had put him up to this. It turned out a gold
mine, and then two streams of defamation were let loose; one from the
covetous commercial standpoint and the other from the humanitarian.
Between them, seeking to drive him out, they depicted him as a monster
of cruelty and depravity.

A King must be an anchorite to escape calumny, and Leopold was not an
anchorite. I asked him why I never saw him in the Casino. "Play," he
answered, "does not interest me. Besides, I do not enjoy being talked
about. Nor do I think the game they play there quite fair."

"In what way do you consider it unfair, your Majesty?" I asked.

"In the zero," he replied. "At the Brussels Casino I do not allow them
to have a zero. Come and see me and I will show you a perfectly equal
chance for your money, to win or lose."

Years after I was in Brussels. Leopold had gone to his account and his
nephew, Albert, had come to the throne. There was not a roulette table
in the Casino, but there was one conveniently adjacent thereto, managed
by a clique of New York gamblers, which had both a single "and a double
O," and, as appeared when the municipality made a descent upon the
place, was ingeniously wired to throw the ball wherever the presiding
coupier wanted it to go.

I do not believe, however, that Leopold was a party to this, or could
have had any knowledge of it. He was a skillful, not a dishonest,
business man, who showed his foresight when he listened to Stanley and
took him under his wing. If the Congo had turned out worthless nobody
would ever have heard of the delinquencies of the King of the Belgians.

Chapter the Seventeenth

A Parisian _Pension_--The Widow of Walewska--Napoleon's
Daughter-in-Law--The Changeless--A Moral and Orderly City

I

I have said that I knew the widow of Walewska, the natural son of
Napoleon Bonaparte by the Polish countess he picked up in Warsaw, who
followed him to Paris; and thereby hangs a tale which may not be without
interest.

In each of our many sojourns in Paris my wife and I had taken an
apartment, living the while in the restaurants, at first the cheaper,
like the Cafe de Progress and the Duval places; then the Boeuf a la
Mode, the Cafe Voisin and the Cafe Anglais, with Champoux's, in the
Place de la Bourse, for a regular luncheon resort.

At length, the children something more than half grown, I said: "We have
never tried a Paris _pension_."

So with a half dozen recommended addres