the decency to go to the window and comment on the dirty boots of a
guard lieutenant just entering the courtyard. Frederick Augustus
thought he had made a hit with Isabelle and applauded his own effort
with a loud guffaw, while pounding his thighs, which seems to give him
particular satisfaction.

CHAPTER II

THE SWEET FAMILY

Husband loving, but family nasty--Money considerations--Brutal
caresses in public--Pests in the family--Awful serenity--Meddle with
angels' or devils' affairs--Father-in-law's gritty kiss.

CASTLE WACHWITZ, _February 24, 1893_.

I have been married some fifteen months and I love my husband. He is
kind, not too inquisitive and passionate. I have better claims to
domestic happiness than most of my royal sisters on or near the thrones
of Europe. Of course when I married into the Saxon royal family I
expected to be treated with ill-concealed enmity. Wasn't I young and
handsome? Reason enough for the old maids and childless wives, my new
sweet relatives, to detest me.

Wasn't I poor? I brought little with me and my presence entailed a
perpetual expense. Now in royal families money is everything, or nearly
so, and the newcomer that eats but doesn't increase the family fortune
is regarded as an interloper.

If I hadn't "_made good_," that is if, in due time, I hadn't become a
mother, my position among the purse-proud, rapacious and narrow-minded
Wettiners would have become wellnigh intolerable. But I proved myself a
_Holstein_. I rose superior to Queen Carola, who never had a child, and
to Maria, Mathilda, Isabelle and Elizabeth, who either couldn't or
didn't. But, to my mind, acting the _cow_ for the benefit of the race
did not invite stable manners.

I wasn't used to them. They hadn't figured in the dreams of my girlhood.
I thought love less robust. I didn't expect to be squeezed before my
ladies. Even the best beloved husband shouldn't take liberties with his
wife's waist in the parlor.

And Frederick Augustus's negligee talk is no less offensive than his
manner of laying loving hands on my person. As a rule, he treats me like
a third-row dancing girl that goes to petition the manager for a place
nearer the footlights. There is no limit to his familiarities or to the
license of his conversation. "_Fine wench_" is a term of affection he
likes to bestow on his future queen; indeed, one of the less gross. He
has the weakness to like epithets that, I am told, gentlemen s