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Every night in the old white palace of the Hague we three, and six others of various nationalities, were entertained to a banquet in the rooms of the Queen’s Chamberlain, the Junkheer van Heen, who had placed his rooms at our disposal. Flunkeys in royal livery, with powdered wigs and silk stockings, conducted us with candles to a well-spread table, and always the Queen’s Chamberlain announced to us solemnly in six languages, “Gentlemen, the happy event will take place to-morrow!”

To-morrow came, and a month of to-morrows, but no heir to the throne of Holland. Three times, owing to false rumors, the Dutch Army came into the streets and drank not wisely but too well to a new-born Prince who had not come!

Ludovic Nodeau, Hamilton Fyfe, and I explored Holland, learned Dutch, and saw the lime tree outside the palace become heavy with foliage, though it was bare at our coming.

The correspondent of The Times had a particular responsibility because he had promised to telephone to the British Ambassador, who, in his turn, was to telegraph to King Edward, at any time of the day or night that the event might happen. But the correspondent of The Times, who was a very young man, and “fed up” with all this baby stuff, absented himself from the banquet one night. In the early hours of the morning, when he was asleep at his hotel, the Queen’s Chamberlain appeared, with tears running down his cheeks, and announced in six languages that a Princess had been born.