"Her Imperial Highness regrets----" my Court Marshal wrote in answer to all invitations or rather "commands" for the next three days. When I refused to participate in the "grand leave-taking," Frederick Augustus came post-haste to expostulate with me. "You must. It would be an affront without precedent." "Take leave of a man who didn't say good-day to me on his arrival, and who probably intends to slight me in similar fashion on going away----" In lieu of argument the Prince Royal abused me like a pick-pocket; I had waited for it and now I let loose. "You are like the rest of your family," I shouted: "ignorant, thoughtless, brutal _en venerie_, sanctimonious in dotage. I know few people for whom I have so great a detestation as for the Royal Saxons. Look at your father, there is no more jesuitical a Jesuit, the inward man as hideous as the outward. He would be an insolent lackey, if he didn't happen to be a prince. "And Johann George--a shameless inheritance-chaser, despoiler of pupillary funds, gambler at the _bourse_, who whines like a whipped dog when he loses. "The royal Bernhardt, companion of street-walkers! "Prince Max, who talks theology, but keeps his eye on Therese. "Your Queen, a victim of religious madness, your King and his system--organized selfishness. Chicanery for those dependent upon him, ruin for all more gifted than the average Wettiner. "While living here I have learned to look upon my father's discrowning as a stroke of good luck for, since kings can no longer indulge their brutalities against their subjects, they turned tyrants at home. "If your father did to the humblest of his subjects what he did to me, he would be chased from home and country. The people, the parliament, his own creatures would rise against him and blot his name from the royal roster. "In the palace, in boudoirs, in the nurseries, he plays the prince--extortioner--executioner. To the public he is the benign lord, whining for paltry huzzas." Frederick Augustus was so dumfounded, he could only grind his teeth. I continued: "You prate of respect due the Majesty. There's nothing to induce feelings of that sort. Round me there is naught but weakness, hypocrisy, pettiness. I see shame and thievery stalking side by side in these gilded halls--gilded for show, but pregnant with woe. "Fie on you, Prince Royal, who allows his wife to be dogged by spies. Thieves, paid by your father, steal my souvenirs; a burglar's kit hidden in their clothes, they besiege my writing table. Jailers stand between me and my children. "My children! "Like a she-dog,[7] whose young were drowned, I cry for my babies--I, the Crown Princess of Saxony, who saved your family from dying out, a degenerate, depraved, demoralized, decadent race." When I had said this and more I fell down and was seized by crying convulsions. FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 7: Queens seem to like this unseemly comparison: