Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess

The Tisch, on her part, promised to tell the King only half the truth – not for my sake, of course, but to shield her dear, seduced young relative.

CHAPTER LIV

FORCED TO DO PENANCE LIKE A TRAPPIST MONK

"By the King's orders" – I submit for the sake of my children – Must fast as well as pray – In delicate health, I insist upon returning to Dresden – Bernhardt, to avoid being maltreated by King, threatens him with his sword – The King's awful wrath – Bernhardt prisoner in Nossen – I escape, temporarily, protracted ennui.

Pillnitz, May 28, 1901.

Though I am in delicate health, the King, having recovered from his illness, commanded me to do penance, – almost public penance.

Fast and pray, pray and fast is the order of the day for the next two weeks.

I arise every morning at five. At six a closed carriage takes me to a distant nunnery of the Ursulines, a good hour's travel. I am forced to attend mass, which also lasts an hour. Then a half-hour's sermon, dealing with fire and brimstone, hell and damnation.

When that's over the Mother Superior kindly asks me to her cell and lectures me for an hour on the duties of a wife and mother, and on the terrors that follow in the wake of adultery.

(I wonder where she gets her wisdom. She isn't married, she isn't supposed to have children, and she ought to know that the founder of her religion was most kind to the adulteress.)

Then back to Pillnitz and breakfast, for it's the King's express command that I worship on an empty stomach; some Jesuit told George my sins would never be forgiven unless the torture of the fast was added to that of early rising, travel, prostration before the altar and listening to pious palaver.

I stand it for my children's sake. They will be returned to me after I did penance full score. My only satisfaction: I compel the Tisch to attend me on my trips, and make her sit on the back seat of the carriage. I know this turns her stomach and watch her twitching face with devilish glee.

Dresden, June 15, 1901.

With the authority of the pregnant woman I demanded that I be allowed to return to town.

"If compelled to see Prince George and the rest of my enemies daily, my child will be mal-formed, or I will suffer an avortement," I told the King.

They let me go and I am breathing more freely. I still wear the chain and ball, but they don't cut into my flesh as in Pillnitz.

Yesterday I learned that Bernhardt was in Dresden, and sent for him. He came in company of two army officers who remained in the anteroom.

"I am a prisoner," he said resignedly, "those fellows outside will conduct me to Nossen."

The audience granted him several months ago took place only after my departure from the summer residence, and developed into a fearful scene.

"His Majesty," said Bernhardt, "was in a rage when I entered. 'State what you have to say,' said the King, 'and be brief.'

"'If Your Majesty will graciously permit me to reside in Dresden, I will promise to lead a life in accordance with Your Majesty's intentions and will obey your slightest wish.'

"'What?' cried the King, 'You dare name conditions for your good conduct?'"

Bernhardt denied any intention to impose conditions, but begged to submit to His Majesty that he couldn't exist in those small garrisons. If in Dresden, it would come easier to him to turn over a new leaf.

"Sure, all you young rakes want to live in the capital," sneered the King, "because it's easy in a big town to hide one's delinquencies."

"Your Majesty," cried Bernhardt, "if I ever did a reprehensible thing, it was forced upon me by intolerable conditions."

The King grew white with rage.

"No excuses," he thundered. "You are a rip and ugly customer and you will stay in the garrison I designated."

Even before the King had finished, Bernhardt interrupted him with a fierce: "Don't you call me names, Majesty. I won't stand for that."

"Won't stand for anything that I think proper to mete out to you, rascal? I will make you." The King had risen and was about to box Bernhardt's ears.

Bernhardt jumped back two paces and shouted like mad: "Don't you dare touch me. I will defend my honor sword in hand, even if I have to shoot myself on the spot."

For several seconds the King stood speechless, then he reached out his hand and touched an electric button. Marshal Count Vitzthum responded.

"Take him," said the King hoarsely – "he is your prisoner."

Bernhardt drew his sword and threw it at the King's feet. He was conducted to a room, and sentinels were posted outside his door and under his windows. Presently the telephone called together a council of war and it was decided that Bernhardt go to Nossen during the King's pleasure, or rather displeasure.

"The army officers that act as my guards are not allowed to speak to me," said Bernhardt, "and the garrison in Nossen will likewise be muzzled." He laughed as he added: "I suppose I shall have to make friends with the spirits of the great Augustus's mistresses haunting the old burg. They were gay ones! If the King remembered that, he would send me to the Trappists rather than to Nossen."

Dresden, July 1, 1901.

I never dreamt that science would come to my rescue, but a clever woman has more than one trick up her sleeve. On a visit to a book store I happened to see a new publication on the Hygienics of Pregnancy and had it sent to the palace.

Last night, when nearly dead with ennui, I turned over the leaves of the volume and came across an article advising women in my condition to seek plenty of merry company. My mind was made up at once.

First thing in the morning I sent for the Court Physician, and with many a sigh and groan gave him to understand that I feared to have melancholy if I continued the monotonous life I was leading.

I happened to strike one of the doctor's pet theories, and he recited whole pages from the book I had been reading. Then he asked me a hundred questions, and rest assured that my answers were in accordance with my wishes.

"I will have the honor to report to His Majesty at once," said the Councillor at the end of the examination, "that some diversion is imperative in Your Imperial Highness's case. Would Your Imperial Highness be pleased to visit the theatre or the Opera if the King approves?"

The King did approve, and the Crown Princess of Saxony is once more permitted the privilege of Frau Schmidt and Frau Müller; namely, to go to the theatre when she feels like it.

CHAPTER LV

FRANCIS JOSEPH JOINS MY SAXON ENEMIES

Cuts me dead before whole family – Everybody talks over my head at dinner – I refuse to attend more court festivities – Husband protests because I won't stand for insult from Emperor – I give rein to my contempt for his family – Hypocrites, despoilers, gamblers, religious maniacs, brutes – Benign lords to the people, tyrants at home – I cry for my children like a she-dog whose young were drowned.

Dresden, November 2, 1901.

Great family concourse to look my new baby over, dear Marie Alix, born at Wachwitz, September 27.

Emperor Francis Joseph was first to arrive, the Majesty who is forever posing as the family's good genius, as upholder of peace and amity among his countless cousins and nieces, and the many uncles and aunts and other relatives of his grand-children.

Behold how he lived up to this reputation!

I had been commanded to attend the reception in the Queen's salon, and made my bow to him. He bowed all around, looking at each present, but managed to overlook me.

Then he commenced a long and weary conversation with the Queen, at whose elbow I sat, and when his stock of platitudes was exhausted, turned to fat Mathilde, congratulating her on the possession of the Stern Kreuz decoration, an Austrian order which I likewise wore at my corsage. It was none other than the late Empress Elizabeth who pinned it on me.

Presently dinner was announced. The Emperor took in Her Majesty, the King, nolens, volens, had to conduct me, but gave me neither word nor look. Nor did the others. I couldn't have been more isolated on a desert island, than at this royal board.

They talked and cracked their silly jokes, and paid compliments to each other and were careful not to let their tongues run away with their intriguing minds, but all went above my head. No one spoke to me but the lackeys: "If it please Your Imperial Highness – "

Frederick Augustus tore into my bedroom some little time after I had retired. Picture of the offended gentleman, if you please. I got no more than I deserve, but it "reflected on him, h-i-m, HIM." Though it was a "family dinner," he, the Crown Prince of Saxony, was "publicly" disgraced. The Emperor had treated the Crown Princess as air. He had not deigned to address a single word to her. The Crown Princess was a trollop in the Imperial eyes – it was enough to drive the Crown Prince to drink.

"Drink yourself to death then," I shrieked.

During the night I speculated what to do: ask a private audience of the Emperor, state my side of the case and beg his forgiveness and protection, beg, especially, for better treatment at his hands?

And if he refused?

Francis Joseph is a good deal of a Jesuit. When he hates, he never lets it come to a break; when he loves, he never attaches himself.

If I stooped to humiliate myself, he might choose to debase me still more. It was entirely probable that he would betray my confidences to the King and Prince George.

I will defy him and – all of them!

"Her Imperial Highness regrets – " my Court Marshal wrote in answer to all invitations or rather "commands" for the next three days. When I refused to participate in the "grand leave-taking," Frederick Augustus came post-haste to expostulate with me.

"You must. It would be an affront without precedent."

"Take leave of a man who didn't say good-day to me on his arrival, and who probably intends to slight me in similar fashion on going away – "

In lieu of argument the Prince Royal abused me like a pick-pocket; I had waited for it and now I let loose.

"You are like the rest of your family," I shouted: "ignorant, thoughtless, brutal en venerie, sanctimonious in dotage. I know few people for whom I have so great a detestation as for the Royal Saxons. Look at your father, there is no more jesuitical a Jesuit, the inward man as hideous as the outward. He would be an insolent lackey, if he didn't happen to be a prince.

"And Johann George – a shameless inheritance-chaser, despoiler of pupillary funds, gambler at the bourse, who whines like a whipped dog when he loses.

"The royal Bernhardt, companion of street-walkers!

"Prince Max, who talks theology, but keeps his eye on Therese.

"Your Queen, a victim of religious madness, your King and his system – organized selfishness. Chicanery for those dependent upon him, ruin for all more gifted than the average Wettiner.

"While living here I have learned to look upon my father's discrowning as a stroke of good luck for, since kings can no longer indulge their brutalities against their subjects, they turned tyrants at home.

"If your father did to the humblest of his subjects what he did to me, he would be chased from home and country. The people, the parliament, his own creatures would rise against him and blot his name from the royal roster.

"In the palace, in boudoirs, in the nurseries, he plays the prince – extortioner – executioner. To the public he is the benign lord, whining for paltry huzzas."

Frederick Augustus was so dumfounded, he could only grind his teeth.

I continued: "You prate of respect due the Majesty. There's nothing to induce feelings of that sort. Round me there is naught but weakness, hypocrisy, pettiness. I see shame and thievery stalking side by side in these gilded halls – gilded for show, but pregnant with woe.

"Fie on you, Prince Royal, who allows his wife to be dogged by spies. Thieves, paid by your father, steal my souvenirs; a burglar's kit hidden in their clothes, they besiege my writing table. Jailers stand between me and my children.

"My children!

"Like a she-dog,7 whose young were drowned, I cry for my babies – I, the Crown Princess of Saxony, who saved your family from dying out, a degenerate, depraved, demoralized, decadent race."

When I had said this and more I fell down and was seized by crying convulsions.

CHAPTER LVI

I AM DETERMINED TO DO AS I PLEASE

I reject mother's tearful reproaches – I beard Prince George in his lair despite whining chamberlains – I tell him what I think of him, and he becomes frightened – Threatens madhouse – "I dare you to steal my children" – I win my point – and the children – "Her Imperial Highness regrets" – Lots of forbidden literature – Precautions against intriguing Grand Mistress – The affair with Henry – was it a flower-covered pit to entrap me? – Castle Stolpen and some of its awful history.

Dresden, November 5, 1901.

Patience ceased to be a virtue. Tolerance would be a crime against myself. I am determined to do as I please in future. If it upsets the King's, Prince George's and the rest's delicate digestion, so much the better.

The newspapers are hinting about my troubles with Prince George and the King. When I go driving or appear at the theatre, the public shows its sympathy in many ways. Sometimes I am acclaimed to the echo.

Mamma wrote me a tearful letter. She spent six hours in prayers for "sinful Louise" and sends me the fruits of her meditations: six pages of close script, advising me how to regain the King's and Prince George's favor.

Never before have I failed in outward respect to my mother, but this time I wrote to her: "Pray attend to your own affairs. Don't meddle in mine which you are entirely unable to understand."

Dresden, November 6, 1901.

Bernhardt was sent to Sonnenstein. Whether he became insane at Nossen, or whether it is the family's intention to drive him mad among the madmen of Sonnenstein, I don't know, but it behooves me to be careful.

Sonnenstein has accommodation for both sexes.

Loschwitz, November 15, 1901.

I sent a letter to the King, asking him to have Loschwitz Castle prepared for my reception. His Majesty didn't deign to answer, but Prince George commanded me in writing to stay at Dresden "under his watchful eye."

I immediately proceeded to his apartments in my morning undress, without hat, gloves or wrap. As I rushed through the anteroom, Adjutant von Metsch begged me with up-lifted hands not to force His Royal Highness's door, Prince George being too ill to receive me, etc., etc. I paid no attention to his mournful whinings. At that moment I had courage enough to stock a regiment.

"So you won't allow me to go to Loschwitz," I addressed George as I suddenly bobbed up at the side of his desk.

My father-in-law looked at me as if I were a spook, emerged from a locked closet.

"Who let you in?" he managed to say after a while.

"I didn't come here to answer questions," I replied. "I came to announce that if you don't let me go to Loschwitz, there will be a scandal that will resound all over Christendom and make you impossible in your own capital."

"Why do you want to leave Dresden?" he insisted.

"Because I want to be alone. Because I am tired of hateful faces. Because I refuse to accept orders and insults from people that are beneath an Imperial Princess of Austria."

Prince George turned pale.

"Am I one of those beneath Your Imperial Highness?" he queried stupidly.

"Decidedly so."

A long pause. Then Prince George shouted: "To the devil with you. I don't care whether you stay in Loschwitz, or Dresden, or on the Vogelwiese."

The Vogelwiese is an amusement park, respectable enough, but the word or name, as used by George, reeked with sinister and insulting meaning.

Trembling with rage, I replied: "Right royal language you royal Saxons use. From time to time, I suppose, you refresh your fish-wife vocabulary in the annals of Augustus the Physical Strong, than whom a more gross word-slinger did not walk the history of the eighteenth century."

I believe Prince George was frightened by my violence. Assuming a haughty tone he said formally: "Your Imperial Highness is at liberty to travel whenever you please, but you will be so good as to leave your children in Dresden."

I stepped up to the white-livered coward and hissed in his face: "Steal my children if you dare, and I will go to France, or Switzerland and ask a republican President to interfere for humanity's sake."

"And – land yourself in an insane asylum," sneered George.

"An old trick of the Royal House of Saxony, I know," I shouted back. "Bernhardt is saner than you, yet the King sent him to Sonnenstein. If such a crime had been perpetrated by one not a king, he would go to jail."

Prince George pointed a trembling finger towards the door. "Out with you!" he bawled hoarsely. "Out!"

I stood my ground. "May I take my children? Yes or no?"

He rang the bell and repeated mechanically: "Out with you, out!"

I had another fit of crying convulsions. Doctors, maids and lackeys were summoned in numbers. They bedded me on the couch and six men-servants carried me to my apartments.

Two days later I went to Loschwitz with my children.

I had defied the King. Prince George was humbled. I carried my point, and the Dresden court will not see me again in a hurry.

Loschwitz, Christmas, 1901.

I refused to spend Christmas at Court. Frederick Augustus planned a stay of a couple of weeks. "Not a single night," I wrote back.

They parleyed; they begged. "The Crown Prince desires to spend Christmas with the children. In the interests of public opinion, it's absolutely necessary that he does."

"But not – that I submit to prostitution. I will give him a dinner, but he will drive back to Dresden immediately afterwards."

Frederick Augustus brought numerous presents for me. "You may place them under the Christmas tree," I ordered the Tisch.

"Oh, Your Imperial Highness, look," cried the Tisch, holding up something or other.

I turned my back on her and looked out of the window. I never went near my end of the Christmas table. "You will send the things brought by His Royal Highness to the bazaar for crippled children," I told the House Marshal. "They shall be sold for the benefit of the poor."

Loschwitz, January 1, 1902.

"Her Imperial Highness regrets."

I refused the invitations to today's family dinner; the grand reception, Te Deum and parade. "Unprecedented affront!" What do I care!

I have eighteen horses, half-a-dozen carriages, I drive, I ride, I hunt, I give the Tisch palpitation daily by the literature I affect: Zola, Flaubert, M'lle Paul, Ma Femme, M'lle de Maupin, Casanova, M'me Bovary. And the periodicals I subscribed for! Simplicissimus, Harden's Zukunft, all the double entendre weeklies and monthlies of Paris. May Prince George and Mathilde burst with rage and envy when they hear of my excursions in the realms of the literary Satans.

Loschwitz, January 15, 1902.

The Tisch is beginning to treat me like a person irresponsible for her doings. Sonnenstein is looming up anew. But I am going to fool her. As I will hold no more speech with her, there will be no occasion for turning my own words against me.

If I have to give a command, or answer a question, I ask Lucretia or Fräulein von Schoenberg to convey my orders.

Loschwitz, March 20, 1902.

An uneventful winter is drawing to a close. By banishing myself to this quiet place I raised a barrier against quarrels, against harsh orders, against humiliations. And the barrier also shuts out: love, happiness.

Sometimes, when the Tisch's hateful mouth spouts honeyed platitudes, I ask myself whether the affair with Henry wasn't, after all, a flower-covered pit dug for me by my enemies.

It was the Tisch who had Henry appointed Vortänzer.

Maybe, knowing my inflammable heart, she offered the tempting bait solely to the end of getting me into her power?

Far from impossible.

I curse the day when I entered Dresden, joined this court and family.

Loschwitz, May 15, 1902.

Royal command to join the court at Pillnitz June 1. The King, who has been ailing for some time, is anxious to be reunited with the children, and, as a necessary evil, I must go along.

I replied that I would prefer Nossen, or even Stolpen, if it pleases His Majesty.

Castle Stolpen is an old-time stronghold of the bishops of Meissen, and its very ruins are pregnant with reminiscences of a barbaric age. The apartments once occupied by the Countess Cosel, as a prison first, as a residence after the death of Augustus, might be made habitable even now. Exceedingly interesting are the old-time torture chambers and the subterranean living rooms of the "sworn torturer" and the dogs, man-shaped, that served him.

Sanct. Donatus Tower, a wing of the great, black pile, was the ancient habitat of these worthies, and the torture chamber, still extant, is a hall almost as big as the Dresden throne-room. In an inscription hewn in the basalt, the sovereign bishop, Johannes VI, poses as builder and seems proud of the damnable fact. Other princes of the Church let us know in high-sounding Latin script that they created the "Monk hole" and the "stairless prison" respectively.

The latter is a vast subterranean vault, never reached by sunshine or light of any kind. Its victims were made to descend some twenty feet below the surface of the earth on a ladder. When near the bottom, the ladder was pulled up and – stayed up. The prisoners were fed once every twenty-four hours, when a leather water pouch and some pounds of black bread were sent down on a rope.

Of course only the strongest got a morsel, or a drink of water. The others died of starvation and the survivors lived only until there were new arrivals, stronger than themselves. The dead bodies were never removed, and horrible stories of necrophily smudge the records of this awful prison and cover its princely keepers with infamy.

The "Monk's hole" was called officially "Obey Your Judge." It is a sort of chimney, just large enough to take the body of a man.

When a monk or other prisoner refused to confess, he was let down into the hole in the wall to starve, while tempting dishes, meat, wine and bread, were dangled over his head, almost within reach of his hands.

Of course, after enduring this torture for several days, the delinquent was glad enough to "Obey His Judge."

By offering to go to this abode of horror and to take the place of Cosel, I meant to show my utter contempt for the royal favor vouchsafed.

CHAPTER LVII

I CONFESS TO PAPA

King Albert dies and King George a very sick man – Papa's good advice – "You will be Queen soon" – A lovely old man, very much troubled.

Castle Sibyllenort, June 19, 1902.

King Albert is dead. George is King, and may God have mercy upon my soul.

Of course the demise of His Majesty changed all my plans of defiance and otherwise. I am once more an official person, even an important one, for the new King can't last long. He is a very sick man, in fact. Perhaps that is the reason why he wants to hear himself addressed "Your Majesty" all the time. Petty souls like to be called "great."

Dresden, June 21, 1902.

I intended to return at once to Loschwitz, but the King, hearing of my intention and not wishing to provoke another scene, invited my father to come to Dresden "in the interests of his daughter."

The same evening I received a wire from papa, saying that he would be in Dresden within twenty-four hours.

My own arrival in the capital was kept secret by the King's order, but next afternoon, when I drove to the station to welcome my father, I got my reception just the same. The people wildly cheered their Crown Princess and thousands of sympathizing eyes followed me from the palace to the depot.

I was almost overcome by so much sympathy and when at last I saw father, I threw myself on his neck, crying aloud.