it, advanced beyond the pirate and robber-baron period. _Au fond_ all
princes and kings would be criminals if they happened not to be crowned
heads."

[Illustration: THE LATE KING ALBERT OF SAXONY

Louise's Uncle by Marriage]

He told me of a Balkan prince--young Alexander of Servia, the same mamma
Natalie intended for my consort--whose chief amusement consists in
having mice and rats chased by ferocious tom-cats in a big cage made for
that purpose. Once, growing tired of that sport, he incarcerated ten
tom-cats in the same cage without food many days in succession, visiting
the prison hourly to see whether they wouldn't take to devouring each
other.

When, in the end, they did, tearing one another to pieces, His Majesty
danced around the cage in high glee, pronouncing the battle of the poor
beasts a bully spectacle.

"You visited Castle Sibyllenort a week ago," continued Romano--"a most
proper place, this royal residence, is it not? You ought to have seen it
before your puritan King inherited it, ten years ago, upon the death of
the last Duke of Brunswick. At that time it was a veritable museum of
pornography, the apotheosis of Paphian voluptuousness. The palace, which
has over four hundred rooms and halls--not one which a decent woman
might enter without a blush--acquired its equipment as a _lupanar_ and
its reputation for debauchery under the famous, or notorious, 'Diamond
Duke,' a brother of the Highness who left the estate to King Albert.
Both Dukes held high carnival in its gilded halls, but he of the
diamonds rather outdid William in outraging decency.

"One of his chief amusements was to hire a drove of ballet girls for
parlor horses. He had a carriage constructed no bigger or heavier than
a Japanese jinrickshaw, and to this hitched ten or twenty ballet girls
in their birthday suits, walking on all fours, himself rider and driver.

"Gracious--how he lashed his treble and quadruple teams of human flesh
as they pulled him from room to room, and his was no make-belief
ferocity, either. He was a niggardly rake, but in order to indulge his
Sadist tendencies, agreed to pay one _Thaler_ (Seventy-five cents) for
every drop of blood shed by the girls.

"To make the count easier, white linen sheets were spread over the
carpets, and the sum total was paid over to the two-legged horses after
each entertainment, the girls showing the sorest stripes or wounds
getting the larger share."

Romano, who lived at half