Explore "The Princess Sophia" by E.F. Benson on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
A few days afterwards Princess Sophia herself started on her return to Rhodopé. The _Felatrune_ was to meet her at Monte Carlo, but she crossed France overland. Her original scheme had been to go by sea all the way, but this saving of time caused by crossing the Continent gave her a balance of eight days, which she proposed to spend on the Riviera, where she lost a good deal of money.
Even in the few months of her absence, the change which had come over her mountain kingdom was startling. The crowd of foreign visitors, chiefly English, had never been so great, nor the season so brilliant. November in Rhodopé is the month of months, clear, cool, and bracing, with a sun of heavenly purity, and a wind just _frappé_ with the snows which have fallen on the higher ranges of the Balkan. The air has a sparkle as if of frost in it, a translucent brightness which in the North we associate with the white rime of autumn mornings. To the Princess, fresh from the damp gray of England, and the tawdry theatrical brilliance of the Riviera, her home seemed an enchanted place, and for once she was glad to get back.