Her relatives-by-marriage were mostly freaks,
and all were unbearable; her entourage a collection of spies and
flunkeys.

If charity-bazaars, pious palaver, and orphaned babies' diapers had not
been the sole topic of conversation at court; if there had been
intellectual enjoyment of any kind, Louise might never have taken up
her pen. As it was: "This Diary is intended to contain my innermost
thoughts, my ambitions, my promises for the future, _Myself_. * * *
These pages are my Father-Confessor. I confess to myself. * * * And as I
start in writing letters to myself, it occurs to me that my worse self
may be corresponding with my better self, or vice-versa."

At any rate she thinks "this Diary business will be quite amusing."

_Louise's Amusing Writings_

It is. The world always laughs at the--husband of a woman whose history
isn't one long yawn.

Nor is Louise content with a bust picture.[2] She gives full length
portraits of herself, family, friends, enemies, and lovers, which latter
she picks hap-hazard among commoners and the nobility. Only one of them
was a prince of the blood, and he promptly proved the most false and
dishonorable of the lot.

When Louise's pen-pictures do not deal with her _amororos_, they focus
invariably emperors and princes, kings and queens,--contemporary
personages whose acquaintance, by way of the newspapers and magazines,
we all enjoy to the full, as "stern rulers," "sacrificers to the public
weal," "martyrs of duty," "indefatigable workers," "examples of
abstinence," and "high-mindedness"--everything calculated to make life a
burden to the ordinary mortal.

_Kings in Fiction and in Reality_

But kings and emperors, we are told by these _distant_ observers, are
built that way; they would not be happy unless they made themselves
unhappy for their people's sake. And as to queens and empresses,--they
simply couldn't live if they didn't inspect their linen closets daily,
stand over a broiling cook-stove, or knit socks for the offspring of
inebriated bricklayers "and sich."

Witness Louise, Imperial and Royal Highness, Archduchess of Austria,
Princess of Hungary and Tuscany, Crown Princess of Saxony, etc., etc.,
smash these paper records of infallible royal rectitude, and superhuman,
almost inhuman, royal probity!

Had she castigated her own kind _after_ royalty unkenneled her, neck and
crop, her story might admit of doubt, but she wrote these things while
in the full enjoyment o