If you had only known it a week ago! A prison _a la_ Princess Ahlden, or the Danish Queen Caroline Matilda, for me, disgraceful dismissal for Romano, for times are happily past when comely gentlemen, who have the wit to amuse royal ladies, durst be murdered in cold blood like Koenigsmarck, or be-handed, be-headed and cut into ninety-nine pieces as Struensee was in Copenhagen market-square. What are you going to do about it, King, George, Frederick Augustus? I'll tell you. You will bury me with the pomp of kings; and your sycophants will print beautiful stories about me, asserting that I died trying to rescue others, or did something of the sort; and your Court Chaplains will weep and pray and lie for me. And the tip of Queen Carola's nose will be redder than ever. * * * * * DRESDEN, _September 1, 1898_. My young friend Bernhardt is doing me a great service and himself a lot of harm. A good-natured, tractable boy _au fond_, they made him a poltroon and worse by their persecutions, their meanness, their petty tyranny. He is proud, and they sent him to reside on a village manure heap; he is ambitious, and must drill raw recruits from morn till night; he is eager to learn and they try to embalm his intellect with tracts and kill his initiative by the endless, watery _ennui_ of tu-penny environment. Of course, he gets desperate and kicks over the traces, and while attracting the dear family's disapproving attention, I am more free than ever to devote myself to my Romano. Bernhardt's "latest" is really inexcusable. "I wonder we don't turn tigers with the education we receive," said one of the brothers of Louis XVI when upbraided for thoughtlessness and lack of consideration for the feelings of others--but Bernhardt seems to qualify for a vulture, and no original one at that, for a like offense as he is charged with was, several years ago, laid at the door of my cousin, Archduke Otho of Austria. Observe half a dozen young officers riding horseback in the neighborhood of their garrison town, Bernhardt at the head. At a bend in the road, a rural funeral _cortege_ hoves into sight: coffin borne on the shoulders of half a dozen peasants; weeping relatives; friends promising themselves a good time at the widow's expense on returning home. A black cross lifted high; priest and choir-boys in their robes. "Halt," thunders Bernhardt, blocking the way. The priest tries to expostulate with the half-drunken fellow. "Shut up, black-coat. I am His Royal Highness, Prince Bernhardt." Then--the devil must be riding him--he orders the coffin put down on the ground. "Out of the way, yokels." And he leaps his horse three or four times across the coffin. The outrage is duly reported in the newspapers and Bernhardt is summoned before the King. "Don't you dare to appear in uniform," Albert added in his own hand. "What has happened?" I asked the ne'er-do-well, when he begged for an audience after meeting the King.