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 vassal, 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 pornographic 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 lass." 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.