No recriminations, no threats, no heroics; only when Ernest Ludwig submitted that divorce be avoided to save his face as a sovereign, Kyril got a bit excited. "This is not a question of politics," he said, "or what the dear public thinks. Your wife don't want you; as a matter of fact, she isn't your wife, and since we are in love with each other, we ought to marry." "Marry, marry, why always marry?" demanded the Grand-duke. "I acknowledge that I haven't the right to interfere in my wife's pleasure--I am not built that way. Well, I _don't_ interfere. What more do you want? You don't deny that I am the chief person to be considered." "You?" mocked Kyril. "You with your sovereignty are not in it at all. If it wasn't for you, Melita and I could marry and say no more about it." "But I don't prevent your enjoyment of each other," pleaded the ruler of the Hessians. Now the idealistic Kyril got on his high horse. "Grand-duke," he said, "if you don't object to your wife having a lover, that's your business. For my part, I object to my paramour having a husband." And so on _ad infinitum_, and a goose like me abuses herself for a bit of goo-goo-eyeing. CHAPTER XXXIV MORE ABOUT THE SWEET ROYAL FAMILY LIFE "Closed season" for petty meannesses--A prince who enjoys himself like a pig--Why princes learn trades--A family dinner to the accompaniment of threats and smashing of table--The Duke's widow and children robbed of their inheritance by royal family--King confiscates testament. LOSCHWITZ, _September 13, 1896_. They are treating me like a laying hen. Expect another golden egg in December. Hence, "closed season" for imperious commands, "all-highest" orders and petty meannesses. When I learned that Bernhardt was in Dresden, I phoned him to come out and see me--without asking either royal, princely, or the Tisch's permission. A junior prince, without fortune or high protector, is really to be pitied. His title, the vague possibility that some day he may be called to the throne, stand between him and enjoyment of life as a man. Nothing left, but to enjoy himself like a pig. Bernhardt admits it. "They planted me in the God-forsakenest hole in the kingdom. If I saw a pretty woman in my garrison from one year's end to the other, I would die of joy. And the newspaper scribblers wonder why we are all Oscar Wildes. "Just to kill time, I am learning the carpenter's trade--this Royal Highness, you must know, lives in a carpenter's house, as innocent of sanitary arrangements as a Bushman's hut. Of course, I run away every little while to Dresden, incog. to pay my respects to Venus. "Louise," he cried with comic emphasis, "may the three hours you steal from my girl, by way of this visit, be deducted from your eternal beatitude." I lent the poor fellow five hundred marks and he rushed back to Dresden. Tonight I told Frederick Augustus of my interview with Bernhardt, not mentioning the five hundred, of course.