I am afraid I wrote down some wicked things—wicked from the standpoint of the Saxon court—and though Queen Carola and father-in-law George know naught of my scribblings, punishment was meted out to me in full measure.
Of course, it's my "damned popularity," as the King calls it, that got me into trouble again. My carriage happened to follow one occupied by the Queen at a distance of some hundred or more paces along the avenues of the Grosser Garten. I had no idea that Her Majesty was out at the time, and certainly was dressed to please the eye. I can't help it. It's a habit with me.
Well, the optics of a good many of my future subjects grew long and cozening, like gipsies', when they beheld their queen-to-be; there was many a "flatteringly protracted, but never a wiltingly disapproving gaze," and those who liked me—and they all seemed to—shouted "Our Louise," and Hurrah. They shouted so loud that poor Queen Carola got plenty of auricular evidence of how her successor-to-be was loved by the people, by her, Carola's, people. And the poor old girl got so "peeved," she ordered her coachman to turn back and proceed to the palace by the shortest route, through the least frequented streets.
Frederick Augustus knew all about it before I reached home and was in a terribly dejected state.
"This has to stop," he said with a fine effort at imitating authority. "On Sunday, when we drove home from High Mass, you got an ovation while the King's carriage passed almost unnoticed. And now this affront to the Queen."
"Bother the old girl," I replied, stamping my foot.
Frederick Augustus got as white as a sheet. "That's the language of a—a—" He knew enough not to finish.
"It's the title by which Queen Victoria is known to many of her subjects."
"Who told you that?"
"I often run across it in the English newspapers."