I was determined she should be perfection.The things that have been done for that girl, sir--you would n't believe them;they would make you smile! Nothing was spared; if I had been told that she must have a bath every morning of molten pearls, I would have found means to give it to her.She never raised a finger for herself, she breathed nothing but perfumes, she walked upon velvet.She never was out of my sight, and from that day to this I have never said a sharp word to her.
By the time she was ten years old she was beautiful as an angel, and so noticed wherever we went that I had to make her wear a veil, like a woman of twenty.Her hair reached down to her feet;her hands were the hands of a princess.Then I saw that she was as clever as she was beautiful, and that she had only to play her cards.She had masters, professors, every educational advantage.They told me she was a little prodigy.
She speaks French, Italian, German, better than most natives.
She has a wonderful genius for music, and might make her fortune as a pianist, if it was not made for her otherwise!
I traveled all over Europe; every one told me she was a marvel.
The director of the opera in Paris saw her dance at a child's party at Spa, and offered me an enormous sum if I would give her up to him and let him have her educated for the ballet.
I said, 'No, I thank you, sir; she is meant to be something finer than a princesse de theatre.' I had a passionate belief that she might marry absolutely whom she chose, that she might be a princess out and out.It has never left me till this hour, and I can assure you that it has sustained me in many embarrassments.Financial, some of them; I don't mind confessing it! I have raised money on that girl's face!
I 've taken her to the Jews and bade her put up her veil, and asked if the mother of that young lady was not safe!
She, of course, was too young to understand me.And yet, as a child, you would have said she knew what was in store for her;before she could read, she had the manners, the tastes, the instincts of a little princess.She would have nothing to do with shabby things or shabby people; if she stained one of her frocks, she was seized with a kind of frenzy and tore it to pieces.
At Nice, at Baden, at Brighton, wherever we stayed, she used to be sent for by all the great people to play with their children.
She has played at kissing-games with people who now stand on the steps of thrones! I have gone so far as to think at times that those childish kisses were a sign--a symbol--a portent.You may laugh at me if you like, but have n't such things happened again and again without half as good a cause, and does n't history notoriously repeat itself?
There was a little Spanish girl at a second-rate English boarding-school thirty years ago!....The Empress certainly is a pretty woman; but what is my Christina, pray?
I 've dreamt of it, sometimes every night for a month.
I won't tell you I have been to consult those old women who advertise in the newspapers; you 'll call me an old imbecile.
Imbecile if you please! I have refused magnificent offers because I believed that somehow or other--if wars and revolutions were needed to bring it about--we should have nothing less than that.There might be another coup d'etat somewhere, and another brilliant young sovereign looking out for a wife!
