and Great-Admiral above and below the sea--what do
you care?"

"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 t