I had good reason to know how bitterly he felt the coldness of his English relations, accentuated as it was by the deservedly violent attacks upon him in the English Press, for in 1903 I was _Président d’honneur_ of the International Jury at the quinquennial exhibition of the Royal Agricultural and Horticultural Society of Belgium held at Ghent. The King came and it was part of my duty to accompany him round the show. When we came to the Congo section, he took me on one side and spoke to me for the best part of an hour upon the subject of his grievances against England, insisting upon it that he had been most cruelly traduced; he maintained that the barbarities of which the Belgian officials had been accused were all lies, and, pointing to the exhibits, he said, “How could we have obtained these results if we had been guilty of such atrocities. Is it credible that free men would come to serve us if we treated them as your press says that we do.” The words “free men” gave something to think about! My position was awkward, to say the least of it. Yet although “There’s such divinity doth hedge a king,” the altar in King Leopold’s case had long since been bereft of its sanctity; I could but take refuge in the ambiguous truth that newspapers often deal in exaggeration, adding that the libretto of Offenbach’s _Grande Duchesse_ perhaps made a mistake when it made Hortense Schneider sing: “Il faut toujours ajouter foi à la gazette de Hollande.” The King laughed, and for the moment the ugly corner was turned, but I had been careful not to lead him to suppose that anybody could hold him guiltless. His animosity against England increased with time. Five years later I was again President at the Ghent Exhibition. This time when the foreign representatives were formally presented to him, the King turned a glassy eye upon me, and said: “I think I have seen you before. Was it here, or could it have been at Bruges?” This from a King who had known me for twenty-eight years, and had always been most friendly, and was, moreover, endowed with the royal faculty of never forgetting a face, seemed rather chilling, especially as he with obvious intent plastered my French colleague, the Vice-President, with pretty speeches. Again I had to go round the show with him, but he never once uttered a word. King Edward, when I told him that Sir George Holford and myself were going over to Ghent, very graciously wrote personally to the King, asking that we might be allowed to visit the gardens at Laeken. King Leopold instructed his Grand Maître de la Cour to tell me that the glass houses at Laeken were under repair, but that if, in spite of that, we “should make a point of going,” etc., etc., etc. Needless to say we did not “make a point of going.” King Edward was very much amused when I came back to London and told him what had happened. He recognized his Leopold, knowing full well that the discourtesy was aimed at himself. His loving cousin was an artist in pin-pricks.