During the night I speculated what to do: ask a private audience of the Emperor, state my side of the case and beg his forgiveness and protection, beg, especially, for better treatment at his hands?
And if he refused?
Francis Joseph is a good deal of a Jesuit. When he hates, he never lets it come to a break; when he loves, he never attaches himself.
If I stooped to humiliate myself, he might choose to debase me still more. It was entirely probable that he would betray my confidences to the King and Prince George.
I will defy him and—all of them!
"Her Imperial Highness regrets——" my Court Marshal wrote in answer to all invitations or rather "commands" for the next three days. When I refused to participate in the "grand leave-taking," Frederick Augustus came post-haste to expostulate with me.
"You must. It would be an affront without precedent."
"Take leave of a man who didn't say good-day to me on his arrival, and who probably intends to slight me in similar fashion on going away——"
In lieu of argument the Prince Royal abused me like a pick-pocket; I had waited for it and now I let loose.
"You are like the rest of your family," I shouted: "ignorant, thoughtless, brutal en venerie, sanctimonious in dotage. I know few people for whom I have so great a detestation as for the Royal Saxons. Look at your father, there is no more jesuitical a Jesuit, the inward man as hideous as the outward. He would be an insolent lackey, if he didn't happen to be a prince.