And yet, as a child, you would have said
she knew what was in store for her; before she could read, she had the
manners, the tastes, the instincts of a little princess. She would have
nothing to do with shabby things or shabby people; if she stained one of
her frocks, she was seized with a kind of frenzy and tore it to pieces.
At Nice, at Baden, at Brighton, wherever we stayed, she used to be sent
for by all the great people to play with their children. She has played
at kissing-games with people who now stand on the steps of thrones! I
have gone so far as to think at times that those childish kisses were a
sign--a symbol--a portent. You may laugh at me if you like, but have n't
such things happened again and again without half as good a cause, and
does n't history notoriously repeat itself? There was a little Spanish
girl at a second-rate English boarding-school thirty years ago!... The
Empress certainly is a pretty woman; but what is my Christina, pray? I
've dreamt of it, sometimes every night for a month. I won't tell you
I have been to consult those old women who advertise in the newspapers;
you 'll call me an old imbecile.
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