r Irreparable! It is to hoped that now I have made such a sacrifice for them my kangaroos will breed! What do you think, M. Baker?”

  “I greatly doubt it, sire.”

  “The devil! But come and see Sir William Hamilton’s Polynesian Museum; come, it is very curious, and I have only given for it some old urns of broken earthenware.” The King moved on towards the palace. Baker followed him. Sir William Hamilton’s Museum surprised him no more than the kangaroos had done; for in his voyage with Flinders he had put into the Sandwich Isles and he could show the King the use of each weapon and the object of each instrument.

  He enquired which were the old pots given in exchange for these curiosities of a dealer in bric-a-brac, and was shown five or six magnificent Greek urns, found in the excavations of Sant’ Agata-dei-Goti. He uttered an artist’s sigh, he would have given 100,000 francs for those old broken pots as Ferdinand called them, and would not have given ten ducats for the tomahawks, and bows and arrows collected in the kingdom of His Majesty Kamehameha I.

  The King, tolerably disappointed at his guest’s small admiration for the kangaroos and the Sandwich Islands Museum, expected to make up for it over his statues and pictures, and indeed, the young banker here displayed much admiration. During his frequent journeys to Rome, great amateur of the fine arts as he was, he had visited the Farnese Museum, so that it was he who did the honours of the King’s splendid inheritance, citing the probable artists and schools, relating the story of Dircé, quite unknown to the King; and helping him to decipher inscriptions.

  Among the pictures, he pointed out the masterpieces of Titian, he turned over the leaves with him of a manuscript masterpiece of the XVI. century, and, in short, he astonished Ferdinand, who, thinking to find in him a kind of ignorant and vain Turcaret, was discovering, on the contrary, a learned and courteous amateur of art.

  The result of this was that, as at bottom Ferdinand was a prince of great good sense, instead of disliking the young banker for being a learned man, when he, the King, as he himself said, was but an ass, he presented him to the Queen, to Acton, to Sir William, to Emma Hamilton, no longer with the questionable consideration given to the moneyed man, but with that courteous protection always accorded by intelligent princes to men of mind and education.

  This presentation gave Andrew Baker occasion to turn to account new studies. He spoke German with the Queen, English with Sir William and Lady Hamilton, French with Acton, and in the midst of it all behaved so modestly and becomingly, that, when entering his carriage to take him back to Naples, the King said to him:

  “M. Baker, had you retained your carriage, I should, none the less, have brought you back in mine, were it only to procure longer for myself the pleasure of your conversation.”

  CHAPTER X.

  THE ACROSTIC.

  SCARCELY had the King left, taking with him Andrew Baker, than Queen Caroline, who, till then, had been unable to speak to Acton, rose, made him a sign to follow her, and charging Emma and Sir William to do the honours should any of the guests arrive before her return, went into her cabinet. Acton entered behind her.

  She sat down and motioned him to do so.

  “Well?” she asked.

  “Your Majesty is probably questioning me about the letter?”

  “I am. Did you not receive two notes from me asking you to experiment? I feel as if surrounded with daggers and plots, and I am in a hurry to get to the bottom of this affair.”

  “As I promised Your Majesty, I succeeded in removing the blood, and the writing has become clear enough for me to read it with a magnifying glass.”

  “And you have read it?”

  “Yes, madame.”

  “Let us see the result,” said she.

  Acton handed to Caroline the letter he had received from her on the night of the 22nd September. The blood had, in fact, disappeared, but wherever it had been, the ink left such faint traces, that, at first sight, the Queen cried:

  “It is impossible to read it, sir.”

  “Yes, indeed, madame,” replied he, “but with a

  magnifying glass and a little imagination Your Majesty will find that we shall reconstruct the entire letter,” and he handed her a glass.

  The Queen had been right; for with the naked eye, by the light of two wax candles, this was all one could read of the letter:

  Although the Queen held the glass in her hand she tried at first to do without it; but, impatient as she was, she quickly tired; and, putting her eye to the glass, she soon succeeded in reading with some difficulty, and finally made out the following lines, giving the letter in entirety:

  “Dear Nicolino,

  “Excuse your poor friend for being unable to go to the rendez-vous where she was expecting so much happiness; it was no fault of mine, I swear to you; it was only after seeing you that I was notified by the Queen that I must hold myself in readiness with the other ladies of the Court to meet Admiral Nelson. They will fête him magnificently, and the Queen desires to show herself to him in all her glory; she has done me the honour to tell me that I was one of the sunbeams with which she counted on dazzling the victor of the Nile. It will be an operation less meritorious on him than on anyone else, since he has only one eye; do not be jealous: I shall always love Acis better than Polyphemus.

  “After to-morrow a word from me will tell you the day when I shall be free.

  “Your tender and faithful “E.

  “21st September, 1798.”

  “Hum,” said the Queen when she had read it, “all that doesn’t tell us much, General. The lady has taken her precautions.”

  “But not enough,” returned Acton, “for this very evening we shall know what to think of her.”

  “How so?”

  “Has Your Majesty been good enough to invite this evening to Caserta, all the ladies of the Court whose baptismal names begin with an ‘E,’ and who had the honour of composing your train at the meeting with Lord Nelson?”

  “Yes, there are seven.”

  “Which, please madame?”

  “Princess Cariati, who is called Emilie; Countess San Marco, who is called Eleonora; the Marchioness San-Clemente, who is called Elena; the Duchess of Termoli, who is called Elizabetta; the Duchess of Tursi, who is called Elisa; the Marchioness of Altavilla, who is called Eufrasia, and the Countess Policastro, who is called Eugenia. I do not include Lady Hamilton, who is called Emma; she would have nothing to do with such an affair. So you see we have seven people compromised.”

  “Yes, but of these seven,” replied Acton, smiling, “there are two no longer of an age to sign with initials only.”

  “True! That leaves five. And then?”

  “Then, it is quite simple, madame, and I do not understand why Your Majesty troubles to listen to the remainder of my scheme.”

  “Oh, my dear Acton! On some days I am really stupid, and this must be one of them. But go on, you make me impatient with all your circumlocutions.”

  “Alas, madame, one is not a diplomatist for nothing.”

  “Well, let’s get on.”

  “I can say it in two words.”

  “Say them, then,” cried the impatient Queen.

  “Let Your Majesty find a means for putting a pen in the hand of each of these ladies, and, in comparing the handwritings....”

  “You are right,” the Queen said, laying her hand on his; “we shall soon discover the lover when we have found the mistress. Let us return.” And she rose.

  “With Your Majesty’s permission, I will ask ten minutes further audience.”

  “For matters of importance?”

  “For matters of the greatest gravity.”

  “Speak,” said the Queen, sitting down again.

  “On the night on which Your Majesty gave me this” letter, you will recall seeing the King’s room lit up at three in the morning? Is Your Majesty aware with whom the King was conversing so late?”

  “My usher told me it was with Cardinal Ruffo.”

  “Very well, at the end of that conversation, the King dispatched a courier.”

  “I did hear, certainly, a horse galloping under the archway. Who was the courier?”

  “His confidential man, Ferrari.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “My English groom, Tom, sleeps in the stables; at three o’clock in the morning he saw Ferrari, in travelling dress, come into the stable, saddle a horse himself and set out. He told me next day when holding my stirrup.”

  “Well?”

  “Well, madame, I asked myself to whom His Majesty would be likely to send a courier after conversing with the Cardinal, and thought it would be to his nephew the Emperor of Austria.”

  “The King would do that without telling me?”

  “Not the King,” replied Acton.

  “Oh! Oh!” said Queen Caroline, frowning, “I am not Anne of Austria and M. Ruffo is not Richelieu. Let him take care!”

  “I considered the matter serious.”

  “Are you sure Ferrari went to Vienna?”

  “My doubts were soon at an end. I sent Tom along the road to learn if Ferrari had taken post horses. He left his own at Capua, telling the postmaster to take care of it, that it was from the Royal stables, and that he would take it again on his return, the night of the 3rd October, or the morning of the 4th.”

  “Eleven or twelve days.”

  “Exactly the time it takes him to go to and from Vienna.”

  “And after these discoveries what did you decide to do?”

  “First, to inform Your Majesty; secondly, it seems to me for our war plans, for Your Majesty is still decided on war ?”

  “Still. A coalition is in preparation which will drive the French out of Italy; the French driven out, my nephew, the Emperor of Austria, will get not only the provinces he held before the Treaty of Campo-Formico, but even the Roman ones. In these sorts of wars, each keeps what he has taken, one gives back only slices; let us seize then, alone, and before anyone else, the Roman states, and, in restoring Rome, which we cannot keep, to the Pope, well, we shall lay down our conditions for the remainder.”

  “Therefore the Queen being still decided upon war, it is important for her to know what the King, less resolved upon it than Your Majesty, has, on the advice of Cardinal Ruffo, been able to write to the Emperor of Austria, and what the Emperor has replied.”

  “One thing you are aware of, General?”

  “What?”

  “That one can expect no favour from Ferrari. He is entirely devoted to the King, and as one is assured, incorruptible.”

  “Good! Philip, the father of Alexander, said there was no fortress impregnable as long as a mule laden with gold could be introduced. We shall see at how much the courier, Ferrari, will estimate his incorruptibility.”

  “And suppose Ferrari refuses, however much the offered sum; suppose he tells the King that the Queen and her Minister tried to seduce him; what will the King, who is becoming more and more suspicious, think?”

  “Your Majesty knows that in my opinion the King has always been suspicious; but I believe there is a means to put Your Majesty and myself out of the question, namely, for Sir William to approach Ferrari. If Ferrari is purchasable, he will take Sir William’s money as easily as ours, and the more that, as the English Ambassador, he has the pretext to advance of desiring to instruct his Court on the real intentions of the Emperor of Austria. If Ferrari accepts, — and he runs no risk in doing so, for one merely asks to read the letter, return it to its envelope and seal it up again — if he accepts, all goes well; if, on the contrary, he is sufficiently his own enemy to refuse, Sir William will give him a hundred louis to keep secret the offer made; finally, at the worst, if he refuses the hundred louis and does not keep the secret, Sir William puts off all that the attempt has of — shall I say — of hazard, on the great friendship he bears his foster brother, King George; if this doesn’t suffice, he will ask the King, on his honour, if, in a like case, he would not do as much as he, Sir William. The King will begin to laugh and there the matter will end. To sum up, the King needs Sir William Hamilton too much in the position he is in, to be angry with him for long.”

  “You believe that Sir William will consent...?”

  “I will speak to him about it, and if that isn’t enough Your Majesty will make his wife speak to him.”

  “And now are you not afraid that Ferrari will pass by without our knowing it?”

  “Nothing is simpler than to provide for this fear, and I merely await Your Majesty’s consent, not desiring to do anything without your order.”

  “Go on.”

  “Ferrari will again pass this night or to-morrow morning at the posting station at Capua where he left his horse; I send my secretary there that Ferrari may be informed that the King is at Caserta and awaits his dispatches there; we stay here to-night and all day tomorrow; instead of passing by the castle, Ferrari enters, asks for His Majesty and finds Sir William.”

  “All that may succeed, indeed,” replied the Queen, anxiously, “as it may all fall through.”

  “But it is much, madame, when one fights with equal chances, and being woman and Queen has fortune on one’s side.”

  “You are right, Acton. Besides, in any case, one must allow for a fire; if the fire doesn’t seize everything, so much the better; if it does, well, one must try to put it out. Send your secretary to Capua, and inform Sir William Hamilton.”

  And the Queen, shaking her still lovely head, laden with care, as if to shake off the thousand pre-occupations weighing upon her, returned to the reception room with a light step, and a smile upon her lips.

  Some of the guests had already arrived, and among them the seven ladies whose baptismal names began with an “E.” Among the men were Admiral Nelson with two of his officers, or rather two of his friends, Captain Troubridge and Captain Ball, and others were the elegant Duke of Rocca-Romana, brother of Nicolino Caracciolo, who was far from suspecting — we speak of Nicolino — that a Minister and a Queen would be taking such trouble to discover his joyous and careless personality; the Duke of Avalos, more usually called the Marquis of Vasto, whose ancient family divided in two branches, and of whom an ancestor, one of Charles V.’s captains, who had been taken prisoner at Ravenna, who had married the famous Vittoria Colonna, and composed for her in prison his Dialogue de l’amour, received at Pavia, from the hands of the vanquished Francis I., his sword, of which only the hilt remained; whilst the other, under the name of the Marquis del Guasto, became the lover of Margaret of France and fell assassinated; the Duke of Salandra, the King’s Master of the Hounds, Prince Pignatelli, and several more besides descended from the noblest Neapolitan and Spanish families. All were awaiting the arrival of the Queen, and bowed respectfully as she came in. Two things were pre-occupying Caroline: She had to use Emma Hamilton to make Nelson more infatuated than ever, and to recognise by her handwriting the lady who had penned the note, in the hope that once that lady was known it would not be difficult to discover the man to whom it was addressed.

  Only those who were present at these intimate and intoxicating evenings of the Queen of Naples, evenings of which Emma Hamilton was both the great charm and principal ornament, have been able to relate to their contemporaries to what a point of enthusiasm and delirium the modern Armida brought her hearers and spectators. If her magical poses, if her voluptuous pantomime had had the influence we have mentioned on cold Northern temperaments, how far more they were likely to electrify those violent Southern imaginations passionately fond of singing, music and poetry, and knowing by heart Cimarosa and Metastasio!

  We ourselves have known and questioned old men who were present at these magnetic evenings, and we have marked their expressions as, after the flight of fifty years, they spoke of their ardent remembrances.

  Emma Hamilton was lovely, involuntarily. Let us try to grasp what she was upon this evening when she desired to be beautiful, both for the Queen and for Nelson, in the midst of all these elegant costumes of the end of the XVIIIth century which the Courts of Austria and of the Two Sicilies persisted in wearing as a protest against the French revolution. Instead of the powder still covering those ridiculously high coiffures erected on the top of the head, instead of those scanty dresses which would have stifled the grace of Terpsichore herself, instead of that violent rouge which turned women into bacchantes; Emma Hamilton, faithful to her traditions of liberty and art, was wearing a long tunic of pale blue cashmere, falling round her in folds to make an antique statue envious; her hair, waving in long curls on to her shoulders, displayed two rubies which shone like the fabulous carbuncles of the ancients; her girdle, a gift from the Queen, was a chain of valuable diamonds, which, knotted like a Franciscan Nun’s, fell to her knees; her arms were bare from the rise of the shoulder to her finger tips, and one of her arms was clasped at shoulder and wrist by two diamond serpents with ruby eyes. The hand of the arm without ornament was laden with rings, while the other, on the contrary, shone only by the brilliant fineness of the skin and tapering nails, transparently pink like rose leaves, while her feet, in flesh-coloured stockings, seemed bare as her hands in their blue sandals laced with gold.

  This dazzling beauty, further increased by this strange costume had something almost supernatural, and therefore terrible and dreadful in it; women turned aside from this resurrection of Greek paganism, from jealousy, men with fear. Possession or suicide were the only alternatives for whomsoever should have the misfortune to become enamoured of that Venus Astarté. It resulted from this that Emma, lovely as she was and precisely on account of her fascinating beauty, remained isolated in the corner of a sofa, in the middle of a circle formed round her. Nelson, who alone would have had the right of seating himself at her side, devoured her with his eyes, and reeled, dazzled, on the arm of Troubridge, asking himself by what mystery of love or political calculation, this privileged creature who united in herself every perfection, was given to him, the rough seaman, mutilated veteran of twenty battles.