Like Melita I am never a bit repentant of my peccadilloes.
If I don't want to do a thing, neither Kaiser, King, George, Frederick Augustus, my parents, the Pope, nor the whole world, can make me. But if I resolve to follow my sweet inclinations, rueing and pining are out of question.
Ferdinand is the most devoted of lovers. He has unlimited tendernesses—a new experience for me.
The lover of my girlhood days overwhelmed me by audacity. The Shah used me like a show-girl. Romano was imperious, super-mannish. For him I was only the female of the species.
Sometimes, in the midst of an embrace, Ferdinand suddenly seems to recollect that a Queen trembles in his arms; the master turns âme damnée. I am Sultana, Louise-Catherine.
Like Catherine the Great, I would throw millions to my favorites and millions more when I dismissed one. At any rate, I would give each a hundred thousand marks "to furnish himself with linen and silks,"—a mot invented by the Semiramis of the North.
Dresden, July 5, 1899.
No more clinic for me. Ferdinand begged so hard, that I allowed him to introduce his wife. She came in after we finished our "consultation," a little heap of misfortune, execrably dressed, frightened, almost dead with submissiveness.