He was indeed happy, so much so that his gaiety infected everybody around him. Each of us felt that he had some small part in this frank happiness, in this touching romance; and we felt all its charm as though our hearts were but twenty years old again. The English themselves, forgetting that their princess was about to marry a Catholic sovereign and that she would have to forswear the Protestant faith--an essential condition of the marriage--the English, usually so strict in these matters, greeted this love-match with enthusiasm. One of the British ministers gave vent to a very pretty phrase. Someone expressing surprise, in his presence, at the acquiescence shown in this connexion by King Edward's government: "Mankind loves a lover," he replied. "Especially in England." The days that followed upon the betrothal were days of enchantment for the young couple, now freed from all preoccupation and constraint. One met them daily, motoring along the picturesque roads of the Basque country or walking through the streets of Biarritz, stopping before the shopwindows, at the photographer's or at the pastrycook's. "Do you know, Paoli," said the King to me, one day, "I've changed the princess's name. Instead of calling her Ena, which I don't like, I call her Nini. That's very Parisian, isn't it?" The royal lover, as I have already said, prided himself with justice on his Parisianism, as witness the following scrap of dialogue, which took place one morning in the street at Biarritz: "M. Paoli." "Sir?" "Do you know the tune of the _Maschich_?" "Upon my word, I can't say I do, Sir!" "Or of _Viens, Poupoule_?" "No, Sir." "Why, then you know nothing. Paoli ... you're a disgrace!" Thereupon, half-opening the door of the confectioner's shop where Princess Ena was making a leisurely selection of cakes, he began to hum the famous air of _Viens, Poupoule_! It will readily be imagined that the protection of the King was not always an easy matter. True, it was understood that I should invariably be told beforehand of the programme of the day; but the plans would be changed an hour later; and, when the young couple had once set out at random, nothing was more difficult than to catch them up. I remember one morning when the King informed me that he did not intend to go out that day. I thereupon determined to give myself a few hours' rest. I had returned to my hotel and was beginning to enjoy the unaccustomed sense of repose when the telephone bell rang: "The King and the Princess have gone out," said the voice of one of my detectives. "It's impossible to find them." Greatly alarmed, I was hurrying to the Villa Mouriscot, when, at a bend in the road, I saw the fugitives themselves before me, accompanied by the Princess Beatrice. "I say!" cried the King, in great glee. "We gave your inspector the slip!" And, as I was venturing to utter a discreet reproach: