You know Nice, my dear Le Queux--you know it as well as I do, therefore you know the Villa Lilas, that big white mansion which faces the sea on Montboron, the hill road between the port of Nice and Villefranche. Half hidden among the mimosa, the palms, and grey-green olives, it is after the style of Mr. Gordon Bennett's villa at Beaulieu, with a big glass front and pretty verandas, with climbing geraniums flowering upon the terraces. We soon settled there, for the household staff had arrived three days before, and on the evening of our arrival I accompanied the Crown-Prince down into the town to the Jetée promenade, the pier-pavilion where the gay cosmopolitan world disports itself to chatter, drink and gamble. It was a glorious moonlit night, and "Willie," after strolling through the great gilded saloons, in one of which was a second-rate variety entertainment--the season not having yet commenced--went outside. We sat at the end of the pier smoking. "Nice is dull as yet, is it not?" he remarked, for each year he always spent a month there incognito, the German newspapers announcing that he was away shooting. But "Willie," leading the gay life of the Imperial butterfly, much preferred the lively existence of the Côte d'Azur to the remote schloss in Thuringia or elsewhere. I agreed with him that Nice had not yet put on the tinsel and pasteboard of her Carnival attractions. As you know, Carnival in Nice is gay enough, but, after all, it is a forced gaiety got up for the profit of the shops and hotels, combined with the "Cercle des Bains" of Monaco--the polite title of the Prince's gilded gambling hell. We smoked together and chatted, as we often did when His Imperial Highness became bored. I was still mystified why we had come to the Riviera so early in the season, because the white and pale green paint of the hotels was not yet dry, and half of them not yet open. Yet our coming had, no doubt, been privately signalled, because within half an hour of our arrival at the Villa Lilas a short, stout old Frenchman, with white, bristly hair--whom I afterwards found out was Monsieur Paul Bavouzet, the newly-appointed Prefect of the Department of Alpes-Maritimes--called to leave his card upon the Count von Grünau. The Imperial incognito only means that the public are to be deluded. Officialdom never is. They know the ruse, and support it all the world over. His Highness the Crown-Prince was paying his annual visit to Nice, and the President had sent his compliments through his representative, the bristly-haired little Prefect. Soon after eleven that night the Crown-Prince, after chatting affably with me, strolled back to the Promenade des Anglais, where Knof, the chauffeur, awaited us with a big open car, in which we were whizzed around the port and up to Montboron in a few minutes. As I parted from the Crown-Prince, who yawned and declared that he was tired, he said: