Page:The Prime Minister by Hall Caine.djvu/15



In the winter of 1910 or 1911 I was staying, for the silence and solitude which seemed necessary to certain literary work I had to do, at an old manor house turned into a private hotel in Sils Beseglia, near Sils Maria, a little village in the Engadine, lying midway on the mountain road between St. Moritz and Maloja, at the foot of a glacier and in the midst of the deep snows. My few housemates were all Germans, being chiefly muscular and adventurous German women, who spent most of their time ski-ing along the neighbouring slopes in not altogether becoming male costume. One afternoon I heard from my sitting-room the tinkle of many sleigh-bells, and looking out I saw, in the glistening Engadine sunshine, some three or four sleighs rolling up the deep snow-ruts to the half-buried gate of the house. They contained a group of illustrious personages, with several of whom I had such slight acquaintance as one usually acquires (whatever different world one comes out of) in the course of long sojourns at small hotels in remote places. As far as I can remember, there were, among others, the Princess Stéphanie of Belgium; her second husband, the Hungarian nobleman whom she married after the death of her first husband, the Crown