KING LEOPOLD AND HIS DAUGHTER.

Marlborough Express, Volume XXXVI, Issue 226, 27 September 1902, Page 2

KING LEOPOLD AND HIS DAUGHTER.

King Leopold, of Belgium, has long been notorious for the immorality of his private life, and he has now disagreeably signalised himself by an act of almost brutal heartlessneas towards his own daughter, the Countess Lonyay, who, upon entering the mortuary chamber, where reposed the remains of her mother, the late Queen of Belgium., was summarily expelled therefrom by her father's orders. The Countess is Princess Stephanie, of Belgium, and was first married to the brilliantly gifted but dissipated Crown Prince Rudolph, of Austria, who, a few years ago, w-is found dead alongside the body of his dead mistress, at a hunting lodge at Eyerling, near Vienna. The Princess lived for some years in semi-

seclusion, and then married (without her father's consent) a handsome young Austrian officer, Count Loayay, with whom she is said to live most happily, the pair being greatly beloved in Vienna. No doubt the Princess erred in contracting a second marriage (with a man of non-royal blood) without her father's consent, but she had been forgiven by her mother, the dead Queen, and to expel her from the side of her dead mother's body was little -horfc of an injury which has, it appears, given rise to universal disgust. The worst feature of the affair is that King Leopold had for many years past lived virtually apart from his wife. Although comparatively an old man, his amours have been notorious, and the particular form which his immoral de3ires assumed have caused him to be known as the modern "Minotaur." That such a cynical old debauchee should have had the heartlessness to deny his daughter access to the side of her dead mother was more than a piece of brutal cruelty: Ib was an offence against common decency and ordinary humanity.