The Watertown weekly leader. [volume] (Watertown, Jefferson County, Wis.) 1912-1917, 1913-11-14
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higbness had warned the girl she
would sleep deeply. The servant made
another noise, then crept away in the
early dawn.
I'll let her sleep till six, she whis-
pered to herself Why should
royal princess get up at five Per
haps | misunderstood the hour"
Then she went below to the kitchen,
where the half-dozen poorly paid sery-
ants of the impoverished prince OF
Saxe-Weimar were waiting to tell her
the gossip of the household. She was
a new maid, and poorly informed.
The Princess Sophia, it seemed,
locked herself in her room every night
with tragedy. The tragedy concern
ed the ultimate necessity of royal
houses-money; and that ultimate lux
ury of royal princesses-love. A hand
some lieutenant had shot himself for
the sake of the Princess Sophia in
Athens five years before. He was 80
poor that the father of the infatuated
girl, an impecunious fourth cousin Of
the Saxon monarch, refused to con-
slider an alliance. And in Heidelberg
that very day a young baron was
lodged whose proposal had been re-
jected as decisively. The baron's IA
Their was the most influential banker
in Germany; his contribution to the
sinking fortunes of Prince Wilhelm
Of Saxe-Weimar would look like open
barter; the grand duke himself had
forbidden it. The second lover of the
'rlncess Sophia was, in short, too
h.
Her Heart Broken.
The kitchen gossips added many
ietails about the royal girl whose
,eart had been broken under the iron
discipline of her caste. She had look
I'd rebellious of late. Five years be-
ore she had broken an alliance with
/ mtddle-aged, dissipated cousin. de-
reed by her relatives as worthy of
Ter hand. At twenty-seven, she was
aerYous, embittered. Heidelberg so
ciety saw her rarely. Only her per-
sonal servants realized her natural
warmth Of heart nowadays. Housed
in the same castle with her family,
she had ostranged herself.
The new maid pondered. It crossed
her mind that the fettered, beautiful
princess of Saxony might be glad to
exchange her lot in life with that OF
her maid
Suddenly she remembered that up
stairs the Princess Sophia still slept.
The little servant battered her
thumbs black and blue against the
chamber door before she gave up. No
one stirred inside. AS a last resort
she peered through the keyhole. Then
the peasant girl saw the Princess
Bophia's answer to the imperial de-
crees that had separated her tortured
heart from her first lover because he
was too poor and from her second be-
cause he was too rich.
The Princess Sophia had killed her
SELF. Just beyond the door was
stretched a white hand clutching a
pistol.
Born to Life of Sorrow.
Thus runs the most modern of fairy
stories. For the sorrows of the Prin-
cess Sophia were as real as her sui
eide in Heidelberg on September II,
1913. They we're as real as the bullet
which Lieut.. Hans Elder zu Putlitz
sent through his brain in Athens in
the grief which the young Baron Won
Bleichroeder carried to Prince Will
helms door on the day of his daugh-
ter's funeral-a door from which the
baron was turned away. For Hans
von Bleichroeder was not merely
rich; he was a Jew, recently en-
aobled, who refused to renounce his
faith. The house of SaXe-Weimar
will not even acknowledge, at this
date, that the match with the baron
was considered.
Departures from royal dignity have
been frequent IN the house of Sake
Weimar for nearly a century, ever
since the family became a mere col
lateral branch of the royal house of
SSXony, unsupported by wealth or
real power Two of the men-Sophia's
uncle, Duke Bernard, and her brother,
Prince Hermann-haye escaped from
the empty court life into happy pri-
waite marriages. Another, Prince Will
helm himself. father of the unhappy
Princess Sophia. fed to America in
his youth, served as a riding master,
rlerk, book agent and even as a res
taurant waiter in New York. but was
finally persuaded to return to Ger
many, marry his second cousin. and
live on small pension from the head
of the house. The women of the
family have remained in the velvet
prison which the kaiser provides for
all his connections, however. remote.
There have been no marriages of the
Saxe-Weimar women out of the linn
tied and dreary royal circle, no out
ward rebellion. Only excepting the
Princess Sophia, who answered the in
escapable rules OF her rank with sui
eide.
Lovers Separated
Sophia was only twenty when she
met Elder III Putlitz, a young man
whose family was old enough to be
allied to the fourth cousin of a grand
possibly; but who was as poor
rs Prince Wilhelm himself. The
prince was staying with his family at
d hotel in Rome, being too poor to af-
ford d palazzo or even retinue. The
introduction occurred at a hotel enter
tainment. The attachment between
the dashing young dragon and the
romantic princess was no So6ter no.