CHAPTER V

My Country and the Days of my Youth

It is more than forty-five years that, since my marriage, Fate has exiled me from my native country. I have never revisited Belgium, except in passing through it, and then often under very painful circumstances.

Well! I will close my eyes and return in imagination to the Château of Laeken, and to a certain pathway in the park; I will go, in like manner, to one particular footpath in the forest of Soignies; there are trees, stones and roofs there, which seem to me to be those which I once knew.

An oak tree was planted at Laeken to commemorate the birth of my brother and the birth of each of my sisters and myself. I had not seen these trees thus dedicated to us for a long time, until I happened to be in Belgium for a few days after the King's death. Accompanied by that old friend of my childhood, my brother's tutor, General Donny, I made an excursion to Laeken, and I saw once more, with what bitter-sweet memories, the little garden formerly tended by my brother and myself, which had been piously preserved in its original state. Was this a mute evidence of the King's remembrance, or the fidelity of some old servants? In my grief I did not question to whom the little garden owed its preservation. My tears alone spoke.

When I stood before our "birthday" oak trees I only saw three!

I was told that by some extraordinary coincidence the one which marked the birth of my brother had died, like him, when it was quite young. Of the others, mine was strong and vigorous; Stéphanie's had had the misfortune to grow a little crooked, but the one belonging to Clémentine was quite normal. I venture to say that the three oak trees are emblems of our destiny so far as our inner lives are concerned, which have been ignored and misunderstood by men, but which like Nature remain confident in God. These three oak trees, and the fourth which is now dead, have always troubled me since the day when I beheld them again.

Whatever they may be now I envy them! They have grown, they have lived, they still flourish on the soil sacred to my lost ones, except one, whose absence is so expressive. I should love to see them again and to live, if not near them, at least under the shadow of other oak trees growing in my beloved country.

Would that I could end my days there, and once more find my adored mother and my vivid youth in the forests, the countryside, or the villages through which we passed so often together. She it was who taught me the secrets of Nature, and it was thus that the life of Nature and the life of Belgium, the wonders of the universe, and the life of society were revealed to me. The Queen loved and taught me to love our heroic country, whose defence of her liberty in past ages constitutes one of the most touching episodes in history.

And I have inherited an ardent wish that my country should never become enslaved.

I know that the good people of Belgium have reproached me, as if it had been my fault, for deserting our country. Those who knew me in my youth have believed that I was transplanted to a strange and brilliant world where I forgot my native land. Then the dramas and scandals into which I was dragged on the hurdle of misunderstanding and calumny, have for some transformed me into a sinner, for whom it was not enough punishment to forbid her to see her dying mother by keeping her as a sane prisoner in a madhouse. Such a woman deserved to be wiped off the face of the earth!

Ah, poor miserable humanity, so full of evil yourself that you see nothing but evil in others, what was my crime?

I would not, I could not live under the conjugal roof. I endured my life, sacrificed myself, as long as I could, because I knew that I owed a duty towards my children, but after they grew up the horror of my life increased every day. My crime has consisted in listening to a unique man, the ideal knight who kept me from committing errors which I resolved to forget, and to do as many others have done.

In my palace, or elsewhere, I could have been the heroine of discreet and multiple adventures. This behaviour would have conformed to the code of high propriety, and God knows that opportunities abounded. But I was not a hypocrite and very soon I found myself up against hypocrites--innumerable legions of them. I was also the recipient of their irritating and deceitful confidences.

Thus slander did its detestable work. An implacable persecution, masking itself behind the simulated indignation of a false morality, began to assail me.

To me one of the most cruel acts was the violent attack made by my detractors on the King and Queen, and on public opinion in Belgium.

Could such a thing be possible? I found myself an exile from my country, imprisoned and branded as mad, for everyone was determined that I should become so.

It is to you, my mother, martyr and saint, and to some sublime moral strength that I owe my resistance. You armed me for the struggle by never letting me forget the essential duties of life which you had taught me. I have remained faithful to them. But I have suffered horribly since the day when even you could not understand my rebellion. I was suppressed by the world. Cleverly exploited, all appearances were against me. My enemies told you: "She is lost; she is mad; the doctors have said so."

What doctors, _mon Dieu_? The truth about these doctors came out afterwards.

Ah! some people envy princesses. They should rather pity them. I know of one for whom there has been no justice in this world. Ordinary rights were denied her. The law of the world was not a law for her, except when it could be used against her.

Yes, a victim of an abominable plot of such surpassing cruelty that reason can scarcely conceive possible; I was not allowed to return to my beloved Belgium at the moment when I learnt, in spite of my persecutors, that my mother was dying at Spa; I could not receive her last blessing, I was not even allowed to follow her coffin ... to the tomb!

If I did not become mad in my asylum it was because I was not meant to do so; I could not become mad. But I still tremble when I think of it.

Later, when the King was dying, I recovered my liberty, and my freedom was brought about by my friend--a friend without equal, who, having on one occasion saved me from myself, now saved me from prison and madness, after having nearly succumbed himself beneath the blows of hate and persecution.

But my freedom constituted a new crime; my fidelity to an incarnate ideal in a whole-hearted devotion constituted an additional sin.

When I attended my father's funeral I was kept under constant observation. I was restricted to a certain area of my native country. The eldest daughter of the great King whom Belgium had just lost was received with polite formality by a police official in Court attire!

Ah, no! I incriminate no one--not even the servants whose civility I had once known. I am aware how tempting and profitable it is to mislead princes, and what power exists in wicked advice when it is given with an air of devotion. I am only explaining how it came about that I did not remain in my much-loved country.

At last the frightful war broke out, following the debates regarding the King's inheritance, and I was at once even more definitely suppressed by the Belgian nation because, to my other abominations, I had added the unpardonable sin of believing that justice existed in Belgium.

I was a prisoner in Munich, where I could do nothing. I was surprised in Bavaria by hostilities and treated like a Belgian princess--that is to say, very badly, as will be seen later.

In Brussels I became an enemy princess, and from the date of the Armistice I was proclaimed a foreigner in my native country in the interests of which I had been sacrificed at the age of seventeen, and I also saw myself deprived of the inheritance which would have become mine at the death of my aunt, the Empress Charlotte of Mexico.

But it is a matter of history that my marriage with the Prince of Coburg was annulled in 1907 by the decision of the special tribunal of Gotha, judging according to the "Rights of Princes," and that this annulment was transmitted to the Court of Vienna. The divorce was ratified by all the minute forms of the law of Courts and the ancient statutes of Austria. The King officially gave me back my title of Princess of Belgium.

That meant nothing; in Brussels no notice was taken of it.

It is a fact that the law of Hungary does not recognize the "Rights of Princes" and the procedure of Gotha; in consequence of the possessions of the Coburg family in Hungary I am still a Princess of Coburg.

I lose myself in this web in which I have been entangled, but common sense tells me that the disappearance of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, and the separation of Austria from Hungary has put an end to the "mixed state" and the position of "mixed subject" which was that of the Prince of Coburg.

Through his ancestors, this "Austrian" Prince, Duke Philip of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, is of Franco-German and not of Hungarian origin. The princely union cancelled, the civil union dissolved, I feel I have been delivered, and that I have regained my Belgian nationality, thanks to the good will of the King himself.

They have wished to ignore this at Brussels. They have branded me as a Hungarian because the Prince of Coburg has entailed estates in Hungary. Could they not just as well have proclaimed me a Turk or a Chinese had he possessed estates in Turkey or China?

I question this; I make no reproaches whatever, especially against the principle of superior authority, for the good reason that this happened in a state whose king and queen had retreated before the invader in order to defend their country (one knows with what courage and self-denial) from the extreme frontier left them by a conquering enemy. They returned in triumph flushed with the joy of victory. They had only time to deal with general and momentous questions. I should like to think that the attitude adopted towards myself has been merely the outcome of a destiny which wills that I should become a stranger in my own country.

I wept over this country, so dear to my heart, in 1914. I believe that her errors towards me have added to her misfortunes. I know that the judgment of Brussels in denying me my share of my father's property aroused bitter indignation in Berlin. My son-in-law, the Duke of Schleswig-Holstein, brother-in-law of the Emperor William II, relied on succeeding to the inheritance of his wife's grandfather. I can only say that the anger of the German Sovereign against the resistance of Belgium was increased by the remembrance of the deception of one of his relations, on whom he was rather severe, and this may have decided him to crush the little nation which dared oppose the violation of its neutrality.

But this did not help to recall the irritable William II back to reason and humanity, because this miserable man, whom I have known since my childhood, was absolutely convinced of his rôle as the appointed scourge of God and the invincible redresser of Justice on the field of battle.

* * * * *

Let us for a moment forget these miseries and sufferings and talk of the time when I was happy in my happy country--the days when I went for excursions with the Queen and "discovered" my parents' kingdom.

What joy when I could drive like my mother! I was then barely fourteen and I was her pupil. We frequently went for excursions through our dear Belgium from early morning till late in the evening. Two or three of the Royal carriages followed. The first was driven by the Queen, the second by myself, and the third by an officer, one of the ladies-in-waiting, or, later, by my sister Clémentine. Doctor Wiemmer, a compatriot and a devoted friend of the Queen who accompanied her to the Belgian Court, often went with us, also good General Donny and General Van den Smissin, and certain maids-of-honour and other trusted members of our entourage. We halted as fancy dictated. The forest of Soignies, the environs of Spa, and the Ardennes have many a time witnessed the sight of the Queen sitting on the grass in some delightful glade, munching one of the famous _pistolets_ for which Brussels is famous, and which came out of the Royal bakeries (what delicious cakes were made there! I can taste them even yet). How beautiful Belgium was then, and what pure air refreshed us. How eagerly I awaited the future.

On these long excursions the Queen carried a map and made out the itinerary herself with the skill of a staff officer; she also taught me and my sisters how to take our bearings.

At this time the automobile had not yet ravaged the world. I have come across this stupefying remark of a Frenchman, "Speed is the aristocracy of movement." One might as well say, "Thoughtlessness is the aristocracy of thought." The automobile is doubtless of occasional individual benefit, but I look upon it as a general scourge. Side by side with the satisfaction which it procures, it upsets existence by precipitating it.

At the time when horse-drawn vehicles were in constant use, we had different impressions of a day's excursion than those which we have after the end of three weeks' feverish motoring--when we halt at various palaces, drive between interminable rows of poplars, interspersed with fleeting visions of fields, houses and poultry-yards, and when we are tortured by the dread of being made untidy by the wind and splashed by the mud.

It is nearly half a century since the horse was the ornament and comfort of the best European society. The example of the Queen of Belgium then counted for something.

In France, the Orleans family--which is related to ours--and the Duc and Duchesse de Chartres led the fashion not only in Cannes, but in Normandy and in the delicious region of Chantilly. The duchess always rode in an admirable riding habit. I well remember her black eyes, her pure features and her dazzling personality which were a mixture of natural charm and inborn distinction.

The Prince de Joinville, so artistic, so witty, was endowed with the most exquisite and gallant spirit. He paid me marked attention, as did his brother the Duc de Montpensier. We were a very gay trio, and the graver members of the family were wont to cast severe glances in our direction.

The mention of the Orleans family recalls to me the most indulgent, the greatest nobleman of all--the Duc d'Aumale, a faithful friend of Belgium and often our host. Oh! what a loyal and noble character the French Republic refused to recognize in him. His revenge was to overwhelm his ungrateful country with kindness. I have lived under his roof and I think of him with the greatest tenderness. I still see myself in a room on the ground floor overlooking the moat at Chantilly, where this princely host surrounded himself with everything that counted for anything in France, and where he held wonderful receptions, frequently numbering among his guests the magnificent-looking Prince de Condé, whom he honoured and had almost brought back to life.

The Queen and the Duc d'Aumale were greatly attached to one another. When the bitterness of a difficult situation rendered her life first difficult, and then impossible, owing to the King's forgetfulness of what was due from the man to the prince, the Duc d'Aumale was one of those invaluable friends whose delicate understanding and faithful thoughts consoled her helplessness.

Although devoted to the Duc d'Aumale, I also knew the Comtesse de Paris intimately, with whom I have stayed at the Château d'Eu. She was an eccentric woman, rather odd-looking in appearance, but she possessed a joyous and lively disposition.

Another lady of the Orleans family who became familiar to me in early life was the Princess Clémentine of respected memory, a daughter of King Louis Philippe, and the wife of Prince Auguste of Coburg. I became her daughter-in-law by my marriage with her eldest son, and my ardent hope was that she would be a second mother to me. It did not occur to either of us that her age and my youth could not agree.

Gratitude also recalls to my mind my near relations the Comte and Comtesse de Flandre, and their many kindnesses which I have not forgotten. Their noble lives have known the awful sadness of the destruction of a tenderly nurtured future. But God has granted them reserves of hope and affection.

I was nearly forgetting one of the chief recollections of my earliest childhood--Queen Marie Amélie, the widow of King Louis Philippe.

This Royal lady, who bore her loss and her exile with so much dignity, was my great-grandmother and my godmother. She lived in retirement at Claremont, near Esher.

When the Queen received the news of my birth her first question was: "Has she small ears?" She expressed the wish for me to be named Louise Marie, in memory of her daughter, my venerated grandmother, the first Queen of the Belgians.

I can still picture my sweet old relation, with her white curls showing underneath a wide-brimmed lace cap. I can again see the early breakfast placed at the side of the deep arm-chair, and I remember the "pain à la Grecque" which she gave me when I had been good.

Then the pony was brought round, and my cousin Blanche de Nemours and myself were installed in the double panniers, and taken for our daily ride in the shady avenues of the great park.

The Queen had as reader Miss Müser, a German, who was the faithful friend and constant companion of her old age. I was very young at this time, certainly not more than four, but I have religiously treasured in my remembrance the face, the voice, and the tenderness of my great-grandmother, Marie Amélie, Queen of France.

As everyone knows, my two sisters, whom I always remember in those happy times when we still ignored what is called life, are both married. Stéphanie, like myself, married very early, and Clémentine much later in life.

Stéphanie as a child, a young girl and a young woman was the more beautiful. Clémentine, who was also beautiful, possessed the most charm. Destiny has smiled upon her. Her life with the King gave her the insight and guidance which we never enjoyed. Every life has its favours and its chances in the human lottery.

Clémentine married Prince Victor Napoleon and the widely varied possibilities attached to such a name.

Stéphanie's marriage seemed brilliant, not with eventualities but with certainties. I refer to her first husband, for she married twice. The first time she had the good luck to marry an intelligent, handsome and chivalrous man, who was perhaps the most remarkable personality of his time. He shared with her the crown of Charles-Quint and the thrones of Austria-Hungary ... crown and thrones have disappeared, as though banished by the wand of some infernal magician, and my sister remains known to history as the widow of the Archduke Rudolph. She was only twenty-five years of age when he died.

I have said nothing about the _mise en scène_ in the midst of which the various personages moved who appealed to my intelligence and to my heart at an age when my heart and mind were alike expanding. There is nothing to tell but what is already well known.

The most interesting place of all others to me in my childhood was the Château of Laeken. I have no agreeable memories of the Palace at Brussels, although I have not forgotten the gallery and the reception rooms, where the many beautiful pictures always interested me, above all that of Charles I, by Van Dyck, dressed in black, in whose pale and noble face I seemed to read the melancholy fate which overshadows some doomed monarchs.

I have seen many princely and many royal abodes. They all resemble museums, and they are equally fatiguing. Better to have a cottage and a small Teniers than own ten _salons_ and five hundred linen tablecloths which belong to everybody.

I was happy at Laeken because work became less absorbing. We had more liberty, more space. I never hesitated to run or jump in the gardens and the park from the earliest age, and I always took the lead instead of my brother, who seemed to be the girl. I was strong, lively and full of devilment.

I was eager and willing to learn. My habit of asking questions gave me the name of "Madame Pourquoi." I always loved truth and logic. My instinctive passion for truth made me attack my governess tooth and nail one day because she wished to punish me undeservedly. I was in such a state of mind that Dr. Wiemmer, who was called in, decided to get to the bottom of the cause of my fury. He concluded that I was right in fact, if not in action, and he saw that my character was one that could only be led by kindness, frankness and justice. The governess was sent away.

The Queen recalled this incident and the doctor's words many times.

This medical man who was so devoted to my family, and who disappeared all too soon, once saved my sister Stéphanie's life when she was stricken with typhoid, and when she was better the King and Queen took us to Biarritz--a change of air being necessary for our convalescent. My sister and I shared the same room facing the sea at the Villa Eugénie. I was thirteen years old, Stéphanie was seven. I was entrusted with the care of her, and to see that she did not catch cold. One night a tempestuous wind arose which, incidentally, produced a terrible waterspout. Waking up, I rushed to the window, which was open, in my nightgown. The system of closing the window would not act, or perhaps I was clumsy; anyhow, I could not manage to shut the window. The wind now rose to such fury that every moment I was blown back into the room. I began to tremble as I feared for Stéphanie. But I still continued to struggle against the force of the storm. How long this lasted I do not know. I only remember that they found me frozen, soaked and shivering, and that I was put into a warm bed.

My eyes closed. I heard Dr. Wiemmer say to the Queen: "What a child! Any other would have called out or rung the bell! She did not wish for help to protect her sister, and the storm did not frighten her. She only listened to the voice of duty, and she did not flinch."

Alas! each of us is made according to his or her destiny.

The first blow which made me realize the cruel severity of Fate was the death of my brother Leopold. I had for him the feelings of a devoted and "motherly" sister.

He was my property, my chattel, my child. We grew up together. I had considerable authority over him as I was twelve months older than he was, and he always obeyed me.

Leopold, Duke of Brabant and Comte de Hainaut, loved to play with dolls. I much preferred playing with him. Nevertheless my uncle, the Archduke Etienne, my mother's brother, one of the best and most distinguished men that the earth has produced, gave us two Hungarian dolls. These were works of art of their kind. Mine was christened "Figaro," a souvenir of Beaumarchais, the enemy of Courts, who thus named it; why, and wherefore, I cannot say. My brother's doll received the much more modest and romantic name of "Irma."

There came a time when Figaro and Irma enlivened the Château of Laeken. They even made the King laugh. I organized performances with Leopold, Irma and Figaro which would have made Bartholo jealous.

My brother and I were happy and light-hearted--as happy as it is possible to be at our age. Then came death, which lacerated my whole being, and the passing of my beloved brother in his ninth year. I remember then that I dared curse God and disown Him....

Leopold, handsome, sweet, sincere, tender and intelligent, embodied for me, after our mother, all that was most precious in the world--I could no more conceive existence without him than the day without light. But he could not stay ... and I still weep for him, although it is more than fifty years since he left me.

If he had lived how different things would have been!

Our house, thus struck down in the male descent of its eldest branch, never recovered from this misfortune. Belgium will remember in the great works accomplished by her, that my grandfather and my father made her what she is.

She will not forget that angel on earth, my grandmother, the immortal Queen Louise. Many, many tears were shed at her death, and have still left their traces in Belgium.

Of my grandfather, I will repeat what M. Delehaye, President of the Chamber of Representatives, said in his address to the King during the magnificent fêtes of July 21-23, 1856, to celebrate the twenty-fifth anniversary of his succession to the throne.

"On July 21, 1831, confidence and joy burst forth at your Coronation, and Sire, although you were then alone on your throne with your eminent qualities and the prospect of splendid political alliances, you are not alone to-day. You present yourself to the country supported by your two sons and the remembrance of the Queen beloved and regretted as a mother, you are surrounded by the Royal family, by illustrious alliances, by confidence and sympathy, you are supported by foreign Governments, your fame has grown greater, and you possess the love of Belgium which has grown still greater than any fame. Sire, we can have confidence in the future...."

Cannot I, must I not, also, have faith in the future?

I appeal to my illustrious ancestors; I appeal to the memory of the Queen; I appeal to the memory of the King, by whom, alas! I was too often denied and betrayed. I appeal to that world where everything is illuminated for the soul liberated from earth, which will alone see clearly for me.