"I fear my tongue ran away with me!" With a smile and a bow the great French diplomatist remarked:
"SIRE, I am so deaf I have not heard a word your Majesty has been saying!"The fashion of coming to the Riviera for health or for amusement, dates from the sixties, when the Empress of Russia passed a winter at Nice, as a last attempt to prolong the existence of the dying Tsarewitsch, her son.There also the next season the Duke of Edinburgh wooed and won her daughter (then the greatest heiress in Europe) for his bride.The world moves fast and a journey it required a matter of life and death to decide on, then, is gayly undertaken now, that a prince may race a yacht, or a princess try her luck at the gambling tables.When one reflects that the "royal caste," in Europe alone, numbers some eight hundred people, and that the East is beginning to send out its more enterprising crowned heads to get a taste of the fun, that beyond drawing their salaries, these good people have absolutely nothing to do, except to amuse themselves, it is no wonder that this happy land is crowded with royal pleasure-seekers.
After a try at Florence and Aix, "the Queen" has been faithful to Cimiez, a charming site back of Nice.That gay city is always ENFETE the day she arrives, as her carriages pass surrounded by French cavalry, one can catch a glimpse of her big face, and dowdy little figure, which nevertheless she can make so dignified when occasion requires.The stay here is, indeed, a holiday for this record-breaking sovereign, who potters about her private grounds of a morning in a donkey-chair, sunning herself and watching her Battenberg grandchildren at play.In the afternoon, she drives a couple of hours - in an open carriage - one outrider in black livery alone distinguishing her turnout from the others.