King Leopold the First, my grandfather, having died on November 10, 1865, King Leopold II and Queen Henrietta ascended the throne.
I can still see the Queen as I saw her when I lay in her arms as a child, so long has my adoration for her survived, so long has my belief in another world remained sacred to her memory.
The Queen was of medium height and of slender build. Her beauty and grace were unrivalled. The purity of her lines and her shoulders merited the expression "royal." Her supple carriage was that of a sportswoman. Her voice was of such pure timbre that it awakened echoes in one's soul. Her eyes, a darker brown than those of the King, were not so keenly luminous, but they were far more tender; they almost spoke.
But how much less her physical perfections counted in comparison with her moral qualities. A true Christian, her idea of religion was to follow it rigorously in every detail, without being in the least narrow-minded. She had a philosophical and an assured conception of God, and the mysteries of the Infinite. This faith enlightened her doctrine and strengthened her piety.
People who cannot, or who will not, study the problem of religion, easily persuade themselves that it is absurd to subject themselves to the laws of confession and to its signs and ceremonies. The sincere Christian is the woman who is par excellence a wife and a mother, but to some bigots she is merely an inferior being, who has fallen into the hands of priests—but they would doubtless be very pleased all the same to have her as the guardian angel of their own home.
Religion did not in the least deter the Queen from her obligations to the State, or from her taste for Art, or from indulging in her favourite pursuit of sport.
She received her guests, she presided over her circle, she attended fêtes with a natural charm peculiar to her, which I passionately admired from the moment when I was old enough to follow in her wake.
The Queen dressed with an inborn art which was always in harmony with her surroundings. A woman in her position has to set out to please and win the hearts of people, and she is therefore obliged more than anyone else to study her toilette. The Queen excelled in this to such perfection that she was always held up as an example by the arbiters of Parisian fashion.
At any time fashion is peculiar, or at least it seems to be; if it were not so there would be no fashion; but la mode is not so varied as one thinks. Considered as novelties, her innovations are nothing more or less than little discoveries and arrangements with which the serpent, if not Eve, was already familiar in the Garden of Eden.
The Queen followed la mode without innovating fashions—that is the affair of other queens—queens of fashion, for which they have reasons, not dictated by Reason. But the Queen adopted and perfected fashions. It was miraculous to see how she wore the fairy-like lace which is the glory and charm of Belgium. I have always remembered one of her gowns, a certain cerise-coloured silk, the corsage draped with a fichu of Chantilly—one of the most beautiful things I have ever seen in my life.