M. Paoli also speaks of her long walks; for these, of course, were occasions on which the burden of his responsibilities weighed heavily upon him. Elizabeth often walked as much as fifteen or twenty miles in a day, with no one but her “Greek Reader”—some student, as a rule, of the University of Athens—in attendance. His function was not only to read Greek, but also to carry the Empress’s spare skirt. She walked “clad in a black serge gown of so simple a character that no well-to-do trades-woman would have cared to be seen in it”; and she often changed her skirt in the midst of her perambulations, behind trees, or any other screen which the landscape afforded, while the reader dutifully looked the other way. Sometimes, too, she perambulated the streets of Paris with equal recklessness. Once, M. Paoli recalls, she went to see Notre Dame by moonlight, and insisted upon being taken afterwards to eat onion soup in a popular _café_. Biarritz and the Riviera, however, were the places at which M. Paoli saw most of her. At both resorts she was known as “the lady in black” who went about with a full purse, dispensing charity when the fit came upon her. Whenever she visited Biarritz, she never failed to buy a cow, to be sent to her farm in Hungary. At Cap Martin, where the Empress Eugénie recommended her an hotel, Francis Joseph sometimes came to see her; but he does not seem to have seen very much of her when he did come. Elizabeth “sometimes,” but by no means always, dined with him; and she invariably lunched alone. The visits, one cannot help feeling, were little more than tributes to those appearances which are so terribly important in imperial circles. It is added that the billiard-room was consecrated as a chapel; and perhaps in that act also a regard for appearances may be discerned. A more important fact, from M. Paoli’s point of view, was Elizabeth’s reluctance to let him know where she was going, when she started for one of her walks. He generally managed to find out; but he nevertheless remonstrated, and received a characteristic reply: “Set your mind at rest, my dear M. Paoli. Nothing will happen to me! what would you have them do to a poor woman? Besides, not one of us is more than the petal of a poppy or a ripple on the water.” He assured her that there really was danger—that he had heard rumours; but she still refused to let herself be scared: “What!” she exclaimed. “Still more of your fears. I repeat, I am not afraid; and, mind, I make no promises.”