Princess of Belgium Louise

“ The Belgian people, left to themselves, would have known better how to act, and how to honour the memory of Leopold II, but this duty was delegated to those who, to this day, have wilfully and lamentably failed.
Let us consider Belgium as a human being, endowed with honour and reason, and jealous of the judgment of history and the esteem of the world; mistress of millions of Congolese and of other millions of colonial treasure. As a reasoning being, would she have considered herself free from all obligations towards the unfortunate children of the giver of these gifts? ”

“ I am not, I am sure, the first woman who after having lived in the clouds during her engagement, has been as suddenly hurled to the ground on her marriage night, and who, bruised and mangled in her soul, has fled from humanity in tears.
I am not the first woman who has been the victim of false modesty and excessive reserve, attributable perhaps to the hope that the delicacy of a husband, combined with natural instincts, would arrange all for her, but who was told nothing by her mother of what happens when the lover's hour has struck. ”

“ God was always present in my thoughts even when I believed myself forgotten by man.
I have had, like every creature who has been crushed by false witness, my hours of doubt and despair. The grievance against me at the Coburg Palace and in Vienna was that I would not conform to the outward practice of religion after I had seen all its double-facedness and mock devotion. I often refused to go to the chapel and accept as fitting the outward piety which to me was sacrilege. I went to seek God and the Holy Virgin in some solitary and humble church far from the Hofburg and my palace. ”

“ But the influence of the Queen's memory sometimes restrains me and keeps me silent out of Christian charity.
Immovable in the convictions of my conscience and outwardly reserved, I am, nevertheless, a woman of contradictions. When I am forced to act I invariably rush to extremes. Soul extremes always result from contrasts, just as the thunder of heaven results from the meeting of two storm clouds. In me the storm is suppressed. I surprise people more than anything else by my customary attitude of not being able to foresee the decision which carries me away. ”

“ The Queen was overjoyed at the thought that I was to make my home in Austria and Hungary, whence she had herself come, and where I should remember her, and at the same time further my country's glory and the King's ambitions.
I have been sacrificed for the good of Belgium, and Belgium now includes Belgians who reproach me for the gift of my youth and happiness essentially destined for their benefit! Belgians to-day regard me as a German, a Hungarian—a foreigner—and worse even than that! Alas for human gratitude! ”

“ I know that the good people of Belgium have reproached me, as if it had been my fault, for deserting our country. Those who knew me in my youth have believed that I was transplanted to a strange and brilliant world where I forgot my native land. Then the dramas and scandals into which I was dragged on the hurdle of misunderstanding and calumny, have for some transformed me into a sinner, for whom it was not enough punishment to forbid her to see her dying mother by keeping her as a sane prisoner in a madhouse. Such a woman deserved to be wiped off the face of the earth! ”

“ The justice of the gods is always that of God. The Court of Vienna was destined to perish horribly. It had betrayed everything; first of all its traditions, for nothing noble remained—even its intrigues were base. It was only a servants' hall for the valets from Berlin. And after Francis Joseph appeared at the famous Eucharistic Congress on the eve of the war, and stood before the altar as Prince of the Faith, he went to finish the dull day at the house of Madame Schratt, and listen to the backstairs gossip of Vienna and the unsavoury reports of the police news! ”

“ The most interesting place of all others to me in my childhood was the Château of Laeken. I have no agreeable memories of the Palace at Brussels, although I have not forgotten the gallery and the reception rooms, where the many beautiful pictures always interested me, above all that of Charles Iy, by Van Dyck, dressed in black, in whose pale and noble face I seemed to read the melancholy fate which overshadows some doomed monarchs.
I have seen many princely and many royal abodes. They all resemble museums, and they are equally fatiguing. ”

“ Dramas, plots, intrigues, treason follow each other—I struggle against them without triumphing. It is the work of my outward self. I may appear to fail, but my inner self turns away disgusted from the mud.
I was not made to conquer in the fray of human conflicts in a sphere which is, perhaps, that of creatures predestined to show that the real condition of man is not here below. The society that he extols, the civilization that he admires, are but the poor and fragile conceptions of his illusion of earthly sovereignty, and they will only bring misfortune to him if he lives for them alone. ”

“ But I wish to say at once, because I am certain of it, Germany is what Imperial Prussia has made her, and would again make of her.
The victim of her confidence and candour, she accepted as gospel all that her Sovereign, the heir of victorious ancestors, declared, professed and taught her.
It is harder to inherit a kingdom than people think, and I say this without irony. William II was not human like his grandfather, who cried out when he saw the sacrifice of the cuirassiers of Reisdroffen: "Ah, my brave men!" ”

“ 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. ”

“ My Sufferings during the War
I was at Vienna when war was declared, and until actual hostilities commenced I could hardly believe such a thing was possible. The idea that the Emperor Francis Joseph, already with one foot in the grave, contemplated appearing as a combatant, after invariably suffering defeat, seemed sheer madness to me. It is true that a camarilla, acting under orders from Berlin, used the weakly old man as a tool. But that Berlin really wished to embark on a war which could not fail to cause a universal conflagration was incredible. It was worse than madness—it was a crime. ”

“ Rudolph often remarked: "I shall never reign; he will not allow me to reign."
And if he had reigned?
Ah, if he had reigned! I knew all his plans and his ideas. Of these, I will only say, modernity did not frighten him. The most daring modern idea would have been acceptable to him. He had already destroyed, in imagination, the worn-out machinery of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. But, like pieces of invisible armour held together by expanding links, the constraints, the formulas, the archaic ideas, the ignorance and the disillusions from which he was always wishing to escape, closed in on him. ”

“ Honours are often without honour, however high they may seem to be. Save for rare exceptions, fortune and power only develop in us the appetite for pleasure and urge us to depravity. Those whom La Bruyère calls "the Great" easily lose the knowledge of human conditions. Life is to them no longer the mysterious proof of the existence of a soul which will be eventually rewarded or punished according to its deserts. Religion seems to them only a mask or an instrument. ”

“ I owe this spirit of confidence to the lessons I learnt in my infancy, chiefly from those taught me by the Queen, my mother. "Always endeavour to be a Christian," she used to say. I could not understand the import of these words when I was a child, but the misfortunes of my life have helped to explain them.
Stirred into revolt by humanity in so many ways, I have now submitted myself to a Superior Will, and I know the happiness of not hating my enemies. Pardon has always followed my rebellion. ”

“ Life gradually became more and more difficult. Austria and Hungary were no longer the victims of illusion. Enlightened by the knowledge of defeat, they cursed Berlin as the author of their misfortunes. Budapest was in a state of ferment.
All at once everything collapsed. The wind of Bolshevism swept furiously over the Dual Monarchy. I now became familiar with the commissaries and soldiers of the Revolution. I experienced visits of inspection, perquisitions, interrogations. But suddenly my misfortunes disarmed even the savage leaders of Hungarian Communism. ”

“ The Emperor's brother, the Archduke Louis Victor, was the instigator of the hatred of which I was the victim. This man was later to know the tortures of a dishonourable exile, and he died dishonoured. God has punished him. I have seen His might strike this guilty man, who started the persecutions from which I had to suffer.
For many years he laid his devotion at my feet. All Vienna knew it; the Emperor included, and he better than most people, because scandal was his daily bread. ”

“ What could I do, alone in my madhouse, deprived of help and liberty?
But I guessed the plots which were hatched at Brussels, and what support my enemies had obtained in order to triumph over a poor tortured woman. I saw my only chance of salvation by the side of the unfortunate man who was enduring martyrdom in the penitentiary of Moellersdorf, for having endeavoured to save me from an earthly hell and its dishonouring abysses.
Perhaps our mutual fidelity may astonish some people. Few really understand that, for certain natures, suffering constitutes a common bond. ”

“ 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. ”

“ On the contrary, I should have much liked to respond to the affection they offered me, and to have entered those Belgian homes that I knew to be so hospitable. Ah! what happiness not to have been born a king's daughter! One could then speak freely to fellow-creatures who merited sympathy; but a princess cannot do as she pleases.
With my entourage I am sometimes as open and expansive as I am silent and reserved with strangers. I mistrust fresh faces, and in no circumstances do I ever indulge in gossip. I much prefer the conversation of men who know something, to that of women who know nothing. ”

“ My real crime has consisted in my effort to get my own property, in waiting for a fortune which I have not handled.
The world only admires the victorious, no matter by what means they achieve victory.
I have been a victim ever since my girlish feet were led into devious paths; I have always suffered defeat.
When the battle was over I did not ask pardon of untruth, injury, theft, or persecution.
I might have been alone, I might have fallen under the burden of infamy and violence. But I would not yield because I was not fighting for myself alone. ”