"I didn't come here to answer questions," I replied. "I came to announce that if you don't let me go to Loschwitz, there will be a scandal that will resound all over Christendom and make you impossible in your own capital." "Why do you want to leave Dresden?" he insisted. "Because I want to be alone. Because I am tired of hateful faces. Because I refuse to accept orders and insults from people that are beneath an Imperial Princess of Austria." Prince George turned pale. "Am I one of those beneath Your Imperial Highness?" he queried stupidly. "Decidedly so." A long pause. Then Prince George shouted: "To the devil with you. I don't care whether you stay in Loschwitz, or Dresden, or on the Vogelwiese." The Vogelwiese is an amusement park, respectable enough, but the word or name, as used by George, reeked with sinister and insulting meaning. Trembling with rage, I replied: "Right royal language you royal Saxons use. From time to time, I suppose, you refresh your fish-wife vocabulary in the annals of Augustus the Physical Strong, than whom a more gross word-slinger did not walk the history of the eighteenth century." I believe Prince George was frightened by my violence. Assuming a haughty tone he said formally: "Your Imperial Highness is at liberty to travel whenever you please, but you will be so good as to leave your children in Dresden." I stepped up to the white-livered coward and hissed in his face: "Steal my children if you dare, and I will go to France, or Switzerland and ask a republican President to interfere for humanity's sake." "And--land yourself in an insane asylum," sneered George. "An old trick of the Royal House of Saxony, I know," I shouted back. "Bernhardt is saner than you, yet the King sent him to Sonnenstein. If such a crime had been perpetrated by one not a king, he would go to jail." Prince George pointed a trembling finger towards the door. "Out with you!" he bawled hoarsely. "Out!" I stood my ground. "May I take my children? Yes or no?" He rang the bell and repeated mechanically: "Out with you, out!" I had another fit of crying convulsions. Doctors, maids and lackeys were summoned in numbers. They bedded me on the couch and six men-servants carried me to my apartments. Two days later I went to Loschwitz with my children. I had defied the King. Prince George was humbled. I carried my point, and the Dresden court will not see me again in a hurry. * * * * * LOSCHWITZ, _Christmas, 1901_. I refused to spend Christmas at Court. Frederick Augustus planned a stay of a couple of weeks. "Not a single night," I wrote back. They parleyed; they begged. "The Crown Prince desires to spend Christmas with the children. In the interests of public opinion, it's absolutely necessary that he does." "But not--that I submit to prostitution. I will give him a dinner, but he will drive back to Dresden immediately afterwards."