The princess and I became rather well acquainted. I was not a

gentleman, according to her code, but, in the historic words of the

drug clerk, I was something just as good. She honored me with a frank,

disinterested friendship, which still exists. I have yet among my

fading souvenirs of diplomatic service half a dozen notes commanding me

to get up at dawn and ride around the lake, something like sixteen

miles. She was almost as reckless a rider as myself. She was truly a

famous rider, and a woman who sits well on a horse can never be aught

but graceful. She was, in fact, youthful and charming, with the most

magnificent black eyes I ever beheld in a Teutonic head; witty,

besides, and a songstress of no ordinary talent. If I had been in love

with her--which I solemnly vow I was not!--I should have called her

beautiful and exhausted my store of complimentary adjectives.

The basic cause of all this turmoil, about which I am to spin my

narrative, lay in her education. I hold that a German princess should

never be educated save as a German. By this I mean to convey that her

education should not go beyond German literature, German history,

German veneration of laws, German manners and German passivity and

docility. The Princess Hildegarde had been educated in England and

France, which simplifies everything, or, I should say, to be exact,

complicates everything.

She possessed a healthy contempt for that what-d'-ye-call-it that

hedges in a king. Having mingled with English-speaking people, she

returned to her native land, her brain filled with the importance of

feminine liberty of thought and action. Hence, she became the bramble

that prodded the grand duke whichever way he turned. His days were

filled with horrors, his nights with mares which did not have

box-stalls in his stables.

Never could he anticipate her in anything. On that day he placed

guards around the palace she wrote verses or read modern fiction; the

moment he relaxed his vigilance she was away on some heart-rending

escapade. Didn't she scandalize the nobility by dressing up as a

hussar and riding her famous black Mecklenburg cross-country? Hadn't

she flirted outrageously with the French attaché and deliberately

turned her back on the Russian minister, at the very moment, too, when

negotiations were going on between Russia and Barscheit relative to a

small piece of land in the Balkans? And, most terrible of all to

relate, hadn't she ridden a shining bicycle up the Königsstrasse, in

broad daylight, and in bifurcated skirts, besides? I shall never

forget the indignation of the press at the time of this last escapade,

the stroke of apoplexy which threatened the duke, and the room with the

barred window which the princess occupied one whole week.




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