CHAPTER XLVI
FEARS FOR MY LOVE
Some reflections on queens of old who punished recreant lovers—Henry was in debt and I gave him money—Indignities by which some of that money was earned—Husband accompanies me to Loschwitz—Reflections on Frederick Augustus's character.
January 15, 1901.
My love played the melancholy Dane for the last few days. His tenderness seemed labored, his spirits under a cloud. Every smile I got had to be coaxed from him.
"The end of my happiness," I thought; "some chit of a girl dethroned me." And I cursed my birthday. "A kingdom for ten years off my age."
And my thoughts of thoughts travelled back to the times when royal ladies had their rivals immured, as practiced by a Brandenburg princess at the Kaiser's hunting box at Grünewald, or made a head shorter, like Lady Jane Grey, who was far too pretty to please Elizabeth; or shot, as elected by Queen Christina, tribade and nymphomaniac both.
And the things Queen Bess did to her unfaithfuls and the crimes Mary Stuart perpetrated to cheat Jeannie Bothwell out of her doughty Hepburn!
"If I were Queen," I thought, and I must have spoken aloud, for Henry said: "You would make me a great lord, love, wouldn't you, give me the best paying office at court, but that's small comfort to my creditors today."
"It's creditors, mere creditors bothering you?" I almost shouted with joy. This man was still mine. No one had succeeded in luring him away from me. I threw myself upon him and nearly smothered him.