did his utmost to make his wife happy in 
 Sweden. King Gustav has inherited from 
 his father a great charm of manner and a 
 fine figure, which devotion to tennis helps 
 him to keep. He is fond of all sorts of 
 sport and is an excellent shot. 
 
 I used to see a good deal of the late 
 King Oscar. His French ancestry and 
 his personal charm made him very popular 
 in France, a country he loved, and during 
 his numerous visits to Paris I had the op- 
 portunity of getting to know him well, 
 and I became very fond of him. I was in 
 Sweden in 1897, traveling incognito, and 
 I remember sitting down to rest one day 
 within sight of Sophie Rue, King Oscar's 
 Norman villa, and, as I looked at the 
 peaceful home of my old friend, I hoped 
 that his last years would not be embittered 
 by the dissolution of the union between 
 Sweden and Norway. But the blow came 
 to the "poet king," whose spirit seemed to 
 live above the dull realities of life, and it 
 came when he was old and broken down 
 with the illness which at last caused his 
 death. Kings must yield to the imperious 
 will of democracy, and I look forward to 
 the time when Sweden will have the ad- 
 vantages enjoyed by the sister kingdom. 
 
 I visited Denmark as well as Norway 
 and Sweden last autumn, and there also I 
 remarked the growth of democratic ideas. 
 It is a restful country, and the souls of 
 the people seem as clear as their blue eyes. 
 
 The Danes are a kind, industrious, and 
 simple race, and if they strike one as being 
 less hardy and vigorous than the other 
 Scandinavian races, they certainly have the 
 same courteous manners as the Swedes and 
 Norwegians. 
 
 The first time that I visited Denmark, 
 King Christian, the father of Queen 
 Alexandra and the Empress Marie, was 
 reigning, and the castle, in which his large 
 family used to assemble for those reunions 
 which he loved, was looked on by the 
 Danes with a sort of reverence. But I 
 remember that once, when I was traveling 
 incognito, I drove past the castle in a cab, 
 and the friendly driver, anxious to oblige 
 a tourist, told me that a great family gath- 
 ering was taking place there. He reeled off 
 the names of the world-famous personages 
 who had gathered round the king, and he 
 did so with as much indifference as a Lon- 
 don cabman displayed when he pointed out 
 Madame Tussaud's to me the first time I 
 was in London, and casually explained 
 that wax figures were kept there. The 
 attitude of the Danish cabman towards the 
 royal family, which seemed to me curious 
 years ago, appears to be that of most 
 Danes at the present time. They have 
 ceased to take any particular interest in the 
 doings of their sovereign and his relatives. 
 Nothing strikes me more, as I go about 
 Europe, than the fact that, if I may be 
 allowed the expression, the market value 
 of princes and princesses has enormously 
 decreased. 
 
 I went to an hotel in Copenhagen, and 
 I had not been long in the capital before a 
 card, inscribed with a single Danish word, 
 was brought to me. I stared at it, not 
 recognizing the name, and wondering who 
 it was who had been to see me. Then it 
 suddenly dawned on me that the word on 
 the card was simply the Danish for queen. 
 Her Majesty had been to see me, and of 
 course I went to see her. 
 
 The royal family appears now to live in 
 retirement, and its members form a small 
 caste, penned off from the rest of mankind 
 by their rank. Their chief amusement 
 seems to be paying calls on one another. 
 Most of them live at their countrv villas 
 
THE SCANDINAVIAN DEMOCRACIES 
 
 19 
 
 and chateaux, and in these pleasant homes 
 there is a constant succession of cousinly 
 meetings, when family news is exchanged, 
 and, while the children play, the elders 
 take a stroll in the park surrounding the 
 house at which the family gathering is 
 taking place. The king displays that pe- 
 culiar form of wit which I have often 
 noticed is characteristic of crowned heads 
 who have lived much in retirement. With 
 them the gaiety of childhood seems, with 
 the passing of the years, to turn into a 
 curious spirit of mockery. Trifles create 
 shouts of laughter, enlivening the family 
 circle and confusing those who are unac- 
 quainted with the type of witticisms 
 which goes down in royal circles. 
 
 Beyond the tranquil inclosures of the 
 royal parks the Danish people is moving 
 surely and steadily toward a broader and 
 more democratic life than it has hitherto 
 enjoyed. And women are in the fore- 
 front of the movement. The Danish wo- 
 men are perhaps the most fascinating of 
 the women of Scandinavia. Many of them 
 are beautiful, and although they refuse to 
 be slaves of fashion, they display a certain 
 charming coquetry in their dress. Num- 
 bers of them earn their own living, and 
 are thus independent of men. This is the 
 sure road for women to take if they de- 
 sire to have the same rights and privileges 
 as men. As it is, the Danish woman has 
 established for herself a position which her 
 Latin sisters may well envy, and the law 
 secures her independence. She will, I am 
 convinced, be given electoral rights, and 
 she will have no need to resort to militant 
 methods to obtain them. 
 
 On the road between Copenhagen and 
 Helsingfors a milk-white villa stands out 
 against the faint-blue background of the 
 Northern sky. There it was that I passed 
 the happiest moments of my stay in Den- 
 mark, and there I found at last two 
 crowned heads who have remained human 
 despite the crushing weight of the crowns 
 they have worn for many years. The 
 Italian villa is the home of Queen Alex- 
 andra and the Empress Marie, and the 
 two sisters, who adore each other, are ab- 
 solutely happy in each other's society and 
 
 in the simplicity of the life they lead. 
 They welcomed me with enthusiasm, 
 kissed me, and were quite excited to have 
 somebody to whom they could show their 
 little house. In the sitting-room they 
 share they both wanted to show me their 
 special corners at the same time. 
 
 "Come and see my writing-table," said 
 the empress, pulling me to her end of the 
 room. 
 
 "No," cried Queen Alexandra, gaily, 
 pulling me in the opposite direction, 
 "come and see my writing-table." 
 
 How we all laughed ! 
 
 "This is my chair," said the empress, 
 showing me one in her corner of the room. 
 
 "And this is my chair," echoed the 
 queen, calling my attention to the favorite 
 chair in her corner. 
 
 I had to see everything and admire 
 everything. The two sisters seemed par- 
 ticularly proud of their kitchen garden and 
 seemed to be delighted to find that I knew 
 something about growing vegetables. I 
 have a kitchen garden of my own in Nor- 
 mandy, where I have a little house, and 
 we were able to compare notes. 
 
 And after we had inspected flowers and 
 vegetables, we went through an under- 
 ground passage which their Majesties 
 have had cut beneath the road that divides 
 the garden of the villa from the sea, and 
 I found myself in a little Norwegian cot- 
 tage by the sea-shore, a tiny stretch of 
 which has been walled off, so that the em- 
 press and the queen may enjoy it undis- 
 turbed. When we were inside the cot- 
 tage, the empress offered me a thin Rus- 
 sian cigarette, and lit one herself. Then 
 Queen Alexandra showed me their tea- 
 kettle, and the little kitchen in which they 
 make their own cakes and brew their tea. 
 
 "This is where I make my tea," cried 
 the queen. 
 
 "And this is where I cut the bread and 
 butter," said the empress. 
 
 They were as happy as two school-girls, 
 reveling in the simple life of a home where 
 they can live like two ordinary women, 
 untrammeled by court etiquette and with- 
 out even a single lady-in-waiting to at- 
 tend them. 
 
20 
 
 CABBAGES AND KINGS 
 
 After visiting the Norwegian cottage I 
 had to see a new marvel. We went down 
 to the beach, and the two sisters explained 
 to me that it was a splendid place for 
 picking up bits of amber. I had seen so 
 much amber in the Castle of Rosenberg 
 and in the shops of Copenhagen that it 
 seemed improbable that there could be any 
 more in the Baltic. Nevertheless there 
 appears to be plenty left, for both the em- 
 press and the queen showed me the boxes 
 in which they store the treasure they find 
 on the shore. The empress is luckier in 
 finding amber than the queen, and her box 
 contained more than her sister's. 
 
 "It is most unfair," said the queen, gaily. 
 
 "I always pick up more than you do," 
 said the empress, triumphantly. 
 
 We searched for amber until it was 
 
 time for me to go, and we enjoyed our- 
 selves like children. 
 
 Both the empress and the queen have 
 played the great parts they have had to 
 fill on the stage of life with dignity and 
 distinction ; but they are Danes, and they 
 have never lost the love of simplicity 
 which is the most notable characteristic of 
 the peoples of Scandinavia. Now that 
 they can live their lives as they like, they 
 deliberately leave their palaces and spend 
 a great part of their time more simply 
 than many commoners. To see their hap- 
 piness made, me happier myself, and, in- 
 deed, my tour in Scandinavia has given 
 me new courage. All that I saw and heard 
 made me feel that the time will come 
 when democracy will make many of the 
 crooked things of this life straight. 
 
The Czar and His People 
 
 IT was mid-winter when I arrived for 
 the first time in St. Petersburg, mag- 
 ical beneath its snow mantle, and I came 
 as a simple tourist to see the country and 
 to study the conditions of Russian life. I 
 established myself in a hotel as a Spanish 
 countess, feeling delighted that nobody 
 knew who I actually was and reveling in 
 the freedom of strict incognito. But I 
 had not been in the hotel five hours before 
 a grand master of ceremonies arrived and 
 betrayed my secret. From that minute 
 everybody knew that the countess was an 
 infanta of Spain, and my liberty was gone. 
 It is my usual experience. I arrive some- 
 where, believing that not a soul knows 
 where I am, and, almost before I have 
 taken possession of my rooms, there is a 
 whir of the telephone bell, and somebody 
 at the other end saying: "Eulalia, how did 
 you get here? You must come and see us 
 at once." 
 
 The grand master of ceremonies 
 brought me a message from the emperor 
 and empress, telling me how delighted they 
 were to know that they were going to see 
 me soon, and suggesting that I should 
 come to the Winter Palace the next morn- 
 ing for the Twelfth Day ceremony of the 
 Blessing of the Waters. 
 
 "But I have nothing to wear!" I cried. 
 
 It was absolutely true. I had never ex- 
 pected to figure at a court ceremony, and 
 it had not occurred to me to bring a man- 
 teau tie tour. Etiquette, however, is less 
 severe in Russia than in Spain or in Prus- 
 sia, as I soon discovered, and the next 
 morning I put on my smartest frock and 
 drove to the Winter Palace, a gigantic 
 building, painted dull red, with rows of 
 gods and goddesses standing on the cornice 
 of- its stupendous facade, looking cold and 
 unhappy in the nipping air. 
 
 I had not seen the empress since we 
 were girls, staying with Queen Victoria at 
 Windsor or in the beautiful Isle of Wight. 
 And what a charming girl she was! A 
 
 simple English girl, despite her German 
 title, in a skirt and blouse, utterly unaf- 
 fected, warm-hearted, and as fresh as a 
 rosebud touched with dew. I was think- 
 ing of the happy, careless days when we 
 were in England together as I drove to the 
 palace, forgetting the change that the pas- 
 sage of the years makes in the friends of 
 one's youth, and when I went into the 
 room where the empress was waiting to 
 watch the Blessing of the Waters from the 
 window, I felt startled to find, instead of 
 the girl I used to know, a surpassingly 
 beautiful and stately woman. The petals 
 of the rosebud had unfolded. She was the 
 center of a brilliant group of grand 
 duchesses and ladies, all wearing the 
 stranee, but beautiful, dress of the Russian 
 court, with long hanging sleeves. On her 
 head was a kokoshnik, a crescent-shaped 
 diadem, flaming with diamonds, from 
 which fell a long white veil, and her state- 
 liness and beauty distinguished her from 
 all the other sumptuous figures surround- 
 ing her. A stranger who had never seen 
 her before would have been certain that it 
 was she, and not one of the others, who 
 was empress. 
 
 "How good to see you again, Eulalia, 
 after all these years!" she said, coming to- 
 ward me; and she put her arms round me 
 and kissed me. 
 
 And in that greeting I realized that the 
 czarina had not changed. She was still 
 the affectionate and unaffected friend I 
 had known years before. We had a hun- 
 dred questions to ask each other, but al- 
 most before we had had time to begin, we 
 had to stop talking to attend to the impos- 
 ing ceremony which was beginning on the 
 frozen Neva. 
 
 From the window I saw that a pavilion, 
 like an exceedingly decorative band-stand, 
 had been erected on the ice just in front of 
 the palace, and I watched a procession of 
 ecclesiastics in stiff Byzantine robes and 
 glittering miters move slowly across the 
 
22 
 
 CABBAGES AND KINGS 
 
 road separating it from the palace, fol- 
 lowed by the grand dukes and the em- 
 peror. The singing of the choir floated to 
 us through the frosty air, and the empress 
 crossed herself devoutly. She is a sincerely 
 religious woman. 
 
 I watched the emperor standing motion- 
 less beneath the fretted and gilded canopy 
 of the pavilion, and the thought suddenly 
 flashed into my mind that the Russian em- 
 perors alone claim the right to govern the 
 souls as well as the bodies of their subjects. 
 The autocrat is a great ecclesiastical per- 
 sonage as well as a secular ruler, and the 
 Russian Church depends upon him and 
 can do nothing without his consent. I 
 remembered that banishment to Siberia 
 was the punishment for those who deserted 
 the orthodox church and refused to believe 
 as the czar believes and to pray as the czar 
 prays. The kings of Spain and the em- 
 perors of Austria are sons, not rulers, of 
 the church, and I had been taught that the 
 pope was king of kings. It seemed to me 
 that no worse form of despotism could be 
 conceived than the concentration in the 
 hands of an autocratic ruler of the spii 
 itual and temporal power, and as these 
 thoughts crowded into my mind, there 
 seemed to me something sinister and ter- 
 rible in the ceremony I was watching, and 
 I realized, as I had never done before, the 
 immensity and the awfulness of the power ' 
 wielded by the motionless figure beneath 
 the gay pavilion. Nobody rejoiced more 
 than I did when the emperor published the 
 Manifesto of April, 1905, granting his 
 subjects religious liberty, and I realized 
 that the stupendous claim which had made 
 me shudder when I thought of it, as I 
 watched the sumptuous Twelfth Day 
 ceremony from the windows of the Win- 
 ter Palace, had been renounced forever. 
 In point of fact, Nicholas II had no desire 
 to maintain it, and he renounced it as soon 
 as an appropriate occasion arose. 
 
 After the picturesque ceremony which 
 had stirred these thoughts had ended, and 
 the archbishop had dipped a golden cross 
 in the water running below the ice of the 
 river, the holy water was brought mto the 
 palace to the empress, and the emperor 
 
 joined us. He gave me a characteristically 
 Russian welcome. His manner was en- 
 gagingly simple and unaffected. The con- 
 trast between him and the German 
 emperor was extraordinary. The kaiser, 
 a constitutional monarch whose power is 
 strictly limited, shows by his bearing and 
 his manner, as I have indicated elsewhere, 
 that he holds the divine right of kings to 
 be a cardinal article of faith. When one is 
 with the czar, it requires a certain effort 
 of the imagination to remember that he 
 possesses autocratic power over the lives 
 of 160,000,000 human beings. The Rus- 
 sians are the most hospitable people in the 
 world, and the emperor and empress are 
 not excelled by any of their subjects in 
 kindness and generosity to guests. They 
 both insisted that as long as I remained in 
 St. Petersburg I must be with them as 
 much as possible and, in point of fact, al- 
 though I slept at the hotel, I was con- 
 stantly at the Winter Palace and had my 
 part in the intimate family life of the 
 imperial family. 
 
 When a man likes nothing better than 
 to remain at home with his wife, it is a 
 sure sign that he is very much in love with 
 her. Judged by that test, there is no hap- 
 pier couple in Europe than the emperor 
 and the empress of Russia. They are 
 never more contented than when together, 
 and it was obvious to me that the czar 
 simply adores his wife. It would be 
 strange if he did not, for there is not a 
 gentler or sweeter woman in the world 
 than the beautiful czarina. And both of 
 them are devoted to their children. They 
 used to make me come with them some- 
 times to the nursery, where the little grand 
 duchesses used to welcome us with shrieks 
 of delight. What games there were! Peo- 
 ple who think of the czar as a trowning 
 despot would have been astonished to see 
 a vigorous pillow-fight going on between 
 him and his children. And away from the 
 formalities of the court, closeted with her 
 children, the czarina was always radiant 
 and happy. Under the spell of their prat- 
 tle and of their caresses she was trans- 
 formed. The smiling mother seemed a 
 different woman to the beautiful, but 
 
THE CZAR AND HIS PEOPLE 
 
 23 
 
 grave, lady seen by the public in the 
 ceremonies of the court. 
 
 "Do try and get the empress to smile, 
 Eulalia," said one of the grand duchesses 
 to me at some court function. 
 
 But that was sooner said than done. 
 There is not a trace of artificiality in the 
 empress's character. She seemed unable to 
 pretend she was enjoying herself when, in 
 point of fact, she was fatigued and bored. 
 Moving as the central figure of a splendid 
 pageant, I think she was always wishing 
 the ceremony to be at an end and to find 
 herself free to be with her children again. 
 
 The tastes of the emperor are as simple 
 as the empress's and in curious contrast to 
 those of most of the members of the im- 
 perial family. Neither of them like the 
 late supper-parties which most of their 
 relatives indulge in. Early to bed and 
 early to rise is my motto, and supper-parties 
 hardly finished at two o'clock in the morn- 
 ing bored me unutterably. When I went 
 to the opera with the emperor and em- 
 press, we used to take time by the forelock 
 and sup in the second entr'acte, in order to 
 be able to go straight to bed when we got 
 home. The ballets given at the Marinsky 
 Theater were exceedingly beautiful, and 
 the empress followed the movements of the 
 dancers with evident enjoyment from the 
 stage box. Behind the box is a charming 
 room, and there it was that supper used to 
 be served. 
 
 "Here is your high tea, Eulalia," the 
 empress would say merrily, and then we 
 sat down to a square meal of cold meat 
 and countless cups of tea, to which I used 
 to do ample justice, as I did not dine be- 
 fore going to the theater. 
 
 His love of simplicity does not, however, 
 prevent the emperor from enjoying society. 
 Like most Russians, he is fond of it, and 
 his animation and vivacity at court balls 
 was delightful and, moreover, genuine. I 
 liked to watch him dance the mazurka, 
 that rushing, almost violent, dance that 
 they say only a Slav can dance to perfec- 
 tion. It was obvious that he enjoyed it. 
 When supper was served, we went to a 
 long table on a dais, set at one end of a 
 great hall, and I discovered that the Rus- 
 
 sian court has a very charming custom 
 which does not obtain elsewhere. The 
 emperor and empress took their places, 
 facing the general company, with their 
 royal guests and other members of the 
 imperial family to right and to left of 
 them ; but we had hardly been a minute at 
 table before the emperor rose and went to 
 one of the tables below the dais, where he 
 sat down and chatted with the people sup- 
 ping at it. After talking for five minutes, 
 he went to another table to greet other 
 guests, and then passed from group to 
 group, sitting down at each table for a 
 few minutes. And with the Russian in- 
 stinct of hospitality, the emperor played 
 the part of host so well that the conversa- 
 tion became more animated at each table 
 he visited. The presence of some sover- 
 eigns, too careful of preserving the dis- 
 tance between themselves and persons who 
 are not of the blood royal, sometimes casts 
 a gloom on their guests. 
 
 Perhaps the emperor's obvious enjoy- 
 ment of a ball was due to the fact that it is 
 but seldom that he can allow himself 
 relaxation. There is not a busier man in 
 the world. I once remarked to him that I 
 find it impossible to get through the work 
 of the day unless I follow a definite rule, 
 and I asked him how he divided up his 
 time. 
 
 "I get up early," he answered, "and 
 after a light breakfast I work until eleven. 
 Then I take a walk and come back for 
 luncheon at half-past twelve. After that 
 comes the task of giving audiences to min- 
 isters and others and, when work allows 
 it, I take a drive before tea in order to 
 get some fresh air. Immediately after tea 
 I am busy again with my secretaries, and 
 work with them lasts until dinner-time." 
 
 "A strenuous day," I said. 
 
 "But that is not the end of it," he an- 
 swered, smiling. "I am very often obliged 
 to go back to work straight from the din- 
 ner-table, and sometimes it is not finished 
 until far on into the night." 
 
 The emperor's devotion to duty is in 
 striking contrast to the almost traditional 
 love of pleasure displayed by the grand 
 dukes. A foreigner might easily be led 
 
24 
 
 CABBAGES AND KINGS 
 
 to suppose that the house of Romanoff is 
 at heart in sympathy with democratic 
 ideas. The lack of formality at court, the 
 marriages between grand dukes and com- 
 moners, the presence of unlettered peas- 
 ants at certain of the ceremonies of the 
 Winter Palace, the share taken by some of 
 the members of the imperial family in 
 amusements accessible to anybody who has 
 money in his pocket, their supper-parties 
 in restaurants, and their enjoyment of the 
 cafe concerts of the capital — all these 
 things might deceive the stranger. To 
 know the grand dukes and grand duch- 
 esses is to realize that they neither under- 
 stand the aspirations of the democracy nor 
 sympathize with them, for, reflecting the 
 glory of autocracy, they are more firmly 
 convinced than any other royal persons in 
 Europe that a gulf divides them from the 
 rest of mankind. And this conviction is 
 so deep that they appear to believe that 
 the most ordinary actions are ennobled by 
 the mere fact that they are performed by 
 persons in whose veins flows the imperial 
 blood. The life led by most of them 
 would be unbearable to me. A perpetual 
 round of amusements becomes in the end 
 as wearisome as the tread-mill. How peo- 
 ple who are not in the first flush of youth 
 can day after day sit up until two o'clock 
 in the morning, as too many of them do, 
 eating unnecessary suppers and drinking 
 champagne, I cannot understand. High 
 tea with the emperor and empress pleased 
 me better than late suppers with the grand 
 dukes and grand duchesses. Indeed, when 
 I yielded to persuasion and went out with 
 them for an evening's amusement, my 
 sleepiness used to divert them immensely. 
 
 "Eulalia, you 're yawning," they would 
 say. 
 
 "It is two hours past my bedtime," I 
 would answer. 
 
 And then we laughed, and it was prob- 
 ably the Grand Duke Alexis who would 
 suggest that we should all drive out to 
 the islands and have another supper at a 
 cafe concert. Then I would strike and 
 go home, scolding myself for sitting up so 
 late and marveling at the extraordinary 
 vitality of the rest of the company, start- 
 
 ing merrily on the long sledge drtve to the 
 islands, where they would sit by the hour 
 in a private room overlooking the little 
 stage on which the unsuccessful artistes of 
 Paris danced and sang. 
 
 Perhaps it is because I am Spanish and 
 not Russian that I failed to see the plea- 
 sure to be derived from spending the night 
 in frivolity, for, in point of fact, there is 
 nothing characteristically grand-ducal in 
 this curious craze; it is simply Russian, 
 and Moscow merchants will spend thou- 
 sands of rubles in extravagant amusements 
 between midnight and sunrise. The grand 
 dukes are typical Russians. They have 
 the virtues and the failings of the typical 
 Russian, and — I am not sure whether it is 
 a virtue or a failing — they are, like all the 
 Russians I have ever met, exceedingly sus- 
 ceptible to feminine charms. To the Rus- 
 sian love is everything, and in Russia wo- 
 men have more power to change men's 
 lives than in any other land. 
 
 But if the majority of the members of 
 the imperial family love extravagant 
 amusement, there is one notable exception 
 to the rule. The Grand Duchess Eliza- 
 beth, widow of the Grand Duke Serge, 
 who was assassinated by revolutionists, 
 shares the simple tastes of her sister, the 
 empress, and detests the empty formality 
 of courts as much as I do. When we were 
 girls, we saw a great deal of each other at 
 Windsor and in the Isle of Wight, and it 
 was a great delight to me to talk over the 
 old days when I visited her in her palace 
 within the fantastic battlements of the 
 Kremlin. She was undoubtedly one of the 
 most beautiful women in Europe, and her 
 husband was extraordinarily handsome. 
 Indeed, their beauty and their bearing 
 made them the most distinguished couple 
 at the great gathering of royal personages 
 I met at Buckingham Palace when the 
 Jubilee of Queen Victoria was celebrated. 
 After the terrible death of her husband, 
 the grand duchess devoted herself to the 
 education of the Grand Duke Paul's 
 motherless children, the Grand Duke 
 Dmitri and the Grand Duchess Maria 
 Pavlovna, and, that task accomplished, 
 she became a sister of charitv. She has 
 
THE CZAR AND HIS PEOPLE 
 
 L'5 
 
 founded a convent in Moscow, where she 
 follows a severe rule, and devotes herself 
 to hospital work and the care of the poor, 
 realizing that even a princess has no ex- 
 cuse to shirk the responsibilities of life and 
 to lead a useless existence. 
 
 How is it that there is such a marked 
 difference between the tastes of the em- 
 peror and those of his uncles and cousins? 
 The answer is not difficult to find. The 
 emperor's love of simplicity comes from 
 his mother, the Empress Marie, who, now 
 that she can indulge her own tastes, lives 
 the greater part of the year with Queen 
 Alexandra in a small villa on the Danish 
 coast. When I visited them there I found 
 that they were living as simply as private 
 persons who know nothing of the life of 
 courts. But while recognizing the influ- 
 ence of his mother in the formation of the 
 emperor's character, I like to think that 
 something of the spirit of Peter the Great 
 has been conserved in the imperial family, 
 and that the love of work, the courage, 
 and the simplicity displayed by Nicholas 
 II are in some measure gifts from his great 
 ancestor. One afternoon I drove out to 
 the islands in a troika, a sledge that might 
 have come from fairy-land, covered with 
 glistening trappings and luxurious furs, 
 and drawn by three horses abreast, and, 
 on my way, I stopped to visit the little 
 house in which Peter the Great lived when 
 he was building his new capital. It is a 
 tiny cottage, a mere hut, with two rooms. 
 Nothing could be simpler or more unlike 
 the vast Winter Palace. Yet I felt, as I 
 left this humble abode, that the spirit of 
 the man who was content to live in it still 
 reigns in the splendid home of his de- 
 scendant, the present emperor. 
 
 I have referred to the courage of Nicho- 
 las II, and it may surprise those who know 
 him only by repute that I should empha- 
 size this trait of his character. I myself 
 had often heard that he was timorous and 
 dreaded assassination. It was therefore a 
 great surprise to me to find that he often 
 walked from the palace to my hotel, with 
 only a single aide-de-camp in attendance. 
 Although his grandfather had been assas- 
 sinated by revolutionists, he himself ap- 
 
 peared to be absolutely fearless, and to 
 disregard the risk he ran by walking about 
 St. Petersburg. If precautions are taken 
 to protect him now, he permits them solely 
 because he is convinced that his life is of 
 value to his people. Russia is his one 
 thought. Those who do not know him 
 often speak or write of him as cruel, tyran- 
 nical, caring for nothing but the conserva- 
 tion of the imperial power and wealth. 
 That is an absolutely false estimate of his 
 character. One has only to look into his 
 beautiful, blue eyes, to realize that he is 
 neither harsh nor cruel, and to understand 
 his great tenderness. Indeed, it is his ten- 
 derness that distinguishes him from most 
 of the sovereigns I know. His affection 
 for his mother, his devotion to his wife 
 and children, are the outcome of this qual- 
 ity, and its exercise is not confined to his 
 domestic life. I have heard him speak on 
 more than one occasion with the utmost 
 feeling of persons who had been con- 
 demned to exile in Siberia. It was per- 
 fectly clear to me from the way in which 
 he spoke of them that, had he followed 
 the dictates of his own heart, he would 
 have canceled the sentences and pardoned 
 the offenders. I could see that the thought 
 of their sufferings made him suffer him- 
 self, and that it was only a stern sense of 
 duty that made him acquiesce in penalties 
 he regretted. 
 
 The bulk of the czar's subjects are peas- 
 ants, and he very often spoke of their life 
 and their customs. Indeed, he displayed 
 the keenest interest in plans to better their 
 condition and to raise their standard of 
 culture. Sovereigns, I have noticed, care- 
 fully eschew any reference to questions 
 which they and their ministers are unable 
 to solve, and it is to me significant that 
 neither the czar nor the kaiser has ever 
 spoken to me of the Polish question. The 
 czar was, however, aware that the Bour- 
 bons and the great Polish family of Za- 
 moyski are now connected, — my cousin, 
 Princess Caroline of Bourbon, married a 
 Zamoyski, — and he very delicately ap- 
 pointed a gentleman of that family to be 
 in attendance on me during my stay in St. 
 Petersburg. From intercourse with this 
 
26 
 
 CABBAGES AND KINGS 
 
 gentleman and with other Poles I met in 
 Russia I discovered that there is a pro- 
 found difference between the Russian and 
 the Polish character. There always re- 
 mains something of the Asiatic in the Rus- 
 sian, but the Pole belongs to the West. 
 He has the Slav charm and the Latin cul- 
 ture. I know of nothing sadder than the 
 tragedy of Poland. That splendid race, 
 which once saved Europe from the Turks, 
 has been parceled out between three em- 
 pires, but neither the iron will of the Ger- 
 man emperor nor the autocratic power of 
 Nicholas II has succeeded in killing the 
 Polish spirit. Small wonder that both at 
 Berlin and St. Petersburg the subject was 
 not broached at court. 
 
 The emperor is perfectly well aware 
 that my sympathies are with the democ- 
 racy, but naturally I never attempted to 
 force my ideas upon him. I am able to 
 understand that a sovereign who wields 
 absolute power and to whom the most 
 powerful of his ministers is obliged to 
 yield may be necessary for Russia at the 
 present day. I am convinced that the world 
 will be happier, princes and people alike, 
 when democracy has triumphed, but I 
 realize that in a country like Russia, the 
 bulk of whose population are unlettered, 
 
 it would be foolish as well as dangerous 
 to introduce suddenly and without prepa- 
 ration methods which are successful in the 
 West. Education, and education alone, 
 can establish the victory of democracy. 
 From my home in the capital of a great 
 people, in whose motto is enshrined a pro- 
 found belief in the brotherhood of man- 
 kind and the essential equality of prince 
 and peasant, I look out over Europe and 
 see the decay of old institutions and the 
 movements which are slowly, but cer- 
 tainly, reducing those monarchs who still 
 retain power to the position of decorative 
 figureheads. In Norway the process is 
 already finished, and although I confess 
 that I was first surprised, I was immensely 
 pleased to find, during a recent visit to 
 King Haakon and Queen Maud, that they 
 were simply the first among equals. I am 
 firmly convinced that this will be the ulti- 
 mate form of monarchy throughout Eu- 
 rope, but long years must pass before the 
 Russian people have the culture and po- 
 litical knowledge which makes a simple 
 Norwegian the equal of his sovereign. 
 Meanwhile it is satisfactory to know that 
 the man guiding the destinies of the Rus- 
 sian people possesses the fine qualities 
 which distinguish Nicholas II. 
 
The Courts of Italy 
 
 1WAS at Genoa, and one spring morn- 
 ing I strolled through a net-work of 
 narrow streets to the harbor. The sea was 
 as blue as a turquoise, gleaming like a 
 jewel in the sunshine, and I could not re- 
 sist the temptation to hire a boat and 
 waste an hour gliding over the enchanted 
 waves. The boatman who rowed me was 
 a lively fellow. Luckily for me, as I after- 
 ward realized, he had not the faintest 
 idea who I was, and I let him chatter to 
 his heart's content. 
 
 "The old Duke of Galliera gave twenty 
 million lire to make that," he said, indi- 
 cating, with a jerk of his head, the New 
 Harbor, hidden from sight by the build- 
 ings on the Molo Vecchio. 
 
 "The Duke of Galliera," he went on, 
 "was a fine gentleman; but the Duchess 
 was wicked. She was left a widow and 
 inherited the enormous, the colossal for- 
 tune of her husband. And what did she 
 do ? Does the Signora know what she 
 did?" 
 
 I did know, but I thought it prudent to 
 shake my head. 
 
 The man leant on his oars and looked 
 intently at me. 
 
 "The Duchess," he said, "left the title 
 and every lira she had and her palace in 
 Bologna and all the estates of her Duchy 
 to foreigners. A curse on them ! The old 
 Duke's son was left a beggar. And the 
 Duchess belonged to Genoa; she had rela- 
 tives in Genoa. Did she remember them 
 when she died ? No, not a single copper 
 did they receive. Everything went to the 
 Duca di Montpensier, a Frenchman who 
 had become a Spaniard, and now it be- 
 longs to his son." 
 
 "Really," I said, and I did not mention 
 that the Due de Montpensier was my fa- 
 ther-in-law, and that I was actually Duch- 
 ess of Galliera. 
 
 "If I could only get hold of that man 
 and his wife, although she is an Infanta 
 of Spain, I would kill them," he shouted 
 
 at me fiercely; "I would show them no 
 mercy." 
 
 On the whole, I was not sorry when I 
 found myself on land again, and I am con- 
 vinced that the man would have upset his 
 boat and let me drown, if he had discov- 
 ered who I was. And I have often won- 
 dered who he was, perhaps a relative of 
 the old Duchess. There was truth in the 
 story he told, a mystery which neither I 
 nor anybody else is ever likely to solve. 
 The Duke of Galliera had a son, Phillipo 
 Ferrari, who refused absolutely to use the 
 privileges which his birth had bestowed 
 upon him. What were his reasons, no- 
 body knows. Some say that he told the 
 Duchess that the Galliera fortune had 
 been acquired by evil means, others that 
 he believed he was not really the Duke's 
 son, others that he is a socialist. And 
 why, in default of the son, one of the rich- 
 est duchies of Italy was left to my father- 
 in-law is a question which remains, and is 
 likely to remain, unanswerable. Phillipo 
 Ferrari is said to be a cabman in Vienna, 
 and fate has decorated me with the unnec- 
 essary title of Duchess of Galliera. And 
 partly through the strange connection of 
 the family into which I married with 
 Italy, partly through my love for the most 
 beautiful and romantic land in Europe, I 
 have lived there a great deal. I used to 
 stay a good deal at the magnificent palace 
 of the Galliera family in Bologna, a sump- 
 tuous place with vast rooms paved with 
 mosaic and glittering with rare marbles. 
 The people of that city of colonnades and 
 cool court-yards took a kindlier view of 
 the new owners of the palace than the 
 Genoese boatman did, and the ancient 
 families of the place had that charm of 
 manner which gives such a fascination to 
 the cultured society of Italian towns. It 
 was a great delight to receive them, and I 
 used to enjoy the balls and parties in that 
 wonderful palace. 
 
 In most countries society gathers in the 
 
28 
 
 CABBAGES AND KINGS 
 
 capital, and when there is a Court, it acts 
 as a magnet to draw people from the prov- 
 inces. The unification of Italy, and the 
 erection of the Italian kingdom, has not 
 materially altered the structure of Italian 
 society. It remains what it was when 
 Italy was divided into a number of small 
 States. Rome and the Quirinal do not 
 attract the nobles of Venice, or Florence, 
 or Bologna, or of other historic Italian 
 towns; they continue to spend the winter 
 in the cities with which their families have 
 been associated for centuries, giving to 
 them a certain brilliance which is not to 
 be found in the provincial towns of France 
 or England. This was lucky for me, be- 
 cause no member of the Royal family of 
 Spain can stay in Rome. Obviously we 
 cannot go there and ignore the King and 
 Queen of Italy, nor can we omit paying a 
 visit of respect to the Pope. As the quar- 
 rel between the Quirinal and the Vatican 
 continues and the Holy Father does not 
 permit Catholic princes to visit the King 
 of Italy in Rome, the only thing that we 
 can do is to stay away. I myself have 
 tried more than once to spend a little time 
 in the Eternal City, but the result has al- 
 ways been the same. As soon as my arrival 
 is discovered, I am confronted by one of 
 the two Spanish ambassadors, anxiously 
 imploring me to go away as quickly as 
 possible, and telling me a pitiful tale of 
 the diplomatic complications which will 
 arise if I persist in staying. Once, how- 
 ever, I set aside all objections to my pres- 
 ence in Rome, and went to see Leo XIII 
 about a very important matter in which 
 the Supreme Ruler of the Catholic Church 
 could alone help me. I hoped to persuade 
 him to annul my marriage with the son 
 of the Due de Montpensier, and I felt cer- 
 tain that there were solid grounds for do- 
 ing so and that the laws of the Catholic 
 Church were on my side. 
 
 The Due de Montpensier lived in 
 Spain, and had indeed assumed Spanish 
 nationality. I saw that if I married his 
 son I should be able to remain in Spain 
 and be constantly with my dear brother, 
 Alfonso XII. That was the argument 
 which weighed with me, when it was pro- 
 
 posed that I should marry the Dike's son, 
 Antonio. He did not interest me, and I 
 knew that I could never love him ; but I 
 also knew that a Princess's marriage is 
 rarely one of her own choice, and that 
 family reasons and international consider- 
 ations play a greater part in determining 
 it than affection. With Antonio, as a hus- 
 band I could remain with the brother 
 whom I loved more than anybody on 
 earth, and, were I to refuse, it was cer- 
 tain that I should be forced to marry 
 some foreign Prince, whom I should prob- 
 ably dislike, and be obliged to spend the 
 rest of my life at a foreign Court without 
 the consolation of my brother's love. I 
 consented, therefore, to the engagement, 
 and it was publicly announced. The Due 
 de Montpensier was delighted, for he was 
 very fond of me and, moreover, he wanted 
 to see his son an Infant of Spain, a title 
 he could only acquire by marrying an 
 Infanta. 
 
 And Alfonso XII died before the mar- 
 riage was celebrated, cut off while still 
 young from the splendid work he was 
 doing for his country. From my point of 
 view, no reason remained for my marriage 
 after my brother's death, and I announced 
 that it would not take place. 
 
 "I consented to marry Antonio in order 
 to be near Alfonso," I said, "and now that 
 he is dead, the one argument that 
 prompted me to take this course has fallen 
 to the ground." 
 
 I had not thought of the political com- 
 plications which my refusal would entail. 
 When the Due de Montpensier heard that 
 I had rejected his son, he flew into such 
 an uncontrollable passion that he rushed 
 about the room in which he was, breaking 
 up the furniture and smashing anything he 
 could lay hands on. He had set his heart 
 on Antonio's children becoming Infantes 
 of Spain, and was furious when he saw 
 that it was possible that his ambition 
 would not be fulfilled. 
 
 Alfonso's wife, Queen Christina, had 
 been appointed Regent. Her position was' 
 a difficult one, and there were fears of an 
 attempt to place Don Carlos on the 
 throne. The Due de Montpensier was ex- 
 
THE COURTS OF ITALY 
 
 29 
 
 ceedingly wealthy and possessed great in- 
 fluence in the country, and it was feared 
 that if I proved obdurate and persisted in 
 my refusal to marry his son, he would 
 throw in his lot with the Carlists and join 
 in an attempt to drive the reigning family 
 from the throne. The Queen came to me 
 and implored me to consent to the mar- 
 riage, pointing out to me the harm that 
 might be done to Spain if I would not alter 
 my decision. Then my sister, the Infanta 
 Isabel, came to me, repeated the same argu- 
 ments that Queen Christina had used, and 
 added new ones. One by one, the Minis- 
 ters arrived to argue with me. Nobody 
 was on my side. Everybody told me that 
 it was my duty to marry Antonio, until at 
 last I felt that the fate of Spain depended 
 on my decision. I was a mere girl, stand- 
 ing at the threshold of life, and the inevi- 
 table happened. Wearied and worn out 
 with the struggle, I finally gave way. 
 
 "I sacrifice myself for the welfare of 
 the nation," I said. 
 
 My marriage is the most cogent proof 
 I can offer of my love for Spain, and I 
 went to the altar for the wedding cere- 
 mony as a victim. 
 
 It is a well-known principle of ecclesi- 
 astical law that a marriage contracted 
 against the will of one of the parties is in- 
 valid, even though it be consummated and 
 children be born to the couple. It was on 
 this principle that I relied when I went to 
 Leo XIII, and my object in asking him 
 to annul my marriage was, not to be free 
 to marry again, but to be free to manage 
 my own fortune in order to leave some 
 provision for my children. I brought with 
 me to Rome a letter from my mother, 
 Queen Isabel, in which she told the Holy 
 Father that she could not die happily with- 
 out the knowledge that my marriage had 
 been annulled and set forth the arguments 
 to prove, there were grounds for the Church 
 to give me the freedom I desired. 
 
 I was full of hope when I arrived in 
 Rome. I was so sure that my cause was 
 a just one, so certain that I should gain 
 the day, so convinced that there was no 
 flaw in the arguments presented in my 
 mother's letter. Moreover, I knew that 
 
 Queen Isabel was persona gratissirna at 
 the Vatican. She was the first Catholic 
 sovereign to signify her acceptance of the 
 doctrine of the Immaculate Conception as 
 a dogma of faith, and she had always done 
 her utmost to further the interests of the 
 Church. I felt that I could not have had 
 a better advocate, and it seemed to me that 
 I had only to go and see the Pope in order 
 to be released from a crushing burden. 
 
 Wearing the costume which every wo- 
 man, be she Princess or peasant, must wear 
 when she is received in audience by the 
 Pope, a black dress and mantilla, I arrived 
 at the Bronze Gates of the Vatican. The 
 magnificent staircase was lined with sol- 
 diers in the picturesque uniform Michael 
 Angelo designed for them, and I was 
 promptly made the center of a little pro- 
 cession. On either side of me walked an 
 urbane ecclesiastic — in palaces one seems 
 to spend half one's time walking between 
 two polite and deferential individuals — 
 and before and behind marched soldiers of 
 the Noble Guard. We passed through a 
 series of splendid halls to the papal ante- 
 chamber. A door was opened, and I passed 
 alone into the presence of the Supreme 
 Pontiff. I made a genuflexion as I en- 
 tered, another in the middle of the room 
 and a third as, feeling rather like a grass- 
 hopper, I reached the chair in which the 
 Holy Father was seated. He bade me sit 
 down, and with great kindness thanked me 
 for all that I had done for the Church and 
 commended my zeal and piety. Being 
 conscious that I did not deserve these en- 
 comiums, I felt a little surprised, and 
 quickly realized that Leo XIII did not 
 know who I was and mistook me for my 
 sister, the Infanta Paz, who is never hap- 
 pier than when she is advancing the inter- 
 ests of the Church in Bavaria, her adopted 
 country. I quickly explained that I was 
 the Infanta Eulalia and presented the let- 
 ter I had brought for him from Queen 
 Isabel, telling him that it was my moth- 
 er's appeal to him to have the marriage 
 which had ruined my life annulled. He 
 took the letter and held it, but he did not 
 read it. 
 
 "Her Majesty's request shall be consid- 
 
30 
 
 CABBAGES AND KINGS 
 
 ered by the Sacred College," he said, and 
 began to speak to me in a manner which, 
 I have no doubt, he thought might be of 
 spiritual benefit to me and might give me 
 comfort. But I had not come for comfort 
 or to listen to spiritual exhortations. I 
 went to see the Pope as I should have gone 
 to see a lawyer, hoping that the Head of 
 the Catholic Church would put the law in 
 motion and give me the freedom I felt cer- 
 tain that that law permitted. But His 
 Holiness refused to play the part I had as- 
 signed to him and spoke as priests speak. 
 
 "Ah!" he said, when I had told him of 
 the unbearable position in which I was 
 placed, tied to a husband with whom I 
 had no sympathy and who spent his time 
 with another woman, "this life is a trial, 
 and you must bow to the will of God ; but 
 we shall try to do what we can for you." 
 
 And doubtless these were suitable words 
 to fall from the lips of a Pope, yet they 
 seemed to me strange. I had not come 
 into his presence inspired with the awe 
 and sense of mystery which most people 
 feel at a papal audience. I was perfectly 
 cool and in a critical frame of mind, and 
 it seemed to me extraordinary to listen to 
 such advice from a man who, in spite of 
 his white cassock, reminded me of the pic- 
 tures and statues I had seen of Voltaire. 
 The Pope's face seemed to me exactly like 
 that of the French atheist as it appears in 
 the marble statue placed by Frederick the 
 Great in the palace of Mon Repos at Pots- 
 dam, where the philosopher used to stay 
 with the King. The face of the aged Pope 
 was so shrunk, that there seemed nothing 
 of it left but the yellowed skin stretched 
 over the bones. And when he turned to 
 me, I saw shining in the midst of that 
 shrivelled countenance, the face of a man 
 who had lived through the centuries, dark 
 eyes so brilliant and so alert that their 
 glance seemed to pierce one, to scorch one 
 like a flame. 
 
 "Was he speaking what he felt?" I 
 asked myself, "or was he merely repeating 
 words he considered it was the duty of a 
 Pope to use?" 
 
 I had no intention of feigning a submis- 
 sion to fate which I did not feel, and I 
 
 made this evident to His Holiaess when 
 he told me to bow to the will of God. 
 
 "That is all very well," I said, "but 
 Your Holiness must see that I am placed 
 in a terrible position," and I explained 
 that the Napoleonic code puts a woman in 
 a situation of servility, entirely under the 
 control of her husband, whether they are 
 living together or apart. 
 
 "I desire to remain a faithful daughter 
 of the Church in which I have been born, 
 but the circumstances in which I am 
 placed are harmful to the life of my soul. 
 I find in my heart great bitterness against 
 my husband, and even the very name of 
 Napoleon is detestable to me because of 
 the code he framed and under which I 
 suffer." 
 
 Leo XIII smiled when I spoke of my 
 detestation of Napoleon and was. evidently 
 amused. 
 
 "My daughter," he said, "it is the 
 chosen of God who are chastened. We 
 ought to thank Him for sending us trials, 
 and you may be certain that you will have 
 your reward." 
 
 But I w r as not to be put off by such 
 phrases, and I continued to urge my point. 
 
 "It is so sad for my children," I said, 
 "that I should remain in this terrible po- 
 sition. As Your Holiness is aware, any 
 fortune which I have can, according to 
 law, be claimed by my husband. The law 
 gives him the right to dispose of it as he 
 likes, while I am deprived of the right of 
 leaving it to my children. And I need not 
 tell Your Holiness to whom he will prob- 
 ably give it." 
 
 Leo XIII turned and fixed his piercing 
 eyes upon me. 
 
 "I hope that, with time," he said, speak- 
 ing slowly, "your husband's heart will be 
 touched by the grace of God, that he will 
 leave this woman and come back to you. 
 
 That was the last straw. Nothing 
 could have been more distasteful to me 
 than the prospect the Pope held out, and I 
 saw that it was useless to continue the 
 conversation ; moreover, we had been talk- 
 ing for three-quarters of an hour and it 
 appeared to me that the Pope was drop- 
 ping off to sleep. I rose. 
 
THE COURTS OF ITALY 
 
 31 
 
 "Your Holiness is fatigued," I said, and 
 retired without waiting for him to say 
 that the audience was ended. 
 
 They were very angry with me for not 
 conforming to the prescribed etiquette, 
 and I was told that I had behaved very 
 badly. It was undoubtedly very kind of 
 the Holy Father, who was then old and 
 feeble, to give me so long an audience, but 
 I think he must have been relieved when I 
 somewhat abruptly terminated it. 
 
 After my visit to the Pope, I went to 
 see the Secretary-of-State, Cardinal Ram- 
 polla, a man with a fine presence and the 
 perfect manner of a Sicilian nobleman. I 
 repeated to him the arguments I had 
 placed before the Pope and told him of my 
 mother's great desire to know that my 
 marriage was annulled before she died. 
 He was exceedingly polite and said the 
 matter should be considered, but he was 
 careful not to commit himself. And I 
 made a point to go and see all the Cardi- 
 nals who were then in Rome, and to put 
 my case before them. They were all ex- 
 cessively urbane, and all of them assured 
 me that the question would be most care- 
 fully examined. 
 
 From that day to this I have never 
 heard another word about it, and no an- 
 swer was ever sent by Rome to Queen 
 Isabel's letter. I am still convinced that 
 according to ecclesiastical law my mar- 
 riage could be annulled on the ground 
 that I was forced into it against my will, 
 but I now realize that I merely wasted my 
 time in going to Rome. The scandal 
 created by the annulment of the marriage 
 of a Spanish Infanta would be too great, 
 and to avoid it the Church refuses to put 
 her law into operation. 
 
 The Italian Royal family was probably 
 not entirely gratified by my visit to the 
 Vatican ; but I was able to smooth matters 
 over when I met the King elsewhere, and 
 he was really very nice about it. He has 
 been placed under a ban by the Vatican, 
 but this fact does not weigh heavily on 
 him, for he is not a man to fear ecclesias- 
 tical censure, and his standpoint is rather 
 that of a free-thinker than of a Catholic. 
 Nevertheless, he would welcome an agree- 
 
 ment with the Vatican which would put 
 
 an end to a trying situation, and change 
 for the better the present unfriendly rela- 
 tions existing between the papal Court and 
 the Quirinal. I knew the King when he 
 was Prince of Naples, and saw a good deal 
 of him when he came to England for the 
 marriage of the Due d'Aosta, as we were 
 both staying in the same hotel. He is one 
 of the most intelligent Kings I have met, 
 and remarkably well-informed. His hobby 
 is numismatics, and his love of old coins is 
 as great as the King of England's love of 
 postage stamps. He has, indeed, become 
 a notable authority on the subject. Before 
 his marriage, the King was a rather taciturn 
 man and his manner somewhat jerky. But 
 the charming Princess Elena brought some 
 spell with her when she left Montenegro 
 and came to Italy to be married to him, 
 for I have never known a man whom mar- 
 riage has so transformed. It seems to have 
 given him an altogether new zest for life 
 and great happiness. The simple, almost 
 patriarchal Court of Montenegro was an 
 excellent school for a modern Queen, and 
 translation to the more splendid Italian 
 Court has not spoilt Queen Elena; she has 
 preserved her love of simplicity, and she 
 follows with interest and sympathy the 
 democratic movement. 
 
 It seems to be the special prerogative of 
 a Queen Mother to be Queen of Hearts, 
 and Queen Margerita holds the same 
 place in the affection of the Italian people 
 as beautiful Queen Alexandra — has ever 
 a Queen been more beloved than she? — 
 holds in England, and the Empress Marie 
 in Russia. I paid a visit to her and King 
 Humbert at the Castle of Monza, their 
 summer home in the outskirts of the town 
 in which the kings of Lombardy were 
 crowned, and, although the etiquette of 
 the Court was severe, she had a charm 
 which made one tolerate the restrictions of 
 palace life. Those about her used to com- 
 plain that she hardly ever sat down. I 
 have remarked that several Queens, whom 
 I know, have this rather trying capacity 
 for standing, and, as nobody can sit while 
 they stand, their guests and their ladies 
 and gentlemen-in-waiting are sometimes a 
 
32 
 
 CABBAGES AND KINGS 
 
 good deal fatigued. Numbers of women 
 are not aware that they owe to Queen 
 Margerita the pretty fashion of wearing a 
 string of pearls in the daytime. But she 
 did not limit herself to the single string of 
 pearls worn by women of fashion, she was 
 simply hung with ropes of pearls morning, 
 noon and night, in fact I have never seen 
 her without them. 
 
 Although the King of Italy has made 
 Rome his capital, the other members of 
 the Royal Family have never gone to live 
 there, and continue to make their home in 
 Turin. In that city there are no less than 
 four Courts, for the Duke and Duchess of 
 Genoa, the Duke and Duchess of Aosta, 
 the Dowager Duchess of Aosta and the 
 King's sister, Princess Clothilde, all reside 
 there, and the exasperating etiquette pe- 
 culiar to Royal personages is rigorously 
 maintained in their palaces. Gentlemen-in- 
 vvaiting and ladies-in-waiting are always 
 in attendance on them, and it used to sur- 
 prise me that people could be found to 
 devote themselves to such an insufferably 
 dull occupation as that of serving in minia- 
 ture Courts, until I remembered that some 
 of them may be glad to do the work, if 
 work it can be called, for the sake of being 
 maintained and of receiving the salaries 
 attached to their offices. English prin- 
 cesses have the daily distraction of opening 
 bazaars, but little happens to enliven the 
 Courts of Turin. When I have stayed 
 there, the chief excitement of the day has 
 invariably been a drive to a park outside 
 the city, where the Royal personages 
 walked for a little, attended by the inevi- 
 table ladies and gentlemen-in-waiting, and, 
 after half-an-hour of that mild form of 
 exercise, drove back to their homes. These 
 proceedings did not appear to awaken any 
 great interest in the citizens of Turin, for 
 in Italy, as in most other countries, the 
 public has ceased to concern itself about 
 the little doings of Princes and Princesses. 
 
 The Dowager Duchess of Aosta some- 
 times shows her independence by freeing 
 herself from the Royal bonds when she is 
 abroad, and I remember her once arriving 
 in Paris entirely unattended. She was 
 Princess Laetitia Bonaparte before her 
 
 marriage and enjoys the style oi Imperial 
 Highness, while, rather oddly, the young 
 Duchess of Aosta is a Princess of the house 
 of Bourbon and sister of the Due d'Or- 
 leans. She is a somewhat masculine type 
 of woman, and spends a great deal of her 
 time in Abyssinia. She leaves her husband 
 and two boys and, with no companion ex- 
 cept an elderly Englishwoman, sets out on 
 a hunting expedition. She is lost in the 
 heart of Africa for months, and then sud- 
 denly reappears and settles down to the 
 hum-drum life of her palace. But soon 
 she hears again the call of the wild, and is 
 away once more. What she does in Abys- 
 sinia nobody knows, if one excepts the 
 elderly Englishwoman. The country seems 
 to have cast a spell on her, and she cannot 
 resist its fascination. The Duke of Genoa, 
 Queen Margerita's brother, and- his wife, 
 who is a Bavarian Princess, live in the 
 same palace as the Dowager Duchess of 
 Aosta, but their households are independ- 
 ent and, in point of fact, the two Duch- 
 esses rarely see each other. The Duke is 
 almost a recluse ; he spends several hours 
 in his private chapel every day, lost in 
 prayer and meditation. His piety, his 
 profound belief in the teaching of the 
 Catholic Church, his veneration for the 
 successors of St. Peter, have all doubtless 
 contributed to his determination to end his 
 days in Turin, and prevented his taking 
 part in the life of the Court established 
 by the Kings of Italy in the Roman palace 
 which, less than fifty years ago, belonged 
 to the Popes. 
 
 I was a little surprised the first time I 
 went to Turin to find that the Piedmont- 
 ese dialect of Italian was spoken in royal 
 circles. To understand what was said 
 sometimes required close attention, even 
 when one knew Italian well, and I have 
 found a similar difficulty in other Italian 
 cities. In Bologna, for instance, where I 
 have lived so much, the cultured classes, as 
 well as the peasants, talked dialect, and 
 traveling about Italy, one seemed con- 
 stantly under the necessity of learning new 
 words and phrases. 
 
 There are so many beautiful Italian 
 cities in which agreeable society may be 
 
THE COURTS OF ITALY 
 
 33 
 
 enjoyed that, had ' one to choose one in 
 which to live permanently, it would be 
 difficult to come to a decision. Venice is 
 one of the most adorable, and the time I 
 spent with Duke and Duchess of Genoa 
 at the King's palace there was a dream of 
 delight. But there is one objection, and 
 that a serious one, to a prolonged stay in 
 Venice, and that is the difficulty of getting 
 proper exercise. As everybody seemed 
 prepared to spoil me, when I was there, I 
 made it clear that it was essential for me 
 to do something more vigorous than glid- 
 ing down silent canals in a gondola or 
 strolling in the Piazza. It was therefore 
 arranged that I should play tennis at the 
 Arsenal, and that indulgence gave me the 
 one thing that seemed lacking in the 
 charming life of the city. Italians can 
 play tennis very well when they choose, 
 and Monsignor Montagnini, the Papal 
 Legate who was turned out of France 
 when diplomatic relations between the Re- 
 
 public and the Vatican were ruptured, and 
 who played so false to me was a case in 
 point. He played an excellent game, and 
 we often had a set together in Paris. Lit- 
 tle did I guess what his means were and 
 never will I forget his false behavior when 
 his papers were captured. In Venice, too, 
 I found some good players, and so man- 
 aged to get the vigorous exercise I 
 needed. Apart from this, I lived the life 
 of the Venetians, walked in the Piazza 
 from half-past eleven to half-past twelve, 
 took the air in a gondola about half-past 
 five, went occasionally to the opera at the 
 Fenice, that most exquisite of theatres, and 
 ended the day by dancing in the enchanted 
 palaces that rise from the sea. It was 
 often sunrise when I stepped into a royal 
 barge with gondoliers in scarlet and, to 
 the rhythmic music of oars that cut the 
 water and the splash of the spray that fell 
 from their blades, floated through the rosy 
 dawn to the Royal Palace. 
 
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