Prince George invented the phrase, "Louise is over-desirous to please," and Queen Carola paid me a state visit to acquaint me with the new indictment. "Good gracious," I said to Her Majesty, "is that all? I thought of being accused of 'sassing' the Archangel Gabriel. As to desire to please, that's exactly what ails me. I love to please. I love to see people happy. I love to make friends." "My dear child," said the Queen, "you haven't the slightest notion of royal dignity. You talk like a _cocotte_. It's a Princess's place to be honored, to be held in supreme esteem." Poor old woman! She was never pretty, never was made love to, never had admirers, legitimate or otherwise; she thus became impregnated with the fixed idea that to be fair and to be loved for one's fairness is frivolous, if not altogether reprehensible. * * * * * _March 10, 1895._ Frederick Augustus drinks. He says I drive him to drink by my attitude towards his beloved family. What the beloved family does to me doesn't count, of course. Drinking was one of the vices of his youth. Love for me cured him of the dreadful habit. As this love wanes, the itch for alcohol increases. I can't do anything with him when he is drunk, and at such times I am afraid of him. He both nauseates me and frightens me. Sometimes he comes home "fighting drunk." The fumes of wine, beer and _Schnapps_, mixed with tobacco, upset my stomach and I try to avoid his coarse embrace as any decent woman would. What does this royal drill-ground bully do? He unsheathes his sword and threatens to cut my liver out, unless I instantly doff my clothes and go to bed with him. Prince George's evil counsel wasn't powerful enough to procure me beatings, but my husband's military education, his love of discipline, backed by alcohol, thrusts a sword into his hand, and, if I refuse to comply with his atrocious demands, I am liable to be treated like so many "mere" civilians that are sabred in the public streets for refusing to do some spurred and epauletted blackguard's bidding, or entertain his insults. If the Socialists, who are forever railing against these self-same army poltroons, only knew it! An Imperial Highness threatened like a small "cit" with a four-foot sword in the hand of a drunken Royal Highness and dragged to a couch with no more ceremony than a street-walker passing a Cossack barracks! The howl that would go up in the Diet, or the _Reichstag_, the fulminant denials by prince and king and government! And if I really did get hurt in one of these fracases, Frederick Augustus would be sure of a "severe reprimand" by father and uncle, and perhaps by the Kaiser, too, but would that heal my wounds, would it save me from death? Would it even prevent Prince George from saying that I myself was to blame?