CHAPTER LVI
I AM DETERMINED TO DO AS I PLEASE
I reject mother's tearful reproaches – I beard Prince George in his lair despite whining chamberlains – I tell him what I think of him, and he becomes frightened – Threatens madhouse – "I dare you to steal my children" – I win my point – and the children – "Her Imperial Highness regrets" – Lots of forbidden literature – Precautions against intriguing Grand Mistress – The affair with Henry – was it a flower-covered pit to entrap me? – Castle Stolpen and some of its awful history.
Dresden, November 5, 1901.
Patience ceased to be a virtue. Tolerance would be a crime against myself. I am determined to do as I please in future. If it upsets the King's, Prince George's and the rest's delicate digestion, so much the better.
The newspapers are hinting about my troubles with Prince George and the King. When I go driving or appear at the theatre, the public shows its sympathy in many ways. Sometimes I am acclaimed to the echo.
Mamma wrote me a tearful letter. She spent six hours in prayers for "sinful Louise" and sends me the fruits of her meditations: six pages of close script, advising me how to regain the King's and Prince George's favor.
Never before have I failed in outward respect to my mother, but this time I wrote to her: "Pray attend to your own affairs. Don't meddle in mine which you are entirely unable to understand."
Dresden, November 6, 1901.
Bernhardt was sent to Sonnenstein. Whether he became insane at Nossen, or whether it is the family's intention to drive him mad among the madmen of Sonnenstein, I don't know, but it behooves me to be careful.
Sonnenstein has accommodation for both sexes.
Loschwitz, November 15, 1901.
I sent a letter to the King, asking him to have Loschwitz Castle prepared for my reception. His Majesty didn't deign to answer, but Prince George commanded me in writing to stay at Dresden "under his watchful eye."
I immediately proceeded to his apartments in my morning undress, without hat, gloves or wrap. As I rushed through the anteroom, Adjutant von Metsch begged me with up-lifted hands not to force His Royal Highness's door, Prince George being too ill to receive me, etc., etc. I paid no attention to his mournful whinings. At that moment I had courage enough to stock a regiment.
"So you won't allow me to go to Loschwitz," I addressed George as I suddenly bobbed up at the side of his desk.
My father-in-law looked at me as if I were a spook, emerged from a locked closet.
"Who let you in?" he managed to say after a while.
"I didn't come here to answer questions," I replied. "I came to announce that if you don't let me go to Loschwitz, there will be a scandal that will resound all over Christendom and make you impossible in your own capital."
"Why do you want to leave Dresden?" he insisted.
"Because I want to be alone. Because I am tired of hateful faces. Because I refuse to accept orders and insults from people that are beneath an Imperial Princess of Austria."
Prince George turned pale.
"Am I one of those beneath Your Imperial Highness?" he queried stupidly.
"Decidedly so."
A long pause. Then Prince George shouted: "To the devil with you. I don't care whether you stay in Loschwitz, or Dresden, or on the Vogelwiese."
The Vogelwiese is an amusement park, respectable enough, but the word or name, as used by George, reeked with sinister and insulting meaning.
Trembling with rage, I replied: "Right royal language you royal Saxons use. From time to time, I suppose, you refresh your fish-wife vocabulary in the annals of Augustus the Physical Strong, than whom a more gross word-slinger did not walk the history of the eighteenth century."
I believe Prince George was frightened by my violence. Assuming a haughty tone he said formally: "Your Imperial Highness is at liberty to travel whenever you please, but you will be so good as to leave your children in Dresden."
I stepped up to the white-livered coward and hissed in his face: "Steal my children if you dare, and I will go to France, or Switzerland and ask a republican President to interfere for humanity's sake."
"And – land yourself in an insane asylum," sneered George.
"An old trick of the Royal House of Saxony, I know," I shouted back. "Bernhardt is saner than you, yet the King sent him to Sonnenstein. If such a crime had been perpetrated by one not a king, he would go to jail."
Prince George pointed a trembling finger towards the door. "Out with you!" he bawled hoarsely. "Out!"
I stood my ground. "May I take my children? Yes or no?"
He rang the bell and repeated mechanically: "Out with you, out!"
I had another fit of crying convulsions. Doctors, maids and lackeys were summoned in numbers. They bedded me on the couch and six men-servants carried me to my apartments.
Two days later I went to Loschwitz with my children.
I had defied the King. Prince George was humbled. I carried my point, and the Dresden court will not see me again in a hurry.
Loschwitz, Christmas, 1901.
I refused to spend Christmas at Court. Frederick Augustus planned a stay of a couple of weeks. "Not a single night," I wrote back.
They parleyed; they begged. "The Crown Prince desires to spend Christmas with the children. In the interests of public opinion, it's absolutely necessary that he does."
"But not – that I submit to prostitution. I will give him a dinner, but he will drive back to Dresden immediately afterwards."
Frederick Augustus brought numerous presents for me. "You may place them under the Christmas tree," I ordered the Tisch.
"Oh, Your Imperial Highness, look," cried the Tisch, holding up something or other.
I turned my back on her and looked out of the window. I never went near my end of the Christmas table. "You will send the things brought by His Royal Highness to the bazaar for crippled children," I told the House Marshal. "They shall be sold for the benefit of the poor."
Loschwitz, January 1, 1902.
"Her Imperial Highness regrets."
I refused the invitations to today's family dinner; the grand reception, Te Deum and parade. "Unprecedented affront!" What do I care!
I have eighteen horses, half-a-dozen carriages, I drive, I ride, I hunt, I give the Tisch palpitation daily by the literature I affect: Zola, Flaubert, M'lle Paul, Ma Femme, M'lle de Maupin, Casanova, M'me Bovary. And the periodicals I subscribed for! Simplicissimus, Harden's Zukunft, all the double entendre weeklies and monthlies of Paris. May Prince George and Mathilde burst with rage and envy when they hear of my excursions in the realms of the literary Satans.
Loschwitz, January 15, 1902.
The Tisch is beginning to treat me like a person irresponsible for her doings. Sonnenstein is looming up anew. But I am going to fool her. As I will hold no more speech with her, there will be no occasion for turning my own words against me.
If I have to give a command, or answer a question, I ask Lucretia or Fräulein von Schoenberg to convey my orders.
Loschwitz, March 20, 1902.
An uneventful winter is drawing to a close. By banishing myself to this quiet place I raised a barrier against quarrels, against harsh orders, against humiliations. And the barrier also shuts out: love, happiness.
Sometimes, when the Tisch's hateful mouth spouts honeyed platitudes, I ask myself whether the affair with Henry wasn't, after all, a flower-covered pit dug for me by my enemies.
It was the Tisch who had Henry appointed Vortänzer.
Maybe, knowing my inflammable heart, she offered the tempting bait solely to the end of getting me into her power?
Far from impossible.
I curse the day when I entered Dresden, joined this court and family.
Loschwitz, May 15, 1902.
Royal command to join the court at Pillnitz June 1. The King, who has been ailing for some time, is anxious to be reunited with the children, and, as a necessary evil, I must go along.
I replied that I would prefer Nossen, or even Stolpen, if it pleases His Majesty.
Castle Stolpen is an old-time stronghold of the bishops of Meissen, and its very ruins are pregnant with reminiscences of a barbaric age. The apartments once occupied by the Countess Cosel, as a prison first, as a residence after the death of Augustus, might be made habitable even now. Exceedingly interesting are the old-time torture chambers and the subterranean living rooms of the "sworn torturer" and the dogs, man-shaped, that served him.
Sanct. Donatus Tower, a wing of the great, black pile, was the ancient habitat of these worthies, and the torture chamber, still extant, is a hall almost as big as the Dresden throne-room. In an inscription hewn in the basalt, the sovereign bishop, Johannes VI, poses as builder and seems proud of the damnable fact. Other princes of the Church let us know in high-sounding Latin script that they created the "Monk hole" and the "stairless prison" respectively.
The latter is a vast subterranean vault, never reached by sunshine or light of any kind. Its victims were made to descend some twenty feet below the surface of the earth on a ladder. When near the bottom, the ladder was pulled up and – stayed up. The prisoners were fed once every twenty-four hours, when a leather water pouch and some pounds of black bread were sent down on a rope.
Of course only the strongest got a morsel, or a drink of water. The others died of starvation and the survivors lived only until there were new arrivals, stronger than themselves. The dead bodies were never removed, and horrible stories of necrophily smudge the records of this awful prison and cover its princely keepers with infamy.
The "Monk's hole" was called officially "Obey Your Judge." It is a sort of chimney, just large enough to take the body of a man.
When a monk or other prisoner refused to confess, he was let down into the hole in the wall to starve, while tempting dishes, meat, wine and bread, were dangled over his head, almost within reach of his hands.
Of course, after enduring this torture for several days, the delinquent was glad enough to "Obey His Judge."
By offering to go to this abode of horror and to take the place of Cosel, I meant to show my utter contempt for the royal favor vouchsafed.
CHAPTER LVII
I CONFESS TO PAPA
King Albert dies and King George a very sick man – Papa's good advice – "You will be Queen soon" – A lovely old man, very much troubled.
Castle Sibyllenort, June 19, 1902.
King Albert is dead. George is King, and may God have mercy upon my soul.
Of course the demise of His Majesty changed all my plans of defiance and otherwise. I am once more an official person, even an important one, for the new King can't last long. He is a very sick man, in fact. Perhaps that is the reason why he wants to hear himself addressed "Your Majesty" all the time. Petty souls like to be called "great."
Dresden, June 21, 1902.
I intended to return at once to Loschwitz, but the King, hearing of my intention and not wishing to provoke another scene, invited my father to come to Dresden "in the interests of his daughter."
The same evening I received a wire from papa, saying that he would be in Dresden within twenty-four hours.
My own arrival in the capital was kept secret by the King's order, but next afternoon, when I drove to the station to welcome my father, I got my reception just the same. The people wildly cheered their Crown Princess and thousands of sympathizing eyes followed me from the palace to the depot.
I was almost overcome by so much sympathy and when at last I saw father, I threw myself on his neck, crying aloud.
The King was standing by, impatiently waiting to conduct his grand-ducal guest before the guard of honor had drawn up. "Later, later," whispered papa, patting me on the cheek.
Dresden, June 22, 1902.
I had an hour's talk with father. I bared my heart to him. I reported my own faults along with those of the others.
Papa understands me. He sympathizes with me, but help me he cannot.
"These are only passing shadows," he said. "Look boldly into the future. You will soon be Queen."
And he told me of his financial difficulties and of the misfortune of being a sovereign lord without either land or money.
"The Emperor ordered me to scold you hard," he continued, "and mamma wants me to be very severe. As to King George, he said he would thank God if I succeeded in breaking your rebellious spirit. 'If you don't, I will,' added his Majesty."
Then father kissed me more lovingly than ever and asked, half apologetically: "Is it true, Louise, that you had a lover?"
"I thought I had one, but he was unworthy of me," I replied without shame.
My confession seemed to frighten him.
"It's sad, sad," he said. "Royal blood is dangerous juice. It brought Mary of Scots to the scaffold; it caused your great-aunt Marie Antoinette to lose her head, only to save the old monarchies a few years later, when we inveigled the enemy of legitimate kingship into a marriage with another of your relatives. But for Marie, Louise, the descendants of the Corsican might still sit on a dozen thrones."
Father forgot his daughter's disgrace when he mounted this historic hobby-horse and, needless to say, I did not recall the original text.
Only when, three days later, he took leave of me, holding my head long between his two trembling hands and kissing me again and again, I felt that the poor, old man's heart was oppressed with shame and torn by fears.
CHAPTER LVIII
MONSIEUR GIRON – RICHARD, THE ARTIST
The King asks me to superintend lessons by M. Giron – A most fascinating man – His Grecian eyes – He is a painter as well as a teacher – In love – Careless whether I am caught in my lover's arms – "Richard" talks anarchy to me – Why I don't believe in woman suffrage – Characters and doings of women in power.
Dresden, July 1, 1902.
King George is determined I shall stay in Dresden to end the newspaper talk about trouble in the bosom of the royal family.
He engaged a new head-tutor for my little brood. Monsieur Giron, a Belgian of good family.
"I would be pleased if you attended the children's lessons and reported to me on the method of the new man," he said. "You are so intellectual, Louise, you will find out quickly if M. Giron is not what he is represented to be."
I promised, for, after all, I owed so much to the King and my children.
Alas, it was fate!
Dresden, July 1, After Midnight.
He is tall, well made, and his wild, Grecian eyes fascinate me. He is conscious of self, but modest. His voice is sweet and sonorous, his eyes are bright with intellect. Speaking eyes!
I asked him to visit my apartments at the conclusion of school hours. He told me he was a painter as well as a teacher of languages.
"Would you like to paint me?"
"I am dying for a chance to reproduce your loveliness as far as my poor art permits."
He told me he had a studio in town, where he is known under his artist's pseudonyme, Richard.
"How romantic! I'd like to see it," I said impulsively.
"Several ladies and gentlemen of society sat for portraits at my studio here and at home."
In short we arranged that he paint my picture and that I should go to his studio, where the light is excellent.
Dresden, July 15, 1902.
I am happy once more. Those hours at Richard's studio are the sweetest of my life.
Lucretia acts the protecting angel as usual. Richard calls her Justice because she is "blind." When she is along, I drive boldly up to the door in one of the court carriages. Sometimes, when I can sneak out of the palace for a little while unobserved, I go alone in a cab.
How long this sort of thing can go on without discovery, I know not. As to what will happen afterwards, I care not.
If I was told that tomorrow I would be caught in my lover's arms and banished to a lone island for life, I would go to his studio just the same.
Dresden, August 1, 1902.
Richard is moulding my character. I, once so proud of rank and station, I, who upheld the Wettiners' robbery of a poor, defenseless woman, the Duke's wife, because Socialistic papers spoke in her favor, – Louise now allows anarchistic tendencies to be poured in her ears. She almost applauds them.
This easy change from one extreme to the other at a lover's behest is one of the things that make woman's rule – or co-rule – as the male's political equal – impossible. It's a sort of Phallus worship that always was and always will be.
"Though women have not unfrequently been the holders of temporary and precarious power, there are not many instances where they have held secure and absolute dominion," says Dr. William W. Ireland in his famous "Blot upon the Brain."
Because they were swayed by the male of the species, of course!
Though the characters of the world's female sovereigns differed as to blood, race, education, environment and personal traits, neither showed any inclination to resist the allurements of irregular amours.
Think of Semiramis, of Mary of Scots, of Elizabeth, Catherine I, of the Tsaritzas Elizabeth and the second Catherine – under the temptations of Power, they recruited paramours for themselves in all ranks of society.
Agrippina was more licentious than Caligula; Messalina's infamy surpassed Nero's, and the furthest reaching, the one irresistible Power swaying them all was MAN.
Augustus of the three hundred and fifty-four emphasized this in the negative and, in his own uncouth way, by "postering" the Countess Cosel's chief charm on penny coins.
"She cost Saxony twenty millions in gold – behold the penny's worth she gave in return."
When the beauty who had brought the richest German kingdom to the verge of state bankruptcy died February 2, 1765, four hundred of Augustus's infamous medals were found hidden in her favorite armchair. She paid three or four times their weight in gold for each.
CHAPTER LIX
THE PEOPLE THINK ME A WANTON
Credit me with innumerable lovers, but don't disapprove – Glad the King feels scandalized – Picture of the "she-monster" – Everybody eager for love – I delight in Richard's jealousy – Husband's indelicate announcement at table – I rush from the royal opera to see my lover – A threatening dream – Richard not mercenary like my noble lovers.
Dresden, August 10, 1902.
This is the kind of speech Richard holds with me and – I enjoy:
"Every working-girl, every poor woman who suckles her own children and helps her husband in the fight for existence, stands mountain high above royal ladies like you.
"None of you royal ladies are their moral equals.
"In no distant time," he says, "they will chase you from your thrones, even as your relatives had to evacuate France by tumbril, post-chaise or train."
Richard's ethical and intellectual valuation of royal princes coincides with my own. He has rare insight into our family life.
However, these disclosures both amazed and alarmed me when I first heard them pronounced. I never dreamt that opinions of that kind prevailed among the masses.
"But why am I acclaimed whenever I show myself?"
"Because you are pretty, because you impersonate the one thing all are desirous to embrace: affluence, kindness, youth and beauty. Because you are a treat to the senses and because sensuality is the paramount thing in life, whether we admit it or not."
"Who's 'we'?"
"Kings and anarchists, princesses of the Blood and laundresses, royal princes and cab drivers, empresses, street-walkers, society ladies, big-wigs and sabretasches. The draggled Menads and the helpful Lafayette, the Jacobins, Charlotte Corday and the man she killed – all were, and are, on similar pleasure bent."
And he added quickly: "As to the Dresdeners, they are tickled because, every time they applaud you, the King is scandalized."
"How do they know that I am not on good terms with the King?"
"The very children in arms understand."
All Dresden, says Richard, is talking about me. Everybody assumes to know the number and qualities of my lovers. "Louise," they argue, "knows how to enjoy herself, but, though it serves the King right, we wouldn't have her for a daughter-in-law, either."
According to the masses, I visit the Vogelwiese at night, ride on the flying horses and solicit men and boys that please my fancy. Like a gigantic she-monster, I drag them to my lair – "some to vanish forever." (No doubt, I eat them.)
"Unwashed soldiers and clerks reeking with cheap perfume, actors and students, draymen and generals, it's all the same to the Crown Princess.
"Sometimes, when the spirit moves her, the Crown Princess issues from her gilded apartments in the palace and seizes the sentinel patrolling the corridors. Or she visits the guard-room en déshabille and selects the youngest and best looking officer for her prey.
"Generous, too. She thinks nothing of handing a pension of ten thousand marks per year to a chap that pleased her once."
"Is that all they say about me?"
"Not one-half. Poor devils that can't afford ten marks per year for their fun, Cit's wives that know only their ill-kempt husbands, factory girls that sell their virtue for a supper or a glass of beer – though afterwards they claim it was champagne – all take delight in contemplating that you, or any other good looking royal woman, are Frankenstein's succuba or worse. Didn't they accuse your grand-aunt, Marie Antoinette, of incest with her son and gave him to the cobbler to thrash the immorality out of him?"
"And they give names?"
"Strings of them" – among them several I never heard mentioned before.
Dresden, August 15, 1902.
Richard is jealous – jealous of the men I did love and the regiments that public opinion give me credit for. He must needs think I have loins of steel.
He tells me he suffers agonies by what I confessed, and still more by what I hide. To see him thus unhappy gives me intense pleasure, for it shows that the boy loves me to distraction.
Midnight.
M. Giron was very cold and distant during the afternoon's lessons.
I had previously lunched with him at his studio and we were very gay then. I teased him unmercifully about "his royal demi-mondaine," as the masses painted me.
Frederick Augustus was very gallant at dinner and told me, before a table full of people, that he would take pleasure in sleeping with me tonight. I have too bad a conscience to deny myself to him. But I ran over to the opera for half an hour and ordered M. Giron to my box.
"I got over my vexation," he said, – "got over it because I reflected that you are the Princess Royal and that I would be a fool to take your love seriously. Henceforth I will regard it a passing adventure and let it go at that, for if I thought it the great passion of my life, I would despair, indeed."
"Find a closed cab," I whispered, my heart in my mouth; "I must see you alone. I will be at the northern side-exit in five minutes."
Cabby was ordered to drive slowly along unfrequented side streets. We lowered the curtains.
"So you don't love me?" I wailed. Burying my face on Richard's chest I cried as if my heart would break.
"Not love you?" he breathed. "If I loved you not, I would die, Louise."
"Then why those cruel words?"
"Good heavens," he cried, "haven't I the right to be jealous? I said what I said to hear you say that you love me."
"And you will always love me?"
"Always, dearest," and he covered my face and neck with burning kisses.
Ten minutes later I was again seated at the opera.
I hear Frederick Augustus in the corridor.
Dresden, August 16, 1902.
A horrible night. Lucky that Frederick Augustus was more than half drunk when he sought "His Imperial Pleasure-trove," as he likes to call me, for I often talk in my sleep and – I dreamt of Richard. I dreamt of my enemies, too.
They stole him from me. He was of the past like Henry, Romano and the rest.
In a second dream he jilted me – cast me off like a garment, old or out of fashion.
Lucretia, who sleeps in the next room, heard me cry out in terror, heard me denounce the King, Tisch – everybody.
And Frederick Augustus snored.
Dresden, October 1, 1902.
Princes and noblemen have ever sought their own advantage of me. To them I was always the milch-cow, or Phryne, outright.
Richard is poor. I offered him a considerable sum for one of his paintings.
"Never again mention the matter," he said curtly.
"But it would give me much pleasure to be of assistance to you."
"Louise, we must separate if you don't stop that line of talk," he replied.
And he means it.
A day or two later I let fall, casually, that Frederick Augustus might buy the portrait of myself that was nearing completion under his skillful brush.
"His Royal Highness won't have the chance," he cried fiercely. "I will tell him it isn't finished, or doesn't come up to my artistic standard, or something of the sort."