I must confess that I have never in my life
felt such an anguish and such a shame to allow myself to be seen.
Consider, Prince, what an example we give to all the world when, for a
miserable piece of Poland or of Moldavia and Wallachia, we throw to the
dogs our honor and reputation! I notice well that I stand alone and am
no Longer _en vigueur_, therefore I let things take their course, though
not without my greatest grief."

The moral example of Maria Theresa did not, however, in any great degree
affect her gallant husband, Francis of Lorraine. His mistress, Princess
Auersperg-Neipperg, had all the noble vices of her exalted position. The
prime minister, Kaunitz, was utterly immoral, and even dared to take
with him in his equipage his mistresses, who waited till his audience
with the empress was over. When the latter once ventured to remonstrate
with him, he replied: "Madam, I have come here to speak with you about
your affairs, not about my own." The so-called chastity commission
established by the empress to supervise the morals of Vienna succeeded
in compelling those who persistently indulged in vices at least to
exercise more caution and discretion; for she remained inexorable
against scandalous debauch and inflicted ignominious chastisement upon
the offenders, according to the Draconic code of the time. The result
was that Vienna had its "Messalinas in toned down colors," as the
British traveller Wraxall says, and that "the superstition of Austrian
women, though it be traditional and immense, is by no means an obstacle
to excesses; they sin, pray, confess, and begin anew."

The brilliant court at Vienna found its counterpart in the frugal,
economical bourgeois court of Berlin, while that of Dresden, as
mentioned in the foregoing chapters, was sunk in a mire of moral
corruption. The memoirs of Marquise Sophie Wilhelmine of Baireuth,
sister of Frederick the Great, describe, with humor and sometimes with
ingenuous malice, the condition of the court at Dresden. The wife and
children of the coarse soldier-king were treated with great harshness
and almost deprived of the necessities of life. The marquise tells of a
visit to Dresden in 1738, where Frederick fell in love with Countess
Orzelska, a natural daughter and mistress of August the Strong. The pen
refuses to record the history of the incest practised at that court with
and among the three hundred and fifty-four "natural" children of August.
August was jealous of