Karl Ludwig has no more use for women than the late Chevalier de Lorraine, the President of the Mignons, but the exaggerated protuberances he met so unexpectedly on all sides, appealed to his sense of humor, or some other sense which I would hate to name. Anyhow, he ran into the garden and cut himself a switch. And ever since then his chief amusement is to switch scrubbing percherons. If he succeeds in dealing one a blow unforeseen by lying in wait for her, or coming upon her all of a sudden, he is particularly satisfied with his day's work and is liable to give a beggar a copper instead of the usual demi-copper.
And of such abnormals the rulers of the world are recruited.
CHAPTER XXXIX
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.