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.

CHAPTER VI

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.