He pointed to a swollen cheek. "He hit me three times in _the eats_." (I beg the Diary's pardon for the language; I report literally.) "Three times," repeated Bernhardt, "that's the reason he wanted me to appear in mufti. As I went out one of the lackeys said: 'I never heard His Majesty rave so.'" "But why did you make a beast of yourself?" I asked. "To force the King to transfer me to another garrison, of course. I can't remain where I am, for the people are terribly incensed against me." "Did you tell His Majesty?" "Not on your life," answered Bernhardt. "If I did, I would have to stay there until my last tooth falls out. As things are, the Colonel will insist upon my speedy transference, and that's worth the three slams on the face I got in addition to the various _Lausbubs_." "He called you, an army officer, a '_Lausbub_.' Where is his vaunted respect for the uniform?" "Didn't he hit me in _the eats_?" lamented Bernhardt tragically in his terrible lingo. "I responded both to insult and injury by knocking my heels together and saying: 'At Your Majesty's commands.'" Of course, I told Romano. "Royalty," he said, "has only, on the face of it, advanced beyond the pirate and robber-baron period. _Au fond_ all princes and kings would be criminals if they happened not to be crowned heads." [Illustration: THE LATE KING ALBERT OF SAXONY Louise's Uncle by Marriage] He told me of a Balkan prince--young Alexander of Servia, the same mamma Natalie intended for my consort--whose chief amusement consists in having mice and rats chased by ferocious tom-cats in a big cage made for that purpose. Once, growing tired of that sport, he incarcerated ten tom-cats in the same cage without food many days in succession, visiting the prison hourly to see whether they wouldn't take to devouring each other. When, in the end, they did, tearing one another to pieces, His Majesty danced around the cage in high glee, pronouncing the battle of the poor beasts a bully spectacle. "You visited Castle Sibyllenort a week ago," continued Romano--"a most proper place, this royal residence, is it not? You ought to have seen it before your puritan King inherited it, ten years ago, upon the death of the last Duke of Brunswick. At that time it was a veritable museum of pornography, the apotheosis of Paphian voluptuousness. The palace, which has over four hundred rooms and halls--not one which a decent woman might enter without a blush--acquired its equipment as a _lupanar_ and its reputation for debauchery under the famous, or notorious, 'Diamond Duke,' a brother of the Highness who left the estate to King Albert. Both Dukes held high carnival in its gilded halls, but he of the diamonds rather outdid William in outraging decency.