As a mere sixteen-year-old (compared with Leopold's age of 65), Caroline's relationship with the old king quickly became public knowledge, causing Leopold to be labeled lecherous and besotted. Though Leopold had previously embarked upon affairs with other mistresses (earning him the nickname le roi des Belges et des Belles), his affair with Caroline was unique, and the Belgian press in particular enjoyed publishing their affair for countless years. Her habit of accompanying Leopold to fashionable spas in Europe provoked further disbelief and outrage, with some speculating that she perversely pleasured the old king with the use of strategically placed mirrors and "special" equipment. The young mistress became known as la reine du Congo because the great wealth she accumulated from Leopold came from his colony. She became his companion for the last years of his life, as his estranged wife Queen Marie Henriette died in 1902. Their relationship coincided with Leopold's worsening international reputation, which was the result of his actions and orders concerning the Congo Free State. Hochschild writes that their affair ironically lost Leopold more popularity in Belgium than any of his crimes in the Congo; consequently, few of his former allies were willing to defend him once he became the target of the international protest movement led by the Congo Reform Association. Belgian socialists in particular used the affair to prove that because Leopold was in his "dotage" and under the control of a "rapacious and ambitious woman", he was unfit to govern.