Читать книгу The Turbulent Duchess - Baroness Orczy - Страница 9

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Long before dawn a stream of people converged towards the port. Women carrying flowers, bunches of roses, branches of lilac and syringa, girls carrying baskets with provisions for the day, men carrying their youngest-born on their shoulders, leading older ones by the hand, the whole crowd moving in the direction of the port where as soon as the tiniest streak of sunlight appeared above the horizon line a salvo of artillery ushered in the wonderful day. May 30th, 1816. The glorious day on which the future Queen of France would set her foot on French soil. That was why Marseilles was in a holiday mood. That was why the streets were beflagged and the port was a forest of masts fluttering their multicoloured pennants in the summer breeze. Now the bells of all the churches began to ring their peals, drowning the very thunder of the artillery with their united clangour, with the boom-boom of Notre Dame de la Garde and the ting-ting of the many convent chapels. Then the cathedral carillon started its merry tune, sending gamuts of sound soaring into the morning: do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si, do; she is coming! she is coming! Coming from the land of sunshine and of song: the young princess is coming to wed our future King: do, re, mi, fa: do, re, mi, fa. She is seventeen: young as the dawn, fresh as a rosebud: she will put new life into this effete monarchy: do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si, do.

By seven o’clock the quays are alive with a restless seething crowd of excited humanity. Already the sun is grilling: red faces, brown faces, old and young are streaming with perspiration: white teeth gleam through moist red lips: the medley of colour is so dazzling that it almost hurts: shawls, kerchiefs, shirts, red, blue, orange, green, every conceivable hue, all trenchant against the azure sky: men, women and children are perched in their hundreds on the roofs, hundreds more are crowding in the windows that overlook the quay: boys have swarmed up the drain-pipes or hung in precarious positions on cornices and balconies: a perch on a garden seat is paid for in silver coin. Vendors of souvenirs push their way through the crowd and do a roaring trade with beads from Sicily or coral necklets from Naples. Street singers in Neapolitan array, twanging guitars, sing sentimental songs about beautiful fairy princesses and lovesick swains. Everything is alive, palpitates with excitement, thrills with the joy of expectancy. Everything hums with life, like a swarm of bees: the soft patois of Provence mingles with the buzzing tones of Marseilles, and together merge in laughter, real, jolly, lighthearted laughter; laughter all the time.

Marseilles this day is in a holiday mood.

In the harbour the French warships rocked and swayed with gentle, rhythmic motion on the placid waters. There was the Renommée, the Saint-François, the Marie-Christine and several others all built by order of the great Emperor for the express purpose of wresting the kingdom of the seas from the English enemy. The white flag embroidered with golden fleurs-de-lis has replaced the tricolour: it flutters gently, peaceably in the breeze, with no hint of conquest, save the conquest of the heart of a fairy princess, who is about to set foot on the soil of France. Their crews are at attention: the officers tightly buttoned in brand-new uniforms: they are waiting for the first boom of the guns that will announce the arrival of their future Queen.

And that first boom when it came sent the huge crowd on the quay into the wildest excitement: it moved and swayed like a gigantic wave rolling towards the port. Children screamed and women fainted. Everybody wanted to see: necks were craned, elbows got to work to forge a passage through the throng. “Here she comes!” A gaily-decorated gig had just come in sight: manned by twelve oarsmen dressed in white satin, she made quick way through the lines of the French battleships. Guns were booming to right and left, bells pealing, carillon ringing. “Here she comes!” rose as an immense uproar from thousands of eager throats.

And here she really was, the fairy princess come out of the land of love and laughter. All in bridal white with feathers and a diadem over her curly hair, weighted with diamonds, smiling, waving her small hands, blowing kisses to the multitude who cheered her to the echoes, Caroline Ferdinande stepped lightly on shore. Already she felt a Queen. Not more than five foot high, she looked both a fairy and a queen. At once the crowd adored her. “Isn’t she lovely?” the women murmured, and threw bunches of flowers down under her pretty feet. She tripped along, still blowing kisses, followed, surrounded, embraced by shouts of welcome and a bombilation of “Hurrahs.” Immediately behind her came her suite, the Prince of San Nicandro, the Count and Countess de La Tour with their pretty daughter, the Count de Lucchesi-Palli. Half a dozen steps and they were met by the Duc de Lévis ready with his speech of welcome. He had it written out in Italian, but Caroline Ferdinande would have none of that. In her execrable French she declared with a disarming smile that in future she will speak no other language but French. “Zé né connais pious d’autre langue,” she says with a Neapolitan accent you could cut with a knife. But what matter the accent? She is just adorable. It is only the old Duc de Lévis who remembers when he was a young man hearing Marie-Antoinette say the very same thing—only with a German accent, when she arrived as a bride in Strasbourg forty years ago.

But what of that? Sad times are things of the past. The future is rosy, as rosy as this adorable child who will bring new blood, new joys, forgotten laughter to this worn-out ancient Kingdom of France. And Caroline Ferdinande nodded her dainty head while she listened to the interminably long speech of the old buffer, all delivered in French at her desire, not a word of which did she understand. But that didn’t worry her. Her shoes were rather tight, but that didn’t matter either. She had been terribly seasick, the journey had been as interminable as the Duc de Lévis’ speech, the ship had been in quarantine ten days before she was able to land; but nothing of that mattered. She stood on the soil of France. She had come to be its Queen.

After the speech she was trotted off to the Town Hall, where there were more pompous old French gentlemen and more speeches which she did not understand. In the centre of the great hall there was a large table, half of which was covered with a Neapolitan flag, the other half with a French one. Caroline Ferdinande and her suite were stationed on one side of the table, the pompous old French gentlemen on the other. There was no question of sitting down. Caroline Ferdinande stood the whole time on her high heels, unconscious of the pain in her feet. When the final speech came at last to an end, the Prince of San Nicandro on one side and the Count de Lucchesi-Palli on the other took their princess by the hand and solemnly conducted her to the other side of the table and handed her over to the Duc d’Havre, the Duchesse de Reggio and the Count de Mesnard, the representatives of her new country.

More salvos of artillery greeted this ceremony, which proclaimed the fact that the Neapolitan Princess was now truly and irrevocably French. French ladies gathered round her, they led her to private apartments all gay with flowers, where she was stripped of every garment that hailed from Italy, down to her stockings and her chemise, and arrayed in exquisite lingerie and a beautiful dress of white satin come direct from Paris. Thus attired she came back into the hall, and across that table covered with the French flag she saw Hector de Lucchesi-Palli, her playmate. He looked pale, she thought, and not nearly so happy as he should have been, considering that this was the happiest day of her life. And she wondered why. But she couldn’t get near him to ask him what was the matter. She was monopolized by her new suite: pompous French gentlemen, and stiff, starchy ladies, not at all like the laughter-loving, happy-go-lucky Sicilians she was accustomed to. They took possession of her, piloted her out of the building before she could have a word with her own people. This mortified her at first, but not for long. She was a future Queen now, and her personal feelings must be suppressed, just like the pain caused by her tight shoes, and that slight recurrence of seasickness which rather worried her when she had to keep on smiling.

It was really wonderful what that tender little body endured during that day in the way of physical discomfort and fatigue. After the ceremony at the Town Hall, she was conducted back to the quay, and there she embarked in a gilded sloop, all garlanded with flowers, with sails dyed a vivid blue and ornamented with yellow fleurs-de-lis. Caroline Ferdinande was afraid she would again be seasick, but fortunately the slight summer breeze dropped just then and the passage across the quay over to the Cannebière was as smooth as on a mill-pond. Caroline was not seasick. She smiled, and chattered to the pompous gentlemen and the starchy ladies, in her execrable French, which they professed was charming. But all the while she tried to catch the eye of Hector de Lucchesi-Palli, who still looked very pale and kept his gaze fixed out towards the open sea. Caroline thought that he too perhaps was afraid that he would be seasick, or else that he was so sad because he had been parted from his simpering Donna Anna.

However, before she could make up her mind as to that, it was time to disembark. A gorgeous coach awaited her, with an escort of picked men from the first regiment of the royal guard, to take her to the Cathedral of St. Martin, where a solemn Mass of Thanksgiving would be said by Monseigneur the Archbishop, and a Te Deum, specially written by the great composer Méhul for the occasion, sung by the cathedral choir. The way to the church led through the Cannebière, the most wonderful avenue in the world when it is en fête. All garlanded with flowers, lined with soldiers in gorgeous uniforms, the houses to right and left decorated with bunting, the balconies and windows crowded with the élite of Marseilles society, all in their best clothes, Caroline Ferdinande had never seen anything like it. She had seen crowds, enthusiastic crowds, in Sicily and Naples, but never anything like these on the Cannebière. In Naples there were always beggars, cripples, vagabonds and cinderwenches who pushed their way to the forefront of a throng, but here in Marseilles beggars did not seem to exist: every man, woman and child was well dressed, and the soldiers!—oh, the soldiers!—what a contrast to the ill-dressed, slovenly regiments of Sicily and Naples commanded by their decrepit old King.

Caroline Ferdinande, reclining on the velvet cushions of the calèche, smiled and bowed in response to the prolonged cheers that swelled to a regular uproar all along her passage, and when she was received at the door of the cathedral by the clergy in magnificent canonicals, when the organ pealed and all the bells of the city sent their bombilation through the air, she felt that an entry into paradise could not be more satisfying or more soul-stirring than this. Kneeling on the damask-covered prie-Dieu, her dainty figure shrouded under a white tulle veil, her bowed head adorned with white plumes, she received Monseigneur’s blessing with a heart overfilled with joy and thanksgiving. During the Te Deum her high birdlike tones were heard right through the choir. “What a lovely voice she has,” the women murmured, and the men said: “She comes from the land of song.”

But even after the long, tedious Mass and Monseigneur’s still more tedious allocution, the ceremonies of the day were not yet ended. At the prefecture, one hundred young Marseillaise girls were waiting for the fairy princess to present her with a string of pearls, and an address enclosed in a silver casket. More speeches, more words of thanks, more smiles: smiles all the time. Then the gala performance at the theatre, with more ovations, more presentations, cheers, curtsies, bowings and scrapings and kissing of hands.

How Caroline Ferdinande ever got into bed that night she never knew. She supposed that she was put there, and she remembered, vaguely, putting her arms round Madame de La Tour’s neck in an ecstasy of happiness. She wanted to kiss somebody, and the old governess who had worried over her childish pranks, and known her as the little Cinderella whom nobody wanted, was as good for the purpose as anyone. Caroline would rather have kissed Hector de Lucchesi-Palli, but he was not there for one thing, and for another he wouldn’t have cared. But even if he didn’t, why wasn’t he there?

Caroline Ferdinande fell asleep and dreamed that Donna Anna di Mauro-Ganari had been ordered by the King of France to walk in high-heeled shoes that were too tight for her, and to kneel before the future Queen and to sing a Te Deum in tune, which she was obviously unable to do, whereupon the King ordered her to be executed on the spot.