CHAPTER XV

The Drama of my Captivity and my Life as a Prisoner--The Commencement of Torture

My misfortunes, alas! are known to the public all over the world. But it is not on me that they weigh most heavily.

If calumny and persecution, assisted by the most powerful influences, have continually added blow upon blow, one truth, at least, is patent: _I was not_--_I am not_--_mad_, and those who endeavoured to affirm that I was insane, did so to their shame, and, I also hope, to their sorrow.

"Nevertheless," it was said, "the princess is peculiar." Others, better informed, declared emphatically, "She is weak-minded."

Not that, thank Heaven!

My "expenditure," my "prodigality," my "debts," and "my relinquishing my interests and my will to my entourage" have all been objected to.

Let us briefly discuss these "peculiarities" and these "weaknesses."

It is perfectly true that at times I have been extravagant. I have said, and I still repeat, that this extravagance was a way of revenging myself for the constraints and pettiness of an oppressive avarice.

It is true, as I have also admitted, that, as in the natural order of events I thought I should inherit a considerable fortune, I have been weak in some things and I have not resisted certain temptations.

People talk of the fantastic sums of money which I have spent. I calculate that I have not disbursed ten millions of francs since 1897, the year when I made a bid for freedom. Higher figures have been given, but these are represented by the exaggerations of speculators and usurers sent by my enemies to help their case, and to bear witness of "follies" after having palmed off their worthless securities on me.

Everyone knows the edifying story of the German creditor who appeared before the Court at Brussels deputed to pay my debts out of the funds accruing to me from the inheritance of the King, and put in a claim for seven million marks, which was reduced to nothing after due inquiry and verification of what he had really advanced and received.

If I were to lower myself to write the story of the various manoeuvres against my independence, all with one object of placing me in such a position that I could neither live nor act, my readers would say: "It is impossible, she is romancing."

But the most unlikely romances are not those which are published. Life alone reveals them.

Reflect; I had to choose between slavery, imprisonment in a madhouse, or flight and, in consequence, an active defence of my personal rights.

I fled, and I have defended myself. But, in order to capture and break me, my allowance was reduced to a mere pittance, and, later, even the means of getting my daily bread were cut off.

I had lost the best of mothers; the King, deceived and irritated, but more politic than I in all that concerned me, placed appearances above the obligations of his conscience, and took no further interest in the cruel fate of his eldest daughter.

From the time of my incarceration my sisters and the rest of my family sided with the King. I saw myself forgotten by my relatives, who for years never came near me in the asylum.

_I was either mad or I was not mad._ To abandon me thus showed that I was not.

The Press at last became indignant at this neglect. Then my relatives came, but oh, very rarely! It was so painful, so embarrassing for them--but it was not embarrassing for me.

When I escaped, their pretended pity gave way to open anger....

It was necessary, however, for me to live and to make as much return as I could for services which had been rendered me. At last I was compelled to go to law--a new crime!

My crime did not consist in my rebellion against a husband and a marriage of convenience that had become impossible.... Have I been the first woman to be forced into matrimony?... My crime consisted in showing that deplorable spirit which the world rarely pardons--the fighting spirit, the spirit of resistance.

The world dislikes a woman who defends herself, and I admit the mystery of procedure and the devious ways of the law have always been beyond me, but a woman who defends herself resolutely, for the sake of principle, honour and right, this woman is detestable.... She wishes to prove herself in the right against established authority; she creates a scandal; she cries: "I am not mad!" She cries: "I have been robbed!" Why, such a woman is a public nuisance.

As a rule, well-bred people who are imprisoned and robbed do not make much noise about it. But in the case of the daughter of a king and the wife of a prince who objects to being thought either demented or a dupe, it is unforgivable of her to create a scandal. Had she done the right thing she would not have been talked about. She would still be in the shadow of the lime trees of the Court; and, as she wants to dabble in literature, she could have written a book about the glory of human justice in Belgium and elsewhere.

Many thanks! My conscience is still my own. I will not yield it up. I will die misunderstood, slandered and robbed, my last word will be a word of protest. That for which I have been reproached must be vindicated; I will make good. I have nothing to be ashamed of as regards my past "extravagances."

God be thanked that my "victims" have always been paid in full, and always to their own advantage.

I should consider myself dishonoured had I caused anyone to lose anything due to him, no matter how small the sum. I would rather have settled with the cheats than have disputed with them.

Having written so fully about my expenditure, let me now turn to the so-called surrender of my fortune and my will to my entourage.

Let none be deceived! Touching this, slander has always attacked one person alone, he to whom I have consecrated my life as he has vowed his life to me. His enemies have credited him with their own base motives. They did not want to see, and they denied that he was, by his greatness of soul, far above all miserable calculations of self-interest.

In vain he threw into the abyss all that he had, all that he was likely to possess. What sublime abnegation, stifled by hate beneath its hideous inventions!

Oh, noble friend, what has not the howling and monstrous beast of hatred said of you?

No doubt you, like myself, were unable to struggle against fraudulent financiers, deceitful men of law and treacherous friends. But to dare to insinuate that you have ever subjugated my will, misled my steps, falsified my acts--ah! it is more absurd than infamous.

I have, I always have had, a power of resistance capable of sacrificing everything to an ideal of honour and liberty, otherwise I should have been a mere doll, or a weathercock responsive to every breath.

Full of consciousness as regards the essentials of human dignity, I should then be unconsciousness personified for things of secondary importance.

Is not that foolish?

But let us leave this topic and throw a new light on the subject of the incredible attempts of a hatred which nothing could disarm up to that day when another justice, not that of man, overthrew thrones so unworthily occupied and delivered me from the persecutions of which I was the object.

On the eve of their fall the German and Austro-Hungarian monarchs still believed they could do as they liked with me. The wrongs I suffered are only one example of what they dared do. What crimes have they not committed which still lie hidden! And what corruption clings even to their memory!

The commencement of the intrigues which brought about my fall is known to the world.

I was at Nice with my daughter. Dora, who represented alike my hope and my consolation, was taken from me by her fiancé, who was in league with the Prince of Coburg, and who broke the solemn promise he had given me.

The prince instinctively felt that I intended to make my escape, and he knew that with me would also vanish his hopes of possessing my inheritance from the King of the Belgians.

"She might get a divorce," he thought to himself. "She might marry again."

I had thought of divorce. This might well have to come much later. But if I could not help freeing myself from a promise to a man who had destroyed the reasons which were the basis of the spoken vow, I hesitated about freeing myself from my vows to an invisible and silent God, who does not corrupt, deceive or persecute.

The indissolubility of marriage is one thing; the severance of the ties of the flesh is another. The longer I live the more I have become convinced that divorce is a scourge. We must have courage to admit that individual cases ought to be considered of no account, the interest of the community must alone be considered. The higher the value that is set on marriage the better will society become. The marriage tie has become something excessively fragile, and as a result society possesses no solidity. The Church is right. But who among us does not stumble, and which of us does not disregard the fact that Divine law is essentially a human law?

The count received at Nice the seconds of the Prince of Coburg, to whom the Court of Francis Joseph had relegated this duty. The duel brought the two adversaries face to face in the Cavalry Riding School at Vienna in February, 1898. The lieutenant fired twice in the air, and twice the general fired at the lieutenant. They were then handed swords. The lieutenant continued to treat the general with respect and touched him lightly on the right hand.

He thus added to the feelings of hatred which the prince already had towards him. Three weeks later he was implicated in that abominable story of the forged bills of exchange which was entirely an invention, and to which, later, the Reichsrath accorded full justice.

The impossible judgment which pretended to dishonour one of the most noble of men would never have been pronounced if I had been called as a witness.

But my enemies hastened to have me incarcerated. My evidence was suppressed and the count was condemned.

A man still lives, silent and hidden, who, if I reckon rightly, must be seventy-five years old. I write these lines hoping that he will be able to read them before he disappears finally from the world.

Now, when my memory invokes him, I see him standing at the threshold of the madhouse into which his hatred had caused me to be thrown, and I see him at the gate of the prison where he had caused Count Geza Mattachich to be confined. But I should like him to know that his victims have pardoned him. They could, to-day, demand satisfaction from Austrian justice, now freed from the constraints of former years. His victims will spare him. Let Him who will judge us all, judge this old man. I do not even know who were the instruments of his vengeance.

Not long since in Vienna a poor creature three-parts blind and with one foot in the grave was pointed out to me, and I heard the name of the Jewish lawyer, now repudiated by all that is estimable in Jewry in Austria, who was the agent, the instigator, and the counsellor of the implacable hatred which determined on my destruction.

I looked back at him thinking that this same personage, so stubborn in his system of police severity, and in his service of the abuse of power, had also armed the hand of the woman who killed my son....

And greatly moved, I asked myself:

"Have they understood?"

Yes, perhaps. Doubtless they are no longer what they were. Life must also have changed them.

Can they, without pain, remember yesterday?

To speak candidly, we fled in order to escape these enemies; I did not stop to think, and I believed that they could have ordered our arrest. I also believed the word of emissaries in the pay of the prince. We were then in France where I ran no risk. I wished to leave for England and implore the help and protection of Queen Victoria who had given me so many evidences of her affection.

My faithful lady-in-waiting, Comtesse Fugger, shared my fears and accompanied me in my hasty flight.

We had scarcely reached London when we received all sorts of mysterious hints from pretended friends. We must go back at once or the count and I would be lost. We therefore left London without any attempt on my part to rejoin the Queen, whom we had passed on our journey, as she had just left England for the south of France.

We were not of the stuff of which criminals are made. They are more callous. Hemmed in by our own too-credulous imagination, we then thought of taking refuge with the count's mother at the Château de Lobor.

No one has ever understood why, and how, I brought myself to go to Croatia, to the house of Countess Keglevich.

Her second husband, the stepfather of Count Geza Mattachich, was a member of the Chamber of the Hungarian Magnates, a Deputy and friend of the Vassals of Croatia. I felt convinced that nobody would dare to carry me off whilst under his roof.

Our adventure was by this time a public topic. The papers of every country referred to it. The duel was the culminating point of this terrible publicity. And, since calumny and its manoeuvres had not, as yet, had any effect, we were looked upon as romantic persons whose sincerity disarmed criticism and called forth feelings of sympathy.

When I think that since then I have been taxed with duplicity, I cannot help smiling. Few cases can be quoted of a more open existence than mine. I have never concealed from my friends what an exaction my life with my husband was to me, and when I was powerless, I never made any mystery of the help which I found in a chivalrous deliverer most providentially placed in my path.

But the world does not forgive those who will not wear a mask of duplicity, and who refuse to conceal the feelings of their heart.

So many people are compelled to hide their feelings. But we, but I ... truly, where is the crime?

I am quite prepared to die; I have no fear of the justice of God.

Strong in our common loyalty we were foolishly persuaded that in France, England, Germany and elsewhere we should be in danger; we had been warned that my husband's intention was to put me in an asylum--Gunther of Holstein had told me this, and had spoken of having me protected by his all-powerful brother-in-law.... What an unforgettable comedy! We arrived in Croatia feeling sure that under the Keglevich roof I should be safe.

The count confided me to his relatives for so long as it would take to obtain a separation from the Prince of Coburg. The talk died down. Public opinion was on my side, chiefly in Agram where the count and his family were regarded with affection. At Vienna even the inimical camarilla was disarmed. We were now only two creatures like so many others; the one bruised by her broken chains, the other willing to assist her. And this devotion perhaps, one day, would be sanctified by time.

Oh dreams! Oh hopes! We are your playthings. The awful reality rises up and rends us.

We had not foreseen the plot against us and what odious accusations would be levelled at the count.

Suddenly his stepfather, who was well known at Court and had influence in other directions, was separated from us. Apparently he had been told, in confidence, of the crime imputed to his stepson, and the accusation did its work.

This explanation of his change of manner is the most indulgent I can give.

The support of Count Keglevich thus failing us, the countess, torn between love of her son and her husband, was placed in a very delicate position, and our enemies had therefore a free field at Agram.

However, there were two parties; on our side were the students and the peasants, and against us were the police and the authorities.

Directly the count thought that we had the support of the students and the country people, he was afraid, and delivered us up. The prince's lawyer--this man whom I cannot name--was given full power. The Emperor consented to let him act as he thought best, and he had a pocket full of warrants.

I ought to say, on behalf of Francis Joseph, that he had been assured that the count wished to kill me. To which the Sovereign is said to have replied:

"I don't want a second Meyerling. Do what is necessary."

The prince and his hirelings were not lacking in inventive skill. Their measures were well taken and their plans well laid. A special train was kept in readiness at the station at Agram for the woman who was to be declared mad for reasons of State, and a cell in the military prison was prepared for the man who was to be _made_ a criminal in the eyes of the world.

All Austria knew this, as well as many other things.

A doctor (an official whom I had never seen), with my certificate of lunacy in readiness, was waiting for me at Agram by order of the police, together with a nurse from the Doebling Lunatic Asylum.

These people and a _posse_ of detectives lay in wait for a whole week. All depended on getting us to go into the town. They would not have dared to have arrested us at the Château of Lobor in the open country, where our defenders would have hastened to our succour in the twinkling of an eye.

The military authorities ordered the count to proceed to Agram, and being an officer on leave he was forced to obey.

We had a presentiment of some "coup." But our situation at the château had become awkward owing to the change of attitude of its owner, who had now left, taking Countess Keglevich with him. It seemed to us that nothing could be worse than this cruel estrangement. However, the count had to obey orders, so I, too, resolved to go to Agram. It was impossible for me to shun any danger that threatened him.

So we left. I went, with my devoted Countess Fugger, to the Hôtel Pruckner. The count went to the rooms retained for him, and I to mine. We arrived late at night.

In the morning, towards nine o'clock, when I was still in bed, the door of my room was forced open. The prince's lawyer entered, followed by men dressed and gloved in black--police officers in full dress. The doctor and the nurse from Doebling formed the background.

The special train was waiting with steam up in the station. Some hours later, without having a chance to collect myself, I was suddenly snatched from normal society and found myself in a cell at the Doebling Asylum on the outskirts of Vienna. By means of a grating in the door I could be constantly watched. The window was barred on the outside. I heard shouts and howls in the distance.

They had placed me in the part of the asylum reserved for those who were raving mad. I saw one patient who had been released for an airing running round a little sanded court, the walls of which were padded with mattresses. He was jumping and throwing himself about, uttering piercing shrieks.

I started back, horrified, covering my eyes and ears. I threw myself on my narrow bed and, sobbing bitterly, I tried to hide my head under the pillow and the bedclothes so as neither to hear nor see.

What might I not have become without the memory of the Queen and without the help of God? My faith sustained me and gave me the courage of martyrs.

Meanwhile at Agram, the count, also under arrest, was being told that by virtue of the Austrian Military Code of 1768 he was accused--by whom will soon appear--of having negotiated bills bearing the signatures of Princess Louise of Saxe-Coburg and the Archduchess Stéphanie.

I was to be declared mad, and he was to be proclaimed a forger!

The worst they did to me was nothing compared with what they brought against him.

Ah! this justice of the Court which revolution has since swept away! Ah! this code of an army, a slave to a throne and not the guardian of the country! What defiance of good sense at the dawn of the twentieth century!

And then we are astonished when the people rise!

The count was put in prison on the accusation of the same nameless individual who had interested himself as a police agent in my affairs. The Governor of Agram was under his orders. He believed the word--or appeared to do so--of this petty lawyer who stated that Count Geza Mattachich had forged my signature, and that of my sister Stéphanie, on bills which had already been nine months in the hands of the bill discounters of Vienna, who had suddenly (!) discovered the signatures to be forgeries.

My signature was in my own writing. This was why it was not advisable to allow me to speak.

My sister's signature was a forgery and added afterwards, but by whom and why?

It would have been most inadvisable to have allowed me to ask this. The count knew nothing about these bills and the use of the funds which they represented.

It would have been most inadvisable for me to have been on the scene. I was thoroughly well guarded.

The count, according to Austrian military justice, found himself in the presence of an _auditor_, a magistrate who was _accuser, defender and judge combined_.

All this may be deemed incredible. But there was worse to come. On December 22, 1898, the count was condemned to forfeit his rank and his title of nobility, and to undergo six years' cellular detention for having "swindled" about 600,000 florins from a "third person."

But on the preceding June 15, when the forged bills became due, the third person mentioned ... had been wholly reimbursed by the Prince of Coburg, who was entitled to act for me from the day I arrived at Doebling, and the count was lost. Yes, lost and for ever--at least so thought his executioner. But, although, thanks to zealous friends, the count had been able to obtain a declaration signed by the bill discounters attesting that they had no claims and that no harm had been done them by Count Geza Mattachich, this evidence was refused and held up by the _auditor_. It was not even on the register.

And the abominable judgment pretended to make the count, this gentleman amongst gentlemen, a forger and a thief, although he was innocent and everyone knew his innocence.

But I am dwelling on infamies which it is superfluous to recall. It is well known that the judgment was quashed four years later by the Reichsrath, thanks to the indignant Socialist party.[1] The count has been avenged from the height of the parliamentary tribunal, and the sort of justice that dishonoured the Austrian Army has ceased to exist, and has been swallowed up in the ruins of a Monarchy and a Court which was too long a criminal one.

[1]: Extract from the proceedings of the sitting of the Reichsrath, held on April 17, 1902. Speech by the Deputy Daszynski:

"Gentlemen, the second judgment which has been pronounced following the demand for the revision of the first trial has admitted that Monsieur Mattachich has not forged any one of the signatures!

"This verdict of the superior military tribunal is of great importance in the whole of this affair. For, gentlemen, if the superior Military Court had simply rejected the appeal we might still believe that Geza Mattachich had forged the two signatures. But, since Mattachich has wronged no one, since the usurers have recovered the money together with a high rate of interest, totalling several hundreds of thousands of florins, on the very day the bills fell due, since out of all this money not a farthing has found its way into the pocket of Mattachich, a matter which, in fact, has not been raised against him, we have the right to ask ourselves what interest Mattachich-Keglevich would have--apart from admitting a singular taste for perversity on his part--to corroborate by a forged signature the bills of the Princess of Coburg which were recognized as good?

"And now, gentlemen, if we put the question _qui prodest_? We will reply certainly not Mattachich-Keglevich, for that would have no other result than that of sending him to the penitentiary of Moellersdorf--but good for moneylenders. It was of the greatest advantage to them that a forged signature should be added to a real one, for it is a fact well known to usurers that a forged signature is worth more than an authentic one, and I will tell you why.

"With an authentic signature the husband who is obliged to honour this sort of debt can say: 'I consent to pay the principal but not the excessive interest.' It is thus that the Prince of Coburg has paid in many instances. But this time the usurers replied: 'No; thanks to the forgery, we are in a position to cause a scene--to threaten: we have in our hands a weapon directed against the Prince of Coburg and against the Court circles.'

"Gentlemen, I have sufficiently proved to you that the second judgment put the affair on a different footing, and threw quite a new light on the subject. Taking advantage of this fact, Mattachich appealed to the Court of Sovereign Appeal, and that tribunal has decided, that after the examination of the procedure they had cause to confirm the second judgment and to reject the appeal of the condemned man.

"At the same time, gentlemen, numerous facts have accumulated which clearly prove the innocence of Mattachich. Notably, a letter has been produced which was equally forged, and which indicated to the judges the line to follow.

"This document was a letter written in German addressed to Leopold II, King of the Belgians. It has been superabundantly proved to be fictitious. It had not been written in the interests of Mattachich but in those of the moneylenders. And those who had committed this forgery were much more in the company of usurers than in that of Mattachich.

"For the question is not one, gentlemen, of simple moneylenders. Our business is not with 'Directors of a house of Commission,' as they call them in the judgments, but with artful business men who lend money to various persons of the Court at a totally usurious rate of interest, and to whom the signatures of these persons, notably of the widowed Hereditary Princess Stéphanie, are perfectly well known.

"Very well! I tell you, gentlemen, if I cannot put before you all the elements of the _procès_, I rely here, not only on vague presumptions but on the depositions of witnesses, on absolutely incontestable affirmations which prove that Mattachich-Keglevich, who languished for four years in a penitentiary, is an innocent man.

"Eight days before his arrest they consented to recognize, by notarial deed, that they had given him every 'opportunity to flee' ('Hear, hear!') on condition that he should abandon the Princess Louise.

"Gentlemen, one does not propose to assure a man like Mattachich-Keglevich by notarial deed of his freedom to depart to a foreign land. These people simply wished to rid themselves of him, they wished to glut the vengeance of the husband prince, and it is on this account that judicial military murder has been accomplished. And, if that did not suffice, by order of the Count Thun, then President of the Council, Princess Louise was banished, like an unfortunate stranger, from the territory of kingdoms and of countries represented in the Reichsrath, despite the fact that she was the wife of an Austrian general. ('Hear, hear!') Yes, gentlemen, we are now going to make this fact public; read to-morrow in the report of the sitting, my interpellation on this subject, and you will then find the dates and all the relative details. Yes, gentlemen, in the interest of certain exalted personages who possess much wealth, certain things take place that could never happen if we were a truly Constitutional State. ('Very true!')

"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."