I looked back at him thinking that this same personage, so stubborn in his system of police severity, and in his service of the abuse of power, had also armed the hand of the woman who killed my son....
And greatly moved, I asked myself:
"Have they understood?"
Yes, perhaps. Doubtless they are no longer what they were. Life must also have changed them.
Can they, without pain, remember yesterday?
To speak candidly, we fled in order to escape these enemies; I did not stop to think, and I believed that they could have ordered our arrest. I also believed the word of emissaries in the pay of the prince. We were then in France where I ran no risk. I wished to leave for England and implore the help and protection of Queen Victoria who had given me so many evidences of her affection.
My faithful lady-in-waiting, Comtesse Fugger, shared my fears and accompanied me in my hasty flight.
We had scarcely reached London when we received all sorts of mysterious hints from pretended friends. We must go back at once or the count and I would be lost. We therefore left London without any attempt on my part to rejoin the Queen, whom we had passed on our journey, as she had just left England for the south of France.
We were not of the stuff of which criminals are made. They are more callous. Hemmed in by our own too-credulous imagination, we then thought of taking refuge with the count's mother at the Château de Lobor.
No one has ever understood why, and how, I brought myself to go to Croatia, to the house of Countess Keglevich.