It is to you, my mother, martyr and saint, and to some sublime moral strength that I owe my resistance. You armed me for the struggle by never letting me forget the essential duties of life which you had taught me. I have remained faithful to them. But I have suffered horribly since the day when even you could not understand my rebellion. I was suppressed by the world. Cleverly exploited, all appearances were against me. My enemies told you: "She is lost; she is mad; the doctors have said so." What doctors, _mon Dieu_? The truth about these doctors came out afterwards. Ah! some people envy princesses. They should rather pity them. I know of one for whom there has been no justice in this world. Ordinary rights were denied her. The law of the world was not a law for her, except when it could be used against her. Yes, a victim of an abominable plot of such surpassing cruelty that reason can scarcely conceive possible; I was not allowed to return to my beloved Belgium at the moment when I learnt, in spite of my persecutors, that my mother was dying at Spa; I could not receive her last blessing, I was not even allowed to follow her coffin ... to the tomb! If I did not become mad in my asylum it was because I was not meant to do so; I could not become mad. But I still tremble when I think of it. Later, when the King was dying, I recovered my liberty, and my freedom was brought about by my friend--a friend without equal, who, having on one occasion saved me from myself, now saved me from prison and madness, after having nearly succumbed himself beneath the blows of hate and persecution. But my freedom constituted a new crime; my fidelity to an incarnate ideal in a whole-hearted devotion constituted an additional sin. When I attended my father's funeral I was kept under constant observation. I was restricted to a certain area of my native country. The eldest daughter of the great King whom Belgium had just lost was received with polite formality by a police official in Court attire! Ah, no! I incriminate no one--not even the servants whose civility I had once known. I am aware how tempting and profitable it is to mislead princes, and what power exists in wicked advice when it is given with an air of devotion. I am only explaining how it came about that I did not remain in my much-loved country. At last the frightful war broke out, following the debates regarding the King's inheritance, and I was at once even more definitely suppressed by the Belgian nation because, to my other abominations, I had added the unpardonable sin of believing that justice existed in Belgium. I was a prisoner in Munich, where I could do nothing. I was surprised in Bavaria by hostilities and treated like a Belgian princess--that is to say, very badly, as will be seen later.