From day to day my resources became straitened, and the atmosphere, at first compassionate, became hostile. I tried to efface myself as much as possible, and to submit myself patiently to the exigencies of my delicate situation. It was well known with whom my heart was in sympathy! Worries and harshness soon assailed me.
My son-in-law, Duke Gunther of Schleswig-Holstein, did not ignore—and with good reason—the difficulties I had to overcome. He lost no time in letting it be known that he considered I ought to agree to be placed under his guardianship, and forced to receive my last morsel of bread at his hands.
I do not wish to enlarge on the actions of this gentleman. If I were to publish the documents and the legal papers which I have kept, I should only add to the remorse and confusion which I should like to think have overcome my unhappy daughter. But, in duty to myself, I must relate a little of what transpired. Nothing else will suffice to show the drama which has enveloped me since the day when I represented the possible loss of a fortune to my family.
Duke Gunther of Schleswig-Holstein, from the very moment when Germany thought herself mistress of Belgium, occupied himself in ascertaining what might accrue to me from the inheritance of my father. Rather more than four and a half millions had been deposited in the bank, assigned for the benefit of my creditors, by arbitration of the tribunal which had been formed on the eve of hostilities.
This sum of money was the object of the touching solicitude of my son-in-law. I leave it to others to relate his efforts to obtain possession of it and divert it into a different channel from the one for which it was intended.
Nevertheless, these four and a half millions were only a drop in the ocean compared with the promise of the past. My dear country can therefore rejoice, and I rejoice with her, that, by the victory of the Entente, she has escaped a revision of the lawsuit touching the Royal inheritance, one which would have been in direct opposition to the Divine and human right, at least as soon as the decree had been issued.
What crime would not then have been committed in my name in favour of the final triumph of German arms if, threatened with the pangs of starvation, I had signed certain renunciations which were extorted from me at Munich, and had thereby lost my personality and abandoned my rights to my children in consideration of a miserable pittance?
They now saw themselves likely to be compensated in some measure for all that had previously prevented them from acquiring the King's inheritance. They had also the certainty of possessing the thirty millions which represent my share of the fortune of Her Majesty the Empress Charlotte, when my unfortunate aunt succumbs beneath the burden of her advanced age.
My children—from the hour when they became aware of the frightful state of destitution to which I was reduced during the war—have only pursued one end: without troubling to see me or to approach me directly, they have endeavoured by the mediation of paid agents to force me to sign a renunciation of my expectations.