"Because I want to be alone. Because I am tired of hateful faces. Because I refuse to accept orders and insults from people that are beneath an Imperial Princess of Austria."
Prince George turned pale.
"Am I one of those beneath Your Imperial Highness?" he queried stupidly.
"Decidedly so."
A long pause. Then Prince George shouted: "To the devil with you. I don't care whether you stay in Loschwitz, or Dresden, or on the Vogelwiese."
The Vogelwiese is an amusement park, respectable enough, but the word or name, as used by George, reeked with sinister and insulting meaning.
Trembling with rage, I replied: "Right royal language you royal Saxons use. From time to time, I suppose, you refresh your fish-wife vocabulary in the annals of Augustus the Physical Strong, than whom a more gross word-slinger did not walk the history of the eighteenth century."
I believe Prince George was frightened by my violence. Assuming a haughty tone he said formally: "Your Imperial Highness is at liberty to travel whenever you please, but you will be so good as to leave your children in Dresden."
I stepped up to the white-livered coward and hissed in his face: "Steal my children if you dare, and I will go to France, or Switzerland and ask a republican President to interfere for humanity's sake."
"And—land yourself in an insane asylum," sneered George.