Full resolution (JPEG) - On this page / på denna sida - XXV. In Spain and in exile
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1917] TWO QUEENS 505
up surrounded by the ladies of her suite. Her Majesty’s
smile and her gracious welcome did but confirm my first
impression—that of being face to face with some one
endued with transcendent qualities, moral as wTell as
physical.
When one approaches the Queen-Mother, Marie
Christina, who was Regent of the Kingdom for many
years, one at once receives the impression of a person
inured to supreme power, to duty, to tribulation, to the
claims and subtleties of politics. Above all she is
grande dame in the highest sense of the term. A long
line of ancestors seem to rise behind her image, august
personages draped in the imperial purple, heroes of
great triumphs or of great trials which formerly cast their
shadow or shed their lustre over the whole of Europe.
Often the vital powers of a race are not equal to such
exalted destinies, such heavy tasks; the descendants
suffer from atrophy, turn into idols or marionettes.
But sometimes in one of the branches of the ancient
family a curious atavism revives the old vitality, the
old virtues. When one is in the presence of Queen
Marie Christina, who for over twenty years and under
the most difficult circumstances succeeded in governing
Spain and consolidating her son’s throne, one naturally
calls up the historic images of her great-grandfather the
Archduke Charles—the sole adversary worthy of
opposing Bonaparte’s military genius; then the Archduke
Albert, an admirable army leader who covered himself
with glory in 1866; both of them having left, besides
their military fame, the memory of great nobility of
character, intelligence and enlightened passion for art.
The Queen-Mother’s conversation is imbued with
frankness and intellectual charm. One feels at once that
she has seen much, worked much, and thought much.
As during the disastrous war which has just desolated
the world, Austria-Hungary has been the loyal and
absolutely inalienable friend of Germany, current opinion
has ascribed Germanophile sympathies to Queen Marie
Christina. Nothing is more unfair : the Queen, by her
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