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In the royal residence, Castle Laeken, he lay in state in his own very simple bedroom. A heavy white bandage was wrapped round his head, and he wore the olive drab uniform of a general. The scarlet sash of the Grand Cross of Leopold was across his chest. There was an ivory crucifix in his bruised hands. The plain rosewood bed on which he lay was covered with white lilacs. Two yellow altar candles burned steadily at its foot, two black-gowned nuns prayed at its head. His clock ticked steadily away on the bedside table.
Albert of Belgium was a German prince. His father was a prince of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. His mother was a Hohenzollern. Like George of England, Albert of Belgium had little expectation as a young man of ever succeeding to the throne. His father was white-bearded old King Leopold's younger brother. Leopold had an heir, the Comte de Hainaut. Albert himself had an older brother, Prince Baudoin. But the Comte de Hainaut died. So, very mysteriously, did Prince Baudoin, and Albert's father renounced his own right to the throne.
In 1898 Albert went to the U. S. for the first time, a gangling blond young man loosely disguised as the Comte de Rethy. Quickly losing his entertainers, he got a job as a reporter on a Brooklyn paper. Later he worked on another paper in St. Paul. Famed old Railway Tycoon James J. Hill taught him to drive a locomotive.
In 1900 he married another German, Princess Elisabeth of Bavaria, and succeeded his uncle as King of the Belgians nine years later. On July 31, 1914 Albert of Belgium rejected the demands of his royal cousin Wilhelm II to give German troops free passage through Belgium to France, and what happened after that all the world knows.
Albert of Belgium became one of the great heroes of the 20th Century. Tall, handsome, he was the only king in Europe to take personal command of his troops and fight in the trenches with them through the war.
"I listened to the generals," he once said to Marshal Joffre, ''and it seemed to me a great responsibility to decide between their different plans, so I would just pick out the one that made the most sense."
With his own hands he shot and killed a traitorous chauffeur who was trying to kidnap him through the lines to Germany. He let his young son Leopold enlist as a private at the age of 13 so that he should know "what a serious business this is, being a king."
After the War, perhaps because Belgium's royal family has never been a rich one, King Albert's simple way of living became world famed. He rode on street cars unattended. When mountain climbing, the sport he loved best, he shared his sandwiches with his guides, and he dug himself very deep into the world's affections.