With my entourage I am sometimes as open and expansive as I am silent and reserved with strangers. I mistrust fresh faces, and in no circumstances do I ever indulge in gossip. I much prefer the conversation of men who know something, to that of women who know nothing.
I detest all that is unnatural in conversation; affectation is insupportable to me. Idle remarks which annoy me easily suggest some repartee or sarcastic comment such as the King knew so well how to use, which always touched to the quick the person to whom it was addressed. But the influence of the Queen's memory sometimes restrains me and keeps me silent out of Christian charity.
Immovable in the convictions of my conscience and outwardly reserved, I am, nevertheless, a woman of contradictions. When I am forced to act I invariably rush to extremes. Soul extremes always result from contrasts, just as the thunder of heaven results from the meeting of two storm clouds. In me the storm is suppressed. I surprise people more than anything else by my customary attitude of not being able to foresee the decision which carries me away.
I do not regard existence from the ordinary standpoint; I regard it from a much higher one. This is not due to any feeling of pride. I am carried away by something within me past certain barriers and certain frontiers; I live in a world of my own in which I can take refuge.
Many, many times during the implacable persecution which I have endured for so long, I have stood in front of a mirror and tried to read the soul within my eyes. I was a prisoner; I was "mad" for reasons of State. I asked myself in cold blood, was I not really becoming mad—was I still mistress of my reason?
"Yes," replied an inner voice, "you are mistress of your reason so long as you are mistress of yourself, and you are mistress of yourself so long as you remain faithful to your ideal of honour."
I will speak of this ideal later. Honest women will understand. But my nature did not find in the conjugal abode the good, the pure and the true, which it had dreamed of, hoped for, and desired. As the years passed the atmosphere of my home changed, the growing children became less of a safeguard. Help came in a day of chaos under an aspect which the world condemns. Nothing stopped me then, and, henceforth, nothing shall separate me from my ideal. I have done away with the gilded splendour which to me is shameful. I live now with that which speaks to me in a language I can understand, something which is morally beautiful. This act of my inner self is now realized. I have not repented. I never shall.
Dramas, plots, intrigues, treason follow each other—I struggle against them without triumphing. It is the work of my outward self. I may appear to fail, but my inner self turns away disgusted from the mud.
I was not made to conquer in the fray of human conflicts in a sphere which is, perhaps, that of creatures predestined to show that the real condition of man is not here below. The society that he extols, the civilization that he admires, are but the poor and fragile conceptions of his illusion of earthly sovereignty, and they will only bring misfortune to him if he lives for them alone.
God was always present in my thoughts even when I believed myself forgotten by man.