My next interview was with M. de Payan. He heartily concurred in my army reform, and said that no measure could be better for the country, educationally, than my plan of universal service of this limited character. When I came to talk of church reforms, however, M. de Payan was very cold and hard to fire. He advised me to talk the matter over with the curé, l’abbé Ramin, a most moderate man, and to beware of Father Pellico. From this negative position I could not move him.
The curé was my next visitor. He also agreed heartily in the wisdom of my army reform. He listened without dissent to my proposal for the gradual cessation of the small grant to the priests, including that to himself. On the other hand, when I spoke about the necessity of procuring lay teachers for the schools, he began to weep. I changed the subject, and when I allowed him to leave the room he said, with a singularly sweet smile, that he would go with my reforms as far as he could, that so just a man as my Highness would not harm his country, that God would watch over his church. I was touched by Abbé Ramin.
Dr. Coulon was then shown in. A man of intellect, as I could see at the first glance. I set before him my army reform, and he was delighted with it. I touched upon the separation of church and state, and he said that it was not hard to be done at Monaco – in name, that is, but difficult indeed to be done in fact. Still he supposed the name of separation was what I wanted, and the gradual cessation of the stipends, which would put Monaco in accord with the modern movement. I then referred to education.
He shook his head, and answered, “I should be your Highness’s sole supporter, and I am a materialist, and only tolerated here on account of my medical skill, and placed on the Council of Education because, as I am not in the habit of running my head against stone walls, I always side with the Jesuits.”
I insisted on the vast improvement in the standard of secular education to be expected from the introduction of highly trained lay teachers, and said that the priests should be absolutely free to teach the children out of school hours.
His reply was a singular one, and shook me.
“Your Highness is a democrat,” he said. “How then can your Highness impose your will in this matter upon a people who are unanimous? If your Highness wishes to escape individual responsibility for the existence of the present state of things, your Highness can dissolve the council of state and institute an elective parliament. That parliament would consist, let us say, of twelve members. If so, eleven would be priests or Jesuits, and the twelfth M. Blanc of the Casino – a body which would resemble in complexion some of the school boards in your Highness’s favourite England. Your Highness has a heavy task, and if that task be persevered in, I fear that the state of your Highness’s nerves will be such as to require my prescriptions.”
He was very free in his conversation, the old doctor, but it was a pleasing change after Baron Imberty and M. de Payan; not but what Abbé Ramin had much attracted me.
I did my best to charm Père Pellico. I courted him as my other subjects courted me. He was expansive in manner; but I am not a fool, and though only twenty-four, I knew enough of human nature to see that there was another Père Pellico underneath the smiling case-work which talked to me. To my military reform he had no objection, provided I exempted Jesuit students from service. I answered that I would exempt all those at present in Monaco, to which he replied that he feared then that I should never have the pleasure of seeing any others. I thought to myself “here is” – but Père Pellico smiled and slowly spoke again.
“Your Highness was thinking, I venture to imagine, that that would be an additional reason for hurrying your military reform. But I must crave the pardon of your Highness for speaking except in reply to your Highness. I have not the habit of courts.”
I spoke then of the Church; he was indifferent – the salaries of his four professors could easily be got from Italy. I then touched upon education.
Père Pellico, to my astonishment, exclaimed, “But on the contrary; my opinions are not different from those of your Highness. They are the same. But as a democrat I do not venture, although I may be wrong, to force them upon the people.”
Here was a change of base.
“If I were your Highness,” he continued, “I would dismiss the Council of State and call an elected parliament to frame a constitution. That would be a more regular method of proceeding than limiting your own prerogative by the exercise of that very prerogative itself.”
“Father,” I replied, “is not the country somewhat small for the complicated machinery of parliament?”
“Why then not try a Plebiscite, ‘yes’ or ‘no,’ upon certain written propositions, as in Zurich?”
“How liberal a politician can afford to be when he has the people with him,” I thought to myself as I bowed out Father Pellico.
For the next three weeks, until the end of February, things went smoothly with me. My great aunt bothered me so to marry a “nice steady young lady who would maintain the dignity of the Court, check the extravagance of the steward, and count the linen,” that I got Dr. Coulon to tell her that she would die unless she removed to Nice. She preferred a short remove to a long one, and took herself off to my great relief. She was a very fussy, but a clever and a really good old lady. My army reform went well enough, and the church edict was fulminated without meeting with opposition. I bought, through Mr. Gambart, who often came to Nice, a charming Leighton and a glorious Watts, and a fine Verboeckhoven from M. Blanc, as a beginning of the public collection. I moved the councils to the palace, and fitted up the public offices thus rendered vacant as my museum. I got M. Lucas at the Casino to improve his already admirable orchestra, to start a free school for instrumental music, and to play once a week in the town of Monaco instead of at Monte Carlo. I wrote to M. Gounod, whom I had the honour to count among my friends, to offer him the Louis Quinze rooms beyond the Chambre d’York, at the north-west corner of the Castle, with the most lovely view in both directions, and the prettiest decorations to my mind in all the palace, if he would come and stay with me as a permanent visitor, and countenance our musical efforts. I founded a school for modelling in clay, a class in decorative art which I taught myself, and I made the arrangements for the reception of a troop of actors in the winter, and for the production of Gounod’s “Jeanne d’Arc” – a piece which was suggested by Père Pellico. In the palace itself I made many improvements. Of the Chambre d’York I left nothing but the pretty mosaic floor, but the room itself, which had been gilt from top to bottom, bed and all, by my great-grandfather to take out the taste of the Great French Revolution, during which the palace had been a poor-house, I turned into a meeting room for the Council of State. My steam yacht had come with a temporary crew of English tars, and my two great 15-inch 60-ton Krupp guns – one for the terrace, seawards, and one for the garden, landwards – were ordered. The “reports” had been abolished; the nagging surveillance of the police had been abolished; the Church establishment had been abolished; and I then had nothing left to abolish but myself, the abolition of myself being a measure from which I shrank although, like King Leopold, I was ready to go if my subjects wished it.
The only one of my reforms which was really popular was the national army, which afforded all the young married men in the principality a weekly holiday away from their wives. But Major Gasignol, who had a “soul above buttons,” used on parade when he was acting as adjutant to take an opportunity of reminding me of the days of glory when one of my ancestors, Grimaldi II., about the time of the Norman conquest of England, had delivered at Rome the Pope from the forces of no less a personage than the Emperor.
All this time, however, my education scheme and my substitution of an elective for a nominated council were in abeyance, the first on account of Père Pellico’s opposition, the second I might almost say on account of his support.
Dr. Coulon, consulted by me, often used to say, “Why does not your Highness throw the responsibility upon a parliament of leaving matters where they are?”
“But I wish to change them,” I as often replied.
“I can understand that your Highness should wish to be thought to wish to change them, but further than that point I can not follow your Highness.”
I seriously thought of clapping Dr. Coulon into prison for his impertinence, but then he was the only liberal in Monaco, and I was a liberal prince. How I wished, though, that my uncle had not been such a fool as to invite the Jesuits, harassed in Italy in 1862, to take refuge in his dominions.
I was no further advanced than my grandfather, Florestan I., who when overtaken by the events of 1848, which lost him Mentone and Roquebrune, contemplated a parliament, which however he never formed. It was a funny constitution was that one which he posted on the walls, and over which I had often mused. It had not gone further than being posted on the walls, I should add, because my grandfather found that it would not bring back Mentone, and as he was strong enough to keep Monaco with or without it he had, very sensibly, put it in the fire. The 11th article of it was the oddest: – “La presse sera libre, mais sujette à des lois répressives.” But the first article gave the tone to the whole: – “The sole religion of the State is the Catholic, Apostolic, Roman.”
I strolled up the terraces of Monte Carlo, which always reminded me of John Martin’s idea of heaven, and consulted M. Blanc. He was in especially good humour that day, because “Madame Brisebanque” and “the Maltese” had both been losing money. Still, when I talked of my parliament and my education reform, he talked of “Jacob’s ladder” and of other infallible systems of ruining him which never had any result except that of beggaring their authors. He told me a long-winded story of how at Homburg a company called “La Contrebanque” had won twenty-four days in succession, and how on the twenty-fifth they had sent for a watchman and an iron chest to guard their winnings, how that afternoon their secretary had lost the whole capital in eighteen coups, and how the innocent watchman had marched up and down all night religiously guarding an empty chest. I tried to hark back to my subject, when off he went again at a tangent, and told me how the day before on opening the “bienfaisance” collection-box in the hall of the hotel they had found no money, but all the letters of an American gentleman who had posted them there the year before. Another of his anecdotes was of a lady who, having lost, had eaten a thousand-franc note on a slice of bread and butter to improve her luck. M. Blanc left the Casino in his carriage just after I had ridden off, and without seeming to look I saw well enough out of the corner of my eyes after he had passed me on the road, that the people uncovered to him more universally and for a longer time than to myself. There was, however, one difference between us – I returned the bows and he did not.
I gave up M. Blanc and pursued my reforming course, abandoning, however, the idea of a parliament and fearing to touch education. My government, now in working order, resembled in no way that which you English think the best of all possible polities – “constitutional monarchy” – which with you appears to me to mean a democratic republic tempered by snobbism and corruption. Mine was a socialistic autocracy, which, in spite of my failure, I maintain to be the best of governments, provided only that you can secure the best of autocrats.