Up to now my most ambitious literary attempts were intimate letters to my brother Leopold, the "Black Sheep." As I now start in writing letters to myself, it occurs to me that my worse self may be corresponding with my better self, or vice versa. If I was only a poet like Countess Solms, but, dear, no. All real bluestockings are ugly and emaciated. Solms is both, and her legs are as long and as thin as those of Diana, my English hunter. I think this Diary business will be quite amusing,--at any rate, it will be more so than the conversation of my ladies. Ah, those ladies of the court of Saxony! If they would only talk of anything else but orphans, sisters of charity and ballet girls. The latter always have one foot in Hades, while you can see the wings grow on the backs of the others. When the von Schoenberg struts in, peacock fashion, and announces "his royal Highness did himself the honor to soil his bib," I sometimes stare at her, not comprehending at the moment, and the fact that she is talking of my baby only gradually comes to mind. Isn't it ridiculous that a 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.