tle knowledge is a terrible thing, if it happens to be acquired
by a prince. Princes are supposed to know nothing but the art and the
_finesses_ of destruction--war. Upbuilding is not in their line.

"I hear you are exercising a bad influence on Louise," roared our uncle,
the Emperor, at Leopold when the latter took leave from him. "You
furnished to her those infernal books, sowing the seed of guilty
knowledge?"

Leopold so far forgot himself as to address a question to the
"All-Highest": "What infernal books?"

"Books full of indecencies and obscenities, in short pornographic
literature," shouted the head of the family, turned his horse and rode
away in high dudgeon. Royal arguments are nothing if not one-sided!

Then Leopold told of himself. His garrison: a filthy mud-hole in Poland.
One-story houses and everybody peeping into everybody else's windows.
The few notables of the town and neighborhood tickled to death because
they have an Imperial Highness with them, and the fool of an Imperial
Highness goes and "besots himself with a mere country lass." He showed
me her photograph. I like her looks. A pretty face, blonde hair and soft
eyes. He was her first lover. On his account she left her family. She
dotes on him as a dog dotes on his master.

Leopold is eccentric enough to jeopardize his career for this poor
thing. He rented a small house for her and spends much of his time there
when not on the drill-grounds.

Hence intense indignation among the "respectable ladies." An Imperial
Highness within reach and he "doesn't come to our dances, he doesn't
visit and sends his regrets when invited!"

Poor Marja suffers especially from the venom of the officers'
wives,--cattle I detest. No royal or imperial prince is safe from them
except in his mother's womb.

"From morn till night and half the night they do nothing but gossip
about me and my girl," said Leopold,--"If the cats were only satisfied
with that! But every little while I get an anonymous letter from one of
them, denouncing her; Marja is favored in a similar way; so is my
general and our uncle, the Emperor."

And needless to say Leopold can't get along on his salary and appanage.
Father can't give him much. The Emperor won't, because the clergy
intrigues against him as a free-thinker and non-church-goer.

We thought long and deep whether it wouldn't be possible to improve our
position and we decided on this:

We will keep up each other's spirits by cland