Meanwhile the identity of my body is established. That of Romano's follows. Scandalum magnatum! But what are you going to do about it, Messieurs?
If you had only known it a week ago! A prison à la Princess Ahlden, or the Danish Queen Caroline Matilda, for me, disgraceful dismissal for Romano, for times are happily past when comely gentlemen, who have the wit to amuse royal ladies, durst be murdered in cold blood like Koenigsmarck, or be-handed, be-headed and cut into ninety-nine pieces as Struensee was in Copenhagen market-square.
What are you going to do about it, King, George, Frederick Augustus?
I'll tell you. You will bury me with the pomp of kings; and your sycophants will print beautiful stories about me, asserting that I died trying to rescue others, or did something of the sort; and your Court Chaplains will weep and pray and lie for me. And the tip of Queen Carola's nose will be redder than ever.
Dresden, September 1, 1898.
My young friend Bernhardt is doing me a great service and himself a lot of harm.
A good-natured, tractable boy au fond, they made him a poltroon and worse by their persecutions, their meanness, their petty tyranny. He is proud, and they sent him to reside on a village manure heap; he is ambitious, and must drill raw recruits from morn till night; he is eager to learn and they try to embalm his intellect with tracts and kill his initiative by the endless, watery ennui of tu-penny environment.
Of course, he gets desperate and kicks over the traces, and while attracting the dear family's disapproving attention, I am more free than ever to devote myself to my Romano.
Bernhardt's "latest" is really inexcusable. "I wonder we don't turn tigers with the education we receive," said one of the brothers of Louis XVI when upbraided for thoughtlessness and lack of consideration for the feelings of others—but Bernhardt seems to qualify for a vulture, and no original one at that, for a like offense as he is charged with was, several years ago, laid at the door of my cousin, Archduke Otho of Austria.