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."