However, as the waste of two million human lives, the loss of four millions in population, subsequently enabled the Prince of Wales to tie the price of a dukedom[3] in diamonds around a French dancer's neck and to support a hundred silly harlots in all parts of Europe, who cares? According to Louise and--others, royalty is the meanest, the most heartless, the most faithless and the most unjust of the species--that in addition she herself disgraced its womanhood, after the famous Louise of Prussia rehabilitated queenship, is regrettable, but to call it altogether unexpected would be rank euphemism. _Louise's Character_ If Louise had lived at the time of Phryne, the philosophers would have characterized her as "an animal with long hair"; if he had known her, the great Mirabeau might have coined his pet phrase, "a human that dresses, undresses and--talks" (or writes) for Louise; as a matter of fact, she is one of those "_Jansenists_" of love who believe in the utter helplessness of natural woman to turn down a good looking man. Her great grand-uncle, Emperor Francis, recorded on a pane of glass overlooking the courtyard of the Vienna _Hofburg_ his opinion of women in the brief observation: "_Chaque femme varie_" (Women always change). This is true of Louise and also untrue of her. While occupying her high position at the Saxon court she was fixed in the determination to make a cuckold of her husband, though Frederick Augustus, while a pumpkin, wasn't fricasseed in snow by any means. The process gave her palpitations, but, like Ninon, she was "_so_ happy when she had palpitations." _Changed Lovers Frequently_ As to lovers, she changed them as often as she had to, never hesitating to pepper her _steady_ romances by playing "everybody's wife," chance permitting, as she intimates naively towards the close of the Diary. Qualms of conscience she knows not, but of pride of ancestry, of insistence on royal prerogatives, she has plenty and to spare. "My great grand-aunt, Marie Antoinette, did this"; "my good cousins d'Orleans" (three of them) "allowed themselves to be seduced"; "_ma cousine de_ Saxe-Coburg laughs at conventionalities,"--there you have the foundation of the iniquitous philosophy of the royal Lais. And for the rest--when she is queen, all will be well. _Her Court--A Seraglio_ Louise's fixed idea was that, as Queen of Saxony, she had but to say the word to establish a court _a la_ Catharine II; time and again she refers to the great Empress's male seraglio, and to the enormous sums she squandered on her favorites. If the Diarist had known that Her Majesty of Russia, when in the flesh, never suffered to be longer than twenty-four hours without a lover, Louise, no doubt, would have made the most elaborate plans to prevent, in her own case, a possible _interregnum_ of five minutes even.