body's wife," chance
permitting, as she intimates naively towards the close of the Diary.

Qualms of conscience she knows not, but of pride of ancestry, of
insistence on royal prerogatives, she has plenty and to spare.

"My great grand-aunt, Marie Antoinette, did this"; "my good cousins
d'Orleans" (three of them) "allowed themselves to be seduced"; "_ma
cousine de_ Saxe-Coburg laughs at conventionalities,"--there you have
the foundation of the iniquitous philosophy of the royal Lais. And for
the rest--when she is queen, all will be well.

_Her Court--A Seraglio_

Louise's fixed idea was that, as Queen of Saxony, she had but to say the
word to establish a court _a la_ Catharine II; time and again she refers
to the great Empress's male seraglio, and to the enormous sums she
squandered on her favorites. If the Diarist had known that Her Majesty
of Russia, when in the flesh, never suffered to be longer than
twenty-four hours without a lover, Louise, no doubt, would have made the
most elaborate plans to prevent, in her own case, a possible
_interregnum_ of five minutes even.

She thought she held the whip hand because a king cannot produce princes
without his wife, while the wife can produce princes without the king;
besides Frederick Augustus was no paragon, and he who plants horns, must
not grudge to wear them.

A wanton's calculations, it will be argued,--but Louise's records show
that her husband, the king-to-be, fell in with her main idea,--that he
forgave the unfaithful wife, the disgraced princess, because, as Queen,
her popularity would be "a great asset."

And Americans, our women of whom we are so proud, are asked to bow down
to such sorry majesties!

_Sired and "Cousined" by Lunatics_

And is there no excuse for so much baseness in high places? Our royal
Diarist offers none, but her family history is a telling apology.

Be it remembered that Louise is not so much an Austrian as a
Wittelsbacher of the royal house of Bavaria that gave to the world two
mad kings, Louis II and Otho, the present incumbent of the throne,
besides a number of eccentrics, among others Louise's aunts, the Empress
Elizabeth and the Duchess d'Alencon, both dead; Crown Prince Rudolph of
Austria, her cousin, was also undoubtedly insane, the result of breeding
in and in, Austrian, Bourbon and Wittelsbach stock, all practically of
the same parentage, in a mad mix-up, the insane Wittelsbachers
predominating.

To cap the climax, L