right to interfere in my wife's
pleasure--I am not built that way. Well, I _don't_ interfere. What more
do you want? You don't deny that I am the chief person to be
considered."

"You?" mocked Kyril. "You with your sovereignty are not in it at all. If
it wasn't for you, Melita and I could marry and say no more about it."

"But I don't prevent your enjoyment of each other," pleaded the ruler of
the Hessians.

Now the idealistic Kyril got on his high horse. "Grand-duke," he said,
"if you don't object to your wife having a lover, that's your business.
For my part, I object to my paramour having a husband."

And so on _ad infinitum_, and a goose like me abuses herself for a bit
of goo-goo-eyeing.

CHAPTER XXXIV

MORE ABOUT THE SWEET ROYAL FAMILY LIFE

"Closed season" for petty meannesses--A prince who enjoys himself
like a pig--Why princes learn trades--A family dinner to the
accompaniment of threats and smashing of table--The Duke's widow and
children robbed of their inheritance by royal family--King
confiscates testament.

LOSCHWITZ, _September 13, 1896_.

They are treating me like a laying hen. Expect another golden egg in
December. Hence, "closed season" for imperious commands, "all-highest"
orders and petty meannesses.

When I learned that Bernhardt was in Dresden, I phoned him to come out
and see me--without asking either royal, princely, or the Tisch's
permission.

A junior prince, without fortune or high protector, is really to be
pitied. His title, the vague possibility that some day he may be called
to the throne, stand between him and enjoyment of life as a man. Nothing
left, but to enjoy himself like a pig.

Bernhardt admits it. "They planted me in the God-forsakenest hole in the
kingdom. If I saw a pretty woman in my garrison from one year's end to
the other, I would die of joy. And the newspaper scribblers wonder why
we are all Oscar Wildes.

"Just to kill time, I am learning the carpenter's trade--this Royal
Highness, you must know, lives in a carpenter's house, as innocent of
sanitary arrangements as a Bushman's hut. Of course, I run away every
little while to Dresden, incog. to pay my respects to Venus.

"Louise," he cried with comic emphasis, "may the three hours you steal
from my girl, by way of this visit, be deducted from your eternal
beatitude."

I lent the poor fellow five hundred marks and he rushed back to Dresden.

Tonight I told Frederick Augus