"Out of the way, yokels."
And he leaps his horse three or four times across the coffin.
The outrage is duly reported in the newspapers and Bernhardt is summoned before the King. "Don"t you dare to appear in uniform," Albert added in his own hand.
"What has happened?" I asked the ne"er-do-well, when he begged for an audience after meeting the King.
He pointed to a swollen cheek.
"He hit me three times in _the eats_." (I beg the Diary"s pardon for the language; I report literally.) "Three times," repeated Bernhardt, "that"s the reason he wanted me to appear in mufti. As I went out one of the lackeys said: "I never heard His Majesty rave so.""
"But why did you make a beast of yourself?" I asked.
"To force the King to transfer me to another garrison, of course. I can"t remain where I am, for the people are terribly incensed against me."
"Did you tell His Majesty?"
"Not on your life," answered Bernhardt. "If I did, I would have to stay there until my last tooth falls out. As things are, the Colonel will insist upon my speedy transference, and that"s worth the three slams on the face I got in addition to the various _Lausbubs_."
"He called you, an army officer, a "_Lausbub_." Where is his vaunted respect for the uniform?"
"Didn"t he hit me in _the eats_?" lamented Bernhardt tragically in his terrible lingo. "I responded both to insult and injury by knocking my heels together and saying: "At Your Majesty"s commands.""
Of course, I told Romano. "Royalty," he said, "has only, on the face of it, advanced beyond the pirate and robber-baron period. _Au fond_ all princes and kings would be criminals if they happened not to be crowned heads."
[Ill.u.s.tration: THE LATE KING ALBERT OF SAXONY
Louise"s Uncle by Marriage]
He told me of a Balkan prince--young Alexander of Servia, the same mamma Natalie intended for my consort--whose chief amus.e.m.e.nt consists in having mice and rats chased by ferocious tom-cats in a big cage made for that purpose. Once, growing tired of that sport, he incarcerated ten tom-cats in the same cage without food many days in succession, visiting the prison hourly to see whether they wouldn"t take to devouring each other.
When, in the end, they did, tearing one another to pieces, His Majesty danced around the cage in high glee, p.r.o.nouncing the battle of the poor beasts a bully spectacle.
"You visited Castle Sibyllenort a week ago," continued Romano--"a most proper place, this royal residence, is it not? You ought to have seen it before your puritan King inherited it, ten years ago, upon the death of the last Duke of Brunswick. At that time it was a veritable museum of p.o.r.nography, the apotheosis of Paphian voluptuousness. The palace, which has over four hundred rooms and halls--not one which a decent woman might enter without a blush--acquired its equipment as a _lupanar_ and its reputation for debauchery under the famous, or notorious, "Diamond Duke," a brother of the Highness who left the estate to King Albert.
Both Dukes held high carnival in its gilded halls, but he of the diamonds rather outdid William in outraging decency.
"One of his chief amus.e.m.e.nts was to hire a drove of ballet girls for parlor horses. He had a carriage constructed no bigger or heavier than a j.a.panese jinrickshaw, and to this. .h.i.tched ten or twenty ballet girls in their birthday suits, walking on all fours, himself rider and driver.
"Gracious--how he lashed his treble and quadruple teams of human flesh as they pulled him from room to room, and his was no make-belief ferocity, either. He was a n.i.g.g.ardly rake, but in order to indulge his s.a.d.i.s.t tendencies, agreed to pay one _Thaler_ (Seventy-five cents) for every drop of blood shed by the girls.
"To make the count easier, white linen sheets were spread over the carpets, and the sum total was paid over to the two-legged horses after each entertainment, the girls showing the sorest stripes or wounds getting the larger share."
Romano, who lived at half a dozen courts and is primed with the scandalous gossip of them all, could certainly write an entertaining book on the fallacies and vices of the world"s Great.
It"s most indelicate, to be sure, but I laughed long and hard over the s.e.xual specialty of my uncle, Archduke Karl Ludwig, who is bad, anyhow, as everybody knows.
One morning His Highness rose at an unusually early hour, even before the scrub-women made their exit. In the corridors, in the parlors, everywhere blonde and dark percherons, cleaning away for dear life and courting housemaid"s knee!
Karl Ludwig has no more use for women than the late Chevalier de Lorraine, the President of the _Mignons_, but the exaggerated protuberances he met so unexpectedly on all sides, appealed to his sense of humor, or some other sense which I would hate to name. Anyhow, he ran into the garden and cut himself a switch. And ever since then his chief amus.e.m.e.nt is to switch scrubbing percherons. If he succeeds in dealing one a blow unforeseen by lying in wait for her, or coming upon her all of a sudden, he is particularly satisfied with his day"s work and is liable to give a beggar a copper instead of the usual demi-copper.
And of such abnormals the rulers of the world are recruited.
CHAPTER x.x.xIX
MY PUNISHMENT
I lose my lover--Quarrels with me because I did my duty as a mother--Royalty extols me for the same reason--My pride of kingship aroused by Socialist scribblers--Change my opinion as to Duke"s widow--Parents arrive--Father and his alleged astrolatry--His finances disarranged by alimony payments--My uncle, the Emperor, rebukes mother harshly for complaining of _roue_ father.
DRESDEN, _Christmas, 1898_.
G.o.d punished me for my sins. My children, one after the other, were ill with scarlet fever, and the youngest is only now out of danger. Of course, I abandoned all my frivolities. I can say without boasting that the mother atoned for the short-comings of the wife and princess.
Hence I thought justified to arrange for a right royal Christmas present: Romano.
Lucretia went to see him. He received her coldly, hardly vouchsafed a word. From a secret drawer of his desk he took a letter, ready written, dated and gave it to Lucretia. "It explains," he said curtly, as he opened the door for her.
He has abandoned me. Because I loved my children better than him, because I am a mother first, Lais second, he throws away his Imperial _fille de joie_ like a lemon sucked dry and prates of tendernesses and heavenly fancies that he alone feels, that are outside the pale of my understanding.
He even refuses to thank me, this proud wooer of the royal bed. He "has given me the best that is in man to give to a woman," etc., etc.
Be it so! G.o.d desired to punish me and, because I loved much, he meted out to me mild chastis.e.m.e.nt.
He stole my lover, but I have my children.
DRESDEN, _January 15, 1899_.
The King, Prince George, my brothers-in-law, my cousins and aunts are trying to make a hero of me. Because I followed the inclinations of my heart and helped to save my children, there"s no end of their praise and admiration. Did they take me for a raven? I am disgusted with so much unctuousness.
Nevertheless I changed my mind about the Duke"s widow. When I felt friendly towards her and quarrelled with Johann George for taking her money and with the King for embezzling the testament and offering accommodation at the poor-house for his kin"s children, I thought it a family affair, but now that the Socialist papers meddle with the case, which concerns the royal house and the royal house alone, it"s time for the Crown Princess to stand by her colors.
Those Jews have actually the audacity to reprimand the King and the royal princes, to impute ign.o.ble motives to us all! They talk of us as if we were _Messieurs_ and _Mesdames_ Jones or Browns, trying to enrich ourselves at the expense of a corpse!
They call us "inheritance-chasers," "purloiners of pupillary funds,"
"starvers of innocent children."
The Duke"s kept-woman is "a lady of the highest character" and we are not; her children are of the blood royal--only better for the dash of plebeian.
It makes me boil to read such things; to see the reverence due the throne set aside, the royal banner dragged into the mire, and of course it"s the kept-woman to whom we are indebted for this pretty kettle of fish. It is she who set the press against us, and it"s me, Louise, who protests with all her might that her demands and pet.i.tions be denied.
Let her starve with her brats. If she was sent to the poor-house she might make anarchists out of loyal paupers.