56 Princess Helene de France t 1 ^ 1 



manner, though courteous and amiable, difficult to recognize as the 

 descendant of French kings or the representative of divine right in the 

 world. His Queen, a masculine, plain woman. 



" With them, the flower of their wilderness, Princesse Helene de 

 France et de Navarre, a tall, very tall, slight girl of immense charm 

 and distinction, whom I taught to play lawn tennis at Castle Menzies 

 three years ago. She remembered it well and was very nice to me in 

 her greeting. She poured out tea for us, and we all sat down to it, a 

 regular meal in the dining-room. The little conversation I had with 

 the Comte de Paris was only about shooting." I saw them again on the 

 15th, when they came to Castle Menzies for a great chasse of blue 

 hares on Shehallion. " It was close opposite Shehallion on the tops 

 of the hills, and to these the hares were driven, poor timorous beasts 

 of the blue mountain kind. We got four hundred of them, a terrible 

 massacre. The party consisted of the Comte and Comtesse de Paris, 

 with three French gentlemen of their suite, of Wagram, the Prince de 

 Broglie, Lord Crawford and his son Balcarres, Algy Grosvenor, God- 

 frey Webb, Needham, and me. The Comtesse de Paris shoots well. I 

 walked the last two miles across the moor with her and saw her kill a 

 brace of strong flying driven grouse in excellent style. She marches 

 over the heather like a grenadier, shouts at the beaters, and jokes in 

 rough country fashion with those near her. The Comte is equally 

 without pretence. They are addressed as Monseigneur and Madame 

 — sometimes, but rarely, as Altesse — their conversation a long se- 

 quence of royal commonplace. They are full of bonhomie. Coming 

 to the high road on our way home a gipsy woman stopped the Count, 

 and he gave her two sixpences. 



"20th Sept. — At 1, came the Comte and Comtesse de Paris, and 

 the little Princess looking lovely in a hat with pink flowers. I was put 

 next her at luncheon, and we talked all the time, Balcarres being on 

 her right hand. We talked about the East, and she promised to come 

 to Egypt and that I should be her dragoman and take her to Mount 

 Sinai. She told me about her life at home at Stowe, where she rides 

 and hunts with the Duke of Grafton's hounds, and at Loch Kinnaird 

 where she walks about the hills alone each summer with her dogs. I 

 asked her, ' Have you no governess with you ? ' 'I should like to see 

 the governess,' she said, ' who would undertake to look after me.' And 

 she looked proudly out of her blue eyes. In Spain, where they spend 

 part of their winters near Seville, they hunt wild camels on horse- 

 back. We talked, too, about her brother, the Due d'Orleans' imprison- 

 ment at Paris, and mine in Ireland." 



On my way back south I paid a first visit to the Glen, where most 

 of the Tennant family wer^ assembled, though Margot was away. 

 Lucy and Charty, however, were there, and I made great friends with 



