ROYAL DISGRACE--LIGHTNING AND SHADOWS
Ordered around by the Queen--Give thanks to a bully--Jealous of the
"mob's" applause--"The old monkey after '_Hochs_'"--Criticizing the
"old man"--Royalty's plea for popularity--Proposed punishments for
people refusing to love royalty.
DRESDEN, _September 8, 1893_.
Thrice twenty-four hours of royal disgrace and I am--alive. This
morning: "All-highest order," signed by Her Majesty's Dame of the
Palace, Countess von Minckwitz: "The Queen is graciously pleased to
invite your Imperial Highness to audience."
Of course her pleasure is a command. I dressed in state and ordered all
the ladies and gentlemen of my court to attend me to the royal chambers.
Queen Carola was very nice, giving the impression that she would be more
lovely still if she dared.
"Prince George has just commanded your husband," she said,--"the King
ordered this condescension on my brother-in-law's part. You will have to
thank him for it."
Isn't it amusing to be an Imperial Highness and a Crown Princess to be
ordered around like a "boots" and to be "commanded" like an orphan
child to say thanks to one's betters!
I promised and the Queen, assuming that I intended to act the good
little girl, took courage to say--for she is the biggest of
cowards--"You are too popular, Louise. Such a reception as you had! All
the papers, even the Jew-sheets, are full of it."
And before I could make any excuses for my popularity she added in
sorrowful, half-accusing tones: "I lived here ever so many years and the
mob never applauded _me_."
"It's so fickle," I quoted. I had to say something, you know.
"And contemptible," added the Queen heartily. "But how is baby?"
I begged permission to send for him. Her Majesty was pleased to play
with the little one for a minute or two and that secured me a gracious
exit. The Queen attended me to the door, opening it with her own royal
hand, thereby rehabilitating me with my entourage waiting outside.
Meanwhile Frederick Augustus had a "critical quarter of an hour" with
father-in-law, who assumed to speak on behalf of the King.
"The King," he said, "despised 'playing to the gallery' worse than the
devil hated holy water." (This court is overrun with Jesuits, and we
must needs adopt their vernacular.)
The King, he repeated, thought it very bad taste for anyone to take the
centre of the stage in these "popularity-comedies," and he told a lot
more lies of the same character. Then he bethought himself of his own
grieved authority.
"Tell your wife," he said, "that I, her father-in-law, and next to the
throne, do everything in my power to escape such turbulent scenes, and
that I would rather ride about town in an ordinary _Droschke_ (cab) of
the second class, preserving my incognito, than in a state carriage and
be the object of popular acclamation."
When Frederick Augustus repeated the above with the most solemn face in
the world, I thought I would die with laughter and actually had to send
for my tire-woman to let my corset out a few notches.
"The old monkey," I cried--"as if he wasn't after '_Hochs_' morning,
noon and night; as if he thought of anything else when he mounts a
carriage or his horse."
"You forget yourself, Louise," warned Frederick Augustus in the voice of
an undertaker, and I really think he meant it. But I wasn't in the mood
to be silenced.
"And as if I didn't know that, like Kaiser Wilhelm, he keeps a record of
towns and villages that were never honored by one of his visits,
intending to make his ceremonial entry there at the first plausible
opportunity."
"It isn't true," insisted Frederick Augustus.
Then I got angry. "It may be thought polite in the bosom of your family
to call one another a liar," I retorted, "but don't you get into the
habit of introducing those tap-room manners in the _menage_ of an
Imperial Highness of Austria. I forbid it."
And then I gave rein to some of the bitterness that had accumulated in
my heart against the old man. Didn't I know that George was mad enough
to quarrel with his dinner when, on his drives about town, he observed a
single person refusing to salute him? And wasn't it a fact that the
Socialists had combined never more to raise their hats to him just
because he insisted on it? And wasn't that one of the reasons why the
government was more hard on them than happened to be politic?
"You mustn't say these things," pleaded Frederick Augustus.
I pretended to melt. "May I not quote your father's own words?"
"What my father says is always correct," replied the dutiful son.
"Well, then, this is what he told House Minister von Seydowitz a couple
of weeks ago: 'When I see one of these intending destroyers of the state
and social order staring at me, hat on head and cigar in face, I doubly
regret the good old times when kings and princes were at liberty to yank
a scoundrel of that ilk to jail and immure him for life, giving him
twenty-five stripes daily to teach him the desirableness of rendering
unto Caesar that which is Caesar's.'"
Frederick Augustus was holding his hands to his ears when I finished. He
ran out and slammed the door behind him.