CHAPTER IV
The King
My father was not only a great king—he was a great man.
A king may achieve greatness through possessing the art of surrounding himself with the right entourage, and thus taking advantage of the importance which it is then so easy for him to gain. He must be superior, at least at heart, to have a taste for superiority.
When he came into power Leopold II did not aim at gathering round him those wonderful intellects who would have inspired him to greatness. He had not the same chances as Louis XIV, neither had he those men whom his own example later developed. Belgium was still an adolescent State, the government of which required very careful and exclusive handling. She had sprung into being from twin countries, widely different in character, but united by the same laws. Her national policy is like a web whose mission it is to hold them together, but such a form of Constitution is not without its inconveniences.
For a long time the King's secret conviction was, that in order to be able to endure and strengthen herself, Belgium had urgent need of some great scheme which would produce in her an amalgamation of effort and intelligence, and allow her to take one of the highest places among the nations of the world.
He had carefully studied the map of the world, and his observations resulted in the unheard-of project of endowing his little kingdom with immense colonial possessions. He had at the time neither the money nor the army; he only had the idea, but the idea obsessed him and he lived for it alone.
The man whom I recall to my mind in thinking of the King is one whose silence always frightened me when I was a child. Here is an instance of his taciturn character.
The Queen is seated, holding in her hand a book which she is no longer reading. She is folding me close to her heart, whilst her eyes follow the King. The doors of the drawing-room leading to the other rooms are open, and the Sovereign paces backwards and forwards, his hands behind his back, almost like an automaton, without glancing at us and without breaking his interminable train of thought. Silence lies over the palace; nobody dares enter, for the King has forbidden access to the Royal apartments. The Queen and I are involuntary prisoners of this prisoner of his own thoughts.
The King was a fine and strong figure. His imposing personality and his characteristic physiognomy are familiar even to the new generation, who have only seen the popular pictures of him; but photographs never did justice to his expression of sceptical shrewdness. His eyes, as I have already said, were light brown; at the least opposition they assumed a fixed expression, and when it rested on my sisters and myself when we were in fault, the King's glance terrified us more than any reproaches or punishment.
The King's voice was deep and somewhat muffled in timbre, sometimes it grew nasal; when he was angry it became, like his eyes, as hard as a stone, but if he wished to please it became soft and emotional. People still speak of the manner in which he delivered his speech from the Throne after the death of Leopold I, and his touching opening words: "Gentlemen, Belgium, like myself, has lost a father."