An Introduction To The Eternal Collection Jubilee Edition (83 page)

‘Will Your Serene Highness permit me to present my niece?’ she enquired, and added to Mistral, ‘This is the son of the Grand Duke Ivan of Russia, dear. When I came here many years ago, the Grand Duke was the only distinguished visitor to the Principality – a very handsome man and his son takes after him.’

Mistral curtsied.

The Prince kissed her hand, and having looked once into her dark eyes, he looked again. Eagerly he turned to Emilie.

‘Will you permit me to offer you,
Madame
, and, your niece, a little supper? My father would wish me to be courteous to an old friend of his.’

That was how it had all begun, Mistral thought, and now day after day it seemed to her as if she became more involved in this strange web which Emilie was weaving around the Prince and herself.

There was nothing she could say, nothing she could do except obey her aunt, and now standing at the top of the Chapel steps, she was sure that this
tête-á-tête
with the Prince, unchaperoned, had been planned by Emilie. It was by no means a spontaneous invitation on the Prince’s part to invite her to drive with him – whether he knew it or not – and somehow it took all the pleasures from everything to know that it was all planned, all part of some strange puzzle to which only her aunt held the key.

Once again she longed to obey an inner impulse and refuse the Prince’s invitation and say that she would walk home with Jeanne, but she knew, even as she thought of it, that it was impossible. Even when she was not there Aunt Emilie’s presence could be felt, even though they were not spoken aloud, her orders were clear and unchallengeable.

‘I will walk home,
Mademoiselle
,’ Jeanne said quietly, and Mistral was sure that she, too, had had her instructions.

‘Very well, Jeanne,’ she said, and without looking at the Prince she walked down the steps of the Chapel. A footman in gorgeous livery assisted her into the carriage. He had a strange face, Mistral thought, with almond-shaped eyes and high cheekbones.

As he shut the door behind the Prince and climbed up on the box, Mistral said,

‘What nationality is your footman? He looks like a Chinese.’

‘Actually he is a Russian,’ the Prince replied, ‘but he was born on the borders of Siberia and Tibet. He has been my personal servant since I was a babe. I call him my Keeper, for he guards me both day and night. In the daytime he is always in attendance on me, and at night he sleeps on the threshold of my room. No harm can come to me when Potoc is about.’ ‘How romantic it all sounds!’ Mistral exclaimed.

The Prince laughed.

‘But like romance it can sometimes be terribly tiresome! You will agree with me because you, too, have a keeper!’

‘I?’

Mistral looked towards him in surprise.

‘Yes, you,’ the Prince replied. ‘Your aunt is a dragon. She frightens me most terribly.’

‘I too, am frightened of Aunt Emilie,’ Mistral confessed, ‘but I cannot see why
you
should be frightened of her. She is always very nice to you.’

I think that is what frightens me,’ the Prince said, but he smiled and there was obviously no truth in his assertion. ‘But tell me about yourself, little
Mademoiselle
, why do you always wear grey?’

He touched Mistral’s skirt as he spoke, for the wide folds of grey foulard were spread wide over the carriage seat, and then he looked at the soft fichu of grey muslin crossed over her breast and at the tiny bonnet trimmed with grey feathers which did little to conceal the shining beauty of her hair.

‘I cannot answer that question,’ Mistral faltered.

‘Why not? Is it a secret – like your real identity and that of your aunt?’

‘Yes – I suppose so! ‘

‘Clever – very clever.’

The Prince seemed to be speaking to himself.

Then he added,

‘But must we have secrets from one another – you and I? Now that we are alone, an unexpected privilege, let us talk about you, most adorable little grey
fântóme
and forget the rest of the world for a little while, including your aunt.’

Mistral pressed her fingers together in her lap.

There was something in the Prince’s tone, in the caressing, almost possessive note in his voice, which made her want to run away. They were driving along the shore. She wanted to look at the sea, at the lemon groves on the other side of the road, at the hillside beyond them on which the sheep were grazing, but instead she dared not let her attention wander from the man at her side.

She liked the Prince because he always laughed and joked.

He was very young and very gay, and yet whenever the opportunity arose, he said things to her which made her shiver inside, and feel the blood rise in her cheeks.

It was not so much what he said as the way in which he said it and the feeling that she had that he was playing with her all the time, that his compliments, elegant though they were, were not sincere but part of a game which she did not understand.

‘I have no wish to talk about myself,’ Mistral said hastily. ‘It is a dull subject, and besides, there is very little I can tell you. Tell me instead about the countryside and who live in all these magnificent villas.’

‘Why should I know or think of such dull prosaic things,’ the Prince said, as he leant forward to look into her face, his eyes resting on her lips, ‘when at the moment all that is of interest to me is here in this carriage – within reach of my arms?’

But you must know,’ Mistral insisted, speaking quickly because she was uncomfortable beneath his scrutiny and felt herself blushing at the implication in his words. ‘Where do you live, for instance? With your father?’

The Prince’s attention was diverted for an instant by this question.

‘So you are a little curious about me?’ he exclaimed. ‘No, I no longer live with my father. When I was twenty-one two months ago, he gave me a villa of my own. My father is old- fashioned and his
Chateau
is near the Palace in the old and quiet part of Monaco. My villa is very smart and very new. It is high up above the new town, on the road to Monte Agel. There I am on my own to do as I like, behave as I wish! It is magnificent – that feeling of independence.’

‘How lucky you are!’

Mistral spoke with a sudden heartfelt sincerity. She wished at that moment that she, too, could live her own life and do as she liked.

‘One day I would like to show you my villa,’ the Prince said, his eyes on Mistral’s face once again. ‘Will you come and visit me? I would like that, but I suppose we shall have to ask your aunt. There are many other things I would like to show you, too, such as the Corniche Road by moonlight – if we could be alone.’

‘My aunt would never allow that,’ Mistral said quickly.

‘I wonder if I could persuade her,’ the Prince said reflectively.

‘No, please do not try.’

Mistral’s voice was almost panic stricken, but now the Prince put out his hand and took hers from her lap. It trembled beneath his fingers like the fluttering of a captured bird.

‘I believe you are really frightened of me,’ he exclaimed. ‘Why, you silly little thing, there is nothing to frighten you. I would never hurt you.’

His tone was unexpectedly kind and gentle, and suddenly Mistral felt her eyes filling with tears.

‘It is not – that – I am – really frightened,’ she stammered. ‘It is just – that I do not – understand.’

‘What don’t you understand?’ the Prince asked, ‘and please don’t cry. You are so sweet that I wouldn’t do anything to distress you.’

‘I am sorry to be so stupid,’ Mistral said, freeing her hand to grope for a handkerchief.

The Prince supplied one from his own pocket. It was of soft linen and smelt of orange blossom.

Mistral wiped her eyes and offered it back to him.

‘I – am ashamed – of myself,’ she whispered.

The Prince’s face was suddenly serious. He took the handkerchief and put it away in his breast pocket.

‘Now let us speak frankly,’ he said in quite a different tone. ‘Why are you upset and why are you frightened of me? Tell me the truth and I will try to help you if I can.’

Mistral looked up into his face. There was something new in his expression which reassured her, and she answered slowly,

‘It is so – difficult to put what I feel into words – but when you talk to me – like you did just now you seem to be laughing at me and – at the same time – compelling me to do something that I do not want to do – even though I do not know what it is! There is something underneath what you say – a different meaning from the words you use – Oh, dear, I cannot explain. How stupid I – must sound to you – you will not understand – ’

‘I think I do understand,’ the Prince said quietly. ‘You are very young and you have only just come from a Convent. Your aunt told me that. It is true, isn’t it?’

Mistral nodded.

‘You have never been made love to, and yet you are so beautiful that every man who sees you will want to make love to you. What is frightening you is love. Does that make it seem any better?’

‘I do not think so,’ Mistral answered truthfully. ‘I did not think somehow that – love would be like that. I have thought about it, of course, and the girls at the Convent often spoke about men and love, but – I thought it would be more – sacred – something holy.’

There was a little pause and then the Prince said quietly ‘You are right! Real love is like that, but – there are many kinds of love.’

‘Oh, I see!’ Mistral said. ‘And what one ordinarily meets is the – other kind?’

‘Exactly! In fact that is what one meets almost invariably in a place like Monte Carlo.’

Mistral puckered her forehead.

‘It is not serious then – just something to laugh about?’

‘Where most people are concerned.’

‘It – it doesn’t make me want to laugh somehow, but – but I will try.’

The Prince made a movement.

‘No,’ he said quickly. ‘Just be yourself, do not pretend, do not act a part you do not feel.’

Mistral raised large troubled eyes to his face.

‘Then what can I do?’ she asked.

The Prince looked out to sea.

‘You are too young to be here,’ he said.

‘Here?’ Mistral asked. ‘With you?’

‘Yes,’ the Prince answered, ‘but I didn’t mean that a moment ago. Now that I think of it, you should not be driving with me un-chaperoned any more than you should be wandering about Monte Carlo with your aunt, being talked about and gossiped about by every wagging tongue in the place.’

‘But why should people talk about me?’ Mistral asked.

The Prince glanced at her sharply as if he suspected the very innocence of her question, and then, when he saw that she had asked it in all simplicity, he laughed gently and taking one of her hands he slipped it through his arm and patted it reassuringly as a brother might comfort a favourite sister.

‘Don’t worry your head about such things now,’ he said, just try and enjoy our drive together. It is a lovely day and there is nothing to frighten either of us.’

There was an extraordinary change in him which Mistral sensed but could not explain. She smiled up at him without embarrassment and the colour came back into her cheeks.

‘I am going to tell you all the things that you want to know as we drive along,’ the Prince went on, and soon he was holding her entranced with his stories of the Principality.

Sister Heloise at the Convent had talked to her of
St. Dévote
and of the beauty of Monaco, but she had only been a simple woman and it was from the Prince that Mistral learned a little of the history of the famous rock.

He told her how in the Stone Age the first inhabitants of Monaco lived in caves overlooking the sea. How later the place was occupied by, the Phoenicians during their voyages of discovery round the Mediterranean, and how they erected a temple to Mallart, the God of the Sun and all living things.

The legend Mistral liked best was how the Greeks identified the Phoenician God with Hercules and how it was at Monaco that Hercules had performed one of his twelve labours and carried off the golden apples from the dragon-defended garden of the Hesperides.

‘Of course everyone in Monaco today maintains that those golden apples were our own succulent golden oranges!’ the Prince laughed.

‘Tell me more,’ Mistral begged.

So he showed her where Caesar embarked for his campaign against Pompey and where in the year 7 B.C. the gigantic statue of Augustus was erected on the heights of
La Tuibie
to commemorate his final victory over the Gauls.

It was easy for Mistral to visualise all the Prince told her, for high above the white houses and russet-red roofs of Monte Carlo she could dimly discern the rock villages which hung like birds’ nests on the mountain crags. There, reached by old, old mule paths, were twisted trees planted by Ligurians or Romans and ancient archways between leaning peasant houses.

There, too, the Prince told her, were men and women with dark Saracenic eyes, who sang the age old songs of the wandering troubadours from Provence or the strange lilting music of Moorish chants.

‘I would love to hear them,’ Mistral cried.

‘One day I will take you there,’ the Prince promised. But she no longer shrank from the idea of being with him and answered confidently.

‘I would like that. Please tell me more. How much there is to know about Monte Carlo besides the fact that it has a Casino!’

‘There is an old proverb,’ the Prince replied, ‘which says, “The shine of gold makes me blind.”’

‘So they are blind to all this,’ Mistral sighed, looking to where a shepherd boy, wearing a mantle of goat skin and playing a flute like those played a thousand years earlier by his Grecian forbears, was tending a flock of fleecy sheep in a field of scented clover.

In more modern times the history of Monaco grew sad and stormy and the Prince related how the powerful patrician families of Guelf and Ghibelline turned the place into a battlefield, how the brilliance and prosperity begun during the reign of Prince Honoré II was swept away by the French Revolution. Prince Honoré had been intelligent and a lover of beauty, he had brought to the Palace a splendid collection of works of art and founded a picture gallery which contained paintings by the greatest artists of the Renaissance.