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.