CHAPTER V
My Country and the Days of my Youth
It is more than forty-five years that, since my marriage, Fate has exiled me from my native country. I have never revisited Belgium, except in passing through it, and then often under very painful circumstances.
Well! I will close my eyes and return in imagination to the Château of Laeken, and to a certain pathway in the park; I will go, in like manner, to one particular footpath in the forest of Soignies; there are trees, stones and roofs there, which seem to me to be those which I once knew.
An oak tree was planted at Laeken to commemorate the birth of my brother and the birth of each of my sisters and myself. I had not seen these trees thus dedicated to us for a long time, until I happened to be in Belgium for a few days after the King's death. Accompanied by that old friend of my childhood, my brother's tutor, General Donny, I made an excursion to Laeken, and I saw once more, with what bitter-sweet memories, the little garden formerly tended by my brother and myself, which had been piously preserved in its original state. Was this a mute evidence of the King's remembrance, or the fidelity of some old servants? In my grief I did not question to whom the little garden owed its preservation. My tears alone spoke.
When I stood before our "birthday" oak trees I only saw three!
I was told that by some extraordinary coincidence the one which marked the birth of my brother had died, like him, when it was quite young. Of the others, mine was strong and vigorous; Stéphanie's had had the misfortune to grow a little crooked, but the one belonging to Clémentine was quite normal. I venture to say that the three oak trees are emblems of our destiny so far as our inner lives are concerned, which have been ignored and misunderstood by men, but which like Nature remain confident in God. These three oak trees, and the fourth which is now dead, have always troubled me since the day when I beheld them again.
Whatever they may be now I envy them! They have grown, they have lived, they still flourish on the soil sacred to my lost ones, except one, whose absence is so expressive. I should love to see them again and to live, if not near them, at least under the shadow of other oak trees growing in my beloved country.
Would that I could end my days there, and once more find my adored mother and my vivid youth in the forests, the countryside, or the villages through which we passed so often together. She it was who taught me the secrets of Nature, and it was thus that the life of Nature and the life of Belgium, the wonders of the universe, and the life of society were revealed to me. The Queen loved and taught me to love our heroic country, whose defence of her liberty in past ages constitutes one of the most touching episodes in history.
And I have inherited an ardent wish that my country should never become enslaved.
I know that the good people of Belgium have reproached me, as if it had been my fault, for deserting our country. Those who knew me in my youth have believed that I was transplanted to a strange and brilliant world where I forgot my native land. Then the dramas and scandals into which I was dragged on the hurdle of misunderstanding and calumny, have for some transformed me into a sinner, for whom it was not enough punishment to forbid her to see her dying mother by keeping her as a sane prisoner in a madhouse. Such a woman deserved to be wiped off the face of the earth!