Then gradually the theater became dark, and the opera commenced.  It was “Orphee,” by Glueck.  Madame Destinn sang the principal part.  Her voice is very beautiful, but she is so small, and somewhat dumpy, that she did not look much like an Orphee.  To make the opera shorter they combined the first and second acts, and to allow Orphee to go from hell to heaven without letting down the curtain they had invented a sort of treadmill on which Orphee and Eurydice should walk while the landscape behind them moved.  It was a very ungraceful way of walking.  They looked as if they were struggling up a hill over rough and stony ground.

We went into the foyer after the performance and were presented to the Princess.  I had known her as a young girl in Cannes, where her parents lived, therefore we had something to talk about.  She is very charming, tall and willowy, and has a pleasant word and smile for every one.

The wedding-day dawned in a relentless haze.  We were invited to be at the chapel of the Schloss at five o’clock.  The regulations about our court dress were the same as for the Schleppenkur, only we were begged not to wear white.  My dress was yellow, with a yellow manteau de cour.  Frederikke wore a light-green pailletted dress with a light-green train.  We were a little late in starting; our Schutzmann had waited patiently in the courtyard for a long time.  We drove through the crowded streets, lined with spectators.  Each clock we passed pointed in an exasperating way to the fact that we were late.  J.’s sword seemed always to be in the way; every time he spoke out of the window to urge on the already goaded coachman the sword would catch on something.  The air was more than suffocating, and there was evidently a storm brewing.

We arrived before the portal of the Schloss at the last moment.  Ours was the last carriage to arrive.  The pompous Suisse pounded his mace on the ground and said, warningly, “You must hurry; the Kaiser is just behind you.”  And we did hurry.

The staircase makes three turns for each flight, and the chapel is the highest place in the palace, meaning seven turns for us.  I grasped the tail of my ball dress in one hand and my heavy court train in the other and prepared to mount.  On each turn I looked behind and could just see the eagle on the top of the Emperor’s silver helmet.  We hurried as I never hurried in my life, for if his Majesty had got ahead of us on any of these turns where the two flights meet and part, we would have been shut out from the chapel.  As it was, one door was already closed.  They opened it for us, and we were the last to enter before the princes.  We crossed the chapel to reach the estrade on which stood the Corps Diplomatique.  In my hurry I forgot to let down my dress, and I don’t dare to think how much stocking I must have exhibited.  When finally I did reach my place I was so out of breath it took me a long time before I was in it again.