"It isn't the same," he moans. "I would like to have my patents signed by uncle or father."
"Antedate your papers," I advised, "who dare dispute the king? Didn't the Kaiser nominate himself Adjutant-General to his grand-dad long after William I lay mouldering in Charlottenburg?"
But Frederick Augustus takes colonel-ships and his petty kingship of the future too seriously to see even the humor of appointing oneself personal attendant to a corpse.
As for me, if I weren't enceinte, they would send me to some lost-in-the-woods country house to die of ennui. But respect for public opinion forbidding drastic measures, George relies on a Russian expedient to humble my proud self and force me to submit to his meddling.
In the Czar's country, when a village resolves on the death of some obnoxious individual, they take him, or her, and bind the body naked to a tree. Then several papers of pins are distributed among the inhabitants, and each man, woman and child is asked to put a pin in the lady or gentleman, whom they must approach blindfolded. They stick the pin wherever they touch the body and if the thing leaks out are able to swear by all the saints that they don't know where it struck. The pin pricking is continued until the obnoxious one expires amid awful tortures and, while all contributed to the murder, none can be hanged for it.
In like manner George and his minions are trying to reduce me to the position of social and political corpse.
Court festivities and public acts, attended by the court, seem to be specially arranged to pillorize me and husband. We are invited, of course. We are next in importance to Prince George. Our entourage is more numerous and more richly costumed than that of the other princes. Four horse coaches for us; Ministers of State waiting on us. I have train-bearers, pages, what-not.
But the King and Prince George cut me and Frederick Augustus in sight of the whole court, of the public in fact!
I don't mean to say that the "All-highest Lords," as they call themselves, treat us as air, or offer insult plain to the ear and eye—they couldn't afford to—nevertheless the stigma of royal disfavor is stamped on us. This is the mode of proceedings: Ceremony obliges the King to address each member of the royal family with the words: "How do you do?", in the German fashion, "How art thou?"
To princes and princesses that are in disgrace, this momentous question is put only once. Those in good standing are asked three times.