Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/603

 pleasant terms with Lord Salisbury, who was foreign secretary as well as prime His continued minister. The prince visited interest in him at Hatfield, bllt they ex- foreign affairs changed no confidences. Independently however of ministerial authority and quite irresponsibly, the prince with increasing freedom discussed foreign affairs with friends at home and abroad. At Biarritz, where he stayed in 1879, at Cannes, or at Paris he emphatically declared in all circles his love of France, his hope of a perpetual peace between her and England, and his dread of another Franco-German war. Nor did he qualify such sentiments when he travelled in Germany. He showed his open-mindedness as to the Channel tunnel scheme by inspecting the works at Dover (March 1882). In the spring of 1887 he was at Cannes during an alarming earthquake, and his cool and courageous behaviour during the peril enhanced his reputation in southern France. In the same year M. Taine, the historian, attached value to a rumour which credited the prince with meddling in internal French politics hi order to keep the peace between France and Germany. The French prime minister, M. Rouvier, was threatened with defeat in the chamber of deputies at the hands of M. Floquet and M. Boulanger, who were reputed to be pledged to an immediate breach with Germany. The prince was reported to have persuaded the Cointe de Paris to detach his supporters in the chamber from the war-faction and to protect with their votes the ministry of peace. M. Taine's rumour doubtless misinterpreted the prince's cordial relations with the Orleanist princes, but it bears witness to the sort of political in- fluence which was fancifully assigned to the prince in France. It was rare, however, that his good-will to France incurred suspicion of undue interference. The monarchs of Europe looked askance on the French International Exhibition of 1889, which was designed to commemorate the revolution of 1789, and the prince abstained from joining the British commission, of which he had been a member in 1867 and president in 1878. But he had no scruples in visiting the exhibition together with the princess and his sons. They ascended under M. Eiffel's guidance to the top of the Eiffel Tower, which was a chief feature of the exhibition buildings. Before leaving the French capital, the prince exchanged visits with President Carnot, went over the new Pasteur Institute, took part in a meet of the French Four-in-Hand Club, and attended the races at Auteuil. A few years later March 1894), when diplomatic friction was arising between France and England over vents in northern Africa, Lord Dufferin, the English ambassador in France, addressed the British Chamber of Commerce, and denounced popular exaggeration of the disagreement. The prince, who was at Cannes, at once wrote to the ambassador, agerly congratulating him on his prudent handling of his theme and reporting to him the commendations of German and Russian royal personages whom he was meeting on the Riviera. In Germany he was less suave in pronouncing his opinions. He complained to Prince von Hohenlohe at Berlin in May 1888 of the folly of the new and irritating system of passports which had lately been devised to discourage Frenchmen from travelling in Germany. But Bismarck ridiculed the notion that any importance attached to his political views. In Germany he was rarely regarded by publicists as other than a votary of Parisian gaiety.

A few months later, in Oct. 1888, he illustrated his love of adventure and his real detachment from current diplomatic controversy by extending his travels further east, where political conflict was rife among most of the great powers. He spent a week with the king of Roumania at his country palace of Sinaia, en P a g in g in a bear hunt in 'he neighbourhood, and attending military manoeuvres. Thence he proceeded to Hungary to join the ill-starred crown prince Rudolph Id. 30 Jan. 1889) in bear-hunting at Gorgeny and elsewhere, finally accompanying him to Vienna (16 Oct.). No political significance attached to the tour. Subsequently he more than once boldly challenged the patrician prejudices of the German and Austrian courts bypassing through Germany and Austria in order to shoot in Hungary as the guest of his friend Baron Hirsch, a Jewish millionaire, who was excluded from the highest Austrian social circles. In the autumn of 1894 he spent no less than four weeks with the baron at his seat of St. Johann. The sport was on a princely scale. The head of game shot during the visit numbered 37,654, of which 22,996 were partridges. According to German and Austrian strict social codes, the prince's public avowal of friendship with Baron Hirsch was a breach of royal etiquette. But he allowed neither social nor diplomatic punctilio to qualify the pleasures of foreign travel. His cosmopolitan sympathies ignored fine distinctions of caste. visits to Roumania