At that time the King, with the Queen, Prince Peter, and his two unmarried daughters, was occupying a modest suite in the Hotel Meurice, in the rue de Rivoli.  He received me in a large, sun-flooded room overlooking the Tuileries Gardens.  The bald, broad-shouldered, rather bent old man in the blue serge suit, with a tin ear-trumpet in his hand, who rose from behind a great flat-topped desk to greet me, was a startling contrast to the tall and vigorous figure, in the picturesque dress of a Montenegrin chieftain, whom I had seen in Cetinje before the war.  I looked at him with interest, for he has been on the throne longer than any living sovereign, he is the father-in-law of two Kings, and is connected by marriage with half the royal houses of Europe, and he is the last of that long line of patriarch-rulers who, leading their armies in person, have for more than two centuries maintained the independence of the Black Mountain and its people.

[Illustration:  HIS MAJESTY NICHOLAS I. KING OF MONTENEGRO

He has been on the throne longer than any living sovereign, he is the father-in-law of two kings, and is connected by marriage with half the royal houses of Europe]

King Nicholas, as is generally known, has been remarkably successful in marrying off his daughters, two of them having married Kings, two others grand dukes, while a fifth became the wife of a Battenberg prince.  Remembering this, I was sorely tempted to ask the King as to the truth of a story which I had heard in Cetinje years before.  An English visitor to the Montenegrin capital had been invited to lunch at the palace.  During the meal the King asked his guest his impressions of Montenegro.

“Its scenery is magnificent,” was the answer.  “Its women are as beautiful and its men as handsome as any I have ever seen.  Their costumes are marvelously picturesque.  But the country appears to have no exports, your Majesty.”

“Ah, my friend,” replied the King, his eyes twinkling, “you forget my daughters.”

Another story, which illustrates the King’s quick wit, was told me by his Majesty himself.  When, some years before the Great War, Emperor Francis Joseph, on a yachting cruise down the Adriatic, dropped anchor in the Bocche di Cattaro, the Montenegrin mountaineers celebrated the imperial visit by lighting bonfires on their mountain peaks, a mile above the harbor.

“I see that you dwell in the clouds,” remarked Francis Joseph to Nicholas, as they stood on the deck of the yacht after dinner watching the pin-points of flame twinkling high above them.

“Where else can I live?” responded the Montenegrin ruler.  “Austria holds the sea; Turkey holds the land; the sky is all that is left for Montenegro.”

One of the things which the King told me during our conversation will, I think, interest Americans.  He said that when President Wilson arrived in Paris he sent him an autograph letter, congratulating him on the great part he had played in bringing peace to the world and requesting a personal interview.