Will my limbs carry me to him and liberty? I pace the room to test their strength.
"Louise," says the voice within,—"your last chance. Your good-natured husband, your darling children, your old parents, pomp and state and circumstance, indeed, a crown, you are going to abandon for—what?"
A man whose carnal side only you know, a poor man, an artist without fame, a professional without future.
Sadly perturbed in mind, I walk to the window. Those of His Majesty's cabinet, where the family council is in progress, are directly opposite.
Shadows of men and women, rising from a sitting position, are thrown on the curtains.
One of the shades slowly ascends.
I see the Tisch pointing a bony finger to the windows of my boudoir. Von Metzsch stands by her side. They grin.
You triumph, wretch and Jezebel?
But when your sbirri, in an hour from now, or tomorrow morning early, invade my rooms, instructed to carry me away—bound hand and foot to a sofa, or in a straight jacket, perhaps—they will find the Crown Princess gone—her and her Diary.
Both will be safe on foreign soil ere you can make arrangements for organized pursuit, for Richard and I will travel by carriage to a distant suburb, there mount the fast express and keep to our state room, engaged under an assumed name, until without the sphere of Saxon or German influence.