Thus there was one remark about the emperor which ridiculed "his
intolerable swagger." There were also some comical references to
Princess Victoria of Prussia, who was jilted by the late Prince
Alexander of Battenberg, on the very eve of the day appointed for the
wedding, and that for the sake of a little actress. This princess
has since then married Prince Adolph of Schaumburg, who was recently
ousted from the regency of the tiny principality of Lippe. "_Poor
Vicky_" was described as being "_many-sided_" owing to the number of
her _affaires de coeur_, notably those with Baron Hugo von Reischach,
at that time a very handsome lieutenant of the "Garde-du-Corps,"
but who afterward became gentleman-in-waiting to the widowed Empress
Frederick, and married one of the princesses of Hohenlohe. This
flirtation between Baron Reischach and Princess Victoria formed
the theme of quite a number of the anonymous letters, in which
the princess was charged with every kind of indelicacy, while the
unfortunate baron was ridiculed in connection with the modernity
of his nobility. Other love affairs of "_poor Vicky_" were likewise
discussed in no friendly manner, and she was represented as being to
such a degree infatuated for Count Andrassy, the eldest son of the
famous Austro-Hungarian statesman, that the young fellow, it
is declared, was forced to resign his secretaryship to the
Austro-Hungarian Embassy, at Berlin, and to flee from the Prussian
Court, in order to escape from the demonstrative attentions of the
princess: "If it is like this now," said one of the letters, "what in
Heaven's name will it be when '_Vicky_' marries!"

There were, moreover, all sorts of matters relating to the _vie
intime_ of the imperial family discussed in these anonymous
communications, such as bickerings between the emperor and his mother,
quarrels with his English relatives, flirtations of the younger