Happy are those whom a peaceful and normal life allows leisure to watch beside a cradle. Nevertheless, I knew happiness with my first-born son Leopold, who saw the light in 1878 at our Château of Saint Antoine, in Hungary. The Queen was present, very delighted at being a grandmother. The arrival of this child, a boy, heir to the titles, appendages and functions of the family, temporarily appeased the quarrels between the prince and myself. There was a lull in the storm, which lasted for some little time. The influence of the Queen had its effect upon my husband. I myself, absorbed by my maternal duties, made great resolutions to be patient and wise in the future. I dreamt wonderful dreams beside the cradle of my son.... Oh, cruel fate, against which I was destined to be powerless. When he grew up, and as the influence of environment exerted itself, Leopold became less and less my child. I wished him to be loyal and courageous. Was he not to carry a sword? What a knightly soul did I not wish to forge in him! But his father claimed the right to guide him. Very soon he belonged to me no longer. Leopold reached the age of reason just when I had thrown off the shackles of an existence which had become atrocious. He believed that, having refused to continue to be the Princess of Coburg, I had thereby appropriated the hundreds of millions which one day should have come to him from his grandfather, and which I should throw to the winds by my folly. So I have known the hatred which nature cannot conceive--the hatred of a son for his mother. I have shed the tears which are shed by mothers who are struck down by their own flesh and blood. But God knows that each time my children, infatuated with the greed for money, which is indeed the root of all evils, have made me suffer, I have always forgiven them. When Leopold died in such a frightful way that I cannot even mention it, he had not belonged, in my belief, for a long time to this world; but it was not I who was affected by this terrible punishment which terminated the lineage of the eldest scion of the house of Saxe-Coburg. He who was stricken was the father who had formed this misguided son in his own likeness! I think he has survived in order that he may have time for repentance. When my daughter Dora was about to be born in 1881, I had such a dread of the presence of her father that I did all I could to hide the imminent hour of my deliverance. I did not wish the prince to be near me at this painful moment; I wanted him to go out, in ignorance that I was in the throes of travail. It happened in this way. The birth took place in our palace at Vienna, and I quite succeeded in astonishing my world. I evaded, during the time of my suffering, a presence which could only have aggravated it. The midwife who was with me had not even time to go and fetch the Royal Accoucheur, who arrived after it was all over.