And now that I have said all that I think is indispensable, perhaps my readers will make excuses for me if I have expressed myself badly in narrating the story of my sufferings.

They will, perhaps, also make excuses for my having broken the silence which I have hitherto maintained.

There has been endless discussion concerning me and my affairs. I have not wished it, I have not inspired it. It has arisen solely through force of circumstances.

We are powerless against circumstances. Our lives seem to be influenced more by others than by ourselves, and the fatality which often orders our actions and our days is not our choice.

A moment's folly can wreck a whole life. This has been my personal experience. But I think that at first I was the person deceived, because I was not old enough to judge rightly and to see clearly.

Can I grow old without obeying the duty to defend the truth, which has been so outraged by my enemies? Can I go down to the grave, misunderstood and slandered?

My life represents a succession of fatalities of which I was powerless to avert the final dÉnouement. I have already said, and I repeat, I do not hold myself guiltless of errors, faults and wrongdoings. But one must, in justice, seek their primary cause in my disastrous marriage.

My parents—particularly the Queen—saw nothing wrong in giving me to the Prince of Coburg when I was hardly more than a child.

The King saw in this marriage the possibility of certain influences and a political union which would be useful to himself and to Belgium.

The Queen was overjoyed at the thought that I was to make my home in Austria and Hungary, whence she had herself come, and where I should remember her, and at the same time further my country's glory and the King's ambitions.

I have been sacrificed for the good of Belgium, and Belgium now includes Belgians who reproach me for the gift of my youth and happiness essentially destined for their benefit! Belgians to-day regard me as a German, a Hungarian—a foreigner—and worse even than that! Alas for human gratitude!

Be that as it may, am I guilty of having voluntarily abandoned my country or of ceasing to love it?

The whole of my being protests against this vile accusation.

Of what then am I guilty? Of having left my husband and my children?

I lived for twenty years at the most corrupt Court of Europe. I never yielded to its temptations or its follies. I gave birth to a son and a daughter, I suckled them at my breast, and I reposed all my hopes of a mother in my children. My son's fate and how he left me is common knowledge. It is also well known how my daughter, influenced by her husband and her environment, has treated me.

Of what was I actually guilty? It is true that finding myself at the end of my courage, and suffocating in the atmosphere of a home which for me was detestable, I was about to succumb....

I was rescued at this crisis, and I dedicated my life to my deliverer. And, in consequence, my saviour was branded as a forger, and by dint of monetary persecutions and fines it was sought to annihilate him.

Both of us have escaped from the murderers who desired our destruction.

Am I guilty of having struggled, of having remained faithful to fidelity, and of having resisted the efforts to overthrow me?

The judgments of error and hatred matter little to me. I have remained the woman that I promised my sainted mother I would become—the idealist, who has lived on the heights.

Am I guilty in the real meaning of morality and freedom? Many women who consider themselves in a position to cast the first stone at me have far more with which to reproach themselves!

What remains to be said?

This.... I believed, I believed in common with the greatest legal minds, that in the ordinary course of events I should inherit a fortune from my father. My inheritance was considerably encumbered and reduced owing to fraudulent schemes and wrongful judgments, which have been universally condemned.

Am I guilty for having been deceived and plundered?

Again it is said that my family was not united. Is this my fault?

I always loved my flesh and blood more than myself. Have I been found wanting in affection and respect towards my parents? Was I not to my sisters the adoring eldest sister who loved and cherished them?

Am I guilty of the errors of the King and the Queen, the latter convinced by my persecutors of the gravity of my "illness," the former irritated—not by my independence, but by the scandal that it created?

Am I guilty of the selfishness of my sisters—one the victim of narrow-mindedness, the other the victim of political schemes?

I freely admit this: I have certainly rebelled against disloyalty and restraint. But for what motives? For what ends?

My real crime has consisted in my effort to get my own property, in waiting for a fortune which I have not handled.

The world only admires the victorious, no matter by what means they achieve victory.

I have been a victim ever since my girlish feet were led into devious paths; I have always suffered defeat. When the battle was over I did not ask pardon of untruth, injury, theft, or persecution.

I might have been alone, I might have fallen under the burden of infamy and violence. But I would not yield because I was not fighting for myself alone.

God has visibly sustained me, by animating my heart with feelings of esteem and gratitude for a chivalrous soul whom I have never heard utter a word of complaint, no matter how atrocious the intrigues and the cruelties which encompassed him.

A base world has judged his devotion and my constancy from the lowest standpoint.

Let such a world now realize that beings exist who are far above the sordid instincts to which humanity abandons itself, beings who, in a common aspiration to a lofty ideal, rise superior to all earthly weaknesses. The last lines of this short sketch of a life, the details of which would fill many volumes, must be a recognition of my gratitude towards Count Geza Mattachich.

I have not said a great deal about him, because he will think that even a little is too much. This silent man only appreciates silence.

"Silence alone is strong, all the rest is weakness." Thus wrote Alfred de Vigny, and this line is the motto of the strong.

But you know, Count, that unlike you I cannot force myself to be silent. I wish to invoke the vision of the hour when you first spoke those words which penetrated my conscience and cleansed and illumined it. From that hour, this light has been my guide. I have sought in suffering the road towards spiritual beauty. But you preceded me thither, and in the dark depths of the madhouse I looked towards your prison cell, and in so doing I escaped the horrors of insanity.

We have had to submit to the assaults of covetousness and hypocrisy.

We have struggled in the mire; we have been separated in wild lands. The world has only seen the splashes of mud and the tattered banner of our combat. It has ignored the cause, and its malevolence has never pardoned us for emerging from the fight as victims.

All this was very bitter at the time, but I never regret! My sufferings are dear to me because you, Count, have shared them, after having tried so ardently to spare me.

There is always a certain joy in bearing unmerited afflictions in the spirit of sacrifice.

This spirit of sacrifice is peculiarly your own. I never possessed it. But you have endowed me with it. No gift has ever been so precious to my soul, and I shall be grateful to you on this side of the tomb and beyond it!

I, who alone know you as you really are, and know the adoration that has given you a reason for living, I thank you, Count, in the twilight of my days for the nobility which you have always shown in this adoration. Shall I ever know, will you ever know, the meaning of rest otherwise than the last rest which is the lot of mankind? Will earthly justice ever render unto us the hoped-for reparations?

Will it be possible for us to remain outlawed from the truth, and crushed by the abuse of power and human wickedness?

Let it be as God wills!