If anything could have increased Milan's unpopularity it was this brutal treatment of his Queen. The very men who, at his coronation, had taken off their cloaks that he might walk on them, and the women who had kissed his garments, now hissed him in the streets of his capital. In his own Court he had no friend except the infamous Christitch; the general hatred even took the form of repeated attempts on his life. If he would save it, he realised he must abandon his crown; and one March morning in 1889, after informing his ministers of his intention to abdicate, he awoke his twelve-year-old son with the greeting, "Good morning, Your Majesty!" Milan was no longer King of Servia; his son, Alexander, reigned in his stead. Probably no King ever laid down his crown more willingly. He had put aside for ever his Royal trappings, with all their unhappy memories, and their present discomforts and danger; but in distant Paris he knew a life of new pleasure awaited him, remote from the wranglings of Courts and the assassin's knife. And within a week of greeting his successor as King, he was gaily riding in the Bois, attending the theatres, supping hilariously with ladies of the ballet, or dining with his friends at Verrey's "where his somewhat rough manner and coarse jokes (the legacy of his swineherd ancestry) caused him sometimes to be mistaken for a parvenu," until a waiter would correct the impression by a whispered, "That gentleman with the dark moustache is Milan, ex-King of Servia." While her husband was thus drinking the cup of Paris pleasure, his wife was still doomed to exile from her kingdom and her son, with permission only to pay two brief visits each year. But Natalie, who had so long defied a King, was not the woman to be daunted by mere Regents. She would return to Belgrade, and at least make her home where she could catch an occasional glimpse of her boy. And to Belgrade she went, to make her entry over flower-strewn streets, and through a tornado of cheers and shouts of "Zivela Rufe!" It was a truly Royal welcome to the great warm heart of the Servian people; but no official of the Court was there to greet her coming, and as she drove past the castle which held all she counted dear in life, not even the flutter of a handkerchief marked the passing of Servia's former Queen.