Chapter VI: Part II: I (1)

“I wish I had been born in Oshkosh or Massachusetts,” said the Archduchess, with innocent humor.

“What have you been doing with yourself?” asked Alexandra. “Your letters were long enough, but they seemed to say less than usual.”

The Archduchess Ranata Theresia took her friend by the arm and led her to the window. The fine lace which covered it, woven with the double eagle of the House of Hapsburg, concealed every detail of the room from the curious below, but was a mere veil to those behind it.

“Oh, I know this prospect!” exclaimed the American girl.

The private apartments of the Hofburg look down upon the Franzensplatz, an oblong court-yard of inconsiderable size, surrounded by flat and dingy walls, its bare surface relieved only by a bronze Hapsburg leaning upon all the virtues he knew not in life. Opposite is the guard-room. In the court-yard to-day were a few tourists staring at the bronze or the remains of the moat and the gilded armorial bearings on the eastern side. All sorts and conditions of people, from peasants with their market-baskets to the hurrying bourgeois and the member of Parliament, took the short cut through the Palace court-yards, while private carriages, with servants in mediæval liveries, and rickety cabs, driven by reckless shouting _kutschers_, awoke the hollow echoes of the deep portals, and clattered across the platz. From two of the upper windows housemaids were shaking rugs, and the only ornaments of the dreary scene were the tall well-built house-guards, who, lackeys as they were, carried their all-round horse-hair plumes and glittering uniforms with the elegance and distinction so indiscriminately lavished by Nature upon the Austrian race.

“I know this scene!” repeated Alexandra. “And I usually turn my back upon it. Why--why--doesn’t the Emperor have the private apartments on the Heldenplatz, where at least you might see trees and the tops of the buildings on the Ringstrasse? This would drive some people melancholy mad. You have not been standing at this window ever since I left you, I hope? Trotting solemnly round the riding-school is better than that. But you seem to have been in Vienna more than usual this year. I congratulated myself that this was the year I was detained in New York.”

“That is brutal! I have only left this prison for two months at Ischl. Between the fire at Schönbrunn and various political reasons, we have been here since you left--now eight months ago! And as you are my only real companion--! I do sometimes wish I had been born an American.”

“There is an asylum in America whenever you make up your mind to run. I have a handsome determined and adventurous brother--he has heard of you! You have only to say the word and his yacht will be in the Adriatic.”

“Don’t talk romantic nonsense. I’m not up to it.”

The Archduchess turned her back on the window and sat down before a table in an upright chair. Alexandra took a rocking-chair--one of three she had long since presented to the Hofburg, that she might always be sure of a comfortable seat. Ranata had no idea whatever of comfort. Her morning bath was supplied by a procession of servants bringing the necessary amount of water in ewers--she had never seen water gush from pipes except into a fountain, and she privately believed that rocking-chairs were a relic of the North American Indian. But if her apartments were as high and angular and unhomelike as those of most royal palaces, she had a decided love of splendor, and originality enough to avoid crimson and white-and-gold. The morbid virginal face of young Ludvig von Bayern looked down from the wall opposite the windows of her salon, and although she made sport of his vanity, she gave the portrait a place for the sake of its beauty, and approved of one form his madness had taken. The walls and windows of her salon were panelled with blue velvet lightly embroidered with gold. The tables, most of the ornaments, several chairs, and even the window-seats were made from blocks of _lapis lazuli_. On one side of the lofty room were her books--English, German, French, and Hungarian--bound in flexible blue-and-white morocco, an unconscious tribute perhaps to her humbler Bavarian blood. Scattered among the embroideries on the walls were many miniatures. In the small writing-room adjoining was a large desk of gilt and _lapis lazuli_, with furnishings of gold and blue vellum. In this little room was one picture only, a small painting of Rudolf in the costume of the Transylvanian sportsman. The frame of this picture was eternally hidden under a wreath of green or flowers.

The walls of her bedroom and breakfast-room were panelled with the Gobelins of which the Hapsburgs have the monopoly in abundance and splendor. Her ancient narrow bed, surmounted by the insignia of her house clutching at a mass of yellow brocade and lace, was high on a dais. Alexandra declared that it looked like a catafalque, and was haunted with the _ennuis_ and miseries of a hundred princesses long since forgotten. When Ranata, sleepless and in want of sympathy, demanded companionship, she was forced to transfer her imperial person into the enamelled and inlaid but wide and modern bed of her American friend, who did what she could to banish ghosts. Alexandra had diplomatically refurnished her apartments by degrees, until now they were those of a young American who, while extravagant and luxurious, was studious of music and books and a devotee of light and air. Ranata never felt at home in them, but they exercised over her a certain fascination, for they breathed the freedom of their owner’s personality.

“I am told,” continued the Archduchess, still with an inflection of bitterness, “that there are people who envy royalty!”

“That is your safeguard--the glamour. It is that blinding halo more than any other cause that has made this country rise serenely after six crushing defeats in one century. The Lord’s anointed--genial yet remote--afflicted beyond all men, yet carefully preserved to his state and people--alive yet dead--kind and just yet--”

She paused abruptly, for although Ranata was at times extravagantly informal and confidential with the one friend to whom her rank meant nothing, Alexandra, with all her audacity, never ventured beyond a certain point. There were moments when Ranata’s ancestors rose in her soul and peremptorily ordered up the drawbridge which the lonely princess loved to fling recklessly at the feet of her American friend; to taste the sweets of girlish intercourse, unrestrained by the fear of imperilling her royal dignity or untainted by the suspicion of self-interest. There was no honor that the House of Hapsburg could bestow upon the American, and Ranata knew that court life was too old a story to offer any further attractions to Alexandra. If the Archduchess had not been fully aware that the Austrian Court was the dullest in Europe, Alexandra would have enlightened her: her lively friend could rehearse every word that would be uttered at a function, the tidbits of scandal that would be murmured at royal dinners after the terrible interval of no conversation whatever. But for Ranata she cherished a deep and almost romantic affection, and believed her existence to be the most tragic in the world. Had it been possible--and it was a possibility of which she never despaired--she would have carried her off to New York; but for the present she spent six months of every year in Austria, and sowed seeds of which the Emperor and his court knew nothing; for outside the privacy of these rooms she was more European than American. Although she was now accepted as a matter of course, for several years the haughtiest and most exclusive people on earth had tolerated her with ill-concealed resentment, by no means unexaggerated by jealousy; and Alexandra, feeling that the pride of her country was involved, to say nothing of her own comfort, had succeeded in obliterating all trace of the alien. Only an American can imagine the force of the reaction. And this morning, returning after a long absence to find her friend more than ever in need of the diversion she knew so well how to provide, she was forced to pause suddenly and bite her lip. But Ranata’s ancestors were slumbering, and the atmosphere of freedom came subtly to her nostrils.

“If possible, my father is more of a machine than ever,” she remarked dryly. “I sometimes think that his very remarks to me at dinner--I see less and less of him anywhere else--are dictated by his ministers. I don’t blame him, poor man, for being afraid to love anybody again. If he wants to be a machine, I should be the last to deny him, and I really believe that he now feels nothing, and is a mere automaton from four in the morning until he goes to sleep peacefully at nine in the evening. I wish I were a machine myself. It must be the only refuge this side the grave. But the stupid physical fact is that my nerve-cells are still stronger than my fibrous tissue, and I must wait thirty years or so for Nature to do her work.”

“Your afflictions have been shocking, poor dear--”

“I am not thinking of my afflictions. No one experienced in sorrow will ever whine. It is the future I am thinking of--to say nothing of the present. I am twenty-eight. Except when you are here I am utterly without companionship, unless, to be sure, when I am in the country on a horse. Here in Vienna, as you know, I rarely leave the Hofburg--leave these rooms only for the riding-school or some other part of the palace; for my father--or his ministers--seems to dislike more and more the attention I attract whenever I show myself abroad--”

She paused abruptly and gave a curious sidelong glance at her friend.

“You have been thinking of matrimony!” exclaimed Alexandra.

“Yes--twice during the past year. I have been almost tempted to consider it--almost, but not quite. The change would be too temporary. If there is one thing that must surpass the eternal boredom of unmarried royal women, it is putting up with a wired automaton and bearing his sickly children. And liberty! Now, at least, I can lock these doors, and even my father would not force them, and my ladies are only too glad to be relieved of my society. But perhaps I have spoken too strongly. In solitude I have found much happiness. I can dream and dream, and forget that not the least of my dreams can ever come true.”

She had spoken flippantly, quite brutally, but she finished with an accent of profound sadness.

“You will become morbid if you are not careful,” said Miss Abbott seriously. “Only the deliberately cultivated reasonableness with which you have accepted this deadly--and ridiculous--life of yours, and the superhuman control you have acquired over your natural impatience and impulsiveness, have saved you so far. But thirty is a dangerous age. I am beginning to feel it myself--wasted emotions, opportunities, passing youth--all that sort of thing. You, my dear, grow more beautiful every day, and your beauty has done you so little good! Gasps and murmurs as you trail down between the tapestries of the Great Hall of Ceremonies in the most gorgeous white gowns ever seen, or ride once a year or so in the Prater!” She paused a moment, and then added deliberately: “Why not cut it? It is incongruous and monstrous to see the most intelligent women in Europe cramped in a three-by-six cage like one of Louis XI.’s victims. What keeps you? Nothing but the silliest superstition in the world to-day, drivelling out its precarious existence. You have your own money. My father can double and treble it. My step-mother would preserve you from all scandal. You could exercise your gifts and have a career, or marry and be happy. Come along--don’t be an idiot.”

“There is just one thing you never can understand. I know you think we are fatuous, if not mad, to believe ourselves heaven-born, divinely appointed; but here we are, we have our inherited duties, and here we must remain. Ourselves are the last we are permitted to consider from our coming to our going. We come into this world with a birthright of obligations to millions of people whose ancestors permitted us first to mount the throne--in our case eight centuries ago! We Hapsburgs have been threatened with annihilation, we have lost much that was precious, the German Empire overshadows and threatens us, and God knows what will happen when my father dies. But although our star has often turned black, it has never gone out. It has a way of flashing up from its embers and disconcerting Europe that suggests eternal fires--if they are carefully watched. And it is the hearth fires that need watching. William’s ambitions will come to nothing if our people stand firm. I have no illusion regarding the real danger. So long as my father lives we are safe against the worst that revolutionists can do. But Rudolf is dead! Both Austria and Hungary detest the Heir, that cold bigot, who has never a smile for the people. And court life will cease when he comes to the throne, for it is not likely he will divorce that woman and marry a princess. Only the most watchful care can save us. The Hungarians are straining at the bit all the time, and the moment disintegration begins William will find some pretext to march in. He will lose no more time than Frederick lost when he saw a woman ascend a tottering throne. Although I am permitted to take no part in politics, I still have a rôle to play which is of almost as much importance to my country as my father’s. One of my obligations is to make the world believe that a princess is above ordinary temptations and weaknesses--a tradition which the Hapsburgs have done more than any royal house to obliterate--and that makes my personal duty the more obvious. Another thing, as you know--to the world I am not even the individual. During these last ten years my study has been to persuade my father’s people that I am the conventional, safely stupid, and normal princess, to make them forget my mother’s supposed gift to this House. If I should do what you propose, Austria would either assume that I was as mad as Ludvig and Otto, or, were they convinced that I had a better brain than my sort, they would accept my act as a deliberate insult to the monarchical idea. In either case I should loosen one more stone in these rotting foundations of ours. Marriage out of class, elopement, a whispered intrigue--they are accustomed to all! But a deliberate renunciation, based on non-sentimental grounds, a flight to America--that would be the new thing with a vengeance, and it is only the innovation that tells. Oh, if Rudolf had lived. If Rudolf--Rudolf--”

She pushed back her chair violently, banished the seriousness from her face.

“Enough of this infliction. I have opened the safety-valves and feel better. Come, show me your new frocks. Are they finer than mine? What have you brought me from New York? And the bonbons! the bonbons! Do you know where we go two weeks from to-day? To Hungary, for the autumn manœuvres. I am so glad! I have not been to Budapest since I was a child. I long to go. I love Hungary. It dares to rebel, and sometimes it gets what it wants. And our dear cousin Willy is to be our guest. He’s bound to come with a sensation up his sleeve. Sometimes I regret that I was not old enough to marry him, for although I fear and sometimes hate him, life with him might have been interesting, for he at least is a man.”

II

When Alexandra was twelve years old Mrs. Abbott had taken her to Vienna to consult a famous surgeon for a threatened deformity. He had commanded that the child be left under his care for at least five years, and Mrs. Abbott, whose devotion to her husband amounted to a mannerism, left her with an old friend, a Hungarian, whose infinite quarterings made her one of that small band so closely allied with the court that they have never learned to snub, since nobody has ever dared to take a liberty with them. This lady, who had married one of the Princes Windischgrätz had formed a friendship with Mrs. Abbott in her impulsive youth when the American’s father had been minister to Austria, renewing it when she returned as the wife of a secretary of Legation. The young husband had died in Vienna, and the Princess had shown a sincere and spontaneous sympathy which cemented their friendship into an intimacy where each might dare to accept a favor from the other. She also extravagantly admired the American’s toilettes, having a natural and exquisite taste, and rebelling at the frequent necessity to wear an old gown, soiled and frayed, perhaps, under her load of family jewels. After her friend married the chieftain of millions, she visited her in New York and Newport, and was deeply impressed with a style of living far more comfortable and luxurious than anything in Europe, and quite as magnificent. Immobile to a world whose existence she barely admitted, with her own class she was simple and natural; and Mrs. Abbott having acquired the same tactics in an early experience of European courts, there was no marked external difference between these two exalted dames, and much in common. The friendship never waned, for Mrs. Abbott was frequently in Europe, and was the first American to dress in Vienna; when, therefore, she was for once in a way confronted with a serious problem, the Princess came gallantly to the rescue, and Alexandra for three years lived in a palace immense and chilly, but as full of old furniture and pictures as a museum, and often of gay Hungarian relatives who played high and slept late.

The “Princess Sarolta,” as she was known to the elect, was a woman of much heart and cynicism, of strong loves and stronger hates. Without children of her own, one of the deepest affections of her life had been for the Archduke Rudolf. Her pet aversion had been the Empress, whom she denounced as a mixture of the country girl and the mystic, wholly unfit to wear a crown. She never forgave her for being, not von Bayern, but in Bayern; and when, in addition to the comparative insignificance of her birth, the sweet and gentle but shy and unhappy Empress treated a throne with contumely and sought the consolations of the inner life, the Princess became her most contemptuous enemy.

To Ranata the Princess transferred the affection she had given to Rudolf, although it was unmixed with the enthusiasm inspired by the brilliant if reckless hope of a house to which she was loyally devoted. When Alexandra was left on her hands Rudolf was still alive, but she was much interested in the rebellious little Archduchess, who in looks and temperament was unlike her mother or any of the recent Hapsburg women; and partly out of sympathy, partly because it pleased her to do one original thing in her life, she brought the two children together on all their holidays.

They promptly gave to each other their hoarded stores of affection. Alexandra, lively, fearless, without awe of rank, yet with too much inherited and inculcated taste to take the wrong sort of liberty with the humblest of her friends, seemed in the nature of a divine gift to a princess who was never permitted to forget her rank by the children of the court circle. These little girls came, when invited, with phrases and sentiments carefully drilled, their small minds already agitated by the possibility of future favors. They bored and exasperated their intelligent, if imperious and highly strung, hostess; the more so that her courtesy must be unwavering, lest she remind them of their inferiority in rank. But Alexandra slapped her when she was angry, and hugged her when the tide of her young and ardent affections rose, indulged in ribald merriment at the rigid Spanish etiquette of the court, the chill magnificence of the ceremonial rooms, of the army of splendid guards and chamberlains and lackeys, and the many other inconsistencies with the daily democracy of the court-yards and the general external dinginess and internal discomfort of the wealthiest house in Europe. But to the Emperor she accorded an unwavering respect, and she always amused him. When, after the terrible loss of his only son--a tragedy which practically banished his wife from his homes--Ranata was first ill, then melancholy, clinging to her chosen friend day and night, he had given his indifferent consent to the American remaining in the Hofburg until his daughter could live without her. That time had not yet arrived, and although the incongruity of an American inmate of the Hofburg sometimes entered the carefully occupied brain of a monarch whose traditions would not permit him to receive the bourgeoise wife of the greatest of his subjects, and bade him ignore the distinguished in art and letters, yet was he so grateful for any cause that might lessen the problem of his youngest born that he deferred indefinitely a half-cherished protest. He believed Alexandra’s influence to be wholesome, and he dreaded the scene which he knew must follow any attempt to reduce the friendship to a more formal footing; Ranata had pounded shrieking on his door more than once.

So the years had passed, the children had played and studied together, and been satisfied with their lot, and no specific excuse had ever arrived to interfere with an arrangement to which even the Emperor became too accustomed in time to question.

After Alexandra’s physical trouble was over, Mr. Abbott had insisted that she spend her summers on his Hudson River estate, where he could see her daily, make sure she passed the greater part of her time out of doors, and preserved her Americanism. He had no objection to her close friendship with the Hapsburg, for he had a far-seeing eye, moreover fully appreciated the education she would have under the royal tutors, the simple food and habits, and, not of the least importance to this erratic American father, the strict discipline to which the heiress of many millions would be subjected. But he invariably informed her, every year when he escorted her to the steamer, that the first time she returned with any “airs,” any reduction in the sum of her Americanism, that would be the last she would see of her beloved Ranata. Doubtless the advice was salutary, as all advice is; but Alexandra from the first had perceived the advantage her Americanism gave her over the born subjects of royalty. Not only did her national exemption from the courtier’s deference and her unconscious indifference to future favors exercise a wild and picturesque charm, but her exciting yarns of Western adventure, spun for the most part out of a fertile imagination, her astonishing games, labelled “American,” won her the unswerving admiration of Ranata and almost conquered the jealousies of the other little girls. As she grew older she became fully aware that her influence over the Archduchess, aside from the deep mutual affection, lay in her fine careless independence and her utter unlikeness to anything in Europe.

The influence of the girls on each other was of mutual benefit. The deep serious nature of the Archduchess, with her centuries of storied impressions, her lofty sense of duty, even in her most rebellious moments, did much to remodel the lighter nature, the slenderer mental and ethical equipment of the American girl. On the other hand, the absolutely fearless outlook of Alexandra, her unswerving American point of view and republican ideal, combined, as she grew older, with a close knowledge of European politics, her habit of thinking for herself, her mere tolerance of Old World standards and traditions, her eager interest in new thoughts and movements, early awakened emulation in the brilliant Austrian, made her eager to lengthen her vision, to comprehend the thought of the more sensible of the liberated women out in the world; finally taught her to project herself beyond the royal horizon, to feel and to know how it was with humanity in its multitudes.

Alexandra watched the two personalities in her friend grow and flourish coincidently; the one uncompromising, traditional, bigotedly loyal to her house and condition; the other tragically human, womanly, broad, generous, passionate, sympathizing with the masses in their struggle for happiness.

As Ranata grew older, the two women in her held many an excited controversy; there were hours of profound depression, discouragement, rebellion, abhorrence of the royal tread-mill, and a wild pagan love of mere existence. Encouraged by Alexandra, she had taken an early stand against matrimony. Twice, however, she had submitted to her father’s wishes, and permitted herself to be affianced; but one of her princes dying before the wedding-day and the other disgracing himself, she announced that she had now done all that could be expected of her, and should be permitted to remain single. The Emperor acknowledged the justice of her argument and bided his time. Of his daughter’s intense inner life he knew nothing, but he recognized that he had an individual, not a mere princess, on his hands, and he humored her as far as was in his power and consistent with her conspicuous position. Liberty beyond palace walls or royal enclosures was not to be considered; tradition was tradition, even to the toothpicks on the imperial table; moreover, although she bore no resemblance to her mother, fate had spared her the growling visage of the Hapsburgs, and, unlike most royal women, she looked born to crown and purple. To the world she was the princess, the goddess, a valuable asset for any reigning house; and, tradition aside, the glorified ideal of a vast and restless people must not be vulgarized, nor even dimmed. But although she had her separate household and a large income to spend on her wardrobe and private fancies, the Emperor and his ministers had no intention that a young, healthy, and beautiful princess should carry out her romantic programme of being an old maid. Happy in their ignorance of her resources, they occasionally frowned over the shrinking list of eligible princes. Early plans to place her on two of the highest thrones in Europe had been frustrated by a method so simple that neither the Emperor nor his advisers had ever penetrated the mystery. Ranata had treated each of the visiting young princes to a furious exhibition of temper, which, taken in connection with her red hair and American influences, appeared to them to be of alarming domestic significance. The impression was ineradicably fixed by the ingenious and terrible tales poured into their ears by the fertile Alexandra.

Men had loved her, but as men love a picture or a character in history; they hardly knew her better, for she was too proud for intrigue, and conversation in the presence of a watchful court is neither sympathetic nor enlightening. Moreover, her Obersthofmeisterin, the Archduchess Maria Leopoldina, was the most anxious duenna that ever had princess in charge, and the boldest officer dared not brave that protecting wing.

Ranata had her dreams, her ideals, but she found her heroes in history; a few ballroom flirtations completed the sum of her interest in mere mortals. Knowing that earthly love and passion were not for her, she did what she could to forget their existence, occupied her mind and wearied her body. The cruel afflictions of her family chastened her somewhat, but she still had her hours of intense rebellion, caught her imagination on the wing in a future which never before had risen on the horizon of what is technically known as “the Great.”

III

“This is certainly an improvement on the Hofburg,” said Alexandra. “It is the only palace I have ever seen that looks like a palace, not a museum, barrack, or hospital; and Budapest is as picturesque a setting for the kings and queens one reads about in books. The Danube is not blue, but it moves--it moves--and its islands are certainly green. The illuminations last night looked as if the stars had come down to kow-tow to the _Hohenzollern_. He has indulged in much affectionate rhetoric, but has not yet broken loose. I wonder if he will to-night?”

“He is sure to, I should think. And I understand that he fell on Count Andrassy’s neck this morning with a rhapsody of Count Julius--to whom we certainly owe the strongest tie that now binds Hungary to us. What children the Hungarians are to be so flattered by this visit! They could have shown no greater enthusiasm for a Charlemagne.”

“He is the one picturesque figure in Europe, my dear.”

“And the one man who could have outshone him is dead! The Hungarians worshipped Rudolf; the peasants will not believe that he is dead; but this romantic hot-blooded people must be enthusiastic about somebody, and my father is too old. William is young; he looks the Emperor; he is as ambitious as Napoleon; there is an idea abroad that he dangles the scales of Europe in his fingers. Oh, if I had been born a man!”

The two girls were standing on the balcony of the private suite of apartments formerly occupied by the Empress Elizabeth when playing the part of Queen of Hungary. Down on their left, beyond the Danube with its mighty bridges, was the beautiful and busy city of Pest. Opposite them, on the most precipitous height of Buda, were the ruins of the citadel. The palace, a vast and symmetrical pile of nearly a thousand rooms, crowns the lowest ridge of a mountain-range which slopes in irregular masses to the river. Behind rises the long shoulder of the Schwabenberg, its arm curved downward in the north to grasp the Danube.

The great hills were brilliant with autumnal color; many boats were on the river; the world was promenading on the corsos; the flags streaming from every window were gayer than the woods. Far below, at the foot of the Palace Hill, in one of the cafés on the quay, the girls could hear the music of the Chardash, and held their breath as its wild note of longing changed to furious appeal.

“This is living!” said Alexandra. “I feel romantic for the first time in my life. Can’t we stay here?”

“It is perfect. I should be happy--almost; content if _he_ were not here. But he must have taught the very Hungarians the hollowness of their fictitious love for my father. They have too much to forgive! They never will forgive it. He is old. He has suffered greatly. They pity him. That is all. And William knows that. He has chosen this moment of uneasiness in Europe to come here, looking the invincible young monarch, bursting with arrogance and daring and the success of his reign. No wonder the susceptible Hungarians think him the chosen of God, and assured of infinite conquest. Did you see the _Pester Lloyd_ this morning? ‘_Till now it is the minds of the Hungarians which, with its own mind, Emperor William knew how to conquer, but he evidently knows as well how to conquer the hearts. This he proved to-day once more, and we can only give him the assurance that of all the languages in the world, it is the language of the heart which in Hungary is best understood._’ Oh, if I were a man!”

“I wouldn’t let a little thing like that stop me. Your brain is as good as his, and you have all the courage of all your ancestors. In more ways than one you are like him who prompted the old bishop to cry, ‘Sit fast, Lord God, or Rudolf will occupy thy throne!’ Times are times, but I don’t believe that all your talents were given to you for no purpose.”

“I believe in the blind law of cause and effect. It is only in my wildest moments that I have dreamed that the first Rudolf and Maria Theresia circled low when I was born and shook a bit of their golden dust into my brain-cells--I hate to talk nonsense! Here come two carriages across the bridge, the first of the guests, no doubt. We had better go in, it is a quarter to five. Mind you are careful not to allude to my father here as ‘The Emperor.’ That is a great point in Hungary.”

“If fate ever should whirl you to the throne, Ranata, for Heaven’s sake have dinner at a Christian hour. I have indigestion for a month every time I come back from America.”

The girls, who had stepped out on the balcony in the broad light of afternoon, ignoring the protests of Maria Leopoldina, who, rather than carry the mausoleum of her charms into the sunshine, had retired in dudgeon, were dressed for a great banquet to be given at five o’clock to the guest of the King of Hungary, the German Emperor. The Archduchess, who, with some reason, had come to the conclusion that life with her was to be a sequence of weeds, interrupted by intervals of uncertain duration, varied her black with white only. Nevertheless, she was one of the best-dressed women in Europe, and only her patient tire-women knew the infinite range of her wardrobe. “I often sigh for color,” she confided once to her American friend, “but I am too superstitious to venture. And perhaps it is as well. My rôle is the princess of the antique, the traditional pattern. In white I look ready for a memorial window or a bas-relief in the Augustin.” To which Alexandra had replied practically, “To say nothing of the fact that it makes your own coloring twice as strong as it would be above a brilliant plumage.”

Certainly the gown of white velvet embroidered with pearls and silver which she wore to-day in honor of her enemy enhanced her statuesque appearance, and gave her sharp black brows, the scarlet of her lips, and the brilliant masses of her hair an insolent effect of being able to supply all the color that a dazzled beholder could endure. The almost fierce incongruousness of her coloring might have defeated her attempt to convince the world that a mere princess dwelt within that virile shell, had it not been for the cold regularity of an Egyptian profile carried loftily above a form of antique height and mould, and a skin so white that despairing man had vowed there was sacrilege in the thought of its being put to mortal use. Her gray eyes were alert and so expressive that she had formed the habit of holding them half closed, and her black lashes were very thick. She had inherited her hands and feet from her Spanish ancestors; while not out of proportion to her great height, they were so finely fashioned that they looked too small for serious work. Her trick of eyebrow and shoulder, when animated, may have indicated the persistence of the French blood brought in by Francis of Lorraine. Nature, unspiteful for once to royal women, had given her the infrequent best of her ancestors, and even modified the not unpleasing nose that Elizabeth of Brunswick had presented to the Hapsburgs. Ranata had immense strength, had been ill but once in her life, hardly ever had experienced the sensation of utter fatigue. Her horsemanship was as remarkable as her mother’s had been; and when she appeared in the Prater beside the equally accomplished Emperor, it was a sight that no man ever forgot. She broke in her own horses; when in the country, frequently groomed and saddled them. After Alexandra, they were her only intimates, and she had known her keenest happiness when riding eight hours of the day through the forests of Upper Austria.

Alexandra never accompanied the Archduchess on her longer walks and rides. She was an accomplished horse-woman and a resigned pedestrian, but she had the frail physique of her race, and had been born of a hard-working fashionable mother with none of that profound sense of parental responsibility so ingrained in the European from queen to peasant. She was handsome rather than beautiful; her eyes were too analytical, her mouth betrayed too pronounced a scorn of the shams of life, her whole expression was too keen and humorous to compare victoriously either with the lofty exalted style of the Archduchess Ranata Theresia or the impassive harmonies of fashionable standards. But her eyes and hair were the brown that took lights from the sun, her features were delicate, high-bred, full of character and energy. Her figure was light, round, active; when compared with any but Ranata’s it was sufficiently tall. In her way she was as complex as her friend of the tremendous and conflicting elements drawn from every civilization in Europe, but her salient and unquestioned characteristics were loyalty and sincerity. She dressed exquisitely, and the thousands she spent yearly in Vienna had long since established her popularity.

IV

Alexandra pressed her hand on the table in a flutter of nerves, to which she was little accustomed. But they had vibrated painfully more than once during the dinner, although, with all her experience of courts, she had rarely been present at so magnificent a scene. The immense Throne Room, or Great Hall of Ceremonies, of perfectly simulated yellow marble, relieved only by white wood heavily incrusted with yellow bronze, seemed to quiver in its flood of amber light. The three chandeliers were huge inverted stacks of golden leaves, with no false note of crystal. The few women present were superbly dressed, and covered from crown to waist with the jewels of centuries, but they made an indifferent showing beside the barbarous magnificence of the Hungarian magnates. Every other man at the table, except the cardinals, was in uniform: the King, the Archdukes, and the Emperor’s suite, in the Prussian; the few members of his household whom Franz Joseph had ventured to bring to the jealous capital of his most uncertain possession, and the Grand Stewards of the Archdukes, wore an Austrian uniform; and the Ambassadors were in fullest dress. But it was evident that the fiery independent spirit of the great nobles of Hungary recognized no uniform except that of a glorious extravagance. Their fancy ran riot in color, in textile, in form. But whether in thick brocade, delicate or gorgeous of hue, in cloth of gold or silver, in white satin fitting like a cuirass and studded with jewels, or in silk so heavily embroidered with gold that it creaked like an armor; whether the long velvet cloak, trimmed and lined with priceless fur, its embroideries representing years of labor, its buttons and chains of big uncut jewels, was worn, or used carelessly as a background, there was nothing in Europe, not even in Russia, to compare with them. The headpieces of fur, the plume fastened with a jewelled rosette, were under their chairs, their high boots and silken small-clothes were likewise eclipsed for the hour, but there was more than enough of them to make the great golden room look like a page of old Hungarian history. So their ancestors had sat at Árpád’s table a thousand years ago. The hair of these men might be shorter, but it is doubtful if they varied in another external detail. Their faces were mobile, excitable, sometimes very clever. A few looked like men of the great world, although in that costume it was difficult to look like anything but the feudal lord ready on an instant’s notice to blow the trumpet in his villages and lead his bondsmen to battle.

As their fiery glances wandered from the Archduchess Ranata Theresia to the German Emperor, from the beautiful woman who reminded them of their lost Rudolf to the dashing young monarch they so passionately admired, a man after their own indomitable Hungarian hearts, they seemed to create an atmosphere of uneasiness, of premonition. Alexandra could imagine their swift transition from extravagant courtesy towards their aged King into the wildest excitement of which the modern man is capable; and endeavored to hope that William would behave himself. The young magnate on her right, Count Zrinyi, was evidently a very excitable person. He had from various causes approached the verge of explosion several times. Never having met anything like this cool American girl, he had fallen madly in love with her; the blood flew to and from his face, his jewelled armor creaked, and twice he dashed the tears from his eyes. Alexandra would have imagined herself in one of the Nights of Arabia had it not been for the intervals of rational conversation, when, seeing himself mirrored in the clear eyes beside him, and fancying, as many a wiser man has done, that it was a kindred soul he saw, he had talked of the grievances of the Hungarians and their determination to have their own way in their own country. At present they were engaged in the extermination of the hated German language and the universal substitution of the Magyar. It mattered nothing that less than half the population of their country spoke Hungarian, that the spirit of Roumania still hovered over the land beyond the Theiss, that there were whole villages where the language was never heard, and that Croatia and Slavonia hated them; the intense national pride and spirit which had endured for a thousand years, weathering every conquest, every humiliation, as ardent under the two centuries of Turkish rule as during the climax of their glory under Matthias Corvinus, had gathered fuller strength since the Revolution of ’48; and the determination was growing daily to give emphasis in every possible way to the individuality of this most individual of European states. Let those pitch their tents in Hungary who would, but they must learn and use the Hungarian language or feel themselves the aliens they were--Austrian officers not excepted.

Alexandra yielded to an impulse, not so much of coquetry as of curiosity; she expressed approval of his patriotism in the beautiful Magyar tongue. She had avoided German instinctively, and they had talked in English--like most of his class he was accomplished in many languages. For the moment she regretted her experiment. He trembled violently and turned white. It was then that he shed his first tear.

“You are _not_ cruel!” he murmured. “You have enraptured me! How kind--how wonderful. It is said to be the most difficult of tongues. Did you learn a few words, perhaps, before coming to Hungary, knowing our greatest weakness--”

“Dear me, no. I studied Hungarian, as one of many languages, with the Archduchess. She studied it as a matter of course.”

“That is a very practical explanation,” he said sulkily. “If I had had time to think I should have known. Queen Elizabeth,” he looked as if he would have raised his plumed and jewelled _kalpag_ had it not been under his chair, “bewitched Hungary upon her first visit by speaking perfectly the Magyar language. She took a great fancy to a young Hungarian girl and invited her to become a maid of honor, but when she discovered that she had been educated in Paris and had almost forgotten her native language she sent her home to learn it, and would not receive her into her household again until she was proficient. We have never forgotten that. And Rudolf! it _was_ his language--we refused to believe that he knew how to speak German.”

“Do you regret Rudolf?” asked Alexandra, in the tone she might have used to demand his opinion of the soft music in the gallery. Again she had touched powder with her wicked torch.

“Regret Rudolf?--_Rudolf?_” He took himself in hand and proceeded more calmly in a moment. “Mademoiselle, I regret the Crown Prince, like many others, for personal reasons, and, like the whole of my country, like all Europe, in fact, for grave political reasons. He was so warm, so genial, so fascinating--the best of good fellows, the most simple and unostentatious of princes, and, what all princes are not--we have one at this table, mademoiselle--a gentleman to the core. He loved Hungary as much as Hungary loved him. Had he lived there would be no straining at the bit now; we should be content to wait. Had he lived, there would be in Europe to-day no uneasy anticipation of our poor old King’s death. And not only could Rudolf make himself beloved by everybody, but there have been few better brains born to thrones--or in spheres where brains are more abundant. He would have sown his wild oats, poor chap!--and have made a great ruler. Then our guest would have had a rival worthy of his mettle. Now he has none.” With one of his abrupt transitions he continued: “And such tact! In all the years that he came to us and held his little court here in Buda, or was a mere sportsman in his hunting-castle, he never made a mistake. Do you know that the King actually has his drinking-water brought from Vienna? And the very food we are eating--and the cooks! Bah!--I’ll eat no more. It is your fault, mademoiselle, that I did not think of it sooner. I never go to Vienna. When he is here--our King--I honor him, for he is old and good and kind--now!--but you will acknowledge, mademoiselle, that he insults us unnecessarily when he brings with him water and meat, vegetables, fruits, to this land flowing with milk and honey.”

“Well, perhaps he does not like milk and honey. I detest both myself. And while I am willing to admit that your language is the most beautiful in the world--a union of velvet and steel, of music and running water and of the sonorousness of distant thunder--yet, my dear Count, still will I give the palm to Vienna for water. It always tastes and sparkles as if it were gushing still from its springs in the mountains, and I am delighted that the Emp--King brings it along.”

The Hungarian looked at her speculatively. He was not a fool, and recognized her difference from the women to whom he was accustomed, although he did not pretend to understand her. The mystery, and her curious treatment of his love-making, made him more thoughtful than usual. He was about to feel his way towards a new channel of attack when his eyes encountered the heavy black-framed visage of the King’s heir, and his ardent brain leaped in a new direction.

“Do you know what that man has done to-night?” he murmured furiously. “He has left his wife at the station in a railway carriage, while he dines here as the guest of the King! I only pretend to touch his hand! Do you call that a man--to make a woman his wife, the mother of his children, and treat her like his mistress? If he had not the courage to renounce his pretensions to the throne and live like a gentleman, why did he marry her? Would such a thing be done in your great country?”

“Oh, well, we do not have morganatic marriages,” said Alexandra soothingly. “It certainly was inconsistent of him to marry her.”

“It is very awkward for us. We acknowledge no difference between husband and wife in Hungary. If that man ever does come to the throne, his wife will be our Queen--”

“Rise!” said Alexandra, “the King is on his feet.”

And now the King had made his pleasant toast to the illustrious guest, the room had rung with enthusiastic “_Élyens_,” and the German Emperor was facing his audience in a stillness so profound that others besides Alexandra longed to have him begin a speech which all knew, from the defiant almost impish light in his eyes, was to be something more than the voluble rhetoric commonly heard at royal tables. He had been in the highest spirits all the evening, joking with the King, at whose right he sat in the middle of the long table, and with every one else in his neighborhood, temporarily charming even his avowed enemy, the Archduchess Ranata Theresia, who sat on his right. In the light-blue and white uniform of a general of the Austro-Hungarian army, his breast covered with orders, he had never looked handsomer; and in the atmosphere of approval that he loved he was ready--everybody felt who knew him--to do and dare anything. But the most expectant were unprepared for his actual performance.

He began at last, turning with deep respect to the King, and a slight excitement was perceptible in his strident tones.

“It is with a feeling of the deepest gratitude that I receive the hearty welcome of your Majesty. Thanks to the invitation of your Majesty, I have been able to visit this splendid town, whose grand reception nearly overwhelmed me.” He paused as if again overcome by the memory, then launched his first thunderbolt at the tempestuous hearts of a people who but half a century before had almost succeeded in wresting their great kingdom from the monarch whose guests they were to-night--a people whose fathers had died cursing the name of Hapsburg, and petitioning Heaven for the success of the Hungarian arms.

“We are following at home,” announced the German Emperor, “with _sympathetic interest_ the story of the knightly Hungarians, _whose patriotism has become proverbial_, and who in a glorious past did not hesitate to sacrifice their blood--for the holy cross,” he added with pious haste. “Names like Zrinyi inspire the hearts of German youths to the present day. We witnessed with _sympathetic admiration_ the festival of the thousandth birthday, which the Hungarians, surrounding their beloved King, celebrated with such astounding pomp. The proud architectural works of your great city give evidence of her artistic spirit, and the bursting of the bonds of the Iron Gates has opened a new way for commerce, and _has ranged Hungary as an equal among the great and the most highly civilized nations of the Earth_.”

By this time the Hungarians were heaving like the sea. They had left their seats and were pressing towards the Emperor, silently, that they might not lose a word of his utterance; and it was evident that only etiquette restrained their emotions. Never before, not in modern times at least, had a monarch so flattered them. Not for centuries had they been saluted as a practically independent state, unhyphenated, for once permitted to stand alone under the crown of St. Stephen, the hated double-headed bird brushed lightly aside. The air seemed shaking with deep political import; more than one man was trembling violently within his barbaric splendors. The Emperor pulled himself up abruptly, and turned once more to his host, whose face, indignant and aghast, composed itself suddenly to courteous attention. William’s tones had been rich with sympathy for a race passionately admired. They now softened with filial affection. “But what has made the deepest impression upon me, particularly during my reception in Budapest, is the enthusiastic devotion of Hungary to your Majesty. And not only here, but in all Europe, above all among my own people, does the same enthusiasm for your Majesty glow--an enthusiasm which I venture myself to cherish, in looking up, after the manner of a son, to your Majesty as my Fatherly Friend.

“Thanks to your Majesty’s wisdom, our union stands firm and unquenchable, a blessing to our people; for it has meant the peace of Europe for many years, and it will continue to do so for many more.

“Enthusiastic devotion to your Majesty--of this I am sure--dwells as firmly now in the hearts of the sons of Árpád as when they cried to your Majesty’s great ancestor, ‘_Moriamur pro rege nostro!_’”

He paused a moment before crying the hurrah for the King, which all present expected as a matter of course would be given in German. But William, under that apparently tactless exterior, capable of the profoundest diplomacy, had a still surer bolt in store. Raising his goblet on high, his eagle glance flashing from end to end of the pale company, his passionate tones thrilling the most antagonistic heart present, he cried:

“Giving expression now to these sentiments, we will put all we are capable of feeling, thinking, and praying for your Majesty into those words which every Hungarian utters with his latest breath--_Élyen a Király!_”

As the words rang out in the Magyar language, so jealously beloved and preserved, from the lips of a monarch whom duty had never commanded to cope with its difficulties, the tongue the King, his host, ignored, there was an instant of almost stupefied silence. Then some one gave an _Élyen!_ as wild and abrupt as a battle-cry, the spell broke, the hot blood of the Hungarians leaped to their heads, they forgot etiquette and crowded about the Emperor, shouting until the marble walls rumbled the echo. Their wild glances never wandered to the convulsed face of their King, nor from the triumphant eyes of the German. Several of the younger men and equally excited women stood upon chairs that they might see him better. Then for the first time in that old palace there rang out the word most hated in Hungary, “_Élyen a császar! Élyen a császar!_” (Hurrah for the Emperor!) Then again that most musical and thrilling of vocatives, “_Élyen! Élyen! Élyen!_”