A Servant of Satan: Romantic Career of Prado the Assassin — page 25: what you’re looking at

Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.

A SERVANT OF SATAN. 17> ment of the foot-guards, Queen Elizabeth making him a present of his first sword on the occasion. Frederick, in receipt of a handsome allowance from the trustees of his mother’s fortune, now entered on a course of the wildest dissipation. ‘The fame of his exploits on several occasions reached the ears of the king, who kindly, but firmly, reproved the lad for his conduct, and urged him to remember what was due to names so honored as those of his father and his dead mother. Nothing, however, seemed to have any effect in checking the career of reckless and riot- ous extravagance on which he had embarked, and at length, after being subjected to numerous reprimands and sentences of arrest, he was punished by being transferred to a line regiment engaged in frontier duty on the Russian border. His dismay at being thus exiled from the court and capital to the wilds of Prussian Poland was impossible to describe, and he bade farewell to his numerous friends of both sexes . as if he had been banished for life to the mines of Siberia. The most painful parting of all was from a pretty little girl, whom he had taken from behind the counter of ‘‘Louise’s” famous flower shop, and installed as his mis- tress in elegant apartments near the ‘‘ Thier Garten.” Rose Hartmann was a small and captivating blonde, with dark-blue eyes, fringed with long black lashes. The lovers were at that time in the honey-moon of their liaison, and while Frederick was sincerely and deeply attached to the girl, she on her side was chiefly attracted by the luxuries and pleasures which he had placed within her reach. Whereas he was almost heart-broken at the idea of leaving her, she only apprehended in the separation a sudden end to all the advantages of a life of ease and indulgence and a return to her former obscure existence. To make a long story short, she played her cards so well during the last days of the young lieutenant’s stay at Berlin, that on the eve of his departure she induced him to contract a secret mar- ee Eomicbooks:com