I lived for twenty years at the most corrupt Court of Europe. I never yielded to its temptations or its follies. I gave birth to a son and a daughter, I suckled them at my breast, and I reposed all my hopes of a mother in my children. My son's fate and how he left me is common knowledge. It is also well known how my daughter, influenced by her husband and her environment, has treated me. Of what was I actually guilty? It is true that finding myself at the end of my courage, and suffocating in the atmosphere of a home which for me was detestable, I was about to succumb.... I was rescued at this crisis, and I dedicated my life to my deliverer. And, in consequence, my saviour was branded as a forger, and by dint of monetary persecutions and fines it was sought to annihilate him. Both of us have escaped from the murderers who desired our destruction. Am I guilty of having struggled, of having remained faithful to fidelity, and of having resisted the efforts to overthrow me? The judgments of error and hatred matter little to me. I have remained the woman that I promised my sainted mother I would become--the idealist, who has lived on the heights. Am I guilty in the real meaning of morality and freedom? Many women who consider themselves in a position to cast the first stone at me have far more with which to reproach themselves! What remains to be said? This.... I believed, I believed in common with the greatest legal minds, that in the ordinary course of events I should inherit a fortune from my father. My inheritance was considerably encumbered and reduced owing to fraudulent schemes and wrongful judgments, which have been universally condemned. Am I guilty for having been deceived and plundered? Again it is said that my family was not united. Is this my fault? I always loved my flesh and blood more than myself. Have I been found wanting in affection and respect towards my parents? Was I not to my sisters the adoring eldest sister who loved and cherished them? Am I guilty of the errors of the King and the Queen, the latter convinced by my persecutors of the gravity of my "illness," the former irritated--not by my independence, but by the scandal that it created? Am I guilty of the selfishness of my sisters--one the victim of narrow-mindedness, the other the victim of political schemes? I freely admit this: I have certainly rebelled against disloyalty and restraint. But for what motives? For what ends? My real crime has consisted in my effort to get my own property, in waiting for a fortune which I have not handled. The world only admires the victorious, no matter by what means they achieve victory. I have been a victim ever since my girlish feet were led into devious paths; I have always suffered defeat. When the battle was over I did not ask pardon of untruth, injury, theft, or persecution.