Like most of the Habsbiirgs, papa was al-
ways attracted by a beautiful woman, and he
fell in and out of love very easily. At the age
of eighteen he had an affaire de cceur with a
petite bourgeoise, who lived near the Pitti Palace ;
but directly it was discovered he was shut up
in his rooms for a fortnight, and forbidden to
see or to correspond with the fair one. At last
the youthful lover discovered a means of com-
municating with his inamorata. He procured
a large sheet of cardboard, on which he cut out
the letters of the alphabet, and covered over
the cut-out portions with transparent paper.
When night fell he placed the sheet of card-
board before his open window, put a lighted
candle behind certain letters until he had



30 MY OWN STORY

completed a word, and in this ingenious way-
conveyed his messages to the girl, who stood
in the street facing the palace.
Papa was only twenty-one when he married
Princess Anna, the daughter of King John of
Saxony, who translated Dante under the nom
de plume of "Philaletes. " Anna's mother,
Queen Amelia, was a daughter of Prince Maxi-
milian of Bavaria, and a twin out of two sets
of twin girls. Her own twin, Princess Eliza-
beth, married Frederick William IV., King of
Prussia; the other twins, Sophia and Marie,
married respectively the Archduke Franz-Karl
(father of the present Emperor of Austria)
and Frederick- August II., King of Saxony, and
it is thus remarkable that two sisters became
in turn Queens of the same country.
