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