addressed; charged to watch and remove "suspects," I myself appeared to be the most suspected of all!

Nevertheless, I resolved that I would not be denied. I organised my service without the knowledge of our guests. Every morning, I returned to see General Berzeviczy. Avoiding any allusion to the real object of my visit, I did my best to overcome his coldness. The general was a very kind man at heart and a charming talker. I therefore told him the gossip of the day, the news from Paris, the tittle-tattle of Aix. I advised excursions, pointed out the curiosities worth seeing, conscientiously fulfilled my part as a Baedeker, and, when I carelessly questioned the general concerning the Empress's intentions as to the employment of her day, he forgot himself to the extent of telling me. This was all that I wanted to know.

In a week's time we were the best of friends. The Empress had condescended to appreciate my frankness in daily covering the table with newspapers and reviews. She gradually became accustomed to seeing me appear just in time to forestall her wishes. The game was won; and, when, later, curious to know the cause of what appeared to me to have been a misunderstanding, I asked General Berzeviczy to explain the reason of his disconcerting reception, he replied:

"It was simply because, when we go abroad, they generally send us officials who, under the pretext of protecting us, terrorise us. They appear to us like Banquo's ghost, with doleful faces and shifting eyes; they see assassins everywhere; they poison and embitter our holidays. That is why you appeared so suspicious to us at first."

"And now?"

"Now," he answered with a smile, "the experiment has been made. You have fortunately broken with an ugly tradition. In your case, we forget the official, and remember only the friend."

2.

In the course of the three visits which the Empress Elizabeth paid to France between 1895 and 1898, I had every opportunity of studying, in the intimacy of its daily life, that little wandering court swayed by the melancholy and fascinating figure of its sovereign. She led an active and solitary existence. Rising, winter and summer, at five o'clock, she began by taking a warm bath in distilled water, followed by electric massage, after which, even though it were still dark, she would go out into the air.

Clad in a black serge gown, ultra-simple in character, she walked at a smart pace along the paths of the garden, or, if it were raining, perambulated the long passages which run out of the halls or "lounges" of most hotels. Sometimes she would venture on the roads and look for a fine point of view—by preference, the top of a rock—from which she loved to watch the sunrise.

She returned at seven o'clock and breakfasted lightly on a cup of tea with a single biscuit. She then disappeared into her apartments and devoted two hours to her toilet.

Her second meal was taken at eleven and consisted of a cup of clear soup, an egg and one or two glasses of meat-juice, extracted every morning out of several pounds of fillet of beef by means of a special apparatus which accompanied her on her travels. She also tasted a light dish or two, with a preference for sweets. Immediately after lunch, she went out again, accompanied, this time, by her Greek reader.

This Greek reader was a very important person. He formed one of the suite on every journey. Selected from among the young scholars of the University of Athens, and often appointed by the Greek Government, he was changed year by year. I, for my part, have known three different readers. Their duties consisted in talking with the Empress in the Greek language, ancient and modern, both of which she spoke with equal facility.

This might have appeared to be a quaint fancy, but it was explained as soon as the Empress's mental condition was better understood. Haunted by a melancholy past, romantic by temperament and poetic by instinct, she had sought a refuge in literature and the arts. Greece personified in her imagination the land of beauty which her dreams incessantly evoked; she had a passionate love for antiquity, loved its artists and its poets; she wanted to be able, everywhere and at all times, when the obsession of her sorrowful memories became too intense, to escape from the pitiless phantoms that pursued her and in some way to isolate her thoughts from the realities of life. The scholarly conversation of the young Greek savant made this effort easier for her; in the varied and picturesque surroundings which her æsthetic tastes demanded, she took Homer and Plato for her companions; and thus to the delight of the eyes was added the most delicate satisfaction of the mind.

The Greek reader, therefore, was the faithful participator in her afternoon walks, which lasted until dusk, and the Empress often covered a distance of fifteen to twenty miles on end. For twenty years, she had obstinately refused to allow herself to be photographed; she dreaded the professional indiscretion of amateur photographers; and no sooner did she perceive a camera aimed in her direction than she quickly unfurled a black feather fan and modestly concealed her face, leaving nothing visible above the feathers but her great, wide, never-to-be-forgotten eyes, which had retained all the splendour and fire of her youth.

The young Greek's duties, however, were not confined to talking to the Empress on her walks. Sometimes the reader would read. Carrying a book which she had selected beforehand, he read a few chapters to her during the rests by the roadside, on the mountain-tops, or at the deserted edge of the sea. Later, he added the daily budget of cuttings from the newspapers and reviews which I prepared for Her Majesty, knowing the interest which she took in the current events of the day.

He also carried on his arm a dark garment—a skirt, in short. The Empress had the habit, in the course of her long walks, of changing the skirt in which she had started for one of a lighter material. It was a question of health and comfort. This little change of attire was effected in the most primitive fashion. The Empress would disappear behind a rock or a tree, while the reader, accustomed to this rapid and discreet proceeding, waited in the road, taking care to look the other way. The Empress handed him the skirt which she had cast off; and the walk was resumed.

On returning to the hotel, she made a frugal dinner, consisting sometimes merely of a bowl of iced milk and some raw eggs washed down with a glass of Tokay, an almost savage dietary to which she had forced herself in order to preserve the slimness of figure which she prized so highly. She took all her meals alone, in a private room, and seldom passed the evening with her suite. Its members hardly ever set eyes on her; sometimes the lady-in-waiting spent day after day without so much as seeing her imperial mistress.

Of the different places in France which Her Majesty visited, the one which she loved above all others was Cap Martin, the promontory which separates the Bay of Monaco from that of Mentone. She came here for three years in succession and returned to it each time with an equal pleasure. The softness of the climate, the wild beauty of the views, the splendour of the luxurious vegetation and the poetic solitude of the pine-forests and orange-groves, reminded her of her property of Achilleon in the island of Corfu and of her palace of Miramar on the shores of the Adriatic. She selected as her residence the enormous hotel that stands at the end of the point, among the tall pines, the fields of rosemary, the clusters of myrtle and arbutus.

The