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accounts the Margravine gives of it would be almost incredible if they
were not amply corroborated from other sources. Suetonius has written of
the strange madness that comes on kings, but even in his melodramatic
chronicles there is hardly anything that rivals what the Margravine has
to tell us. Here is one of her pictures of family life at a Royal Court
in the last century, and it is not by any means the worst scene she
describes:

On one occasion, when his temper was more than usually bad, he told
the Queen that he had received letters from Anspach, in which the
Margrave announced his arrival at Berlin for the beginning of May. He
was coming there for the purpose of marrying my sister, and one of his
ministers would arrive previously with the betrothal ring. My father
asked my sister whether she were pleased at this prospect, and how she
would arrange her household. Now my sister had always made a point of
telling him whatever came into her head, even the greatest
home-truths, and he had never taken her outspokenness amiss. On this
occasion, therefore, relying on former experience, she answered him as
follows: 'When I have a house of my own, I shall take care to have a
well-appointed dinner-table, better than yours is, and if I have
children of my own, I shall not plague them as you do yours, and force
them to eat things they thoroughly dislike!'

'What is amiss with my dinner-table?' the King enquired, getting very
red in the face.

'You ask what is the matter with it,' my sister replied; 'there is not
enough on it for us to eat, and what there is is cabbage and carrots,
which we detest.' Her first answer had already angered my father, but
now he gave vent to his fury. But instead of punishing my sister he
poured it all on my mother, my brother, and myself. To begin with he
threw his plate at my brother's head, who would have been struck had
he not got out of the way; a second one he threw at me, which I also
happily escaped; then torrents of abuse followed these first signs of
hostility. He reproached the Queen with having brought up her
children so badly. 'You will curse your mother,' he said to my
brother, 'for having made you such a good-for-nothing creature.' . . .
As my brother and I passed near him to leave the room, he hit out at
us with his crutch. Happily we escaped the blow; for it would
certainly ha