Of course all this was a matter of court gossip at the time, and three or four years ago the stories formerly current concerning the father, who has been dead for more than a decade, were revived with regard to his son, for no other reason than that the prince had quite frequently rendered himself subject to disciplinary measures by the kaiser. If the latter has, however, ordered him to remain under arrest in his palace at various times, it has not been as a punishment for having horsewhipped his wife when drunk, as some foreign illustrated papers would have the world believe, but only because the prince had been guilty of some neglect in military duty, or had disobeyed the wishes of the emperor in connection with the management of his household.
Thus, some two or three winters ago, Princess Frederick-Leopold was almost drowned while out skating near Potsdam; she broke through the ice, was completely unconscious when miraculously rescued by four peasants who happened to be in the neighborhood, and was only brought back to life with the utmost difficulty. The emperor and empress were naturally much concerned and distressed by this accident; but William's sympathy changed into very serious anger when he learnt that the princess had remained so long under the ice and had been dependent on the courage and bravery of the peasants who rescued her, only because neither her husband nor any of the gentlemen of his household had been in attendance upon her. In fact, she was quite alone with a lady-in-waiting, who lost her head, and was completely unable to offer any assistance when the mishap occurred. The emperor also discovered that on the previous day the princess had, without any escort whatsoever, skated alone all the way from Potsdam to Brandenburg and back, a remarkable feat, calling for much endurance and attended by no little danger. Now, as I have already stated, it is contrary to the rules of court etiquette and usage for any prince or princess of the blood to leave their residence, unattended, and it was on account of the infraction of this regulation that the kaiser sentenced both the prince and his consort to several weeks' arrest in their palace. It was this circumstance that gave rise to the ridiculous and sensational tale of the prince having been punished by the emperor in consequence of the latter having caught him in the act of beating the princess while in a fit of drunken fury.
Prince Frederick-Leopold is a great traveller, and has not only spent a considerable time in India as the guest of his brother-in-law, the Duke of Connaught, when the latter was in military command at Bombay, but, moreover, he has visited China and Japan, and devoted several months to a tour in the United States, which was wound up by some rather exciting events at Coney Island before his return home to Berlin.
[Illustration: SCENE IN DUKE ERNEST GUNTHER'S QUARTERS After a drawing by Oreste Cortazzo]
Of the bachelorhood days of the kaiser's other brother-in-law, Duke Ernest-Gunther of Schleswig-Holstein, already mentioned several times in these pages, especially in connection with the anonymous letter scandal, the least said the better. A hard-drinking, dissipated, and somewhat coarse-mannered cavalry officer, he has often been a source of perpetual anger to the kaiser and of distress to his sister, the excellent empress. He managed to get his name involved in all sorts of unsavory speculations on the stock exchange and in gambling scandals, invariably, it is true, as a victim; while at least three foreign footlight favorites were expelled from Germany by the police on account of the scandals created by his association with them. On one occasion, he even had the audacity to appear at Charlottenburg with a notorious American "demi-mondaine" seated beside him on the box of his drag, although his sister, the empress, was present at the races, as well as a large number of ladies of the court and many great dignitaries. Seeing the servants of his coach arrayed in the familiar liveries of his house, they all naturally imagined that the lady beside the duke was one of his sisters, either Princess Frederick-Leopold or Princess Fedora, and accorded to her the homage which would have belonged by right to either of these two princesses, but which was totally misplaced when conceded to a woman of such unenviable notoriety as the fair stranger who sat beside the duke. Needless to add that the emperor was furious when he heard of the affair, and after giving orders for the immediate expulsion of the woman, directed the prince to leave Berlin, and to remain at his castle of Prinkenau until he had expiated his gross and flagrant breach of the proprieties.
Duke Ernest-Gunther was a suitor for the hand of quite a large number of princesses, and among those to whom he proposed were the daughters of the Prince of Wales and of the latter's brother, the Duke of Coburg, his suit being rejected with touching unanimity in each instance, in consequence of his unenviable reputation. Yet strangely enough, as stated previously, he seems to have developed into an exemplary husband, although his marriage was contracted under circumstances which, verged on a tragedy; for his wife, a mere seventeen-year-old girl, just issuing from the school-room when he made an offer for her hand, was literally flung into his arms by both her parents, who were determined to separate from each other, and who had been informed by Emperor Francis-Joseph of Austria, and by King Leopold of Belgium, that no such step could be tolerated until after the marriage of little Princess "Dolly," the only daughter of this ill-matched couple. The betrothal took place in due course at Vienna. But before the marriage could follow, the young girl's mother, namely, Princess Louise of Coburg and of Belgium, deliberately eloped from the Austrian capital with her husband's chamberlain, the Hungarian Count Keglewitch; and what was worse, took her daughter with her. The trio fled to Nice, where they were visited by King Leopold, who after endeavoring in vain to persuade the princess to return to her husband at Vienna, discarded her in hot anger, declaring that she was no longer his daughter!
The next act in the drama was a challenge issued by Prince Philip of Coburg against Count Keglewitch, who left Nice for the encounter: the duel was fought in the army riding-school at Vienna, the commander of the metropolitan garrison and the minister of war acting as seconds to Prince Philip, although duelling is strictly forbidden by law in Austria, as it is in Germany. Prince Philip received a painful wound in the hand, and the count forthwith left to rejoin the princess at Nice. The publicity given to this duel had the unfortunate result, however, of calling attention to the presence of poor little Princess Dorothy at Nice with her misguided mother and the count, and the princess having been warned by the Austrian authorities and the French police that her daughter would be taken from her by force unless she relinquished her hold upon the child, she sent her back to Vienna, whence the girl was immediately dispatched to Dresden and placed under the care of the mother and the unmarried sister of the German empress, with whom she remained until her marriage.
Shortly after her departure from Nice, her mother was forced to take flight in consequence of the persecution to which she was subjected by her creditors; and with a shamelessness that can only be explained on the score of an unbalanced mind, she deliberately returned to Austria with her lover, and coolly took up her residence at his castle near Agram, where the count actually made preparations for a siege, in order to resist by force any attempt on the part of the authorities to take the princess from him.
Ultimately, both were captured by strategy, and while the princess was conveyed under police escort to Vienna, and lodged at the request of her husband in a lunatic asylum, on the sworn statements of two court physicians concerning her insanity, the count was placed under close arrest at Agram on the charge of grossly immoral conduct, unbecoming an officer and a gentleman. Before he had been very long in the military prison, this charge was changed to one of forgery; for it was discovered that there were notes in circulation at Vienna and Paris to the extent of more than a million dollars, which the count had negotiated, and which bore the forged signature of Princess Louise's sister, the widowed Crown Princess Stephanie of Austria.
The count of course denied that he had forged the signature, but as the fact remains that he negotiated the notes, and that Princess Louise, who, failing himself, can alone have been the culprit, is officially declared insane, and legally irresponsible, he has had to bear the brunt of the affair, and is now, after having undergone the terrible ceremony of military degradation, working out a sentence of five years' penal servitude in a fortress; doubtless comparing his fate with that of the celebrated Baron Trench, who was imprisoned for years in the dungeons of Spandau, and of Magdeburg, for having compromised the fair name of the sister of Frederick the Great by indiscreet attentions.