"Yes, yes, M. Paoli, I know you, though perhaps you don't yet know me. My mother has often spoken to me of you and, when she heard that you had been appointed to watch over my safety, she said, 'With Paoli, I feel quite at ease.'"
"I am infinitely touched and flattered, Sir," I replied, "by that gracious mark of confidence. It is true that my collection was incomplete without your Majesty."
That is how I became acquainted with H. M. Alfonso XIII, in the spring of 1905, at the time of his first official visit to France. "The little king", as he was still called, had lately completed his nineteenth year. He had attained his majority a bare twelve-month before and was just entering upon his career as a monarch, if I may so express myself. The watchful eyes of Europe were beginning to observe with sympathetic interest the first actions of this young ruler who, with the exuberant grace of his fine and trusting youth, brought an unexpected and amusing contrast into the somewhat constrained formality of the gallery of sovereigns. Though he had no history as yet, plenty of anecdotes were already current about him and a plenty of morals were drawn in consequence:
"He has a nature all impulse," said one.
"He is full of character," said people who had met him.
"He is like his father: he would charm the bird from the tree," an old Spanish diplomatist remarked to me.
"At any rate, there is nothing commonplace about him," thought I, still perplexed by the unconventional, amusing, jocular way in which he had interrupted my nocturnal contemplations.
No, he was certainly not commonplace! The next morning, I saw him at early dawn at the windows of the saloon-carriage, devouring with a delighted curiosity the sights that met his eyes as the train rushed at full speed through the verdant plains of the Charente. Nothing escaped his youthful enthusiasm: fields, forests, rivers, things, people. Everything gave rise to sparkling exclamations:
"What a lovely country yours is, M. Paoli!" he cried, when he saw me standing near him. "I feel as if I were still at home, as if I knew everybody: the faces all seem familiar. It's 'stunning'!"
At the sound of this typically Parisian expression (the French word which he employed was épatant) proceeding from the royal lips, it was my turn to be "stunned." In my innocence, I was not yet aware that he knew all our smart slang phrases and used them freely.