"My great grand-aunt, Marie Antoinette, did this"; "my good cousins d'Orleans" (three of them) "allowed themselves to be seduced"; "ma cousine de Saxe-Coburg laughs at conventionalities,"—there you have the foundation of the iniquitous philosophy of the royal Lais. And for the rest—when she is queen, all will be well.
Her Court—A Seraglio
Louise's fixed idea was that, as Queen of Saxony, she had but to say the word to establish a court à la Catharine II; time and again she refers to the great Empress's male seraglio, and to the enormous sums she squandered on her favorites. If the Diarist had known that Her Majesty of Russia, when in the flesh, never suffered to be longer than twenty-four hours without a lover, Louise, no doubt, would have made the most elaborate plans to prevent, in her own case, a possible interregnum of five minutes even.
She thought she held the whip hand because a king cannot produce princes without his wife, while the wife can produce princes without the king; besides Frederick Augustus was no paragon, and he who plants horns, must not grudge to wear them.
A wanton's calculations, it will be argued,—but Louise's records show that her husband, the king-to-be, fell in with her main idea,—that he forgave the unfaithful wife, the disgraced princess, because, as Queen, her popularity would be "a great asset."
And Americans, our women of whom we are so proud, are asked to bow down to such sorry majesties!
Sired and "Cousined" by Lunatics
And is there no excuse for so much baseness in high places? Our royal Diarist offers none, but her family history is a telling apology.
Be it remembered that Louise is not so much an Austrian as a Wittelsbacher of the royal house of Bavaria that gave to the world two mad kings, Louis II and Otho, the present incumbent of the throne, besides a number of eccentrics, among others Louise's aunts, the Empress Elizabeth and the Duchess d'Alencon, both dead; Crown Prince Rudolph of Austria, her cousin, was also undoubtedly insane, the result of breeding in and in, Austrian, Bourbon and Wittelsbach stock, all practically of the same parentage, in a mad mix-up, the insane Wittelsbachers predominating.
To cap the climax, Louise has eighteen or nineteen insane cousins on her mother's side!