The modern portions of the Palace are entirely commonplace and cheerful. The east wing, visible from where I am seated writing, might have been designed by Baron Haussmann: a long stretch of yellow façade—dazzling to the sight just now, in the morning sunshine—with a French roof, of slate, and a box of gay-tinted flowers in each of its countless windows.
Behind the Palace there is a large and very lovely garden, reserved to the uses of the Royal Household; and beyond that, the Dunayskiy Prospekt, a park that covers about sixty acres, and is open to the public.
The first floor, the piano nobile, of that east wing is occupied by the private apartments of the King and Queen.
I look across the quarter—mile of red-tiled housetops that separate me from their Majesties’ habitation, and I fancy the life that is going on within. It is too early in the day for either of them to be abroad, so they are certainly there, somewhere behind those gleaming windows: Theodore Basile, and Aneli Basilitsa.
She, I would lay a wager, is in her music-room, at her piano, practising a song with Florimond. She is dressed in white (I always think of her as dressed in white—doubtless because she wore a white frock the first time I saw her), and her brown hair is curling loose about her forehead, her maids not having yet imprisoned it. I declare, I can almost hear her voice: tra-la-lira-la-la: mastering a trill; while Florimond, pink, and plump, and smiling, walks up and down the room, nodding his head to mark the time, and every now and then interrupting her with a suggestion.
The King, at this hour, will be in his study, in dressing-gown and slippers—a tattered old dingy brown dressing-gown, out at
