‘You are too young to be here,’ he said.

‘Here?’ Mistral asked. ‘With you?’

‘Yes,’ the Prince answered, ‘but I didn’t mean that a moment ago. Now that I think of it, you should not be driving with me un-chaperoned any more than you should be wandering about Monte Carlo with your aunt, being talked about and gossiped about by every wagging tongue in the place.’

‘But why should people talk about me?’ Mistral asked.

The Prince glanced at her sharply as if he suspected the very innocence of her question, and then, when he saw that she had asked it in all simplicity, he laughed gently and taking one of her hands he slipped it through his arm and patted it reassuringly as a brother might comfort a favourite sister.

‘Don’t worry your head about such things now,’ he said, just try and enjoy our drive together. It is a lovely day and there is nothing to frighten either of us.’

There was an extraordinary change in him which Mistral sensed but could not explain. She smiled up at him without embarrassment and the colour came back into her cheeks.

‘I am going to tell you all the things that you want to know as we drive along,’ the Prince went on, and soon he was holding her entranced with his stories of the Principality.

Sister Heloise at the Convent had talked to her of St. Dévote and of the beauty of Monaco, but she had only been a simple woman and it was from the Prince that Mistral learned a little of the history of the famous rock.

He told her how in the Stone Age the first inhabitants of Monaco lived in caves overlooking the sea. How later the place was occupied by, the Phoenicians during their voyages of discovery round the Mediterranean, and how they erected a temple to Mallart, the God of the Sun and all living things.

The legend Mistral liked best was how the Greeks identified the Phoenician God with Hercules and how it was at Monaco that Hercules had performed one of his twelve labours and carried off the golden apples from the dragon-defended garden of the Hesperides.

‘Of course everyone in Monaco today maintains that those golden apples were our own succulent golden oranges!’ the Prince laughed.

‘Tell me more,’ Mistral begged.

So he showed her where Caesar embarked for his campaign against Pompey and where in the year 7 B.C. the gigantic statue of Augustus was erected on the heights of La Tuibie to commemorate his final victory over the Gauls.

It was easy for Mistral to visualise all the Prince told her, for high above the white houses and russet-red roofs of Monte Carlo she could dimly discern the rock villages which hung like birds’ nests on the mountain crags. There, reached by old, old mule paths, were twisted trees planted by Ligurians or Romans and ancient archways between leaning peasant houses.