THE LATE KING OF THE BELGIANS

1.

Of all the sovereigns with whom I have been connected in the course of my career, Leopold II is perhaps the one whom I knew best, with the circumstances of whose private life I was most intimately acquainted and whose thoughts and soul I was nevertheless least able to fathom, for the simple reason that his thoughts were impenetrable and his soul remained closed. Was this due to excessive egotism or supreme indifference? To both, perhaps. He was as baffling as a puzzle, carried banter occasionally to the verge of insolence and cynicism to that of cruelty; and, if, at times, he yielded to fits of noisy gaiety, if, from behind the rough exterior, there sometimes shot an impulse of unexpected kindness, these were but passing gleams. He promptly recovered his wonderful self-control; and those about him were too greatly fascinated by his intelligence to seek to understand his habit of mind or heart. And yet, though fascinating, he was as uncommunicative as it is possible to be; he possessed none of the external attractions of the intellect which captivate and charm; but, whenever he deigned to grant you the honour of an interview, however brief, you at once discovered in him a prodigious brain, a luminous perspicacity and critical powers of amazing subtlety and keenness.

No sovereign used—and abused—all the springs of his physical and moral activity, to a greater extent than did Leopold II to his dying day. An everlasting traveller, passing without cessation from a motor-car into a train, from a train on to a boat, caring little for the delights of sleep, he worked continuously, whether in the presence of some fine view, or at sea, or at meals, or in the train, or in his hotel, or on a walk; the place and the hour mattered to him but little.

"Monsieur l'officier, take down!" he would say to his equerry, at the most unexpected moment.

And "monsieur l'officier"—his only form of address for the officers of his suite—drew out a notebook, seized a pencil and took down "by way of memorandum," to the slow, precise and certain dictation of the king, the wording of a letter, a report or a scheme relating to the multifarious operations in which Leopold II was interested. Contrary to the majority of monarchs, who took with them on their holidays a regular arsenal of papers and a very library of records, Leopold carried in the way of reference books, nothing but a little English-French dictionary, which he slipped into the pocket of his overcoat and consulted for the purpose of the voluminous correspondence which he conducted in connexion with Congo affairs:

"It is no use my knowing English thoroughly," he confessed to me, one day. "Those British officials sometimes employ phrases of which I do not always grasp the full meaning and scope. I must fish out my lexicon!"

On the other hand, he had needed no assistance in order to work out his complicated and gigantic financial combinations. He possessed, if I may say so, the bump of figures. For hours at a time, he would indulge in intricate calculations and his accounts never showed a hesitation or an erasure. In the same way, when abroad, he treated affairs of state with a like lucidity. If he thought it useful to consult a specialist in certain matters, he would send for him to come to where he was, question him and send him away, often after teaching the expert a good many things about his own profession which he did not know before. And the king thereupon made up his mind in the full exercise of his independent and sovereign will.

"My ministers," he would say, with that jeering air of his, "are often idiots. But they can afford the luxury: they have only to do as I tell them."

Leopold II did not always, however, take this view of the constitutional monarchy. For instance, a few months before his death, one of his ministers was reading a report to him in the presence of the heir presumptive—now King Albert—when the wind, blowing through the open window of the royal waiting-room, sent a bundle of papers, on the King's desk, flying all over the carpet. The minister was rushing forward to pick them up, when the King caught him by the sleeve and, turning to his nephew, said:

"Pick them up yourself."

And, when the minister protested:

"Leave him alone," whispered Leopold. "A future constitutional sovereign must learn to stoop!"

An autocrat in his actions, he affected to be a democrat in his principles.

It matters little whether his methods were reprehensible or not: history will say that Leopold II was to Belgium the artisan of an unequalled prosperity, although it is true that he was nearly always absent from his country. The fact is that he loved France at least as well as Belgium. He loved the Riviera and, above all, he loved the capital. He had the greatest difficulty in dragging his white beard away from the Paris radius; and, when, by chance, it was eclipsed for a week or two, it continued to figure in the magazines, in the illustrated and comic papers and on the posters that advertised cheap tailors, tonic pills or recuperative nostrums. Leopold II, therefore, was a Parisian personality in the full glory of the word. True, he never achieved the air of elegance that distinguished Edward VII. You would have looked for him in vain on the balcony of the club, on the asphalt of the boulevards, in a stage-box at the theatre, in the paddock at Longchamp. But, should you happen to meet in the Tuileries Gardens, in the old streets of the Latin Quarter or, more likely still, along the quays, a man wrapped in a long dark ulster, wearing a pair of galoshes over his enormous boots and a black bowler on his head, carrying in his hand an umbrella that had seen better days and under his arm a bundle of yellow-backed books or a knickknack of some sort packed up anyhow in a newspaper; should you catch sight of a lean and lanky Ghent burgess rooted in silent contemplation of the front of the Louvre, or the porch of Saint-Germain-l'Auxerrois, or the gates of the École des Beaux-Arts; should you perceive him haggling for a musty old book at the corner of the Pont des Saints-PÈres and counting the money twice over before paying, then you could safely have gone home and said:

"I saw the King of the Belgians to-day."

I often accompanied him on these strolls in the course of which the artist and book-lover that lay hidden in him found many an occasion for secret and silent joys; for the King, who hated music, who bored himself at the theatre and who despised every manifestation of the art of to-day, had a real passion for old pictures, fine architecture, rare curiosities and flowers.

"Monsieur le commissaire," he would often say, with his fondness for official titles, in his strong Belgian accent, "we will go for an excursion to-day with monsieur l'officier."

And the "excursion" nearly always ended by taking us to some old curiosity shop or to the MusÉe Carnavalet, or to the flower-market on the Quai de la Tournelle.

In the later years of his life, however, he had to give up his walks in town: he was attacked by sciatica, which stiffened his left leg and prevented him from walking except with the aid of two sticks or leaning on his secretary's arm. Also, the fact that he had—not always justly—been made the absurd hero of certain gay adventures, subjected him to an irksome popularity which caused him genuine annoyance. He was ridiculed in the music-halls and in the scandal-mongering press; caricatures of him were displayed in all the newsvendors' windows.

This stupid and sometimes spiteful interest in his movements was a positive affliction to him. We did our best, of course, to prevent his seeing the satirical drawings in which he figured in attitudes unbecoming to the dignity of a king; but we did not always succeed. Fortunately, his sense of humour exceeded any grudge which he may have felt. Remembering that he possessed an astonishing double in the person of an old Parisian called M. Mabille, he never failed to exclaim when, by some unlucky chance, his eyes fell upon a caricature of his royal features:

"There, they're teasing that unfortunate M. Mabille again! And how like me he is! Lord, how like me he is!"

His habit of icy chaff made one feel perpetually ill at ease when he happened to be in a conversational vein. One never knew if he was serious or joking. This tall, rough-hewn old man had a trick of stinging repartee under an outward appearance of innocent good-nature and, better than anyone that I have ever met, understood the delicate art of teaching a lesson to those who ventured upon an improper remark or an unseemly familiarity in his presence.

One evening, at a reception which he was giving to the authorities in his chalet at Ostende, the venerable rector of the parish came up to him with an air of concern and drawing him respectfully aside, said:

"Sir, I feel profoundly grieved. There is a rumour, I am sorry to say, that your Majesty's private life is not marked by the austerity suited to the lofty and difficult task which the Lord has laid upon the monarchs of this earth. Remember, Sir, that it behooves kings to set an example to their subjects."

And the worthy rector, taking courage from the fact that he had known Leopold II for thirty years, preached him a long sermon. The penitent, adopting an air of contrition, listened to the homily without moving a muscle. When, at last, the priest had exhausted his eloquence:

"What a funny thing, monsieur le curÉ!" murmured the King, fixing him with that cold glance of his, from under his wrinkled eyelids. "Do you know, people have told me exactly the same thing about you! Only I refused to believe it, you know!"[7]

That was a delicious sally, too, in which he indulged at the expense of a certain Brazilian minister, who was paying his first visit to court, and who appeared to be under the impression that the King was hard of hearing. At any rate, he made the most extraordinary efforts to speak loud and to pronounce his words distinctly. The King maintained an impassive countenance, but ended by interrupting him:

"Excuse me, monsieur le ministre," he said, with an exquisite smile. "I'm not deaf, you know: it's my brother!"

Picture the diplomatist's face!

Lastly, let me recall his caustic reply to one of our most uncompromising radical deputies, who was being received in audience and who, falling under the spell of King Leopold's obvious intelligence, said to him, point-blank:

"Sir, I am a republican. I do not hold with monarchies and kings. Nevertheless, I recognise your great superiority and I confess that you would make an admirable president of a republic!"

"Really?" replied the King, with his most ingenuous air. "Really? Do you know, I think I shall pay a compliment in your style to my physician, Dr. Thirier, who is coming to see me presently. I shall say, 'Thirier, you are a great doctor and I think you would make an excellent veterinary surgeon!'"

The poor opinion which he entertained of the republic, as this story would appear to show, did not prevent him from treating it with the greatest respect. Of all the foreign sovereigns, Leopold II was certainly the one who kept up the most cordial relations with our successive presidents. At each of his visits to Paris, he never failed to go to the ÉlysÉe. He called as a neighbour, as a friend without even announcing his visit beforehand. When M. FalliÈres was elected President at the Versailles congress, the first visit which he received, on his return to the Senate, where he was then living, was that of Leopold II.

Nevertheless, whatever personal sympathy he may have felt for France, the King of the Belgians always turned a deaf ear to sentimental considerations; and there is no reason why we should ascribe to such considerations the very marked courtesy which he showed to the official republican world. In my opinion, this attitude is due to several causes. In the first place, he reckoned that France was a useful factor in the development of Belgian prosperity and that it was wise to increase the economic links that united the two countries. On the other hand, what would have become of his colonial enterprise in the Congo, if France had taken sides with England, which was displaying a violent hostility against him? Lastly, this paradoxical monarch, who always governed through Catholic ministries at home, because that was the wish expressed by the majority of votes, was, I firmly believe, a free-thinker at heart and was pleased to find that our rulers entertained views which corresponded with his own secret tendencies.

The fact is that Leopold II looked at everything from two points of view: that of practical reality and that of his own selfishness. The King had in his veins the blood of the Coburgs mixed with that of the d'OrlÈans, two highly intelligent families, but utterly devoid of sentiment or sensibility; and he treated life as an equation which it was his business to solve by any methods, no matter which, so long as the result corresponded with that which he had assigned to it beforehand.

He had an extraordinarily observant mind, was marvellously familiar with the character of his people, its weaknesses and its vanities and played upon these with the firm, yet delicate touch of a pianist who feels himself to be a perfect master of his instrument and of its effects. His cleverness as a constitutional sovereign consisted in appearing to follow the movements of public opinion, whereas, in reality, he directed and sometimes even provoked them.

Thus, in 1884, when the violent reaction of the Catholics against the anti-clerical policy of M. FrÈre-Orban culminated in the return of the conservatives to power, one might have thought that the Crown, which until then had supported the liberal policy and favoured the secularisation of the schools, would find itself in a curiously difficult position and that the check administered to M. FrÈre-Orban would amount to a check administered to the King himself. Not at all. Leopold II, sheltering himself behind his duties as a constitutional sovereign, became, from one day to the next, as firm a supporter of the Catholic party as he had been, till then, of the liberals. Nay, more, I have learnt since that he had a hand in the change of attitude on the part of parliament and the nation. As I have hinted above, his personal sympathies lay on the side of the liberal party; but, with the perspicacity that was all his own, he was not slow in perceiving the spectre of budding socialism which was beginning to loom behind Voltairean liberalism. He suspected its dangers; and he did not hesitate to give a sudden turn to the right to the ship of state of which he looked upon himself as the responsible pilot. And this position he maintained until the end of his days without, for a moment, laying aside any of his personal preferences.

2.

My first meeting with Leopold II dates back to 1896. The King had prone to the Riviera, accompanied by his charming daughter, Princess ClÉmentine, now Princess Napoleon, who, from that time onward, filled in relation to her father the part of the Antigone of a tempestuous old age. I shall never forget my surprise when the King, who had made the long railway-journey from Brussels to Nice without a stop, said to his chamberlain, Baron Snoy, as they left the station:

"Send away the carriage, monsieur le chambellan. We'll go to the hotel on foot. I want to stretch my legs a bit!"

We walked down the Avenue Thiers, followed by an inconvenient little crowd of inquisitive people. Just as we were about to cross a street, a landau drove up and obliged us to step back to the pavement. As it passed us, the King solemnly took off his hat: he had recognised Queen Victoria seated in the carriage and apparently astonished at this unexpected meeting.

When we reached the Place MassÉna, again the King's hat flew off: this time, it was the Dowager Empress of Russia entering a shop.

"The place seems crammed with sovereigns," he said, with his mocking air. "Whom am I going to meet next, I wonder?"

I saw little of him during this first short stay which he made at Nice, for I was at that time attached to the person of the Queen of England and had to transfer the duty of protecting King Leopold to one of my colleagues. I used to meet him occasionally—always on foot—on the Cimiez road; I would also see him, in the afternoon, taking tea at Rumpelmayer's with his two daughters, the Princesses ClÉmentine and Louise, and his son-in-law, Prince Philip of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. These family meetings around a five o'clock tea-table marked the last auspicious days of peace which was more apparent than real among those illustrious personages.

When Leopold II returned to the Riviera two years later, he had quarrelled, in the meanwhile, with his daughter Louise, who herself had quarrelled with her husband; he had ceased to see his daughter StÉphanie, who had married Count Lonyay; and he met his wife, Queen Marie Henriette, as seldom as he possibly could. Princess ClÉmentine was the only one who still found favour with this masterful old man, who was so hard upon others and so indulgent to himself; and she continued, with admirable devotion and self-abnegation, to surround him with solicitous care and to accompany him wherever he went.

I never met a more smiling resignation than that of this princess, who took a noble pride in the performance of her duty. Nothing was able to discourage her in the fulfilment of her filial mission: not the rebuffs and caprices which she encountered on her father's side, nor the frequently delicate and sometimes humiliating positions which he forced upon her, nor even the persistency with which, until his dying day, he thwarted the secret inclinations of her heart.

It has been said that, at one time, he thought of giving her the Prince of Naples—now King of Italy—for a husband and that he abandoned the idea in consequence of the stubborn opposition which the plan encountered on the part of exalted political personages. I do not know if he ever entertained this plan; on the other hand, I feel pretty sure that, some years ago, he would have liked the Count of Turin for a son-in-law and that negotiations were even opened to this effect with the Italian court. But the most invincible of arguments—the only one that had not been taken into account—was at once opposed to this project: the princess's affections were engaged elsewhere. She loved Prince Victor Napoleon and had resolved that she would never marry another man. Of course, I was not present at the scene which the plain expression of this wish provoked between father and daughter; but I understand that it was of a violent character. From that day, the Prince's name was never mentioned between them. The Princess continued, as in the past, to fill the part of an attentive and devoted daughter; she continued scrupulously to perform her duties as "the little Queen," as the Belgians called her after 1904, the year of her mother's death, when she began to take Marie Henriette's place at official functions; she continued to succour the poor and nurse the sick with greater solicitude than ever; and she was seen, as before, driving her pony-chaise in the Bois de la Cambre. Only, in the privacy of her boudoir, the moment she had a little time to herself, she would immerse herself in the study of historical memoirs of the Napoleonic period.

To tell the truth, I believe that if Prince Victor had not possessed the grave fault, in Leopold's eyes, of being a pretender to the French throne, the King would have ended by giving to the daughter whom he adored the consent for which she vainly entreated during six long years. But the King was an exceedingly selfish man; he was eager, for the reasons explained above, to preserve good relations with the French Republic; and he refused at any price to admit the heir of the Bonapartes into his family. The result was that he ended by conceiving against the Prince the violent antipathy which he felt for any person who stood in his way and interfered with his calculations. I remember realising this one morning at the station at BÂle, where I had gone to meet him. The King was waiting on the platform for the Brussels train, when I suddenly caught sight of Prince Victor leaving the refreshment-room. I thought it my duty to tell the King.

"Oh, indeed!" he said. "Let's go and look at the engines."

And he strode away.

Can it have been because he was sure of meeting neither Prince Victor nor the members of his family on the Riviera that he resolved, at the end of his life, to fix one of his chief residences in the south of France? I will not go so far as to say so. I am more inclined to believe that the old King, who was a passionate lover of sunshine, flowers and freedom, found in that charming and easy-going country the environment most in harmony with his moods and tastes.

As early as 1898, he resolved to lay out for himself a paradise in that wonderful property, known as Passable, which he had purchased near Nice, with its gardens sloping down to the Gulf of Villefranche. He devoted all his horticultural and architectural knowledge, all his sense of what was beautiful and picturesque to its embellishment. Tiberius achieved no greater success at Capri. Year after year, he enlarged it, for he had a mania for building and pulling down. He also had the soul of a speculator. None knew better than he how to bargain for a piece of land: he would bully, threaten and intimidate the other side until he invariably won the day. Thereupon he used to indulge in childish delight:

"It's all right," he would say, with a great chuckle. "I have done a capital stroke of business!"

And I am bound to admit that he spared neither time nor energy when he scented what he called a "capital stroke of business."

I can still see him, one afternoon, leaving M. Waldeck-Rousseau's villa at the Cap d'Antibes, near Cannes, where he had gone to pay the prime minister a visit, and perceiving, on the road leading to the station, a magnificent walled-in park that looked as if it were abandoned:

"Who owns that property?" he asked, suddenly.

"An Englishman, Sir, who never comes near it."

"We have time to look over it," said the King, "before the train leaves for Nice. Somebody fetch the gardener!"

The gardener was not to be found, but the gate was open. Leopold II walked in, without hesitation, followed by Baron Snoy, my colleague, M. Olivi, and myself, hurried along the deserted paths and praised the beauty of the vegetation; but, when it became time to go, we discovered, to our dismay, that someone had locked the gate while we were inside. There was no key, no possibility of opening it. We called and shouted in vain. Nobody appeared. The train was due before long; the King began to grow impatient. What were we to do? Olivi had a flash of genius. He ran to a shed, the roof of which shewed above the nearest thicket, and returned with a ladder:

"If Your Majesty does not mind, you will be able to get over the wall."

The King accepted impassively and the ascent began. Baron Snoy went first, then I; and the King, in his turn, climbed the rungs, supported by Olivi. Baron Snoy and I, propped up on the top of the wall, hoisted the King after us. We were joined by Olivi; and then a dreadful thing happened: the ladder swayed and fell! There we were, all four of us, astride the wall, swinging our legs, without any means of getting down on the other side.

"We look like burglars," said the King, with a forced laugh.

There was nothing for it but to jump. The distance from the top of the wall to the slope beside the road was not great; and Baron Snoy, Olivi and I succeeded in falling on our feet without great difficulty. The King, however, who limped in one leg and lacked agility, could not think of it.

Then Olivi, who certainly proved himself a most resourceful man that day, solved the problem. He suggested that the King should climb down upon our shoulders. The King, accordingly, let himself slide down on to the shoulders of Baron Snoy, who passed him on to Olivi's back, while I caught hold of his long legs and deposited his huge feet safely on the ground!

Some years later, seeing Olivi at the station at Nice:

"I remember you, M. Olivi," said Leopold II. "You took part in our great gymnastic display at Antibes."

"I did, Sir."

"Well, do you know, M. Olivi, there is no need for me to climb the wall now. I have the key: the property belongs to me!"

The whole man is pictured in this anecdote. Even as he gave numberless signs of avarice and meanness in the details of material life, so he displayed an almost alarming extravagance once it became a question of satisfying a whim, although he would carefully calculate the advantages of any such whim beforehand. Now to increase the number of his landed properties was with him a genuine monomania, a sort of methodical madness.

At the bottom of his character lay certain precepts which belonged to the great middle class of 1840 and which had survived from the middle-class education imparted to him in his youth. It was thus that he was brought to think that the amount of a man's wealth is to be measured by the amount of real estate which he possesses. He fought shy of stocks and shares because of the frequent fluctuations to which they are subjected. On the other hand, he felt a constant satisfaction—I was almost saying a rapturous delight—in the acquisition of land, in turning his cash into acres of soil and investing his fortune in marble or bricks and mortar, because he looked upon these as more solid and lasting.

It goes without saying that, during his long visits to the South, he escaped as much of the official and social drudgery as he could. He saw very little of his illustrious cousins staying on the Riviera; avoided dinners and garden-parties; and, when not at work, spent his time in long and interminable walks, or else went and sat on a bench in some public garden or by the sea and there steeped himself in his reflexions. Sometimes, when he was in a hurry to get back, he would take the tram or hail a fly, always picking out the oldest and shabbiest.

One day, at his wish, I beckoned to a driver on the rank at Nice.

"No, no, not that one," he said. "Call the other man, over there: the one with the horse that looks half-dead."

"But the carriage seems very dirty, Sir," I ventured to remark.

"Just so: as he drives such an uninviting conveyance, he must be doing bad business; we must try and help him."

Leopold II had a trick of performing these sudden and unexpected acts of kindness.

He was a sceptic to the verge of indifference and yet entertained odd antipathies and aversions. For instance, he hated the piano and was terrified of a cold in the head. Whenever he had to select a new aide-de-camp, he always began by asking two questions:

"Do you play the piano? Do you catch cold easily?"

If the officer replied in the negative, the King said, "That's all right," and the aide-de-camp was appointed; but if, by ill-luck, the poor fellow returned an evasive answer, his fate was doomed: he went straight back to his regiment.

This inexplicable dread of the corizza had attained such proportions that, during the last years of the King's life, the people about him—including the ladies—discovered a simple and ingenious expedient for obtaining a day's leave when they wanted it: they simply sneezed without stopping. At the third explosion, the old sovereign gave a suspicious look at the sneezer and said:

"I sha'n't want you to-day."

And the trick was done.

On the other hand, he showed himself very indulgent towards his younger officers' adventures in the world of gallantry. I remember his chaffing one of them, one morning, at Nice. Captain BinjÉ, an officer whose intelligence, activity and devotion had earned his appreciation, was a little late on duty that morning; and moreover his clothes emitted a very strong scent. The King at once began to sniff:

"Oof! Oof!" he said. "I'll wager you struck a flower on your road here!"

"Y-your M-majesty," stammered the officer.

"All right, all right, my boy: you can't help it, at your age!"

He had idiosyncrasies, like most mortals. For instance, he used to have four buckets of sea-water dashed over his body every morning, by way of a bath; he expected partridges to be served at his meals all the year round; and he had his newspapers ironed like pocket-handkerchiefs before reading them: he could not endure anything like a fold or crease in them. Lastly, when addressing the servants, he always spoke of himself in the third person. Thus he would say to his chauffeur, "Wait for him," instead of, "Wait for me." Those new to his service, who had not been warned, were puzzled to know what mysterious person he referred to.

A strange eccentric, you will say. No doubt, although these oddities are difficult to understand in the case of a man who displayed the most practical mind, the most lucid intelligence and the shrewdest head for business the moment he was brought face to face with the facts of daily life. But, I repeat, to those who knew him best, he appeared in the light of a constant and bewildering puzzle; and this was shown not only in the peculiarity of his manners, but in the incongruity of his sentiments. How are we to explain why this King should feel an infinite love for children, this stern King who was so hard and sometimes so cruel in his treatment of those to whom by rights he ought never to have closed his heart nor refused his indulgence? Yet the tall old man worshipped the little tots. They were almost the only creatures whose greetings he returned; and he would go carefully out of his way, when strolling along a beach, rather than spoil their sand-castles. How are we to explain the deep-seated, intense and jealous delight which he, so insensible to the softer emotions of mankind, felt at the sight of the fragile beauty of a rare flower? How are we to explain why he reserved the kindness and gentleness which he so harshly refused to his wife and daughters for his unfortunate sister, the Empress Charlotte, whose mysterious madness had kept her for forty-two years a lonely prisoner within the high walls of the ChÂteau de Bouchout? And yet, every morning of those forty-two years he never failed, when at Laeken, to go alone across the park to that silent dwelling and spend two hours in solitary converse with the tragic widow. Each day, with motherly solicitude, he personally supervised the smallest details of that shattered existence.

Lastly, what an astounding contrast was offered in Leopold II, who was considered insensible to the weaknesses of the heart, by the sudden blossoming of a sentimental idyll in the evening of his life!

3.

No one, I said, at the beginning of this chapter, was more intimately acquainted than myself with the private life of the late King Leopold. This was one of the consequences—I am far from adding, one of the advantages—of my professional duties about the persons of the sovereigns whom I have guarded. And I would certainly have hesitated before broaching the subject of the royal adventures, if this subject had remained secret. But public animosity and the King's indifference to scandal have made it so well-known that I feel no scruples about speaking in my own turn, the more so as this will give me the opportunity of destroying many a detail of the legend which people have been pleased to build up around him and of correcting those facts which have come to the inquisitive ears of the public.

To begin with, the adventure with which Leopold II was credited for ten years in connexion with Mlle. ClÉo de MÉrode must be relegated to the pure domain of fiction. I daresay that it assisted the advancement of the young and pretty dancer as much as it annoyed the King, who was pursued even in Brussels itself by the irreverent nickname of "ClÉopold." What gave rise to this absolutely gratuitous conviction on the part of public opinion? Nothing more nor less than a gossiping remark let fall in the slips at the Opera by someone who pretended that he had met the King and the ballet-dancer looking for a sequestered spot in the Forest of Saint-Germain.

The scandal was hardy and tough: it ran for ten years without stopping to take breath. At the end of that period, which was long enough to turn any lie into a truth, Leopold II, one night at the Opera, asked an important official to present Mlle. de MÉrode to him, saying that he had never met the lady, although he had "often heard of her." The important official promptly adopted the view that the King was uncommonly "deep."

And yet it was perfectly true: he had never set eyes on her in his life. The fact was proved by the candour of the words which he addressed to the charming dancer when she was brought up to be presented:

"Allow me to express all my regrets if the good-fortune which people attribute to me has offended you at all. Alas, we no longer live in the days when a king's favour was not looked upon as compromising! Besides, I am only a little king."

On the other hand, a single and decisive love, which he preserved until his death was soon to fill his thoughts exclusively and graft upon his senile heart a belated bloom of disconcerting youth. When Leopold II made the acquaintance of Mlle. Blanche Caroline Delacroix, whom he afterwards raised to the dignity of Baroness Vaughan, he had just reached his sixty-fifth year. The lady boasted two-and-twenty summers. The humbleness of her birth prevented her from raising her eyes to a throne. She was the thirteenth child of a working mechanic and was born at Bucharest, where her father had gone to seek his fortune. She was brought up, therefore, in courts which were very different from royal courts; and I need not say that her education had hardly prepared her for the brilliant destiny which her chequered life held in store for her.

Well, one afternoon in September, she was sent for to be presented to King Leopold, who was passing through Paris, who had heard of her attractions and who felt interested in her modest condition. She was so flustered by this event that she promptly mixed up Belgium and Sweden. This was not a very serious matter in itself; but it might have been, in the circumstances, if Leopold II had not happened to be in a good humour that day. The fact remained that Mlle. Delacroix was convinced that she was in the presence of the King of Sweden, nor did she find out her mistake until she noticed the amused surprise which Leopold betrayed whenever, with her very comprehensible ignorance of the rules of etiquette, Mlle. Delacroix went out of her way to call him "His Majesty Oscar."

I am bound to confess that she at once recovered her self-possession when the King of the Belgians thought fit discreetly to apprise her of his identity and she was greatly diverted by her blunder. Two years later, I described the mishap to the King of Sweden, who happened to be staying at Biarritz at the same time as the Baroness Vaughan. Said Oscar II:

"Do present my fair cousin, who did me so great an honour!"

"But, Sir," I replied, "she may feel a regret!"

"Do you think so, Paoli? And yet I am no 'fresher' than my cousin of Belgium. I am afraid, you see, that the regret will be all on my side!"

I believe that the regret was mutual. However, the meeting was arranged. The baroness took a snapshot of King Oscar with her kodak; and we agreed to say nothing about it to King Leopold, who was of a jealous disposition.

To what did Blanche Caroline Delacroix owe her success with Leopold II: to her vivid conversational powers, to the dazzling youthfulness of the fair-haired divinity that she was, or to her genuine intelligence? I cannot tell; but this much is certain, that, at her first audience, she succeeded in arousing in the old man's heart a love which was manifested at first in a polite flirtation and consecrated later in a union the mystery of which was never fully solved. Both the King and Mme. de Vaughan carefully refrained from making the smallest confidence on the subject of their marriage even to those in whom they confided most readily. Nevertheless, I have always believed that a secret religious ceremony did take place, so as to regularise their situation, if not with regard to Belgian law, at least in respect to the Church and their consciences. This conviction on my part was strengthened by the pastoral letter which Mgr. Mercier, Archbishop of Mechlin addressed to the Belgian Catholics after the King's death and in which the primate declared that the sovereign had died at peace with the Church of Rome. Allowing for the legitimate susceptibilities of the royal family, it was impossible to confirm the existence of a morganatic union in a more diplomatic manner. Some have said that the marriage was celebrated at San Remo, during the time when the King and Mme. de Vaughan were staying at Villefranche, near Nice. I cannot certify this. When I consult my recollection, I merely remember that, on a certain morning, some years before Leopold II's death, I saw the King and Mme. de Vaughan drive off together in a motor-car—a thing which they had never done before—he looking very nervous and she greatly excited. They forbade anyone to accompany them and did not return until evening, when they made no attempt to tell us where they had been. Marcel, the chauffeur, said that he had taken them to San Remo, on Italian territory; but, apart from this, he also showed a memorable discretion and we got no more out of him.

I noticed, however, that, from that day, the attitude of the couple changed: they showed themselves in public together, went openly to the theatre at Nice and to the carnival masquerade and abstained from taking the very childish and rather ridiculous precautions which the King had prescribed during the period of flirtation and "engagement" on the score of "saving appearances!"

Ridiculous and childish they were, as the reader can judge for himself. For instance, although the Baroness Vaughan shared all the King's journeys and accompanied him wherever he went, she was never to address a word to him in public or appear to know him. They took the same trains, got out at the same stations, put up at the same hotels in adjoining rooms, lunched and dined in the same dining-room, but ignored each other's existence, he with an imperturbable composure, she with a charming awkwardness.

The King never spoke of Mme. de Vaughan to the members of his suite: I do not believe that he once so much as mentioned her name before me; and yet he knew that I knew. He was quite aware that I had made her acquaintance and that we used to spend hours chatting together in the halls of the hotels at which we stayed. On the other hand, he imagined that nobody except myself suspected this intrigue, although it was an open secret about which the whole staff of the hotel, from the manager to the kitchen-scullions, used to gossip from morning till night! He went on stoically playing his puerile comedy. Every day, at lunch, seated with her maid at a table opposite him, she used to send smiles and signals to Captain BinjÉ and myself, who had our work cut out to keep a serious countenance. When lunch was over, Leopold would start on a walk with his aide-de-camp, while Mme. de Vaughan would set out, on her side, accompanied either by her companion or her maid. Half an hour later, they met on the high-road. The King would hurry forward, take off his hat and exclaim:

"Fancy meeting you, madame! How fortunate!"

This was the signal. The aide-de-camp and the lady's maid withdrew discreetly, leaving the two love-birds to themselves. They strolled together for a couple of hours, after which each took a different road back to the hotel, so as not to enter it at the same time.

On rainy days, the little scene was enacted with the aid of motor-cars. At a given spot, the King changed into Mme. de Vaughan's car, while the maid stepped into the King's. When, as sometimes happened, the baroness grew weary of this sentimental progress—for she had her capricious moods—she hastened to resort to the traditional method which never failed to achieve its object: she gave a sneeze, a loud, Titanic sneeze. Thereupon Leopold II forgot his tender passion and eagerly urged her to go home at once.

The Baroness Vaughan was not a bad sort of woman on the whole. In the early days, she used to put up with the violent outbursts to which the King occasionally treated her: she would light a great, big cigar and think no more about it. Afterwards, when she grew accustomed to look upon herself as the King's morganatic wife, her ambition increased and she insisted on being treated with deference. She complained to me that the Princess ClÉmentine, whom she had met on the road or in some path in a garden, had not condescended to return her bow; and she added, in a regretful tone:

"To think that, if I had lived in the days of Louis XIV, I should have had a stool at Court!"

In the absence of a stool, she managed to achieve a most luxurious existence. The King, who now never left her, had installed her, when he was in residence in Brussels, in a charming villa which communicated directly with the grounds of the ChÂteau de Laeken by means of a bridge that spanned the road and led into the Baroness Vaughan's garden. Every day, before paying her his visit, he sent her the choicest flowers from his hot-houses and the finest fruit in his orchard.

He also gave her a delightful little house on his estate of Passable, near Nice. He used to go there in the evening alone, through the garden, armed with a dark lantern, and spend two hours with the baroness playing cards. At eleven o'clock, he went back to his own villa, again carrying his dark lantern, while my detectives, crouching in the bushes, watched over his safety without his seeing them, although he knew that they were there; for, without showing it, he attached great importance to being properly guarded.

He was very thrifty in his personal expenditure and ended by imparting his habits of economy to his fair friend. Baroness Vaughan used to scrutinise the kitchen accounts as closely as any middle-class housewife. True, the housekeeping books sometimes took excessive liberties. I remember, one year at the ChÂteau de Lormois near Fontainebleau, which the King had hired for the season from Mme. Constant Say, the widow of the sugar-refiner, there was a violent scene with the cook, who had had the temerity to charge for seventy-five eggs in six days. Mme. de Vaughan was justly annoyed, dismissed him on the spot and refused to pay him the usual wages instead of notice. But Master Cook declined to be done out of what he considered his rights. In his fury, he hit upon the bright idea of taking up his stand, day after day, outside the gate of the chÂteau, where he launched out into invectives against his late mistress and loudly bewailed the injustice with which he pretended to have been treated. We dared not arrest him because of the scandal which he threatened to raise: he knew the habits of the house, of course. My detectives tried in vain to make him listen to reason and we were beginning to despair, when, at the end of a week, we saw that he was wearying of his daily pilgrimage. One fine day, he left for Paris and was seen no more.

Great as was the influence which Mme. de Vaughan had gained over the King's mind, I am bound to confess that it was never exercised in political matters nor in any of Leopold's financial undertakings. The baroness knew nothing about those things and made no attempt to understand them. The King was grateful to her for this discretion, which in reality was only indifference, for he never allowed any outsider to interfere in his affairs, whether public or private. He discussed none of his schemes before they were completed or before he had drawn up his plan of execution down to the minutest details.

"It shall be so," he used to declare; and no one ever dreamt of opposing his will so plainly expressed.

It was in this way that he conducted his enormous Congo enterprise entirely by himself. The different phases of this business are too well known for me to recapitulate them here. One of them, however—the first phase—has been very seldom discussed and deserves to be recalled, for it throws a great light not only upon the king's conceptive genius, but also upon his diplomatic astuteness and his amazing cynicism.

In 1884, Leopold II, who had for years been obsessed by the longing to lay hands upon the Congo territory, promoted an international conference in order to frustrate the West African treaty which had lately been concluded between Great Britain and Portugal and which stood in the way of the realisation of his secret ambitions. The King of the Belgians now conceived the subtle and intelligent idea of inducing the congress to proclaim the Congo into an independent state, with himself as its recognised sovereign.

There was only one person in Europe possessed of sufficient authority to bring about the adoption of this daring plan; and that was Bismarck. Bismarck was the necessary instrument; but how was he to be persuaded? Faced with this difficulty, Leopold II hit upon the idea of sending to Berlin a mere journalist, whom he knew to be a clever and talented man, and instructed him to capture the Iron Chancellor's confidence. Leopold coached this journalist, a gentleman of the name of Gantier, to such good purpose that, as the result of a campaign directed from Brussels by the King himself, M. Gantier managed, within a few months, to insinuate himself into Bismarck's immediate surroundings, to interest him in the Congo question and to prove to him that Germany would derive incomparable benefits from proclaiming the independence of the Congo and entrusting its administration to a neutral sovereign like the King of the Belgians.

The stratagem was successful from start to finish. The Congress of Berlin, on the motion of the chancellor, proclaimed the Congo an independent territory with Leopold II, for its sovereign. We know the result: the Congo is at this day a Belgian colony. Leopold II, in a word, had "dished" Prince Bismarck.

This incident is enough to show why the King considered himself superior to all his advisers and why, as I have already said, he felt grateful to Mme. de Vaughan for never talking to him about his vast enterprises. Her reticence made him appreciate her society all the more.

The relaxation which he found became more and more necessary to him because as he drew nearer the tomb, the worries aforesaid and his activities increased. It was as though he had received a mysterious warning to tell him that his years were now numbered and that he must hasten the realisation of his numerous and immense schemes. Not to speak of his work on the Congo, which was violently attacked both by politicians of all parties abroad and by the Opposition at home, his other vast undertakings also became the object of fierce criticism on the part of his adversaries, who considered that he was neglecting the political evolution of the country in order to devote himself entirely to his plans for transforming the town of Brussels. He was so well aware of this state of opinion that, when the burgomaster of the capital, his friend and fellow worker, M. Mott, came to congratulate the King on his last birthday, Leopold said:

"Let us hope that I shall have time to complete my work."

"Why not, Sir?" replied M. Mott. "You and I are of the same age; and You are stronger and haler than I am."

"Never mind, Monsieur le Bourgmestre: remember that, when one of us closes his eyes, the other will have to keep his open!"

It was written, in fact, that Leopold II should be called away before fully realising his colossal dreams and settling his intricate personal affairs. He was working up to the very moment of his death; as everybody knows, his mind remained clear to the end, nor did his hostility towards his family waver for an instant. He died as he had lived, inaccessible, haughty and sceptical.

Nay, even after he had entered into everlasting rest, he made one last effort to resist the final annihilation. I have the gruesome story from one of Leopold's aides-de-camp. On the night after the King's death, while two Sisters of Charity and an officer with drawn sword were watching by the remains in the chapelle ardente, suddenly an uncanny cracking sound was heard to issue from the coffin. The watchers at first believed it an hallucination; then, when the cracking continued and became louder and louder, the two nuns examined the bier. How great was their terror when, through the crevices in the wood, they saw the buttons of the uniform in which the King was clad and the hilt of his sword moving slowly upwards! The doctors were hurriedly sent for and declared that the deleterious gases were escaping from the ill-embalmed body, causing the King's corpse to swell and burst its coffin.

Thus death itself, after depriving him of movement for all time, refused him the majesty and mystery wherewith it surrounds all those whom it strikes, until the moment when they are lowered into the tomb!

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