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 roué father.
Dresden, Christmas, 1898.
God 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! God desired to punish me and, because I loved much, he meted out to me mild chastisement.
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 ignoble 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 petitions be denied.
Let her starve with her brats. If she was sent to the poor-house she might make anarchists out of loyal paupers.
Dresden, April 1, 1899.
My parents came to see the children and make merry because I am basking in the sun of royal grace. Mother has a new maid of honor, as ugly as the Tisch, and when we are entre nous every second word is: "when Louise is Queen." They know to a penny what our inheritance from the King, the Queen and Prince George will amount to and are forever making plans and specifications how to spend the money for the glory of Saxony and of our own family.[6]
Mother's scare-crow of a maid of honor had at least sense enough to tell Lucretia of a few scandals that happened at home, which mother never intended for my ears.
It seems that papa, some few months ago, suddenly became possessed of the ambition to become an astronomer. Nothing would do, but he must buy a heap of instruments and set them up in a distant tower of Salzburg Castle. And there he spent all his evenings—star-gazing, he gave out.
He seldom reached the nuptial couch before one or two in the morning,—utterly exhausted by the night's work.
Well, mamma thought he labored too hard, and one forenoon when he had gone hunting, climbed up many stairs to investigate. Imagine her surprise when she found, in the astrolatry, a young lady in the act of getting out of bed, a girl, by the way, whom I used to know.
Mamma had the mauvais genre to report the case to Emperor Francis Joseph, while papa sought another climate, remaining away until mother begged him on her bended knees, so to speak, to come home. Nor did she get satisfaction from Vienna. That great moral teacher, the Emperor, told her not to make a scare-crow of herself, but on the contrary make herself pretty and agreeable for, and to, her lord and master. I understand now why mamma says: "All men stick together like gypsies."
As a matter of fact father's limited resources are considerably affected by the various alimonies he has to pay to his own mistresses and those of my brothers. The third born of our boys, only a week ago, made too free with the fiancée of the pastry-cook, who threatened to kill him. It cost father several thousand florins to appease the ruffian and Heinrich Ferdinand renewed acquaintance with mother's boxing proclivities.