“Pour juger le feu Roi il faut l’avoir vu de près et l’avoir fréquenté dans les moments difficiles. Alors on pouvait se rendre compte de la force de son caractère et de la justesse de son esprit. J’ai été le témoin le plus attentif de tout ce qu’il a fait pour amener le rapprochement de la France et de l’Angleterre, et de la ténacité qu’il a apportée dans la poursuite d’une politique que certaines personnes trouvaient un peu précipitée. Mais il connaissait mieux la France que personne en Angleterre et il savait ce qu’il pouvait oser. Je lui étais très attaché parceque je savais tout ce qu’il valait—c’était un homme d’état—on n’apprend pas dans les livres à être un homme d’état; on l’est naturellement et rien ne donne à ceux qui ne les possèdent pas les qualités de décision et de perspicacité nécessaires pour entreprendre de grandes choses.” This spontaneous tribute of one great statesman to the merits of another is a sufficient refutation of much that has in ignorance been imputed to King Edward. That he was immensely popular in France is certain. Frenchmen looked upon him as a true friend, and in society he was said to be “le plus Parisien des Parisiens”; a leading Royalist once said to me, “Tell your King that if ever he is tired of his job in England, we will take him by acclamation.” The fact that he was beloved by the more frivolous sets did not prevent his being respected by the serious politicians. It is idle to suppose that men like Gambetta, Clémenceau, Hanotaux, Pichon, Delcassé and others who were wrapt in affairs, sought his society as that of a mere man of pleasure, a mere Royal _boulevardier_ such as the Prince of Orange. Like Sir William Harcourt and others of our own leaders on both sides in politics, they formed a higher estimate of his worth than that which unfortunately will be handed down in the “Dictionary.” The German Press, as Sir Sidney Lee himself points out, took a very different view from his of the King’s visits to foreign potentates. They were far from thinking him to be the negligible quantity in politics that Sir Sidney Lee describes. Believing him to be an enemy, they looked upon him as a dangerous one. If he paid a visit to the King of Italy it was a deadly machination to disunite the Triple Alliance. If he met his near relation, the Emperor of Russia, at Reval or Cowes, it was with the view of soldering an _entente_ between England, France and Russia, and converting it into an alliance, offensive and defensive, aimed at Germany. In all that the King did there was a sinister motive, a continuous Machiavellian intrigue with one solid object.