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!"
[Illustration: PRINCESS CLEMENTINE]
"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!
IX
THE ENGLISH ROYAL FAMILY
1.
While writing these recollections, I have more than once had occasion,
in passing, to mention different "faces" belonging to the Royal Family
of England. They occur at most of the sovereign courts; for it was no
empty phrase that used to describe Queen Victoria as "the grandmother
of Europe." There was never a truer saying. Even as, in whichever
direction beyond-seas we turn our eyes, we behold the British flag
waving in the breeze, in the same way, if we study the pedigree of
any royal house, we are almost always certain to discover an English
alliance.