Princess Sophia

“ Some ten days of this little holiday, it is true, he makes a rule of spending with his mother, the Princess Sophia, in her charming villa on the olive-clad hills above Monte Carlo; but one would think there could be no great intimacy between so diverse-minded a pair. But of this the reader will judge later. For the present it may be said that the Princess’s time is largely spent at the tables, while the Prince, on ascending the throne of Rhodopé, suppressed once{13} and for all the gambling which at one time threatened to undermine the very foundations of the State. ”

“ It was absolutely necessary that the exercise of royal functions by the Princess Sophia should appear to go on in its usual way; any stoppage would be a signal for a revolution. In order that this plan should be carried out, I must act for the princess regent; I must do what I thought right, and it must be done in her name, exactly as if she had ordered it. I assumed the responsibilities without hesitation. While it was supposed I was merely the private secretary of the princess, acting as her agent and mouthpiece, I was in fact the ruler of all the Russias. ”

“ Did a man ever hear the equal of that? Oh, Petros, you are unapproachable!’ and she looked at him for the first time.
Then she turned to Malakopf: ‘You spoke of the strange whims of the House of Ægina,’ she said. ‘The strangest of all their whims was on the day that you were made Prime Minister. I heard you{197} ask, “Who, after all, is the Princess Sophia?” I, after all, am the Princess Sophia! “Where is the Princess Sophia?” you asked. Malakopf, I am here. ”

“ Because you drink tea with Princess Sophia, and see her in her stays, you think you know her better than I. Perhaps you know the people better also. I, at any rate, know that she is capable of almost anything—certainly of any piece of extravagant folly, but also, I am afraid, of a consummate stroke of Statecraft. If I were to take to prophesying in your spirit, an uneasy man would be standing in your shoes. You don’t see a quarter of the possible risks we may have to run, but you see no more of our possible opportunities. ”

“ And it is the events by which Prince Leonard came to the throne, and was enabled to rescue his kingdom from its imminent dissolution in the lifetime of his mother, the reigning Princess Sophia of Rhodopé, that this story tells.{17}
CHAPTER I.
THE GIRL IS MOTHER TO THE WOMAN. Princess Sophia’s father, the reigning Prince Leonard’s grandfather, was a man extraordinarily truculent in disposition, with a hand of iron under no velvet glove, and a temper frankly diabolical. His wife, the Grand Duchess Fedora, had died in giving birth to his only child, the Princess Sophia ”

“ Sophia got up from the table, and went indoors to the nursery to see the adorable Leonard, the four-months-old baby. Petros’s arrangement seemed to her to be in every way admirable. Apart from the convenience of getting away when she wanted, it gave her the opportunity of getting away alone. She was fond of her husband, but constantly irritated by him. She had no idea of letting herself be schooled by him into dependence, to be taught the duty of royalty by him, and she never forgot that she was Princess of Rhodopé, and he her husband. ”

“ To her Prince Petros, in a moment of unguarded confidence, had hinted at the upshot of this night’s work, and when she saw Sophia her voluminous bodice remained expanded with a quick-taken breath, and the two for a moment looked at each other in silence. Sophia recovered herself first.
‘Oh, I am even as delighted and surprised to see you, dear Princess,’ she cried, ‘as you are to see me. I appear like the man in the moon, do I not? It is ages since we met. Where is Petros, you ask me? ”

“ Sophia had her left wrist, but Daria did not look at her: her eyes were riveted upon the sight below, her nostrils dilated, her breath came quickly; I saw her right hand clench. The voice of the mob echoed about us; a raven, frightened by the noise, burst into the window and flew over our heads, beating its wings against the roof in its efforts to escape. Looking at the princess, I felt that she too, was like a captive bird, but still she gazed below and I looked again also, and saw them kill a boyar and dash his brains out on the pavement. I cursed Sophia in my heart as a fiend. ”

“ It should have been built in a day, like a fairy-palace, to pleasure you. And Pierre, Pierre is just the man—sober and steady, and full of the divine fire. I remember his laying his hand on his heart one night after one of those evenings, those dear evenings, we spent together at Monte Carlo, and saying: “I adore the Princess! None plays so finely as she!”’
Sophia was charmed with his readiness to take her idea up.
‘At last, and at last!’ she cried. ‘Oh, Petros, my soul is sick for roulette!’
‘Poor dear Sophia,’ said he, ‘and I am afraid you find me grown very dull. ”

“ Oh, I cannot stop; I must go and rub the lesson in. He has a horror of making himself ridiculous. Perhaps this will cure him for awhile.’
Sophia went straight back to the Palace, where the servants were all agape to see her return so early, and to Leonard’s room. He had got there only a moment before her, since she had taken the short-cut through the private door in the Palace garden, and he was tearing the detected finery from him. On his bed lay the hat, a perfect garden of magenta roses and sage-green ribbons, and he was even then wrestling with the hooks and eyes of the bodice. ”

“ I should request her to come home.’
‘Then you would be acting unwisely,’ said Malakopf, knowing he had done right to open this point. ‘Do you not see that the more hopelessly she beggars herself, and the more deeply she gets into debt to someone, you or another, by so much the more are our plans advanced? If we are to overthrow the dynasty—dethrone the Princess Sophia, I mean—she must meet us half-way; she must run to meet her ruin.’
‘I am sure she would not apply to you for money,’ said Petros—‘not directly, at least.’
‘Indirectly, perhaps,’ suggested Malakopf. ”

“ Sophia soon grew considerably exercised about the boy. She had begun to see that the atmosphere of the Palace of Amandos was not entirely wholesome. He was not disciplined in any way, which she considered the worst preparation for a lad who would one day be an autocratic Sovereign. She compared the escapades of her own youth with his, and had to confess that she, at any rate, had been a little in awe of her father. She had often revolted, but with an uneasy feeling that consequences might follow, and thus disobedience had its drawbacks. ”

“ Princess Sophia was far too well entertained by the farcical absurdity of the conspiracy to be really angry at present with her husband. Malakopf, however, less simple-witted and much older, was not so lightly dismissed. She knew the man to be cunning, and one whose investments might be considered{136} safe, and she fumed at the idea of a centipede conspiring against her.
‘But there is one point which perplexes me,’ she said to Blanche. ‘Petros and that creature are in league together, that is certain, and Petros, poor dear, I have no doubt whatever, thrones himself prospectively over Rhodopé. ”

“ Not long after this she fell into an uneasy doze, and dreamed that the kingdom of Rhodopé was a bright little round thing, like a roulette-marble. She and Sophia had gone out for a walk together, and Sophia had dropped it, and now she and the Princess were hunting for it in the snow. Others were hunting for it, too. Gray, uncanny shapes like wolves trotted incessantly about; some were like Malakopf, some reminded her of Prince Petros, others had terrible whiskers and green eyes ”

“ Prince Demetrius gloomily threatened his daughter with the prospect of being an old maid all her life, but she only put her pretty nose in the air, and said ‘Hoots!’—a word she had picked up from Blanche, and thought very expressive of certain shades of feeling.{33}
CHAPTER II.
A FOOL COMES TO RHODOPÉ. Till the time she was twenty-one Princess Sophia lived quietly enough at Amandos, paying visits occasionally abroad, but passing a full ten months of the year in Rhodopé. ”

“ The princess immediately rose, and said, " "O yes," and held out her two hands to her; turning at the same time to me, and saying, "Princess Sophia."
I found it was the Duke of Gloucester's (154) daughter. She is very fat, with very fine eyes, a bright, even dazzling bloom, fine teeth, a beautiful skin, and a look of extreme modesty and sweetness. She curtseyed to me so distinguishingly, that I was almost confused by her condescension, fearing she 'Might imagine, from finding me seated with the Princess 'Augusta, and in such close conference, I was somebody. ”

“ It was tacitly understood between her and Petros that the Prince would not accompany her, and such had been the success of his Regency the year before that now Sophia begged him never to send her anything referring, however remotely, to State matters.
‘I am sick of the sceptre!’ she said to him the day before she left; ‘and you, Petros, are still rather fond of it. Oh, you remind me so much of a child dressing up in Court finery; when it comes to put the finery on in earnest, how bored it is! ”

“ The day for the reading of the Bill arrived, and the House was packed. The business of the day was transacted with immense indifference and rapidity, and when it was finished a dead dense silence fell on the Assembly. Then Prince Petros rose from the throne, and stepped forward to the edge of the little platform, where sat the monarch and the Ministers.
‘Gentlemen,’ he said, ‘Her Royal Highness the Princess Sophia has bid me read to you the text of a Bill she introduces through me. On this Bill I shall myself speak on December the thirty-first, immediately before the rising of the House. ”

“ The month of April this year had been peculiarly seasonable; the lucid atmosphere of summer had come, but not its heats; the freshness of spring remained, but its armoury of squalls was spent, and seldom in her life had the Princess enjoyed a more delectable score of days. Her Ministers at Rhodopé, she was pleased to observe, at length entirely understood her, and the completeness with which they indulged her intolerance of State affairs was worthy of the Regency of Petros. ”

“ But before long Sophia made him feel his own man again. She grew up with the foot of the roe-deer and the eye of the hawk, and her imperative craving for excitement in some form or other kept her father on incessant tenterhooks as to what she might choose to do next. By no means the earliest of her escapades was at the age of ten, when he found her sitting with the grooms in the stable-yard, cross-legged on the horse-block, and smoking a cigarette. ”

“ Every half-mile there was a fresh relay of a hundred, who ran with them their appointed course, and then, throwing their torches in the air by way of salute, gave way to the next. The port was one blaze of coloured light, and the yacht Felatrune{58} a ship from Fairyland. Sophia, warm-hearted and impulsive, was greatly affected by the enthusiasm of the people; it was for her they had made the darkness many-coloured; it was the wishes for her happiness that turned the wonted silence of night into a chorus of sound. Once during the drive down she had touched Petros on the arm. ”

“ Leonard arrived late in the evening, and found her with a few friends playing baccarat. His mother threw down her cards when he entered.
‘Dearest Leonard!’ she cried; ‘but I should scarcely have known you. How you have grown, and how you have improved! I am so delighted to see you again! Have you dined?’
Indeed, any mother might have been proud of him. He had grown up tall, well-looking, and with an extraordinary frankness and charm of manner. Though he was still but seventeen, he looked almost a man, and Princess Sophia felt how wise she had been to send him to school. ”

“ At this period the princess Sophia died, in the eighty-fourth year of her age; and her death was intimated to the queen by baron Bothmar, who arrived in England with the character of envoy-extraordinary from the elector of Hanover. This princess was the fourth and youngest daughter of Frederick, elector Palatine, king of Bohemia, and Elizabeth daughter of king James I. of England. She enjoyed from nature an excellent capacity, which was finely cultivated ”

“ Valetta start from Tilbury, bearing Prince Leonard, his tutor, and the little rope-rings out into the siren-haunted mists of the mouth of the Thames.{239}
CHAPTER XIII.
THE PLAGUE-SPOT SPREADS. A few days afterwards Princess Sophia herself started on her return to Rhodopé. The Felatrune was to meet her at Monte Carlo, but she crossed France overland. Her original scheme had been to go by sea all the way, but this saving of time caused by crossing the Continent gave her a balance of eight days, which she proposed to spend on the Riviera, where she lost a good deal of money. ”

“ He had not come, and already Sophia had passed through the folding dining-room doors, and the others were following. The arrangement of the table had been thrown hopelessly out of gear by these alterations, but Sophia did not have Malakopf’s chair removed. She herself, with an extraordinary naturalness of manner, talked and laughed and ate and drank heartily and with great enjoyment, and Princess Caroline grew momently more thunderous in aspect and more apprehensive.
The dinner had been later than usual, and it was nearly ten when the dessert was put on. Suddenly Sophia rose. ”