to his credit, among them not a few subsequently accounted
geniuses. Augustus, the Physical Strong (1670 to 1733), was the happy
father, the _Mareshal de_ Saxe one of his numerous gifted offspring.

Alas, since then the House of Wettin has declined not in numbers only.

Poor baby is burdened with ten names in honor of so many ancestors. Why,
in addition, they want to call him "Maria" I cannot for the life of me
understand, for there never was a Saxon princess or queen that amounted
to a row of pins.

I wonder whether they will say the same of me after the crown of the
Wettiners descended upon my brow. Those so inclined should consult these
papers ere they begin throwing stones, for my Diary is intended to
contain my innermost thoughts, my ambitions, my promises for the future,
_Myself_, and let no one judge me by what I say other than what is
recorded here.

These pages are my Father Confessor. I confess to myself,--what a woman
in my position says to members of her family or official and
semi-official persons--her servants, so to speak--doesn't signify, to
borrow a phrase from my good cousin, the Kaiser Wilhelm.

Father-in-law George tells me to trust no one but him, my husband, and
Frederick Augustus's sisters, cousins and aunts, and to rely on prayer
only, yet, stubborn as nature made me, I prefer respectable white paper
to my sweet relatives.

Up to now my most ambitious literary attempts were intimate letters to
my brother Leopold, the "Black Sheep." As I now start in writing letters
to myself, it occurs to me that my worse self may be corresponding with
my better self, or vice versa. If I was only a poet like Countess Solms,
but, dear, no. All real bluestockings are ugly and emaciated. Solms is
both, and her legs are as long and as thin as those of Diana, my English
hunter.

I think this Diary business will be quite amusing,--at any rate, it will
be more so than the conversation of my ladies. Ah, those ladies of the
court of Saxony! If they would only talk of anything else but orphans,
sisters of charity and ballet girls. The latter always have one foot in
Hades, while you can see the wings grow on the backs of the others.

When the von Schoenberg struts in, peacock fashion, and announces "his
royal Highness did himself the honor to soil his bib," I sometimes stare
at her, not comprehending at the moment, and the fact that she is
talking of my baby only gradually comes to mind. Isn't it ridiculous
that a