line from the harbour lights, I jumped into my boat
and went ashore. With a bound I was in the theatre.
There she was! And I laugh still when I think
of her grandparents’ faces when they saw me
appear; but they raised the quarantine forthwith, and
when, soon after, I gave a ball on board the Iphigenie,
that charming young lady was its chief ornament.
Beautiful and quaint that ball was, breezy with victory
and duty well performed, the glorious scars of the
old Iphigenie mingling with the splendour of the flowers
and the lights.
After staying a month at Havana, as there was no question
of pirates, I was ordered to take the Creole back
to Brest, where I arrived in March, 1839. My
monkey was the first to see and point out the land
from the top of the rigging. I had hardly got
into the roadstead before the maritime prefect boarded
me to tell me I was made a knight of the Legion of
Honour. The worthy admiral insisted on receiving
me as such before the guard, which had been turned
out. He drew his sword to give me the accolade,
and made me a little speech, under the fire of which
I did not flinch, though he was deeply moved.
1839
Scarcely had I landed from the Creole when I received
the distressing news of the death of my sister Marie,
Duchess of Wurtemberg. It was the first mourning
in our family, the first break in that numerous circle
of tenderly attached brothers and sisters. I
adored my sister, who was a most remarkable woman,
witty, as passionate in her antipathies as in her
affections, an artist to the very tips of her fingers.
Her death was a deep sorrow to me, and it saddened
my short stay among my own people. A short stay
it was indeed, for I only came ashore in March, and
June found me at the entrance of the Dardanelles,
attached to the staff of Admiral Lalande, commanding
our squadron in the Levant.
I had rather a funny little adventure on my way to
take up my duty. I had asked the then Minister
of the Interior, M. Duchatel, to give orders that
there should be no official reception when I passed
through Toulon--no firing of guns, nor authorities
waiting at the city gates, nor troops drawn up, all
that wearisome and commonplace ceremonial which I
had been through I know not how many times already.
The minister had given his promise, and, strong in
his assurance, I was just getting there quietly in
my travelling-carriage, when the sight of a mounted
gendarme, who galloped off the moment he caught sight
of us just after we got through the pass of Ollioules,
made me suspect some treachery or other. Without
a second’s hesitation I jumped out of the carriage,
the moment the gendarme was out of sight, and desiring
my valet to go on with it, struck across the fields
on foot to the harbour. I had not been mistaken,
for soon I heard twenty-one guns greeting the entrance
of my empty vehicle into Toulon, doubtless amid what
the stereotyped official phrase would call, and with
good reason this time, a scene of indescribable enthusiasm.
