I only knew him to adopt a chivalrous attitude on two occasions. Once when I asked him to change a gentleman-in-waiting attached to my person and that of my husband who made common cause with the Archduke Victor, he immediately granted me my request. Again, when I had entered upon a new life, and was living up to a higher ideal and disregarding the most sinister proofs of an atrocious calumny, it happened that the Prince of Coburg found himself face to face with a man of honour who was ready to give him satisfaction. My husband put on an air of supreme disdain. The Emperor then reminded him that the uniform of a soldier was intended for more than purposes of show. He advised the Prince of Coburg to fight; he fought. I believe this was the only military victory that Francis Joseph gained over anyone; and as for the prince, an Austrian general, it was the only battle in which he was personally engaged. * * * * * I often think that Providence was very merciful to the Empress in not letting her attain old age, riveted as she was to the chain which dragged the Empire into the abyss of human foolishness and ferocity. Shall I say that my thoughts go out to her in prayer? She, too, was a martyr; she is only second to the Queen in my daily meditations. The difference in my age and rank kept me, to my great grief, farther apart from her than I should have liked. At the time when I could have drawn nearer to her, I was torn between my yearning for the ideal, and the vanities of the world. If she was a serene empress I was a distressed princess! But I had, however, something in common with her; the love of nature and freedom and the taste for Heinrich Heine. Without putting this writer on the same pedestal as Goethe, the mind by which I have tried to vivify my own, I have enjoyed many happy hours reading Heine, and the older I have grown the more I have learned to know and admire the poet who was both an inspired humorist and a philosopher. He was the De Musset of Prussia and Judea, the wit _par excellence_ of Europe--Heine had taken from France and given her a unity of gifts, the blending of which promises a race of men, freed from race barriers, moved by the same love of eternal beauty. An indication of the reconciliation which the future will perhaps see. It is possible that he _was_ a Jew; the Apostles were also Jews. But I understand and appreciate the sentiments of the Empress in going to see him at Hamburg, continuing to be on friendly relations with his sister after his death, and lastly in erecting a monument to him at Corfu. Rudolph once said of his mother: "She is a philosopher on a throne." She had truly a great mind.