Royal personages need some courage to face these attempts, which on one occasion King Umberto, after being shot at, turning round to his equerry, coolly called the “buonamani del nostro mestiere!”[48] A later attack was more successful and more tragic! Three men besides Sipido, who turned out to be a mere boy of fifteen, were tried for the outrage. But the Belgian authorities did not behave well on this occasion. The three accomplices were acquitted and young Sipido was sentenced to be placed under police supervision until he should come of age—an amazing sentence for such a crime! Probably not without connivance he escaped to France and was only sent back to Belgium under the extradition treaty between the two countries at the demand of the British Government. It was made out that the attack was a protest against the Boer War; but there was an undercurrent of hostility on the part of Belgium which had been strengthening for some time. That hostility was the work of King Leopold. The relations which existed between the old King Leopold, the Nestor of Europe, as he was called, and Queen Victoria, are well known. When his son came to the throne in 1865, the friendly relations between him and his English cousins continued. The King was a great collector of Chinese works of art, and the Prince of Wales brought him one day, in 1870, to my father’s house to see the porcelain and enamels which I had brought back from Peking. The terms on which they then were could only be called cordial and affectionate, and thus they lasted until after the year 1878, when the Congo Free State was established. The policy of the King, and the cruelties to which it led, entirely alienated the Prince of Wales, whose kind heart could brook nothing of the kind; while the rumours which were current all over Europe as to the private life of the King made him personally odious to Queen Victoria; the position became more and more strained, until at last the King’s visits to England were more or less private and secret; on more than one occasion I met him prowling about the streets of London unattended, and evidently wishing to avoid recognition, though he spoke to me once when I came suddenly upon him and he could hardly help it.