Ten minutes later the Tisch entered my apartment with a look of triumph on her hateful face. She handed me a letter on a golden plate and waited.
"Your Ladyship is dismissed," I snapped.
She didn't move: "I expect your Imperial Highness's commands with respect to the royal children," she said. "May it please Your Imperial Highness to read Prince George's letter."
I tore open the envelope. His Majesty's representative "graciously permits me to see my children at nine in the morning and between five and six in the afternoon. At no other time, and never unless Baroness Tisch is in attendance."
I threw the letter on the floor and trampled on it. "Get out," I commanded the Baroness. If she hadn't gone instantly, I believe I would have choked her.
So I am deemed unworthy to mother the children I bore; and a spy is officially appointed to watch my intercourse with the little ones lest I corrupt them. No other inference was to be drawn from the measure.
"I will show them." But no sooner was the threat launched, than a great fear clutched at my heart.
Was I in a position to defy them? To guard the purity of the royal children "is the King's first duty towards his family." If he had proof positive that I was an impure woman, there was no use quarrelling with his decision. Besides, moral delinquencies engender more than physical weakness. I felt my boasted energy ebbing away fast.
"I am without strength, unnerved, because Henry left me," I lied to myself. The abandoned woman is either a tigress or a kitten. I happen to be no tigress.