TRAGIC COMFLICATIOKS.

Otago Witness, Issue 2558, 25 March 1903, Page 65

TRAGIC COMFLICATIOKS.

Meantime there are some poor, helpless, innocent beings who are tossed about m all this raging maelstrom of conflicting and stormy passions. It is a sign of grace that the princess, when her children were mentioned, blushed and looked wretched. "Ah," she said, "they will be brought up to curse me." But she went on to say that she would insist on her right to see them now and then ; a right which there is little doubt will not be admitted. And a situation already wretched, complicated, noL to say hopeless, is further complicated by this last thing, which alone was wanting to make the tragedy of distorted and maimed lives complete— "another child is £oon coming. And already one hears over this unhappy being — who makes such a strange entry on a world of sorrow — the sound of conflict as to its paternity which makos one shudder. What is to come out of it all? Will it release royalties from the hideous servitude which has weighed upon them for so many centuries? A young Austrian Archduchess used to &ay in the eighteenth century that the birda of the air had a liberty denied

to the children of a Court— they could at least choose their mates. Either this liberty will be given to the women of future Courts or royalty will go clown as so many other institutions have «one down, in the whirlpool of scandal.— t. P., in M.A.P.