Hotel National, Lucerne
22nd August

Darling Elizabeth:

This morning between twelve and one, Blanche and I were strolling on the quai when we met Sir Charles Bevon. He seemed glad to see us, and asked if we knew any of the people in society here, and when we told him we had only been in Lucerne four days and that he was the first person we had met that we knew, he invited us to dine with him at the Schweitzerhof to-night. It is from this dinner we have just come, and I must tell you about it before I go to bed.

Sir Charles asked the Marquis and the Marquise de Pivart, the Vicomte de Narjac, and Mr. Vanduzen, an American naval officer en retraite, to meet us. I sat between the Marquis and Mr. Vanduzen. The Marquis looks like a little black monkey, with a beard À Henri Deux, but his manners are so elegant one never thinks of his looks. He knows the De Croixmares very well, and when I asked him what he thought of HÉloise he turned so red and looked so uncomfortable that I at once felt that Jean's charming Comtesse had brisÉ son coeur at some period of their acquaintance. He dropped the subject as soon as possible, and quite rudely began to talk of the war, and said that England was the Jew among nations. I cooled his Anglophobia for him by remarking that I would much prefer to have him talk of the Comtesse de Croixmare than attack my country. He seemed positively afraid of me after that, so I am sure there must be something between him and HÉloise that he doesn't want his wife to know. He got so moody and silent that I told him I thought him very rude, and devoted myself through the rest of dinner to Mr. Vanduzen, who is elderly and "natty." Mr. Vanduzen is quite amusing, but I wish he wouldn't call people by their full names as if they were a species he was labelling for a museum, such as, "Really, Miss Blanche Blaine, you amaze me." "It was very warm to-day, was it not, Madame la Marquise de Pivart?" "Have you made the ascent of Pilatus, Sir Charles Bevon?" You know the style of man, Elizabeth, you must have met one or two like him at Nazeby or Hazeldene. If they are English they are called snobs, but when they come from the Land of Canaan on the other side of the pond they are put down quite likely as "so American."

The Marquise is a fascinating creature, she knows the full value of her figure as one of her attractions, and she clothes it accordingly. Her bust is like alabaster, the neck and shoulders are perfect; her eyes are rather wide apart, which gives her a naÏve expression; her smile is simplicity itself, and she talks with a tabloid voice. Sir Charles seemed to admire her, for he addressed nearly all his conversation to her, and he poked me so hard under the table once or twice that I was compelled to say, "The table leg is on the other side, Sir Charles," and he gave the Marquise such a reproachful glance.

Blanche had the Vicomte all to herself, and he seemed to like it. He has an automobile and talked of nothing else, and Sir Charles says he does nothing else in Paris. He is going to take Blanche and the Marquise in it to-morrow for a spin in the valley of the Reuss.

Everybody talked at once, as they always do on the Continent, and the effort to be general was quite fatiguing to me who am accustomed to the English method of monopolising one's neighbours. The foreign custom certainly gives more "go" to a dinner, but I think when I am not the hostess I prefer conversation À deux.

After dinner we had coffee in the salon instead of outside on the verandah, for Sir Charles said we ought to see Don Carlos and suite go in to dinner. The suite were already in the salon, and they occupied the most comfortable chairs and looked rather sulky, which I suppose was from having to wait so long for their dinner. Don Carlos has thirty rooms on the first floor, but he will neither take his meals in private or at the usual hour with everybody else. He makes quite a point of dinner, and has it in the salle-À-manger when the general public have finished. He must be a great advertisement for the Schweitzerhof, for crowds come nightly to see him and the Duchess go in to dinner. When they entered the salon there was as much etiquette among the suite as if they were at a levÉe. They formed themselves in a line in order of precedence; the men all kissed the Duchess's hand and the ladies curtseyed, then Don Carlos gave his arm to his wife and led the way to dinner. As the door of the salle-À-manger was open we could see them eating; everybody talked at once, and the suite ate as if it was the only dinner they had had for a week. I am sure they were hungry.

Don Carlos is a splendid-looking Spaniard, with exile written all over him; whether natural or cultivated, the pose was perfect—the sadness and abstraction, the forced amusement, the far-away look in the eyes—but it wasn't melodramatic, and you didn't feel like laughing. The Duchess of Madrid was reine aux bouts des ongles and an ideal consort for a banished monarch. She must have been very beautiful at one period of her life, and is still strikingly fine-looking. She was dressed as the great ladies on the Continent know how to dress, and wore some lovely diamonds. She had the same melancholy far-away expression as Don Carlos, and they both seemed rather bored, as if they had had too much of the suite, who are really nothing but pensioners. Sir Charles says they have not a peseta to bless themselves with, and live entirely on the bounty of Don Carlos. They follow him wherever he goes and form a sort of court for him; they are nothing but a pack of conspirators and professional revolutionists who dare not go back to Spain, and as they have all been broken in the Carlist cause, and still continue to intrigue and make themselves useful, Don Carlos has to put up with them. And I must say I think he does it right royally, keeping up a fine old Bourbon custom, for these people can still say, like the needy noblesse in Louis XIV.'s time, that they "bank with the king."

When we had "done" Don Carlos and his dinner-party, Sir Charles suggested that we should go to the Kursaal and try our luck at Petits Chevaux. We found the room crowded, and most of the people looked like those I saw at the Monico in London the night Algy Chevington took me there for supper, when he couldn't get a table at the Trocadero. At first we couldn't get near the tables, but the Marquise went and stood behind the croupier, and got him a place for her. Then a man, who I am sure was a High Church curate, for he had cut off his coat collar and let his hair grow long like a French abbÉ, offered me his seat if I would touch his money for him. But he gave me bad luck till he was cleared out, and then I began to win. It was such fun, and I raked in quantities of gold and some five-franc pieces made of lead. The Marquise and I won, but the others had no luck, and I saw the Marquis somewhere in the back drinking beer with an impossible female, and I told him so afterwards, and that I thought it was very rude to the ladies in his party, and he looked as if he would like to choke me. The Vicomte told Blanche that he believed the croupier tampered with the machinery and could make any horse win he liked, and the croupier heard. For an instant I thought there was going to be a "scene," but the Marquise said such a cochon as the croupier wouldn't dare to strike the Vicomte, who it seems spends the time he can spare from automobiling in Paris in duelling. "Mais, comme il est sale, ce croupier," the Marquise said to me, and then added that the croupiers at Monte Carlo were as beautiful as Lucifer, and that a friend of hers, a Comtesse Jean d'Outremer, had eloped with one. A bÊtise she called it. I told Sir Charles after that that I thought we had better go, and they all walked with us as far as the National. The Marquis and the Vicomte kissed my hand, and Sir Charles told me to call on the Marquise to-morrow, as she expected it. My kindest regard to Madame de Croixmare and the family at the chÂteau.—Your dearest Mamma.