nd _sabretasches_. The draggled Menads and the helpful
Lafayette, the Jacobins, Charlotte Corday and the man she killed--all
were, and are, on similar pleasure bent."

And he added quickly: "As to the Dresdeners, they are tickled because,
every time they applaud you, the King is scandalized."

"How do they know that I am not on good terms with the King?"

"The very children in arms understand."

All Dresden, says Richard, is talking about me. Everybody assumes to
know the number and qualities of my lovers. "Louise," they argue, "knows
how to enjoy herself, but, though it serves the King right, we wouldn't
have her for a daughter-in-law, either."

According to the masses, I visit the Vogelwiese at night, ride on the
flying horses and solicit men and boys that please my fancy. Like a
gigantic she-monster, I drag them to my lair--"some to vanish forever."
(No doubt, I eat them.)

"Unwashed soldiers and clerks reeking with cheap perfume, actors and
students, draymen and generals, it's all the same to the Crown Princess.

"Sometimes, when the spirit moves her, the Crown Princess issues from
her gilded apartments in the palace and seizes the sentinel patrolling
the corridors. Or she visits the guard-room _en deshabille_ and selects
the youngest and best looking officer for her prey.

"Generous, too. She thinks nothing of handing a pension of ten thousand
marks per year to a chap that pleased her once."

"Is that all they say about me?"

"Not one-half. Poor devils that can't afford ten marks per year for
their fun, Cit's wives that know only their ill-kempt husbands, factory
girls that sell their virtue for a supper or a glass of beer--though
afterwards they claim it was champagne--all take delight in
contemplating that you, or any other good looking royal woman, are
Frankenstein's succuba or worse. Didn't they accuse your grand-aunt,
Marie Antoinette, of incest with her son and gave him to the cobbler to
thrash the immorality out of him?"

"And they give names?"

"Strings of them"--among them several I never heard mentioned before.

* * * * *

DRESDEN, _August 15, 1902_.

Richard is jealous--jealous of the men I did love and the regiments that
public opinion give me credit for. He must needs think I have loins of
steel.

He tells me he suffers agonies by what I confessed, and still more by
what I hide. To see him thus unhappy gives me intense pleasure, for it
shows that t