"And now, gentlemen, I ask you: who should be held responsible for having thrown these persons into prison solely in order that the wealthy Prince of Coburg might glut his vengeance? Were they, by chance, officers? No, I tell you quite frankly, the officers were guiltless. They would never have pronounced such a sentence if Mattachich and the witnesses had appeared before them, and if the accused had been allowed to question the witnesses, if the Press had been able to give a report of the debates, if the gifted lieutenant had had liberty of speech in a public audience, if he had been able to have a lawyer to represent him. Is it not truly malignant to throw people into prison and cause them to be condemned by an auditor and by judges who know nothing of the affair! Gentlemen, I wish to accuse no one of forgery, I wish to charge no one. My aim is not to denounce an institution which is the fatal source of all faults and mistakes. "And, seeing that we have here the occasion of debating on such doings in open Parliament, I address myself to M. the Minister of National Defence: Does he wish, he who is a man of honour, does he wish, not only as an old man with white hair, but also as a soldier whose conscience is pure and tranquil, to take on his shoulders the responsibility of the anguish and tortures inflicted on an innocent person? Will he keep silent, or will he speak? "If he is not, perhaps, in a position to make a decision to-day, he has no right to hesitate any longer to throw light on this mysterious affair." CHAPTER XVI Lindenhof Can anyone adequately realize the sufferings of a woman who sees herself erased from the world and taken to a madhouse--the conscious prisoner of an odious abuse of power? At Doebling, and afterwards at Purkesdorf, my tortures would have been beyond human endurance if I alone had been obliged to suffer. But with the hope of Divine justice, the knowledge that another was submitting to a worse punishment solely on my account gave me strength to endure. The loss of honour is as terrible as the loss of reason. I could not abandon myself to utter despair whilst the count heroically resisted his persecutors with a dignity which was afterwards admitted when the debates in the Reichsrath threw a new light on my affairs. But what terrible hours I have passed! What nights of agony! What horrible nightmares! What tears, what sobs! I tried in vain to control myself. Fortunately my attendants pitied me. That was some consolation. I even felt that the doctors, embarrassed by the responsibility of my case, looked at me kindly. With the exception of two or three miserable creatures, bought over by my enemies through greed or stupidity, I have hardly found any physicians who were not disgusted at the injustice meted out to me, and who asked nothing better than to shift the responsibility of keeping me in a madhouse on to someone else's shoulders.