When, upon the occupation of Montenegro by the Austrians, the King fled to France and established his government at Neuilly, near Paris—­just as the fugitive Serbian Government was established at Corfu and the Belgian at Le Havre—­England, France, and Italy entered into an agreement to pay him a subvention, for the maintenance of himself and his government, until such time as the status of Montenegro was definitely settled by the Peace Conference.  England ceased paying her share of this subvention early in the spring of 1919.  When, a few weeks later, it was announced that King Nicholas was preparing to go to Italy to visit his daughter, Queen Elena, the French Minister to the court of Montenegro bluntly informed him that the French Government regarded his proposed visit to Italy as the first step toward his return to Montenegro, and that, should he cross the French frontier, France would immediately break off diplomatic relations with Montenegro and cease paying her share of the subvention.  This would seem to bear out the assertion, which I heard everywhere in the Balkans, that France is bending every effort toward building up a strong Jugoslavia in order to offset Italy’s territorial and commercial ambitions in the peninsula.  The French indignantly repudiate the suggestion that they are coercing the Montenegrin King.

“How absurd!” exclaimed the officials with whom I talked.  “We holding King Nicholas a prisoner?  The idea is preposterous.  So far as France is concerned, he can return to Montenegro whenever he chooses.”

Still, their protestations were not entirely convincing.  Their attitude reminded me of the millionaire whose daughter, it was rumored, had eloped with the family chauffeur.

“Sure, she can marry him if she wants to,” he told the reporters.  “I have no objection.  She is free, white, and twenty-one.  But if she does marry him I’ll stop her allowance, cut her out of my will, and never speak to her again.”

Because it has been my privilege to know many sovereigns and because I have been honored with the confidence of several of them, I have become to a certain extent immune from the spell which seems to be exercised upon the commoner by personal contact with the Lord’s anointed.  Save when I have had some definite mission to accomplish, I have never had any overwhelming desire “to grasp the hand that shook the hand of John L. Sullivan.”  To me it seems an impertinence to take the time of busy men merely for the sake of being able to boast about it afterward to your friends.  But because, during my travels in Jugoslavia, I heard King Nicholas repeatedly denounced by Serbian officials with far more bitterness than they employed toward their late enemies and oppressors, the Hapsburgs, I was frankly eager for an opportunity to form my own opinions about Montenegro’s aged ruler.  The opportunity came when, upon my return to Paris, I was informed that the King wished to meet me, he being desirous, I suppose, of talking with one who had come so recently from his own country.