The Hartford republican. (Hartford, Ky.) 18??-1926, 1908-05-22
The PENALTY OF
Being A QUEEN.
Sad Side of the POmp That Goes
With Royal Prerogative and
Court SpectacleS.

The flowers of queens do not smell
like other flowers. Almost always the
exhale perfume of suffering
and death. When an empress
buries her lips and her eyes
IN bunch of roses, make no mis-
axe it is that she may the better
weep. The flowers of royal gardens
are confidantes of crowned heads and
they receive and k,p faithful the
secrets whispered 20 them by these
lonely great woman VINO are never
alone.
Yes! Queens all qeens, are infinitely
to he pi,ed. Even those who have
least teen stricken know not happiness
but what shall we think of those,
who like Queen Amele, are at once
living healthy and secure and a thou
sand times more heart pierced and
tortured than the victim who has
succumbed TO the fury of assassins?
THE queen was not wounded" cried
the first dispatch which carried the
dreadful news. Not wounded, What
Shakespearean irony in the words. Be
fore her very eyes her husband and
one of her sons are stricken down like
dogs and her other son escaped death
only by miracle-and they say,
She was not wounded" How other
wise could she be wounded? On the
contrary, it is just through not being
wounded that she is wounded most.
And if heaven had granted her the IA
vor to fall dead, then only would she
not have been wounded. For consider
what since that day must be that
royal life which anyway had never even
before it been silklined.
Trying on black dresses; taking off
jewels, which are festal souvenirs of
the past; praying hurriedly by snatche
in a nightmare, for she is dragged
away from God every minute, because
she must keep her eyes and her wits
about her and keep her head when
everyone else has lost it, brushing
away her tears or gulping them down
TO give an order giving herself up to
Portugal, TO the monarchy rather than
to her dead, who from the immediate
and earthly point of view have already
only a secondary interest; receiving
ministers reading dispatches question
ing marshais receiving condolences
listening to reports editing proclama-
ton presiding in the great portrait gal
lery over councils at which men now
speak low and now shout and pound
the table showing herself calm erect
and brave in the face of riots present.
ing a smiling presence 10 the people
and to the factions-smiling for the
glory of the nation; forgetting, for
giving lavishing clemency rendering
good for evil, life for death. If in
this somber hustle there b somee in
stants OF respite and recreation rush
ing into hiding to spend them there
in the chapelle ardents, where lie watch
ed over by nune two loved ones
whose unwilling immobility brushes
her, prostrates her and in spite of
all emitting nothing going forward
erect even 10 the end of the funeral
march, remounting again the State
carriage from which now two are mis-
sing and when at last all is over after
the dirge and the salute, the last
words of the archbishops the requiem
aeternam the incense, the holy water
and the ropes-all is done and all
is over-to find herself alone in the
evening the doors closed, with a pale
tired child whose brow she kisses be-
fore he goes TO sleep and 10 whom she
teaches the duties of sovereigns and
of rulers of empires.
These are the privileges this the
lot, of Queen Amelie, young and beau
tiful widow and mother mourning
still! Where is there in any land,
a ragpicker or peasant woman
washing clothes in the river in De-
cember who at such price would
change places with her?