It turned out that the Queen's and George's apparent acquiescence to my sinful popularity marked the deceitful calm before the storm. Frederick Augustus has not succeeded in gaining the King's and his father's forgiveness even now. As a military officer he is shunted from pillar to post, and the generals and high officials of the court treat him like a recruit in disgrace. Of course he blames me, shouting that I wrecked his career. As if a future king need care a rap whether, as prince, he got a regiment a few months earlier or later. "When you are King," I sometimes say to him, "you may nominate yourself Field-Marshal-General and Great-Admiral above and below the sea--what do you care?" "It isn't the same," he moans. "I would like to have my patents signed by uncle or father." "Antedate your papers," I advised, "who dare dispute the king? Didn't the Kaiser nominate himself Adjutant-General to his grand-dad long after William I lay mouldering in Charlottenburg?" But Frederick Augustus takes colonel-ships and his petty kingship of the future too seriously to see even the humor of appointing oneself personal attendant to a corpse. As for me, if I weren't _enceinte_, they would send me to some lost-in-the-woods country house to die of _ennui_. But respect for public opinion forbidding drastic measures, George relies on a Russian expedient to humble my proud self and force me to submit to his meddling. In the Czar's country, when a village resolves on the death of some obnoxious individual, they take him, or her, and bind the body naked to a tree. Then several papers of pins are distributed among the inhabitants, and each man, woman and child is asked to put a pin in the lady or gentleman, whom they must approach blindfolded. They stick the pin wherever they touch the body and if the thing leaks out are able to swear by all the saints that they don't know where it struck. The pin pricking is continued until the obnoxious one expires amid awful tortures and, while all contributed to the murder, none can be hanged for it. In like manner George and his minions are trying to reduce me to the position of social and political corpse. Court festivities and public acts, attended by the court, seem to be specially arranged to pillorize me and husband. We are invited, of course. We are next in importance to Prince George. Our entourage is more numerous and more richly costumed than that of the other princes. Four horse coaches for us; Ministers of State waiting on us. I have train-bearers, pages, what-not. But the King and Prince George cut me and Frederick Augustus in sight of the whole court, of the public in fact!