The vogue of these
sunny shores dates from their annexation to France, - a price
Victor Emmanuel reluctantly paid for French help in his war with
Austria. Napoleon III.'s demand for Savoy and this littoral, was
first made known to Victor Emmanuel at a state ball at Genoa.
Savoy was his birthplace and his home! The King broke into a wild
temper, cursing the French Emperor and making insulting allusions
to his parentage, saying he had not one drop of Bonaparte blood in
his veins. The King's frightened courtiers tried to stop this
outburst, showing him the French Ambassador at his elbow. With a
superhuman effort Victor Emmanuel controlled himself, and turning
to the Ambassador, said:
"I fear my tongue ran away with me!" With a smile and a bow the
great French diplomatist remarked:
"SIRE, I am so deaf I have not heard a word your Majesty has been
saying!"
The fashion of coming to the Riviera for health or for amusement,
dates from the sixties, when the Empress of Russia passed a winter
at Nice, as a last attempt to prolong the existence of the dying
Tsarewitsch, her son. There also the next season the Duke of
Edinburgh wooed and won her daughter (then the greatest heiress in
Europe) for his bride. The world moves fast and a journey it
required a matter of life and death to decide on, then, is gayly
undertaken now, that a prince may race a yacht, or a princess try
her luck at the gambling tables.
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