Perhaps--I do not assert it--secret party meetings have been, and are, held now and again at No. 241, Avenue Louise, in those beautiful salons, so rich in relics, or in the garden of the imperial residence, now more than ever an object of public curiosity, with its modest blue stone façade and its oak door with carved eagles, guarded only by those tall chestnut-trees which serve as a curtain to many a demeure bourgeoise of more ambitious aspect. The Prince’s partisans, the associates of his hopes, evidently come and go very unobtrusively, for no one at Brussels hears or sees anything of them. The Prince’s voice is raised at long intervals--whenever he thinks it desirable to formulate the Imperialist idea--in succinct and frank letters addressed, now to the Bonapartist Committees of the Seine, anon to personalities like M. Malbert. But this is done so discreetly, these letters are written in so dignified a style, without any reference to the question of personal banishment from France, that the sharpest-sighted critic is unable to trace in them the faintest infraction of the duty which an exile owes to a country which shelters him.
Prince Napoleon returns to Brussels from his rare visits to the Empress Eugénie at Farnborough Hill, and to his sister, the Duchesse d’Aoste Douairière, at Turin, without getting himself talked about; for on no account would he say or do anything which might compromise the country in which he has found an agreeable asylum for half his life. When he comes to England two lines in the “Times,” “Telegraph,” or “Post” sometimes announce the fact, either on his arrival or departure. His “movements” at the Carlton or the Savoy (the hotels of his predilection) are not watched and reported upon; the names of his visitors are not publicly, or even privately, mentioned. His friendly visit to King Manoel at Buckingham Palace in November, 1909, was recorded in the Court Circular (which scrupulously noted his rank of “Imperial” Highness) and mentioned in the “Times”--that was all. And perhaps it was enough; for the Prince it was certainly ample. Let him alone, and he is grateful.
It was amusingly said of him by a Brussels critic: “Prince Napoleon is a Pretender who seems to have no pretensions.” Probably the author of the mot was unaware of the homage which he was paying to the Prince’s correct interpretation of a rôle so difficult to sustain.