"At Your Imperial Highness's commands."

"And you think me ninny enough to be satisfied with reading no more than what you consider proper for me to see?"

The Tisch wavered not a bit. "His Majesty the King is served the same fashion."

"No matter. I want my papers whole, and don't you dare to mutilate them." By way of letting her down easier I added: "Don't give yourself the trouble."

"No trouble, I a.s.sure your Imperial Highness. With your permission, then, I will continue to clip for Your Imperial Highness."

I rose and, measuring her from head to toe with flaming eyes, I said: "You will do nothing of the kind, do you understand?"

The impertinent cat insisted: "But I think it proper----"

"Have you heard what I said or not, Baroness?"

She tried to save her face by a.s.serting, "I am acting by command of His Majesty."

"I will ask His Majesty whether you spoke the truth," I said quick as a flash; "meanwhile you are suspended and will return to Dresden until recalled. Ring the bell and I will give orders to the Master of Horse to send you away."

Of course Tisch couldn't afford such an inquiry to be made, which would have exposed her clumsy hand and, as remarked, royalty doesn't care to be found out. Defeat staring her in the face, Tisch wavered: "Of course, if your Imperial Highness chooses to take the responsibility, I will be most happy to submit the papers as they arrive."

"In their wrappers," I commanded, as I dismissed her.

By distributing a hundred marks in silver, I found out that the Tisch examines my body-servants daily and that, night after night, she sits up hours writing long-winded reports. She is the King's tool, but she let the cat out of the bag when cornered. That gives me the whip hand for the time being.

CHAPTER XXV

THE TWO BLACK SHEEP OF THE FAMILY UNITED

Leopold upon my troubles and his own--Imperial Hapsburgs that, though Catholics, got divorces or married divorced women--Books that are full of guilty knowledge, according to royalty--A mud-hole lodging for one Imperial Highness--Leopold's girl--What I think of army officers' wives--Their anonymous letters--Leopold's money troubles--We will fool our enemies by feigning obedience.

LOSCHWITZ, _September 15, 1894_.

Leopold is with me, the brother two years older than I. They just made him a Major--a twelve-month later than his patent calls for.

Like myself, he is almost permanently in disgrace with the head of the family, even as I am with the King and Prince George. We had no sooner embraced and kissed, than I asked him for the latest gossip concerning the Crown Princess of Saxony.

"You are a tough one," he said, shaking his finger with amused mockery.

According to Vienna court gossip, "I threw Prince George out of doors,"

when he "raised his hand against me," Frederick Augustus and myself haven't been on speaking terms for six months; and the Saxe family was actually considering the advisability of divorce.

Of course I told Leopold how things really are.

"Then there will be no divorce?" he asked.

"If the King and Prince George leave me alone,--no."

"Too bad," he said with a laugh, "that knocks me out of the pleasure of maintaining my _thesis_ that the founder of the Christian religion didn't believe in indissoluble marriage, but, on the contrary, in divorce if such couldn't be avoided."

"Who told you that?"

"Professor Wahrmund is preparing a paper on the subject," said Leopold, who, as remarked, is a very well-read chap and a student. He named five or six emperors and kings, Catholics, some of them members of the Austrian Imperial family, who obtained divorces, or married divorced women. I jotted down the list.

Lothair II divorced his wife Theutberga and married his love, Waldrade.

Emperor Frederick I divorced the Empress Anna on the plea that she was sterile. She married a Count, with whom she had a dozen children.

Margaret, a daughter of Leopold VI of Austria, was divorced by King Ottokar of Bohemia.

John Henry, Prince of Bohemia, divorced his wife Margareta, who afterwards married an ancestor of the Kaiser, Ludwig of Brandenburg.

King Ladislaus of Sicily divorced Queen Constance and forced his va.s.sal, Andrea di Capua, to marry her against his will. Ten years later Ladislaus married Maria de Lusignan.

But a little knowledge is a terrible thing, if it happens to be acquired by a prince. Princes are supposed to know nothing but the art and the _finesses_ of destruction--war. Upbuilding is not in their line.

"I hear you are exercising a bad influence on Louise," roared our uncle, the Emperor, at Leopold when the latter took leave from him. "You furnished to her those infernal books, sowing the seed of guilty knowledge?"

Leopold so far forgot himself as to address a question to the "All-Highest": "What infernal books?"

"Books full of indecencies and obscenities, in short p.o.r.nographic literature," shouted the head of the family, turned his horse and rode away in high dudgeon. Royal arguments are nothing if not one-sided!

Then Leopold told of himself. His garrison: a filthy mud-hole in Poland.

One-story houses and everybody peeping into everybody else's windows.

The few notables of the town and neighborhood tickled to death because they have an Imperial Highness with them, and the fool of an Imperial Highness goes and "besots himself with a mere country la.s.s." He showed me her photograph. I like her looks. A pretty face, blonde hair and soft eyes. He was her first lover. On his account she left her family. She dotes on him as a dog dotes on his master.

Leopold is eccentric enough to jeopardize his career for this poor thing. He rented a small house for her and spends much of his time there when not on the drill-grounds.

Hence intense indignation among the "respectable ladies." An Imperial Highness within reach and he "doesn't come to our dances, he doesn't visit and sends his regrets when invited!"

Poor Marja suffers especially from the venom of the officers'

wives,--cattle I detest. No royal or imperial prince is safe from them except in his mother's womb.

"From morn till night and half the night they do nothing but gossip about me and my girl," said Leopold,--"If the cats were only satisfied with that! But every little while I get an anonymous letter from one of them, denouncing her; Marja is favored in a similar way; so is my general and our uncle, the Emperor."

And needless to say Leopold can't get along on his salary and appanage.

Father can't give him much. The Emperor won't, because the clergy intrigues against him as a free-thinker and non-church-goer.

We thought long and deep whether it wouldn't be possible to improve our position and we decided on this:

We will keep up each other's spirits by clandestine correspondence, carried on with the aid of a mutual friend. At the same time we will, apparently, fall in with the ideas of "our masters" and endure a few pin-p.r.i.c.ks rather than waste our strength in useless opposition.

Let no one chide us for hypocrites, because our gentleness will be a mask, our submission a snare, our obedience a lie. It's all on the outside. Inwardly Leopold and Louise will remain true to themselves.