The method of his bringing up, also, and the careful manner in which his studies and employments were regulated, should have tended to increase, rather than detract from, the bodily health which he bid fair to enjoy. His education, entrusted to M. le Comte Vanderstraeten-Ponthoz, and to Monsieur le Lieutenant Donny, was skilfully directed in such a way as to maintain a wholesome equilibrium between the development of his physical force and that of the brilliant mental faculties with which the young prince was gifted. The employment of his time was carved out with the greatest minuteness, and out-door exercises alternated with mental labour so as to procure for both mind and body the repose they needed. The prince invariably left his bed at six in summer, and seven in winter, and breakfasted an hour after he rose; when he worked with his tutor till ten o’clock. A run in the park or a ride on his pony served him for recreation; and at one he joined his father and mother at luncheon—a meal which the king and queen always took en famille. Before resuming his studies, the little prince went out again with his tutor, dined at six, and was then at liberty to amuse himself until his bed-time, which was fixed for eight o’clock. Such a life could hurt no one: no enforced studies were exacted from his tender brain, nor was the heir of Belgium sacrificed to the desire to see him turn out a prodigy; he lived as other happy and well-cared-for children live, making his short life one long holiday; and, until within ten months of his decease, showed no symptoms whatever of ill-health.
Then the first signs of sickness, said to be consequent on the suppression of some childish disorder, became apparent, and increased until they culminated in pericarditis, or inflammation of the membranes of the heart, the affection which ultimately destroyed him. At its commencement, this complaint had all the appearance of a heavy cold, accompanied by a dry, violent cough, which was soon followed by a pallid face and wasted figure, the sure signs of impoverished blood.
When the first grave consultation had confirmed the diagnostic of the attendant physicians, that the pericardium or membrane of the heart was affected, all the efforts of science were immediately put in requisition to arrest the progress of the evil; but without avail, for they proved powerless to stay the rapid decline of his natural powers, by dropsy, the usual effect of heart disease. The swelling of the stomach and chest of the poor little invalid now became enormous; the respiratory organs no longer performed their office, and the cough redoubled in intensity. It became most distressing, scarcely ceasing day or night; and the gravest fears began to be entertained for his lungs. The apartments of the prince, though large and airy, and situated on the ground floor of the right wing of the palace of Laeken, and opening on the park, did not contain sufficient vital air for his need. When it was necessary to close the windows of the chamber, which was only done at night (for the suffering child found no relief except in a free current of air), servants placed on either side his bed kept up a continual fanning, and by that means occasionally gained him a few moments of repose. Every morning, under the guardianship of his tutor, Monsieur Donny, the prince was taken into the park in a little pony-carriage led by a groom, and made the tour of the domain four or five times. Towards the middle of the journey the pony and servant were changed, for the promenade was long, and often occupied several hours; and, occasionally, the poor father and mother, so soon to be bereaved, might be seen following on horseback, and wistfully regarding the little carriage which held the object of their dearest hopes. It was a triste and melancholy procession, and resembled a funeral cortége more than anything else.
Towards one o’clock the prince would stop, generally near the aviary of pheasants, and lunch with his preceptor; for, strange to say, his appetite, though feeble, never abandoned him until the very last. Soon the carriage was again in motion and making the circuit of the park, for it was only by a continual change of air that the poor child was enabled to breathe with any ease. The affection of the prince for Monsieur Donny was incredible. Throughout his illness he insisted upon his being continually at his side, would not take his meals without him, and obliged him to sleep in his apartments; and Monsieur Donny (although he had been married but a few weeks when the first serious symptoms of illness appeared) never quitted the royal child for a moment until he was carried out of the palace of Laeken for the last time. About the month of October there appeared to be some amelioration in the prince’s condition, and hopes were almost confidently entertained of his ultimate restoration to health. But these hopes were of short duration, although the bulletins, issued daily, fluctuated so much in their statements that it was difficult to arrive at a knowledge of the truth. The king is said to have had no hope from the commencement of the disorder, and his despair was proportionately great. His grief was so profound that he became a mere shadow of himself; and yet, with that manly fortitude which resists an open expression of what it feels, might be seen at all times, pacing the palace and gardens of Laeken with calm dry eyes, but a fixed, mournful look, which seemed as though he had always before him a vision of the pitiless death which was about to strike him in his tenderest affections.
At night he would constantly rise from his own bed to go with bare feet and noiseless step, and hang over the couch where his child, with angelic patience, was awaiting his doom. This patience, so calm as to appear almost unnatural, and which excites surprise in those who have not nursed little children through mortal illnesses, seems to have been a characteristic of this little child. Numberless anecdotes have, of course, been related of him during the last months, many of which are totally without foundation, but one in particular was so widely spread that it gained general credence. It was the fact of his feigning sleep when suffering great pain if he heard the approach of his father’s footstep, lest he should be questioned relative to his state, and read the disappointment his answer must have caused. ‘If I pretend to sleep,’ he used to say to his attendants, ‘my father will think that I am better.’
But during the daytime his father was seldom absent from his side, and was never weary of trying to extract some slight support on which to hang hope by questioning the child as to his feelings and symptoms. One day, when the little tragedy was drawing very near its close, and the prince was suffering from one of those attacks which so often threatened to be fatal, the king approached the bed to learn some news of his condition, and receiving, for the first time, no reply save such as was conveyed by the languid, half-raised eyes.
‘Je vous ennuie, n’est ce pas, mon enfant!’ he exclaimed; and unable to control his feelings, rushed away into the park in order to conceal them.
On Christmas-day the king, in an attempt, if possible, to distract the child’s mind, had a large Christmas-tree set up in the midst of his apartment, made brilliant with wax tapers, and hung with numbers of beautiful playthings and other ornaments calculated to attract one of his age.
The Duc de Brabant, after having duly admired the tree and its belongings, and appearing to take pleasure in examining and handling the playthings with which it was laden, asked his attendants to bring a large box to his bedside; and having seen all his presents packed away in it, gave it to Doctor Henriette (one of his attendant physicians), and begged him to distribute its contents amongst the little invalids in the hospital. This is but one trait amongst a thousand from which might have been predicated what sort of king this child, if spared, would eventually have made. He was positively adored by the people of the royal household—those servants who were under his control; and by seeing him play at sovereign with whom one read the natural nobility of his yet undeveloped character. When any of his servants had committed a fault and deserved a reprimand from the officer on duty, the Duc de Brabant would accuse himself of the negligence in order to save the real offender from punishment. He was nursed throughout his illness by two Sœurs de Charité, who paid him the utmost attention, and of whom he became proportionately fond. It was said that on the first of January the Duc de Brabant asked his father for the sum of six thousand francs: ‘Pour ces deux anges qui me veillaient.’ This anecdote was afterwards contradicted; but it possesses at least the merit of giving the general idea of the disposition of Leopold-Ferdinand. His was the most generous little heart possible, and he would have despoiled himself of everything to make one creature happy.
On Thursday evening, the twenty-first of January, when it became known in Laeken that the prince was really dying, the whole community was in commotion; and when towards nine o’clock the report was spread that all was over, nothing was to be seen but mournful and downcast countenances, and the commissioner of police was forced to reassure the people by telling them that the child still lived. These sentiments were but natural, for the progress of the disease had been suspended during so many months that the dangerous state of the royal invalid was but thoroughly realised. The public had begun to think that the doctors must be mistaken in their diagnostics; and thus, when the bulletins from the palace intimated that there was a fatal aggravation of the symptoms, the news could not fail to throw the whole country into a state of consternation. The last agony of the unfortunate child (whose sufferings had been greatly accelerated ever since the fourteenth of January) commenced at five in the evening of the twenty-first, and did not terminate till forty minutes past twelve, at which time he drew his last breath in a long sigh of relief. MM. Henriette and Wimmer, who had so assiduously tended the royal child since the appearance of the disease to which he succumbed, were summoned to the palace of Laeken by a despatch from M. le Comte Vanderstraeten-Ponthoz a few minutes after the last crisis had commenced, and did not again quit the bedside of the invalid, though they had the grief of seeing all their science powerless to do more than assist at the last moments of him whose life but a few months before they had hoped to save.