Richard keeps on saying: "Don't worry. After all, what can they do to you?" He doesn't know, or doesn't want to understand that, while the law holds out protection for all, from pedlars and vagabonds to and including prime ministers, royalty itself is only technically above the law; in praxis we are beyond the benefits of all law, human and otherwise.
To be sure, a Cit is sometimes unjustly treated, but with tenacity and a small amount of courage, he finds his remedy in the courts and in the press.
To royal princes and princesses the King is both judge and executioner, as the cases of the Duke of Saxony and Bernhardt show. Maybe it pleases His Majesty to cloak his tyranny by convoking a commission, but what of it, since the commission is invariably made up of his creatures, trained, if not commanded, to do the all-highest will and nothing but the all-highest will?
As in days gone by, the poor "witch"—if she be young and comely—must face her accusers naked, the sworn torturer at her elbow, so I have no standing in law or decency before the Powers over social life or death in our sphere of society.
If there be blemishes in my character, the King sees them magnified by the sharp tongues of evil creatures, his spies. There is no privacy. I must submit to be stared at, to have my flesh lacerated by curious eyes, and, as in the case of the old-time "witches," the handsomest were condemned the quicker because "the devil was more liable to choose them for an abode than ugly ones," so my very beauty will hasten my destruction.
CHAPTER LXV
FISTICUFFS DON'T SAVE MY CROWN
The attempted theft of my Diary—Grand Mistress discovered after breaking open my desk—Reading Diary like mad—Personal encounter between me and Grand Mistress—I am the stronger, and carry off the manuscript, but have to leave all my love letters, which go to the King—I discover that they had stolen the key to my Diary from my neck.
Dresden, November 27, 1902.