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:

"Am I a kennel-dog in the estimation of the Bastard of England?" cried
Mary of Scots, when Queen Elizabeth refused her safe-conduct through
England upon her departure from France (Summer 1561).]

CHAPTER LVI

I AM DETERMINED TO DO AS I PLEASE

I reject mother's tearful reproaches--I beard Prince George in his
lair despite whining chamberlains--I tell him what I think of him,
and he becomes frightened--Threatens madhouse--"I dare you to steal
my children"--I win my point--and the children--"Her Imperial
Highness regrets"--Lots of forbidden literature--Precautions against
intriguing Grand Mistress--The affair with Henry--was it a
flower-covered pit to entrap me?--Castle Stolpen and some of its
awful history.

DRESDEN, _November