When Leopold died in such a frightful way that I cannot even mention it, he had not belonged, in my belief, for a long time to this world; but it was not I who was affected by this terrible punishment which terminated the lineage of the eldest scion of the house of Saxe-Coburg. He who was stricken was the father who had formed this misguided son in his own likeness!
I think he has survived in order that he may have time for repentance.
When my daughter Dora was about to be born in 1881, I had such a dread of the presence of her father that I did all I could to hide the imminent hour of my deliverance. I did not wish the prince to be near me at this painful moment; I wanted him to go out, in ignorance that I was in the throes of travail. It happened in this way. The birth took place in our palace at Vienna, and I quite succeeded in astonishing my world. I evaded, during the time of my suffering, a presence which could only have aggravated it. The midwife who was with me had not even time to go and fetch the Royal Accoucheur, who arrived after it was all over.
Dora was my second and my last child. She promised to be a pretty girl; she was taller than myself, very fair and rather shortsighted. She had the misfortune to marry Duke Gunther of Schleswig-Holstein, brother of the Empress Augusta, the wife of William II. "Misfortune?" my readers will say; "that is the usual opinion of a mother-in-law." They will see later that the word misfortune is conformable to the facts which touch contemporary history. I will say nothing more.
My daughter has no children. If she had, they would have been told that their grandmother was the most wicked of women, if not the maddest, because she often said to her son-in-law, as well as to the Prince of Coburg and certain dignitaries of Vienna and elsewhere, who were the accomplices and agents of the persecution by which she was overwhelmed:
"You have only one end in view, and that is to take away all that remains to me—my liberty. But there is justice and you will be punished!"
They have been.
Ah! if instead of making me suffer martyrdom, or allowing me to be made a martyr, some of my own relations had dared come to me, openly or in secret!... I am a woman, I am a mother. I do not affirm that I was not guilty of wrong. I only affirm this: they always lied to me. They always talked to me of the honour and virtue of the family, but, above it all, I heard the cry of "Money! money! money!"
CHAPTER VIII
My Hosts at the Hofburg—the Emperor Francis Joseph and the Empress Elizabeth
Since defeat has overthrown in one day thrones which were the foundation of the world of Germany, I sometimes pass from the Ring towards the Graben by the Hofburg, the ancient Imperial Palace of this city of Vienna where I am now writing. I can see from the Fransenplatz (the large inner court) the windows of the rooms which formerly saw me received by the guards and chamberlains with the honours due to my rank. These windows are now closed, empty and silent. In Vienna everything seems dead. The old Hofburg has ceased to exist. The new Hofburg, an outward symbol of vanished hopes, is an unfinished building. It bears witness to the downfall of an Empire.