The Queen taught me from my earliest youth how to manage servants; I learned from her very early in life that it was possible to be on a throne one day and the next to find one's self in the streets. How many of my relations or friends can contradict this to-day? But at that time my mother's cold reasoning would have disgusted the Courts and the chancellors.
QUEEN MARIE HENRIETTE OF BELGIUM
My mother made me think deeply. Thought was my first revelation of a real existence. I began to look further than the throne and a title for the means of moral and intellectual superiority, I became a definite personality; I wished to form my own ideas so that in after life I could always be myself.
The Queen helped to mould my character by abundant reading, chiefly in French and English—principally memoirs. I was never, or very rarely, allowed to read a novel. The Queen read deliciously, giving the smallest phrase its full value; the manner in which she read aloud was not only that of a woman who knew how to read, but it also displayed a penetrating intelligence—in fact, it was more like speaking than reading, and it seemed to come from a heart which understood everything.
The Queen was gay and entrancingly charming with her intimate friends. She was always like this, in her excursions in the country, at croquet parties, at her own receptions, and in her box at the theatre. Her good humour was in accordance with the promptings of a generous and expansive nature.
On my birthday, August 25, 1894, which I celebrated with her at Spa, she wished to mark the auspicious occasion by improvising a small dance after déjeuner, which she had specially ordered to be served, not in her villa, but in a room reserved for her in an hotel, thus making déjeuner a more agreeable and homely affair. There were present myself and my sisters, Stéphanie's daughter, and my own, and all of us wore our smartest gowns.
The Queen insisted on Clémentine, who was an accomplished musician, playing the piano, and having sent for Gerard, her maître d'hôtel, who had accompanied us to supervise the service (he was one of those servants who believed in their duty towards their employers, and who knew the meaning of the name of servant), the Queen said to him:
"Gerard, in honour of the princess's birthday you are going to waltz with us."