Part 46

Dear L.,--We have been named to Paris.

Never did people have such a time getting away from a place.

All our furniture except a sofa and two chairs had been packed, and was already on the way to Paris.

The entire morning I was busy receiving notes and bouquets of all dimensions, tied with every imaginable national color.

We breakfasted with our colleagues from Germany, who had the apartment above us. While still at table a royal chamberlain announced that King Oscar was coming in half an hour to bid us good-by. Heavens! How could we receive his Majesty without carpets or curtains, only the sofa and two chairs! What a predicament! But our good and kind friends came bravely to the rescue. They offered to send down rugs, palms, and flowers, so that we could receive our royal guest in the curtainless room. Well, the palms and plants did certainly make the room look more inviting. J. camped on the one chair, and the King and I sat on the sofa. The King stayed half an hour. We were as sorry to leave him as he was to have us go. He kissed me on my forehead, and kissed J. on both cheeks, and said, "I shall come to Paris to see you."

J. escorted the King down-stairs and put him in his carriage, while I wiped away a tear.

The royal visit over, our borrowed plumes were returned. Hardly was the apartment bare again when there came a court lackey telling our bewildered valet that the "Crown Prince would be at the house in a short moment." Our colleagues most amiably sent the rugs, etc., down again, and we sat in state and waited.

The Prince came, bringing a large photograph of himself, and said many nice things, expressing his sorrow that we were going to leave Stockholm, and bade us good-by.

The time was gradually approaching when I should put on my hat to depart.

There were still a lot of things to be attended to at the last moment. Our people had to be bid good-by and paid, and thousands of trifles, as you may imagine, to be thought of, and I began to despair of getting away. I seriously proposed to J. to pretend to leave, bidding people good-by at the station, and stop at the first place, to return the next morning and finish quietly what seemed so impossible to do then.

What was our dismay, then, at receiving a telephone message from Prince Carl, asking if I could receive him. Of course, I answered I would be proud, and our colleagues above, learning of this new complication, sent, without begging, the useful and ornamental things which had adorned our salon before.

Prince Carl came. He brought me a little bunch of lilies-of-the-valley, intending a gentle allusion to my name. We were very sad at the idea that we were to part, but part we must, and pretty soon. The tired rugs were taken back once more.

Prince Eugen kindly telephoned that he wished to say good-by. It was already so late that there was no question of the rugs, for it was within an hour of our departure; therefore we were obliged to receive the Prince without any accessories. He came with a little offering of flowers. However, that did not make any difference, because we all stood up. It is the custom here in Stockholm that every one goes to the station to speed the parting guest. The station was overcrowded. We were showered with the good wishes of two hundred and fifty people, and flowers were in such quantities that we had to have an extra compartment for them.

PARIS, 1897-1902

PARIS, May, 1897.

Dear L.,--I can hardly believe that we have been here a month. The time has slipped by, as it has a way of doing when one is frightfully busy; in my case it was particularly exasperating.

Johan's secretary took rooms for us at the Hôtel Chatham, which was not a very good choice, as you will see.

The day for Johan to present his lettres de créance was fixed for the 20th of April. M. Crozier, the gentleman who introduces Ambassadors and Ministers to the President, appeared with two landaus, escorted by a detachment of the Garde Nationale.

The little courtyard of the hotel could not contain more than the carriages; the horsemen were obliged to stay in the very narrow rue Daunou, which they filled from one end to the other.

While the two gentlemen were exchanging their greetings I slipped out and walked down the rue de la Paix, which I found barred from the rue Daunou as far as the rue de Rivoli.

I felt very proud when I thought from whom it was barred.

I went into a shop while the brilliant cortège was passing and, feigning ignorance, asked the woman at the counter:

"What is this procession?"

"Oh! C'est un de ces diplomates" she said, shrugging her shoulders.

I left the shop without buying anything--a paltry revenge on my part; still it was a revenge.

We have found a suitable apartment in the rue Pierre Charron, and I have just now begun to look up some of my old friends. Alas! there are not many left, but those who are seem glad to see me. My first official visit was to Madame Faure. This was easily managed. I simply went on one of her reception-days. An Elysian master of ceremonies was waiting for me, and I followed him into the salon where Madame Faure sat, surrounded by numerous ladies. A servant wrestled in vain with my name, "Crone" being the only thing he seized, but the master of ceremonies announced to the President that I was the Danish Minister's wife, after which things went smoothly. To leave no doubt in the other guests' minds that I was a person of distinction and the wife of a Minister Madame Faure asked me innumerable questions about Monsieur le Ministre.

We were scarcely settled when there came the awful catastrophe of the burning of the Bazar de Charité, about which you have probably read. I had promised to go to it, and I can say that my life literally hung on a thread, for if my couturière had kept her word and sent my dress home at the time she promised I should certainly have gone and would probably have been burned up with the others. Marquise de Gallifet also owed her life to my not going. She came to make me a visit and lingered a little. This little saved her life. She entered the fated bazar just a moment before the fire broke out, and therefore managed to escape.

Frederikke and I drove to the offending dressmaker. (How I blessed her afterward!) When we passed the Cours la Reine we were very much astonished to see a man without a hat, very red in the face, waving two blackened hands in the most excited manner. He jumped into a cab and drove away as fast as the horse could gallop. Then we saw a young lady, bareheaded, in a light dress, rushing through the street, and another lady leaning up against the wall as if fainting. The air was filled with the smell of burning tar and straw, and we noticed some black smoke behind the houses. I thought it must come from a stable burning in the neighborhood. We had been so short a time in Paris that I did not realize how near we were to the street where the bazar was held.