Secret Memoirs: The Story of Louise, Crown Princess Part 9

CASTLE WACHWITZ, _March 10, 1893_.

Queen Carola is a good soul though she doesn't dare call her soul her own. I never heard her say "_peep_" in the presence of his Majesty. She looks forlorn and frightened when King Albert is around.

I like her better since I am a mother, for she loves baby. Yes, though she is a Queen, I saw her actually smile at the child once or twice.

Poor woman, the point of her nose is always red, and, like Father-in-law George, she believes weeping willow the only fit emblem for royalty. The look of the whipped dog is always in her weak eyes.

I am too young and--they _do_ say--too frivolous to stand so much mopishness. These mustard-pots, sedate, grave, wan and long-faced, make me mad. I don't know what to say,--all I can do is try to hide my "un-princess-like" cheerfulness when they are around.

I wish I had an ounce or so of diplomacy in my composition. It might enable me to sympathize with the fancied troubles of the Queen and Prince George, but I am incorrigible.

CHAPTER IV

MY UNPLEASANT YOUTH

Father hard to get along with--Royal imaginations--Kings cursing other kings--Poverty and pretense--Piety that makes children suffer--Up at five to pray on cold stones--Chilblains and prayer.

CASTLE WACHWITZ, _March 11, 1893_.

It occurs to me that, if this is intended as a record of my life--somewhat after the fashion of the _Margravine_ of Bayreuth's Memoirs--I ought to tell about my girlhood.

Let me admit at once that my marriage to the Crown Prince of Saxony was, politically speaking, a stroke of good luck. My father, the Grand-duke of Tuscany, had been deprived of land and crown ten years before I was born, and, though he likes to pose as a sovereign, he is, as a matter of fact, a mere private gentleman of limited resources, whom the head of the family, the Austrian Emperor, may coax or browbeat at his sweet pleasure. If papa had been able to save his thronelet, I have no doubt he would be a most agreeable man, open-handed and eager to enjoy life, but instead of making the best of a situation over which he has no control, he is forever fretting about his lost dignities and about "his dear people" that don't care a snap for his love and affection. This makes him a trying person to get along with,--mention a king or prince in the full enjoyment of power, and father gets melancholy and calls Victor Emanuel, the second of his name, a brigand.

He seldom or never visits his _confreres_ in the capitals of Europe, but when I was a girl our gloomy palace at Salzburg saw much of the ghosts of decaying royalty. The Dukes of Modena and Parma, the King of Hanover, the _Kurfurst_ of Hesse, the King of Naples and other monarchs and toy-monarchs that were handed their walking papers by sovereigns mightier than themselves, visited us off and on, filling the air with lamentations and cursing their fate.

And, like papa, all these _ex'es_ are ready to fly out of their very skins the moment they notice the smallest breach of etiquette concerning their august selves. If they had the power, the Imperial Highnesses would execute any man that called them "Royal Highness," while the Royal Highnesses would be pleased to send to the gallows persons addressing them as "Highness" only.

And papa has other troubles, and the greatest of them, lack of money.

Poverty in private life must be hard enough, but a poor king, obliged to keep up the pretense of a court, is to be pitied indeed.

Add to what I have said, father's share of domestic unhappiness. Mother is a Bourbon of Parma, serious-minded and hard like my father-in-law, and almost as much of a religious fanatic.

Oh, how we children suffered by the piety of our mother. There were eight of us, myself the oldest of five girls, and seven years older than my sister Anna. Yet this baby, as soon as she could walk, was obliged to rise, like myself, at five o'clock summer and winter to go to the chapel and pray. The chapel was lighted only by a few wax candles and, of course, was unheated like the corridors of the palace. And like them it was paved with stones. Many a chilblain I carried away from kneeling on those granite flags.

And the stupidity of the thing! Instead of saying our prayers we murmured and protested, and as soon as we were old enough we slipped portions of novels in our prayer-books, which we read while ma.s.s was said. That trick was not unfraught with danger though, for mother's spies were always after us, and the bad light made reading difficult.

I am sure that if mother had found us out, she would have whipped us within an inch of our lives.

CHAPTER V

A FIERCE DISCIPLINARIAN

Diamonds used to punish children--Face object of attacks--Grunting and snorting at the royal table--Blood flowing at dinner--My brother jumps out of a window.

CASTLE WACHWITZ, _April 1, 1893_.

Nothing of consequence happened since my last entry, and I continue the story of my girlhood.

Her Imperial Highness, my pious mother, had a terrible way of punishing her children. The face of the culprit was invariably the object of her attacks. She hit us with the flat of her bony hand, rendered more terrible by innumerable rings. The sharp diamonds cut into the flesh and usually made the blood flow freely.

The court chaplain at Salzburg was a peasant's boy without manners or breeding of any kind. While the least violation of etiquette or politeness on the children's part was punished by a box on the ear, or by withholding the next meal, mother overlooked the swinishness of the chaplain simply because he wore a black coat.

One of the chaplain's most offensive habits was to grunt and snort when eating. On one occasion my brother Leopold gave a somewhat exaggerated imitation of these disgusting practices at table, whereupon mother, blind with fury, for she thought a priest could do no wrong, struck Leopold in the face, causing the blood to gush from his lacerated cheek.

Father immediately rose from table and savagely turning upon mother said, "Understand, Madame, that as a sovereign and head of the family I will have no one punished in my presence. If I think punishment necessary, I will inflict it myself in a dignified way."

Mother immediately began to cry. She always had a flood of tears ready when father offered the slightest reprimand. Afterwards she upbraided father and us, the children. If it were not for her incessant prayers, she said, and for the Christian life she was leading, G.o.d would have destroyed the Tuscans long ago, and she wasn't sure that either of us would attain Paradise except for her intercession with the Almighty.

This and similar scenes and incidents disgusted me with religion early in life. Myself and all my brothers and sisters hated the very sight of the court chaplain who licked our mother's boots, while heaping punishments and indignities upon us.

At one time my brother Leopold didn't know his catechism. "I will teach your Imperial Highness to skip your lessons," said the court chaplain.

"Kneel before me and read the pa.s.sage over ten times as a punishment."

Leopold promptly answered: "I won't."

"Yes, you will, Imperial Highness, for such are my orders," cried the court chaplain.

Leopold said doggedly, "I kneel before the altar and before the Emperor, if he demands it, not before such as you."

"Suppose I call on your Imperial Highness's mother and ask her to forbid you to mount a horse for a month or so?" queried our tormentor.

Horseback riding was Leopold's chief pleasure, and the chaplain had no sooner launched his threat, when Leopold opened the window and apparently jumped out. As the school-room was situated in the third story, the teacher thought his pupil dead on the pavement below, but Leopold was merely hanging on to the stone coping and shutters. That gave him the whip hand over the teacher. "I will let go if you don't promise not to inform mother," demanded the twelve-year-old boy.

"I promise, only come in," moaned the teacher.

"Promise furthermore there shall be no punishment whatever for what I did and said."

"None whatever, your Imperial Highness."

"Swear it on the cross."

The chaplain did as ordered and Leopold crawled back to safety.

Leopold is a good deal like me, and has been in hot water more or less all his life.

When I was a girl of fifteen, he defended my honor at the risk of the fearful punishments my mother had in store for those children that wouldn't buckle down to the chaplain, but that is so sad a chapter of my girlhood days I cannot bring myself to put it down today.