, whatever they might happen to be.

After he had become King, and it was part of his royal duty to give
great State dinners, it was sometimes his way to behave himself on the
occasions of those festivities after a fashion which even W. S. Gilbert
never could have caricatured in any "Mikado" or other such piece of
delightful burlesque. The King was fond of making speeches at his
State dinners, and it was his way to ramble along on all manner of
subjects in the same oration. Whatever idea happened to come uppermost
in his mind he usually blurted out, without the slightest regard for
time, place, or company. This habit of his became very embarrassing
now and then when some of the ambassadors of great European States
happened to be guests at his dinner-table. In the presence of the
French Ambassador, for instance, the King, while delivering his
after-dinner speech, would suddenly recall some of his recollections of
the days when the great Napoleon held the Imperial throne of France,
and he would then, perhaps, close a sentence {117} with an exultant
reference to the glorious triumphs we had obtained over our enemies the
French.

On one occasion when Leopold, King of the Belgians, was dining with him
the King suddenly observed that his royal guest was drinking water, and
he called to him with an oath and demanded what he was drinking that
sort of stuff for; and not content with the poor King's plea that he
drank water because he liked it better than wine, William insisted
that, in his house at least, his royal brother must swallow the juice
of the grape. One day when Talleyrand was among his guests King
William favored the company with a very peculiar sort of speech, and he
concluded the speech by proposing a toast which is described by those
who heard it as utterly unsuited for publication. One of the guests
was Charles Greville. He was anxious to know what impression this
extraordinary performance had made upon Talleyrand. He asked
Talleyrand in a whisper if he had ever heard anything like that before.
But Talleyrand, who had listened to the oration and the toast with
unmoved composure, was not to be thrown off his balance or drawn into
any expression of opinion by an indiscreet question. He merely
answered that it was certainly "bien remarquable."

The Duchess of Kent and the young Princess Victoria were dining with
the King one day, and some of the guests, although not all, were well
aware that there had bee