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Updated: May 27, 2025
"Just then poor Carlotta d'Altenstein, a widow without friends, my dear companion, was seized with her mortal illness, and then I saw my scheme complete before me. "By the lavish use of money, of which I had more than I needed by far, for my father's private fortune invested in Europe was very great, I contrived that I should change places with the Baroness d'Altenstein.
"Poor fool that I was, he bent me to his will within a week, and he had no greater advocate for his cause than the Baroness d'Altenstein, my lady, though, poor soul, she only meant me well. But she was romantic, and had not long been married to a man she loved, a courtier from the country of the Dolphbergs; she had spent her honeymoon in their capital, and was an advocate for love at any price.
"By the aid of Don Juan and the Baroness d'Altenstein, who was broken down with grief at the course affairs had taken, my condition was concealed, and arrangements were made for my accouchement under circumstances of the greatest secrecy. Don Juan had abandoned all hope from the outset of legitimatising the child; his one object was to conceal my shame. This he succeeded in doing.
He forced me at the end of the few days' honeymoon to return to the Court, and then from that time forth I saw him only surreptitiously with the aid of d'Altenstein, who was the aider and abettor of it all, yet loving me, and working only, as she thought, poor soul, for my happiness. "I was soon undeceived in my Prince.
"To the public it was I who was ill; to the world at large, even to Don Juan, it was I who died. It was then that, passing as the Baroness d'Altenstein in England as plain Mrs. Carlotta Altenstein I went to the city of Bath, which had been recommended, and also offered certain devotional advantages to me, for I intended to give the remainder of my life to religion and the poor.
"I know not how it came about, but I found myself sitting on a seat in that secluded corner of my garden with the Prince beside me with his arms around me, whilst my lady-in-waiting, the Baroness d'Altenstein, had discreetly wandered off out of earshot, but still with a keen eye that no one should disturb us. "I never can account for it, I never can understand how it was I listened to him.
"For years I lived in one of the fairest cities of Europe with my faithful d'Altenstein, and for those years the Duke Waldemar left me in peace, being, I suppose, occupied in some other villainy. "But suddenly he commenced his importunities again, and made one dastardly attempt, through others, to steal the safe from the bankers' vaults in which it lay, but this was frustrated.
I was dethroned, and with one single faithful companion, the Baroness d'Altenstein, fled to Europe in the warship of a friendly nation. "But before the storm burst I had sent to Europe the steel safe and its precious contents, the diamonds. "For some reasons, I have many times since wished that it had sunk to the bottom of the Atlantic.
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