little squalling bit of humanity, whom the accident of birth
planted in a palace, is royalty first and all the time, and a child only
because he can't help it?

As for me, I am a woman and mother first, and my child is an animated
lump of flesh and blood--_my_ flesh and blood--first and all the time.
Of course, when baby came I wanted to nurse it. You should have seen
Frederick Augustus's face. If I had proposed to become a wet-nurse to
some "socialist brat" he couldn't have been more astonished. Yet my
great ancestress, the Empress Maria Theresa, nursed her babies "before a
parquet of proletarians," at the theatre and at reviews, and thought
nothing of giving the breast to a poor foundling left in the park of
Schoenbrunn.

Frederick Augustus recovered his speech after a while--though he never
says anything that would seem to require reflection, he always acts the
deep thinker. "Louise," he mumbled reproachfully,--"what will his
Majesty say?"

"I thought you were the father of the child," I remarked innocently.

"No levity where the King is concerned," he corrected poor me. "You know
very well that for an act of this kind a royal permit must be previously
obtained."

Followed a long pause to give his mental apparatus time to think some
more. Then: "And, besides, it will hurt your figure."

"Augusta Victoria" (the German Empress) "nursed half a dozen children,
and her _decollete_ is still much admired," I insisted.

Frederick Augustus paid no attention to this argument. "Anyhow, I don't
want the doctors to examine your breast daily," he said with an air of
mixed sentimentality and brusqueness.

These were not his own words, though. My husband, not content with
calling a spade a spade, invariably uses the nastiest terms in the
dictionary of debauchery. When he tells me of his love adventures before
marriage it's always "I bagged that girl," or "I made something tender
out of her," just as a hunter talks of game or a leg of venison.

He doesn't want to be rude; he is so without knowing it. His indelicacy
would be astounding in a man born on the steps of the throne, if the
Princes of this royal house were not all inclined that way.

Two weeks after my accouchement George and Isabelle called. Though
brother and sister-in-law, we are not at all on terms of intimacy.
Frederick Augustus made some remarks of a personal nature that sent all
the blood to my head; Isabelle seemed to enjoy my discomfort, but George
had