According to the house laws, a regular pirate's code, his late Highness's fortune reverts to the family treasury. Prince Johann George will derive the revenues from the real estate the Duke owned privately. He is already rich,--sufficient reason for his wanting more. I shudder when I think what they will do to the woman the Duke married. The most notable thing about the funeral was the "calling down" Prince Bernhardt got. "You will go to my valet and ask him to lend you one of my helmets. Yours is not the regulation form, I see," said the King to him in the voice of a drill-sergeant. And Bernhardt had to take to his heels like a school-boy caught stealing apples. I had to laugh when I observed the meeting between my erstwhile admirer, the Prince of Bulgaria, and His Majesty. Ferdinand's broad chest was ablaze with orders and decorations, but his valet had forgotten to pin onto him the Cross of the _Rautenkrone_, the Royal Saxe House decoration. There were plenty of others, but the King had eyes only for the one not dangling from a green ribbon. Consequently, Ferdinand, though a sovereign Prince, got only one "_How art thou?_" If we were living in the eighteenth, instead of the nineteenth, century, his valet's neglect would constitute a prime cause for war between the two countries. CHAPTER XXXIII MELITA'S LOVE AFFAIRS AND MINE The Grand Duchess tells me how she cudgeled George--Living dictaphone employed--Shows him who is mistress of the house--Snaps fingers in Prince George's face--Debate about titles--"A sexless thing of a husband"--Conference between lover and husband--Grand Duke doesn't object to his wife's lover, but lover objects to "his paramour being married." DRESDEN, _April 15, 1896_. Melita conducted herself at the funeral and in our palace as unconcernedly as if she and George were fast friends. She smiled every time she saw him, and he cut her dead to his heart's content. During the three days' stay of the Hesses, I had many a good talk and many a good laugh with Melita, and now I got a true and unabridged record of what happened at Darmstadt during George's meddling visit there. The Grand-duchess, who can be as catty as they make 'em, had her secretary sit behind a screen to take stenographic notes. Saxon kings and princes always roar and bellow when, in conversation or otherwise, things go against their "all-highest" grain. As soon as George felt that he was losing ground, he began to bark and yell, whereupon Melita interrupted him by saying, "I beg you to take notice that you are in _my_ house." George grew so red in the face, Melita hoped for an apoplectic fit. But after a few seconds he managed to blurt out: "It's your husband's house." "While I am Grand-duchess of Hesse it's my house, too. Moreover, this is my room and I forbid you to play the ruffian here." Prince George looked at the Grand-duke, but Ernest Ludwig said nothing.