I was to be declared mad, and he was to be proclaimed a forger!
The worst they did to me was nothing compared with what they brought against him.
Ah! this justice of the Court which revolution has since swept away! Ah! this code of an army, a slave to a throne and not the guardian of the country! What defiance of good sense at the dawn of the twentieth century!
And then we are astonished when the people rise!
The count was put in prison on the accusation of the same nameless individual who had interested himself as a police agent in my affairs. The Governor of Agram was under his orders. He believed the word—or appeared to do so—of this petty lawyer who stated that Count Geza Mattachich had forged my signature, and that of my sister Stéphanie, on bills which had already been nine months in the hands of the bill discounters of Vienna, who had suddenly (!) discovered the signatures to be forgeries.
My signature was in my own writing. This was why it was not advisable to allow me to speak.
My sister's signature was a forgery and added afterwards, but by whom and why?
It would have been most inadvisable to have allowed me to ask this. The count knew nothing about these bills and the use of the funds which they represented.
It would have been most inadvisable for me to have been on the scene. I was thoroughly well guarded.
The count, according to Austrian military justice, found himself in the presence of an auditor, a magistrate who was accuser, defender and judge combined.