ittle figure, which
nevertheless she can make so dignified when occasion requires. The stay
here is, indeed, a holiday for this record-breaking sovereign, who
potters about her private grounds of a morning in a donkey-chair, sunning
herself and watching her Battenberg grandchildren at play. In the
afternoon, she drives a couple of hours--in an open carriage--one
outrider in black livery alone distinguishing her turnout from the
others.

The Prince of Wales makes his headquarters at Cannes where he has poor
luck in sailing the Brittania, for which he consoles himself with jolly
dinners at Monte Carlo. You can see him almost any evening in the
_Restaurant de Paris_, surrounded by his own particular set,--the Duchess
of Devonshire (who started a penniless German officer's daughter, and
became twice a duchess); Lady de Grey and Lady Wolverton, both showing
near six feet of slender English beauty; at their side, and lovelier than
either, the Countess of Essex. The husbands of these "Merry Wives" are
absent, but do not seem to be missed, as the ladies sit smoking and
laughing over their coffee, the party only breaking up towards eleven
o'clock to try its luck at _trente et quarante_, until a "special" takes
them back to Cannes.

He is getting sadly old and fat, is England's heir, the likeness to his
mamma becoming more marked each year. His voice, too, is oddly like
hers, deep and guttural, more adapted to the paternal German (which all
this family speak when alone) than to his native English. Hair, he has
none, except a little fringe across the back of his head, just above a
fine large roll of fat that blushes above his shirt-collar. Too bad that
this discovery of the microbe of baldness comes rather late for him! He
has a pleasant twinkle in his small eyes, and an entire absence of
_pose_, that accounts largely for his immense and enduring popularity.

But the Hotel Cap Martin shelters quieter crowned heads. The Emperor and
Empress of Austria, who tramp about the hilly roads, the King and Queen
of Saxony and the fat Arch-duchess Stephanie. Austria's Empress looks
sadly changed and ill, as does another lady of whom one can occasionally
catch a glimpse, walking painfully with a crutch-stick in the shadow of
the trees near her villa. It is hard to believe that this white-haired,
bent old woman was once the imperial beauty who from the salons of the
Tuileries dictated the fashions of the world! Few have paid so de