In the course of the first journey which I took with them a year after the murderous attempt in Madrid, the King himself acquainted me with the real cause of this happy quietude so promptly recovered. Walking into the compartment where I was sitting, he lifted high into the air a pink and chubby child and, holding it up for me to look at, said, with more than a touch of pride in his voice:
"There! What do you think of him? Isn't he splendid?"
III
THE SHAH OF PERSIA
1.
Must I confess it? When I was told, a few weeks before the opening of the International Exhibition of 1900, that I should have the honour of being attached to the person of Muzaffr-ed-Din, King of Kings and Shah of Persia, during the whole duration of the official visit which he contemplated paying to Paris, I did not welcome the news with the alacrity which it ought doubtless to have evoked.
And yet I had no reason for any prejudice against this monarch: I did not even know him. My apprehensions were grounded on more remote causes: I recalled the memories which a former Shah, his predecessor, had left among us. Nasr-ed-Din was a strange and capricious sovereign, who had never succeeded in making up his mind, when he came to Europe, to leave on the further shore, so to speak, the manners and customs of his country or to lay aside the troublesome fancies in which his reckless despotism loved to indulge. Was it not related of him that, while staying in the country, in France, he caused a sheep or two to be sacrificed every morning in his bed-room, in order to ensure the Prophet's clemency until the evening? And that he had the amiable habit of buying anything that took his fancy, but neglecting to pay the bill?
Lastly, this very delicious story was told about him. The Shah had asked whether he could not, by way of amusement, be present at an execution of capital punishment during one of his stays in Paris. It so happened that the occasion offered. He was invited to go one morning to the Place de la Roquette, where the scaffold had been erected. He arrived with his diamonds and his suite; but, the moment he saw the condemned man, his generous heart was filled with a sudden tenderness for the murderer: