On the contrary, what had I _not_ to declare? I was the eldest daughter of the great King of these good people who did not recognize me. I wanted to cry out, so as to be heard as far as the Château of Laeken, and denounce the injustice of Fate, which made me a victim and an exile. I was thinking thus when an old superintendent of the Belgian railways passed. He did not glance carelessly at me as the Customs officials had done; he scrutinized me gravely, and I saw that he knew at once who I was. The count was watching in the corridor, and he was also certain that I had been recognized. He followed the superintendent. The man looked at him, read the anxiety in his face, and identifying him, doubtless by the photographs in the newspapers, stopped and said kindly: "It is our Princess, is it not?... Do not be afraid. Nobody here will betray her." I never knew the name of this good and faithful compatriot. If he is still alive I hope he will learn through these lines that my gratitude has often gone out and will always go out to him. I arrived at last, safe and sound in Paris. I had nothing more to fear. I was in a hospitable country, protected by just laws. It is common knowledge that shortly afterwards the most eminent French physicians recognized, after long interviews, when I was minutely interrogated and examined, the inanity of the pseudo-medical statements which had kept me in a lunatic asylum for seven years and caused me to be treated as a minor, incapable of managing my own affairs. My civil rights were restored to me; together with my liberty I had miraculously recovered my reason! But I found again, alas! during the dreadful war, evidences of the implacable hatred from which I had suffered so much. This time my enemies thought me in their power, and behaved in an odiously grasping manner. It was not now covetousness for the millions of my inheritance from my father the King, but it was greed for another fortune, that of the Empress Charlotte, my unfortunate aunt, whose old age is sheltered by the Château of Boucottes. This fresh possibility of wealth aroused the same covetousness, and, as of old, it produced the same line of conduct. But once again I was providentially saved. CHAPTER XVIII The Death of the King--Intrigues and Legal Proceedings A certain book exists of which only 110 copies have been printed, and these have been carefully distributed among those who were unlikely to mislay them. This book, of which I deplore the fact that a greater number of copies were not printed, contains all the evidence concerning Niederfullbach, and the various judgments against my claims. Such as it is, and for the sake of what it contains and does not contain, I should be glad to see this book in the colleges and schools of Law throughout the world. It would be both useful and suggestive. Also if it were under the eyes of the general public it would doubtless be consulted with great interest.