I was too sick and shocked even to curse at him. The pain seemed to be searing into my brain, and I was half-swooning as Kraftstein bandaged my skull and the pair of them supported me upstairs and laid me down on my bed. The last thing I heard before I slipped into unconsciousness was Rudi saying that it would be best if my highness rested for a while, and I remember thinking it odd that he had slipped out of his play-actor’s role for a while and then back into it.

That was my only experience of schlager-play, and it was one too many. But it taught me something, and that was a fearful respect for Otto Bismarck and his ruffians. If they were capable of that kind of cold-blooded mutilation then there was nothing they wouldn’t do; from that moment I put all thought of trying to escape from Schönhausen out of my mind. I hadn’t the game for it.

As to the scars, they healed quickly under Kraftstein’s care. I’ll carry them to my grave, one close to my right ear, the other slightly higher, but just visible now that my hair is thinner. Neither is disfiguring, fortunately; indeed, as Rudi observed, there is something quite dashing-romantic about them. They’ve been worth a couple of campaigns, I often think, in giving people the wrong impression of my character.

They hurt most damnably for a couple of days, though, during which I kept to my room. That was all the convalescence they would allow me for they were in a great sweat to begin what Rudi was pleased to call my “princely education”.

This consisted of some of the hardest brain work I’ve ever had in my life. For a solid month, every waking hour, I lived, talked, walked, ate and drank Prince Carl Gustaf until I could have screamed at the thought of him—and sometimes did. At its worst it amounted to gruelling mental torture, but in recalling it now I have to admit that it was brilliantly done. I wouldn’t have believed it possible, but the three of them—Rudi, Kraftstein, and Bersonin—came as close as one humanly could to turning me into another person.