a dozen courts and is primed with the
scandalous gossip of them all, could certainly write an entertaining
book on the fallacies and vices of the world's Great.

It's most indelicate, to be sure, but I laughed long and hard over the
sexual specialty of my uncle, Archduke Karl Ludwig, who is bad, anyhow,
as everybody knows.

One morning His Highness rose at an unusually early hour, even before
the scrub-women made their exit. In the corridors, in the parlors,
everywhere blonde and dark percherons, cleaning away for dear life and
courting housemaid's knee!

Karl Ludwig has no more use for women than the late Chevalier de
Lorraine, the President of the _Mignons_, but the exaggerated
protuberances he met so unexpectedly on all sides, appealed to his sense
of humor, or some other sense which I would hate to name. Anyhow, he ran
into the garden and cut himself a switch. And ever since then his chief
amusement is to switch scrubbing percherons. If he succeeds in dealing
one a blow unforeseen by lying in wait for her, or coming upon her all
of a sudden, he is particularly satisfied with his day's work and is
liable to give a beggar a copper instead of the usual demi-copper.

And of such abnormals the rulers of the world are recruited.

CHAPTER XXXIX

MY PUNISHMENT

I lose my lover--Quarrels with me because I did my duty as a
mother--Royalty extols me for the same reason--My pride of kingship
aroused by Socialist scribblers--Change my opinion as to Duke's
widow--Parents arrive--Father and his alleged astrolatry--His
finances disarranged by alimony payments--My uncle, the Emperor,
rebukes mother harshly for complaining of _roue_ father.

DRESDEN, _Christmas, 1898_.

God punished me for my sins. My children, one after the other, were ill
with scarlet fever, and the youngest is only now out of danger. Of
course, I abandoned all my frivolities. I can say without boasting that
the mother atoned for the short-comings of the wife and princess.

Hence I thought justified to arrange for a right royal Christmas
present: Romano.

Lucretia went to see him. He received her coldly, hardly vouchsafed a
word. From a secret drawer of his desk he took a letter, ready written,
dated and gave it to Lucretia. "It explains," he said curtly, as he
opened the door for her.

He has abandoned me. Because I loved my children better than him,
because I am a mother first, Lais second, he throws away his Imp