The Fall of Prince Florestan of Monaco Part 2

Dr. Coulon was then shown in. A man of intellect, as I could see at the first glance. I set before him my army reform, and he was delighted with it. I touched upon the separation of church and state, and he said that it was not hard to be done at Monaco-in name, that is, but difficult indeed to be done in fact. Still he supposed the name of separation was what I wanted, and the gradual cessation of the stipends, which would put Monaco in accord with the modern movement. I then referred to education.

He shook his head, and answered, "I should be your Highness's sole supporter, and I am a materialist, and only tolerated here on account of my medical skill, and placed on the Council of Education because, as I am not in the habit of running my head against stone walls, I always side with the Jesuits."

I insisted on the vast improvement in the standard of secular education to be expected from the introduction of highly trained lay teachers, and said that the priests should be absolutely free to teach the children out of school hours.

His reply was a singular one, and shook me.

"Your Highness is a democrat," he said. "How then can your Highness impose your will in this matter upon a people who are unanimous? If your Highness wishes to escape individual responsibility for the existence of the present state of things, your Highness can dissolve the council of state and inst.i.tute an elective parliament. That parliament would consist, let us say, of twelve members. If so, eleven would be priests or Jesuits, and the twelfth M. Blanc of the Casino-a body which would resemble in complexion some of the school boards in your Highness's favourite England. Your Highness has a heavy task, and if that task be persevered in, I fear that the state of your Highness's nerves will be such as to require my prescriptions."

He was very free in his conversation, the old doctor, but it was a pleasing change after Baron Imberty and M. de Payan; not but what Abbe Ramin had much attracted me.

I did my best to charm Pere Pellico. I courted him as my other subjects courted me. He was expansive in manner; but I am not a fool, and though only twenty-four, I knew enough of human nature to see that there was another Pere Pellico underneath the smiling case-work which talked to me.

To my military reform he had no objection, provided I exempted Jesuit students from service. I answered that I would exempt all those at present in Monaco, to which he replied that he feared then that I should never have the pleasure of seeing any others. I thought to myself "here is"-but Pere Pellico smiled and slowly spoke again.

"Your Highness was thinking, I venture to imagine, that that would be an additional reason for hurrying your military reform. But I must crave the pardon of your Highness for speaking except in reply to your Highness. I have not the habit of courts."

I spoke then of the Church; he was indifferent-the salaries of his four professors could easily be got from Italy. I then touched upon education.

Pere Pellico, to my astonishment, exclaimed, "But on the contrary; my opinions are not different from those of your Highness. They are the same. But as a democrat I do not venture, although I may be wrong, to force them upon the people."

Here was a change of base.

"If I were your Highness," he continued, "I would dismiss the Council of State and call an elected parliament to frame a const.i.tution. That would be a more regular method of proceeding than limiting your own prerogative by the exercise of that very prerogative itself."

"Father," I replied, "is not the country somewhat small for the complicated machinery of parliament?"

"Why then not try a Plebiscite, 'yes' or 'no,' upon certain written propositions, as in Zurich?"

"How liberal a politician can afford to be when he has the people with him," I thought to myself as I bowed out Father Pellico.

For the next three weeks, until the end of February, things went smoothly with me. My great aunt bothered me so to marry a "nice steady young lady who would maintain the dignity of the Court, check the extravagance of the steward, and count the linen," that I got Dr. Coulon to tell her that she would die unless she removed to Nice. She preferred a short remove to a long one, and took herself off to my great relief. She was a very fussy, but a clever and a really good old lady. My army reform went well enough, and the church edict was fulminated without meeting with opposition. I bought, through Mr. Gambart, who often came to Nice, a charming Leighton and a glorious Watts, and a fine Verboeckhoven from M.

Blanc, as a beginning of the public collection. I moved the councils to the palace, and fitted up the public offices thus rendered vacant as my museum. I got M. Lucas at the Casino to improve his already admirable orchestra, to start a free school for instrumental music, and to play once a week in the town of Monaco instead of at Monte Carlo. I wrote to M. Gounod, whom I had the honour to count among my friends, to offer him the Louis Quinze rooms beyond the Chambre d'York, at the north-west corner of the Castle, with the most lovely view in both directions, and the prettiest decorations to my mind in all the palace, if he would come and stay with me as a permanent visitor, and countenance our musical efforts. I founded a school for modelling in clay, a cla.s.s in decorative art which I taught myself, and I made the arrangements for the reception of a troop of actors in the winter, and for the production of Gounod's "Jeanne d'Arc"-a piece which was suggested by Pere Pellico. In the palace itself I made many improvements. Of the Chambre d'York I left nothing but the pretty mosaic floor, but the room itself, which had been gilt from top to bottom, bed and all, by my great-grandfather to take out the taste of the Great French Revolution, during which the palace had been a poor-house, I turned into a meeting room for the Council of State.

My steam yacht had come with a temporary crew of English tars, and my two great 15-inch 60-ton Krupp guns-one for the terrace, seawards, and one for the garden, landwards-were ordered. The "reports" had been abolished; the nagging surveillance of the police had been abolished; the Church establishment had been abolished; and I then had nothing left to abolish but myself, the abolition of myself being a measure from which I shrank although, like King Leopold, I was ready to go if my subjects wished it.

The only one of my reforms which was really popular was the national army, which afforded all the young married men in the princ.i.p.ality a weekly holiday away from their wives. But Major Gasignol, who had a "soul above b.u.t.tons," used on parade when he was acting as adjutant to take an opportunity of reminding me of the days of glory when one of my ancestors, Grimaldi II., about the time of the Norman conquest of England, had delivered at Rome the Pope from the forces of no less a personage than the Emperor.

All this time, however, my education scheme and my subst.i.tution of an elective for a nominated council were in abeyance, the first on account of Pere Pellico's opposition, the second I might almost say on account of his support.

Dr. Coulon, consulted by me, often used to say, "Why does not your Highness throw the responsibility upon a parliament of leaving matters where they are?"

"But I wish to change them," I as often replied.

"I can understand that your Highness should wish to be thought to wish to change them, but further than that point I can not follow your Highness."

I seriously thought of clapping Dr. Coulon into prison for his impertinence, but then he was the only liberal in Monaco, and I was a liberal prince. How I wished, though, that my uncle had not been such a fool as to invite the Jesuits, hara.s.sed in Italy in 1862, to take refuge in his dominions.

I was no further advanced than my grandfather, Florestan I., who when overtaken by the events of 1848, which lost him Mentone and Roquebrune, contemplated a parliament, which however he never formed. It was a funny const.i.tution was that one which he posted on the walls, and over which I had often mused. It had not gone further than being posted on the walls, I should add, because my grandfather found that it would not bring back Mentone, and as he was strong enough to keep Monaco with or without it he had, very sensibly, put it in the fire. The 11th article of it was the oddest:-"La presse sera libre, mais sujette a des lois repressives." But the first article gave the tone to the whole:-"The sole religion of the State is the Catholic, Apostolic, Roman."

I strolled up the terraces of Monte Carlo, which always reminded me of John Martin's idea of heaven, and consulted M. Blanc. He was in especially good humour that day, because "Madame Brisebanque" and "the Maltese" had both been losing money. Still, when I talked of my parliament and my education reform, he talked of "Jacob's ladder" and of other infallible systems of ruining him which never had any result except that of beggaring their authors. He told me a long-winded story of how at Homburg a company called "La Contrebanque" had won twenty-four days in succession, and how on the twenty-fifth they had sent for a watchman and an iron chest to guard their winnings, how that afternoon their secretary had lost the whole capital in eighteen _coups_, and how the innocent watchman had marched up and down all night religiously guarding an empty chest. I tried to hark back to my subject, when off he went again at a tangent, and told me how the day before on opening the "bienfaisance"

collection-box in the hall of the hotel they had found no money, but all the letters of an American gentleman who had posted them there the year before. Another of his anecdotes was of a lady who, having lost, had eaten a thousand-franc note on a slice of bread and b.u.t.ter to improve her luck. M. Blanc left the Casino in his carriage just after I had ridden off, and without seeming to look I saw well enough out of the corner of my eyes after he had pa.s.sed me on the road, that the people uncovered to him more universally and for a longer time than to myself. There was, however, one difference between us-I returned the bows and he did not.

I gave up M. Blanc and pursued my reforming course, abandoning, however, the idea of a parliament and fearing to touch education. My government, now in working order, resembled in no way that which you English think the best of all possible polities-"const.i.tutional monarchy"-which with you appears to me to mean a democratic republic tempered by sn.o.bbism and corruption. Mine was a socialistic autocracy, which, in spite of my failure, I maintain to be the best of governments, provided only that you can secure the best of autocrats.

I had no one to back me in what I did. Major Gasignol and some of the other officers were strongly favourable to the army reform, which gave them service and promotion. Dr. Coulon was half favourable to my views, and a quarter favourable to my ways of working them out in action.

L'Abbe Ramin was conciliatory and kind. M. de Payan was grimly neutral.

Every other functionary was an active, though veiled, enemy to nine-tenths of my proposals. The people were abjectly pa.s.sive, and I almost wished that the auberge of the "_c.r.a.paud Volant_" of _Rabagas_ had had a real existence. At last, however, I conjured up the spirit to found a school with lay teachers, arranging to pay its cost over and above the expected fees out of my own purse. No one came to it, and the Jesuit schools and the schools of the _freres de la doctrine_ continued to be thronged. The Catholic schools were supported by the state. Mine were supported by myself. I went a step further, and I offered Father Pellico the alternatives of stopping the state contributions to all schools, or of continuing them, provided that lay teachers only were employed during the princ.i.p.al hours of the day. He coldly said that an agreement of the nature proposed by me would be contrary to his duty, and that if I chose to stop the state contributions to his schools the effect of my action would be to shake my throne without harming them. He added that if he was to go to prison he was at the service of my officer of the guard. I replied that he was welcome to his opinion.

The next day the edict appeared. It was countersigned by Baron Imberty, who disapproved of it, but not by M. de Payan, who had resigned and left for Nice to consult the Bishop. As I drove through the town in the afternoon, I was coldly received by the people, and the proclamation was torn down on the following night. The weekly parade of the militia was put off for fear of a hostile demonstration; and on the day on which it would have taken place I received, instead of the muster-roll of the national regiment, a vote of thanks from the Executive Committee of the English National Education League, and notice of my unanimous election to members.h.i.+p of the Council of that body.

A strange event occurred in the afternoon, (it was the 11th of March), to distract my thoughts. General Garibaldi, who had been travelling _incognito_, and with the permission of the French Government, given conditionally on the _incognito_ being strictly preserved, to visit his birthplace-Nice, applied to me to know whether I would receive him if he stopped at Monaco for a day on his return. I replied that I should be glad to see him, the more so as I had met his son Ricciotti at Greenwich in June 1870, at the dinner of the Cobden Club, to which orgy he and I had both been lured by the solicitations of the arch-gastronomist, the jovial Mr. T. B. Potter. I did not add that our acquaintance had been interrupted by the war in which the same clever and conceited officer had cut up my cousin's (the King of Wurtemberg) troops at Chatillon-sur-Seine.

On the 12th the old General came, and I met him at the station and drove him to the palace. The news that he was with me soon spread through the town, and a mob collected at the palace gates. The General, to whom I had given the "bishop's rooms," which had once been occupied by Monseigneur Dupanloup, his arch enemy, imagined that the crowd was composed of his admirers, and, leaning upon his stick, he proceeded to harangue them from the window of the private apartments. Some hundreds of my subjects, I was afterwards informed, had listened to him languidly enough until he began to attack the Jesuits, when arose the uproar which brought me to his room, and all my household into the courtyard. I begged him to remember where he was, but the howling of the mob had excited the old lion, and the more they threatened the more violently he declaimed. When he was pulled into a chair by Major Gasignol the mischief was done, and a maddened crowd was raging on the _place_ crying "a bas Garibaldi," "a bas les Communistes," "a bas le Prince."

Colonel Jacquemet made his way to me and said, "Sir, I can count on twenty of the sergeants and corporals who are in the courtyard, ex-soldiers of your Highness's ex-garde. They are grand old soldiers, and with the strong walls to help them will hold this _canaille_ in check."

He might have said, "Sir, I don't like your ways, and have disapproved of everything that you have done, but after all you are the rightful Prince of Monaco, as well as a good fellow, saving your Highness's presence, and I am ready to die for you." He didn't. He only spoke the words that I have set down.

My answer was an unhesitating one.

"I, Prince Florestan the Reformer, am not going to hold my throne by force if I can't hold it by love; and, moreover, if I wished to do so it is doubtful whether I could succeed."

As I spoke the crowd parted asunder, and I saw advancing through it in a wedge the English blue-jackets from my yacht, armed with cutla.s.ses. A few stones were thrown at them, but of these they took not the smallest notice. At their head was the captain of the port, a native Monegascan, the very man who years before had saved my sailor cousin from the waves.

They entered the courtyard, and I at once asked them to make their way, with General Garibaldi in the midst, back to the yacht, and steam with him to Mentone, land him, and return. At the same time I sent for Father Pellico. It was lucky the sailors had come, for I soon discovered that the carbineers had made common cause with the mob, and that the sergeants who were ready to die for me would not have escorted Garibaldi.

The mob howled dismally as he left, but he was embarked safely just before Father Pellico reached the palace gate. I told him that the General had left, and asked him whether this concession would satisfy the crowd. He asked whether I was prepared at the same time to give way about the schools. I told him that if I thought that after doing so I could continue to reign with advantage to the country and credit to myself I would willingly give way, but that if he thought that in the event of my abdication the public peace could be maintained until a vote was taken to decide the future of the country, I should prefer to return to my books and to my boat. He said that he hoped that I should stop, but that if, on the other hand, I went he thought that order would be maintained.

I bowed to him and said, "Pere Pellico, you may if you please occupy the throne of the Grimaldis. I shall leave in an hour when the yacht returns."

I went on to the balcony and attempted to address the crowd. If they would have listened to a word I said I might have turned them, but not a syllable could be heard. I could not "address my remarks to the reporters," because owing to the wise precautions of my predecessor with regard to the press there were none. I retired amid a shower of small stones.

Colonel Jacquemet's language was fearful to listen to. The air was thick with his curses. I was reminded of the question of a little girl friend of mine, who having been taken out one day to an inspection by the Commander-in-Chief of the garrison of Portsmouth upon Southsea common, asked on her return home if "the Duke of Cambridge wasn't a very pious man," explaining that she had heard him "say his prayers"-alluding doubtless to His Royal Highness's favourite expression of "G.o.d bless my body and soul!" If he had ever read history the colonel would have known that the fire-eating d'Artagnan of "Three Musketeers" renown once commanded the fortress of Monaco for Louis the Fourteenth, under my ancestor the Marshal, and he might have been inspired by a desire to emulate his fame, but, as it was, he seemed chiefly moved by a loathing for his tattered fellow-subjects. He wanted to mow them with grape-of which we had none; he wanted to blow them into the air-but to reason with him was useless, and I was unable even to fix his attention enough to bid him farewell.

As I left the palace, surrounded by the tars and preceded and followed by the sergeants of the ex-garde, Abbe Ramin came running up and seized me by the hand.

"Your Serene Highness must not leave us," he cried; "the people are irritated for a moment against their prince, but happier days will come."

"I can stop if I please, Abbe Ramin," I replied, "but only either by firing upon the people, or by blockading them and depriving the women and children of the upper town of their daily bread. I will do neither."

"History will speak of your Highness as your Highness deserves!"

"My dear friend-for I believe you are my only friend in Monaco-I thank you for coming to bid me farewell, but don't talk of history, for history will only declare me to have been an obstinate young fool."

We moved off slowly down the hill amid the hisses of the crowd. The sergeants formed square upon the quay, I embraced Colonel Jacquemet and the Abbe, stepped into the gig, and in a minute was on board. Steam was up, and the next evening I landed at Ma.r.s.eilles.

By a telegram from the Abbe I learnt that an informal vote of the adult male inhabitants of the princ.i.p.ality had been taken that day, and that the result was this:-

For Annexation to France