The Birthday Present

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Like every woman of sense and discernment, I know the dangers of celibacy. No state of life is less conducive to health and happiness, and one only has to look at the wan features of an obedient priest to see the effects of this disastrous practice firsthand. My enlightened readers, then, will no doubt be surprised to learn that on the day of my thirty-fourth birthday, I had not taken a lover in over two years.

One’s tastes grow more refined with age, and this fact is the only explanation I can offer for my lengthy and unnatural abstinence. For some time, I had found no man who was to my liking and, being of the opinion that cheap country wine is no substitute when what one really wants is champagne, I had been unwilling to compromise.

But I should explain further. At this point in my life, I had made my home for several years in Munich, and since my arrival in that city my house had become, if modesty will permit to me to say so, a center of the city’s literary and philosophical life. The intelligent and ambitious men who assembled around me had their uses; the erotic possibilities of my circle, however, left much to be desired. Most of the regular visitors to my salon were either distinguished old men or energetic young artists and scholars. The former held no interest for me for reasons that should be obvious, and the latter, if more appealing in physical form, proved equally unsatisfying when consumed as a regular diet. The new, romantic generation was far too high-strung and sensitive for my tastes—young men bored me, though they clustered around me like gnats and, after a few years in Munich, the thought of spreading my thighs for yet another adoring and submissive young poet was enough to make me cry with frustration.

For over a year, my life in Munich had been further spoiled by the presence of my greatest rival, a clever and arrogant Scotsman by the name of James McKirnan. I was, unfortunately, indirectly responsible for his arrival in Bavaria, for it was my fault that he was not safely settled in England. Many years ago, when I was visiting a cousin in the British Isles, this objectionable man had tried to force me to marry him, and in retribution I had started a rumor about him so vicious that after it had spread he was never again accepted into polite society, either in London or in the countryside. Seeing all avenues of social advancement closed to him, he was forced to come and try his luck again on the Continent. The previous King of Bavaria had met James in Paris and, convinced of his philosophical and technical acumen, had taken the ridiculous step of appointing this lowborn Scotch mechanic as president of the Royal Bavarian Academy of Sciences.

So now James, my greatest enemy, was well established in the same city as myself, and he took full advantage of his strong position at court. He made a habit, for example, of luring young men away from my salon, which I would not have minded so much had he not always chosen the most attractive and talented as his targets—just the ones, in short, who might have made passable lovers. It was, in short, largely James McKirnan’s fault that I entered my thirty-fourth year in a state of unusual melancholy.

The year was 1799, and the rest of Munich society, as it happened, was touched with melancholy, too, as everyone waited anxiously to see how Maximilian Joseph, the new king of Bavaria, would wear his crown. In fact, my thirty-fourth birthday fell on the day of Maximilian’s first court ball.

I arrived at the palace in a sober mood, expecting little from the evening ahead. Maximilian was a great soldier, but also a man of stern and serious character, and his court was not likely to offer the same diversions as that of his predecessor, Karl Theodor, who had had well-developed tastes for art, actresses and adultery. Given the new king’s character, I could not help but wonder if Bavaria was about to enter a period as pious and dull as the one through which Prussia had suffered under the heavy hand of Friedrich Wilhelm I. The fact that the king, recently widowed, was currently in negotiations for a new queen added a small point of interest to the new court, but so far that had been the only source of gossip surrounding our abstemious new sovereign.

As it turned out, Maximilian’s first official ball proved a night of great importance in my life, a night that finally broke my long spell of abstinence and brought me to a new juncture in my career. I owe this change, and my current happiness, entirely to my beloved cousin Robert, who had, without my knowledge, found an admirable solution to the dull monotony that plagued my life at the time. He chose the occasion of my birthday to unveil his plan.

But before I tell you about Robert’s ingenious birthday present, I should tell you a little more about my mood and situation earlier that night.

The evening did not begin well. As soon as we had assembled in the ballroom and the orchestra began to play, I felt a firm hand on my elbow.