He was not at all what his enemies represented him to be, a sot, a gambler and a roué. In appearance a benignant burgomaster, tall and stalwart; in manner and voice very gentle, he should be described as first of all a man of business. His weakness was rather for money than women. Speaking of the most famous of the Parisian dancers with whom his name had been scandalously associated, he told me that he had never met her but once in his life, and that after the newspaper gossips had been busy for years with their alleged love affair. "I kissed her hand," he related, "and bade her adieu, saying, 'Ah, ma'mselle, you and I have indeed reason to congratulate ourselves.'"
It was the Congo business that lay at the bottom of the abuse of Leopold. Henry Stanley had put him up to this. It turned out a gold mine, and then two streams of defamation were let loose; one from the covetous commercial standpoint and the other from the humanitarian. Between them, seeking to drive him out, they depicted him as a monster of cruelty and depravity.
A King must be an anchorite to escape calumny, and Leopold was not an anchorite. I asked him why I never saw him in the Casino. "Play," he answered, "does not interest me. Besides, I do not enjoy being talked about. Nor do I think the game they play there quite fair."
"In what way do you consider it unfair, your Majesty?" I asked.
"In the zero," he replied. "At the Brussels Casino I do not allow them to have a zero. Come and see me and I will show you a perfectly equal chance for your money, to win or lose."
Years after I was in Brussels. Leopold had gone to his account and his nephew, Albert, had come to the throne. There was not a roulette table in the Casino, but there was one conveniently adjacent thereto, managed by a clique of New York gamblers, which had both a single "and a double O," and, as appeared when the municipality made a descent upon the place, was ingeniously wired to throw the ball wherever the presiding coupier wanted it to go.
I do not believe, however, that Leopold was a party to this, or could have had any knowledge of it. He was a skillful, not a dishonest, business man, who showed his foresight when he listened to Stanley and took him under his wing. If the Congo had turned out worthless nobody would ever have heard of the delinquencies of the King of the Belgians.
Chapter the Seventeenth
A Parisian Pension--The Widow of Walewska--Napoleon's Daughter-in-Law--The Changeless--A Moral and Orderly City