The Caldwell watchman. (Columbia, La.) 1885-1946, 1913-11-14
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highness had warned the girl she
would sleep deeply. The servant made
another noise, then crept away in the
early dawn.
"Ill let her sleep till six" she whis-
pered to herself. Why should a
royal princess get up at five Per
haps | misunderstood the hour"
Then she went below to the kitchen,
where the half-dozen poorly paid serv-
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 a tragedy. The tragedy concern
ed the ultimate necessity of royal
houses-money; and that ultimate lux
ury of royal pri~ncesses-love. A hand
some lieutenant had shot himself Tor
the sake of the Princess Sophia in
Athens five years before. He was SO
poor that the father of the infatuated
girl, an i~mpecunious 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
Princess Sophia was, in short, too
rich.
Her Heart Broken.
The kitchen gossips added many
details about the royal girl whose
heart had been broken under the iron
discipline of her caste. She had look
ed rebellious of late. Five years be-
fore she had broken an alliance with
a m%iddle-aged, d~issipated cousin, de-
creed by her relatives as worthy OF
her hand. At twenty-seven, she was
nervous, 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 estranged herself.
The new maid pondered. 1t 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
Sophia'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 a 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 were as real as the bullet
which Lieut.. Hans Elder zu Putlitz
sent through his brain in Athens in
1908 for love Of her, and as real as
the grief which the young Baron Won
B%leichroeder 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
Won Bleichroeder was not merely
rich; he was a Jew, recently en-
nobled, who refused to renounce his
faith. The house of Saxe-Weimal
will not even acknowledge, at this
date, that the match with the baror
was considered.
Departures from royal dignity have
=. been frequent in the house of SAKE
Weimar for nearly a century, eve
since the family became a mere col
lateral branch of the royal house O
Saxony, unsupported by wealth O
real power. Two of the men-Sophia'
uncle, Duke Bernard, and her brother
Prince Hermann-have escaped fror
the empty court life into happy pr
vate marriages. Another, Prince Wi
helm himself, father of the unhapp
Princess Sophia, fled to America |
his youth, served as a riding mastel
clerk, book agent and eve as a rel
taurant waiter in New York, but wa
finally persuaded to return to &c
many. marry his second cousin, an
live on a small pension from the hea
of the house. The women of tn
family have remained in the velvs
prison which the kaiser provides fl
all his connections, however. remot
There have been nc marriages of tt
Saxe-Weimar women out of the lir
tied and dreary royal circle. no GU
ward rebellion. Only excepting IL
Princess Sophia, who answered the j
escapable rules of her rank with S,
eide.
Lovers Separated.
Sophia was only twenty when 81