Part 16

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.

The long years which I spent in the service of Queen Victoria and the confidence with which she honoured me by admitting me to her intimacy enabled me to become acquainted with several members of that large, united and affable family; and I am bound to say that not one of them has forgotten me. They all deign to give me a little corner in their childish and youthful memories; they are good enough to remember that, in the old days, when they came to Nice, to Aix, to Biarritz or to Cannes to pay their duty to their grandmother and to bring her the smile of their youth, there was always in the old-fashioned landau that carried the good Queen along the country roads, or walking beside her donkey-chair, somebody who shared the general gaiety and whom the Queen treated with affectionate kindness. That "somebody" was myself.

I thus had the honour of seeing King George V when he was still wearing the modest uniform of a lieutenant in the Royal Navy and, later, of knowing Queen Mary when she was only Duchess of York and Cornwall. And I hope that she will permit me, in this connexion, to recall an incident that diverted Queen Victoria's little circle for a whole evening. It happened during a visit which the Duchess of York was paying to the Queen at Nice. I had informed the venerable sovereign that the "ladies of the fishmarket"--one of the oldest corporations at Nice--wished to offer her some flowers; and the Queen asked the Duchess of York to receive them in her stead and to express her sincere thanks for their good wishes.

The good women handed the Duchess their bouquets; and I then saw that they were shy and at a loss what to do or say next. So I whispered to them:

"Go and kiss that gentleman over there," pointing to Colonel Carington, the Queen's equerry. "That is by far the best speech that you could make!"

The ladies evidently approved of my suggestion, for they forthwith, one and all, flung themselves upon the colonel's neck; and he, though flurried and a little annoyed, had to submit with the best grace possible to this volley of kisses under the eyes of the princess, who laughed till the tears ran down her cheeks.

When I apologised to him afterwards for the abominable trick which I had played him:

"Ah," he sighed, "if only they had been good-looking!"

The fact is that none of the ladies evoked the most distant memories of the Venus of Milo!

Thanks to the recollections of those bygone years, of which any number of charming and amusing stories could be told, I was no longer a stranger to the Duke and Duchess of York when, after the accession of King Edward VII, they were raised to the title of Prince and Princess of Wales and travelled across France, under my protection, on their way to Brindisi, where they were to take ship for India.

"I will present you to the prince myself," said Princess May, with exquisite and simple kindliness, when she saw me waiting for them in the railway station at Calais. And she continued, "George, this is M. Paoli: you remember him, don't you?"

"I remember," said the prince, giving me his hand, "how much my grandmother liked you and the affection which she showed you. I need hardly say that we feel just the same to you ourselves."

I could not have hoped for a more cordial welcome from the prince, whose features bore so striking a resemblance to those of the Emperor of Russia, whom I had just left.

This journey was a particularly pleasant one for me, as it enabled me to foregather once more with an old and faithful friend in the person of the prince's secretary, of whom I had seen a great deal at the time when he was private secretary to Queen Victoria and who now occupies the same position under King George V; I refer to Sir Arthur Bigge.

Sir Arthur belongs to that race of servants of the monarchy whose zeal and devotion cease only with their death. He met with a striking adventure at the time of the interview between Queen Victoria and the late M. Félix Faure at Noisy-le-Sec. The story has never been told before; and I have no hesitation in publishing it, because it does great credit to the generosity of feeling of the then President of the Republic.

The Queen was on her way to Nice, that year, and had expressed a wish to meet M. Félix Faure, whom she did not know. The interview was arranged to take place during the stop of the royal train at Noisy Junction; and it had acquired a certain solemnity owing to the political circumstances of the moment. We began by witnessing a long private conversation between the Queen and the president through the windows of the royal saloon-carriage, after which, in accordance with the usual etiquette, they presented the members of their respective suites. When it came to Colonel Bigge's turn, the Queen said to M. Faure, without having the least idea of mischief in her mind:

"My private secretary, Sir Arthur Bigge, who enjoys all my confidence and all my esteem. Besides, I expect you know his name: it was he who accompanied the Empress Eugénie on her sad pilgrimage to Zululand and helped her to recover the body of her poor son."

The president bowed, without moving a muscle of his face or uttering a word; and Sir Arthur, greatly embarrassed by the terms of the presentation, thought the best thing for him to do was to lie low and keep out of the way. How great, therefore, was his surprise when, after everybody had been presented, he heard his name called by M. Félix Faure:

"What can he want with me?" he asked, rather uneasily.

As soon as they were alone, the president said to him, point-blank:

"As a Frenchman, I wish to thank you for the devotion which you have shown to one of our fellow-countrywomen in circumstances so terrible for her. You behaved like a man of heart. I congratulate you."

M. Faure had the knack of enhancing the character of his office and winning the respectful sympathy of foreigners by happy flashes of inspiration of this kind.

But I am wandering from my subject. To return to the Prince of Wales, the cordiality of the reception which he gave me at Calais promised me a charming journey. In point of fact, I was able, during the run across France, to perceive how fond both the prince and princess were of simplicity and gaiety. They were evidently delighted to be going to India, although the princess could not accustom herself to the idea of leaving her children. As for the prince, he was revelling beforehand in the length of the voyage:

"One never feels really alive except on board ship," he said to me. "What do you think, M. Paoli?"

"I think, Sir," I replied, "that I must ask Your Royal Highness to allow me to differ. When I am on board ship, I sometimes feel more like dying."

"You're not the only one," he retorted, with a side glance at one of his equerries, who stood without wincing.

The prince liked teasing people; but his chaff was never cruel and he accompanied it with so much kindness that there was no question of taking offence at it. At heart, the prince had remained the middie that he once was, a "good sort," full of fun, full of "go," fond of laughing and interested in everything.

We chatted in the train until very late at night, for I did not leave the prince until we reached Modane, the station on the Italian frontier where my service ended.

2.

I saw him next at the Queen of Spain's wedding; and again in 1908. The prince and princess had just spent a week in Paris for the first time in their lives, and were returning to England delighted with their stay. The special train had hardly left the Gare du Nord, when the Hon. Derek Keppel, who was with the prince, came to me in my compartment:

"M. Paoli," he said, "I am commanded by Their Royal Highnesses to ask you to give them the pleasure of your company to luncheon."

I at once went to the royal saloon. The prince was chatting with M. Hua, his sons' French tutor, a very agreeable and scholarly man whom he treated as a friend; the princess was talking to Lady Eva Dugdale, her lady-in-waiting. It goes without saying that the conversation was all about Paris and the impressions which the prince and princess had received from their trips to Versailles, Chantilly, Fontainebleau and Chartres.

"I can understand my father's admiration and affection for France," said the prince to me. "It is a magnificent country and an interesting people. I am glad that the _entente cordiale_ has strengthened the bonds of friendship between the two nations. I must come and see you oftener."

While the prince was saying these pleasant things to me, I was surprised to observe his valet depositing two apparently very heavy hampers on the floor in the middle of the carriage; but my astonishment was still greater when I saw the princess herself open one of the hampers and take out a table-cloth, plates, a chicken, tumblers, in short, a complete lunch.

"By the way," said the prince, "I forgot to tell you: there's no restaurant-car in the train, so we are going to have a pic-nic lunch here. It will be much better fun!"

And it was. The man put out two folding-tables which were in the carriage; and then, at the princess's suggestion, we all helped to lay the cloth! One looked after the plates, another the glasses, a third the knives and forks, while the princess herself carved the cold fowl.