“This is my room,” she said, while we were talking, “in which whatever happens no one is permitted to bother me. I take refuge here from time to time, and remain until I feel myself ready to face the world once more.”
I then told her my troubles. She rang a bell, and gave an order to let M. X—— know immediately that Miss Fuller would come to see him with a card from her, and that M. X—— would kindly do everything in his power to assist Miss Fuller.
I looked at her for some time and then I said to her:
“I should have liked greatly to know you without being aware that you were a princess.”
“But,” she said, “it is the woman whom you now know and not the princess.”
And that was true. I felt that I was in the presence of some one who was really great, even if her birth had not made her so. I am certain that she would have accomplished great things if she had not found her career already mapped out for her from the day of her birth in her father’s palace.
Everyone knows that a princess’ life precludes liberty, and contains no possibility of breaking with the conventions for the sake of doing something extraordinary or notable. These chains are so strong that if one contrives to break them, it generally happens under the impulse of despair, as a result of irritation and not for the sake of a purely inspired work.
When I arose to take leave of the princess she kissed me and said:
“If ever I come to Paris I shall call on you at your studio.”
She caused an attendant to accompany me to the master of ceremonies, with whom I was to go to the bank. There the master of ceremonies communicated Princess Marie’s order to the effect that I was to be accommodated in any way I might desire.