THE LATE KING OF PORTUGAL 93 



took place a few years later in Paris, when no scientific 

 investigation was connected with the embarrassing 

 disappearance of the Royal trinket. 



35. A King Who was a Zoologist 



The King of Portugal, Carlos di Braganza, who was 

 assassinated in the spring of 1908, was one of the 

 most gifted and vigorous men of his age, fearless 

 and intelligent to a rare degree, good-hearted, and de- 

 voted to the welfare of his people. If any man were 

 justified in having no fear of outrage because he was 

 conscious that his uprightness was proved and known 

 to all men, his benevolence experienced by all, his ability 

 and vast knowledge recognised by all, Dom Carlos was 

 that man. Fanaticism, however, takes no account of 

 the virtues of its victims. Until society has invented a 

 method for keeping instruments of destruction out of 

 the reach of dangerous, more or less maniacal individuals, 

 all those who excite the fanatics brain, even by the 

 excellence and nobility of their lives, risk death when- 

 ever they trust themselves to the tender mercies of a 

 crowd. Psychology may one day enable us to detect, 

 and improved supervision of children enable us to 

 segregate before it is too late, the latent assassins in our 

 midst. If they have not a king as their quarry their 

 reason is palsied by a president, and were there no 

 presidents, they would become homicidal in the presence 

 of a prefect or a policeman even of a professor. 



Some four years ago I had the honour of conducting 

 Dom Carlos round the Natural History Museum in 

 Cromwell Road. He arrived without attendant or 

 escort, and I passed two hours alone with him. I had 

 been told that he was a great shot and fond of natural 

 history, that he played every athletic game, rode, and 



