The last days of the Archduke Rudolph

Contents

PAGE

Chapter I ...... 17

Concerning Myself and my Family — The Education of a Cosmopolitan — Feldkirch, Stonyhurst, the Sorbonne, Milan — The Making of a Democrat — Viennese Society and the Intellectuals — Kaiser Franz Josef and his Heir — A Constructive King — Bismarck and his Plans for Prussia — Rudolph's Popularity

Chapter II . . . . .28

Fears of Austrian Landowners — I possess my Uncle's Confidence — Am appointed Imperial Messenger — Join Austrian Embassy in London — Oberon's Lincolnshire and Gamecock's National — I return to Vienna with the Archduke

Chapter III ...... 39

Secretary to the Archduke Rudolph — His Fascinating Personality and Ability — Our Visit to Berlin — A Future King and a Future Kaiser — Prince William of Prussia and his Clique — The Pan-German Idea — Berlin's Fear of Rudolph's Popularity aftd-JEljestige **^ '" '- "*""

Chapter IV . . . . .52

The Prussian Royal Family — Intrigues respecting the Succession — The Crown Prince's Malady — The Crown Princess Victoria — The Heir-Presumptive' s Attitudes — Albert Edward and Rudolph — A Curious Wager — Rudolph's Opinion of Albert Edward — Albert Edward's Complaint of the Press

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Chapter V ...... 65

An Old Acquaintance in Berlin — I meet Prince Bismarck — His Friend Orloff — Bismarck's Secret Agents — Rudolph's Opinion of Bismarck — My Regard for the Chancellor

Chapter VI . . . . .80

The Kulturkampf in Germany — Position of the Catholic Body — Prussian Official Salons — Austria's National Party and the Vatican — Kaiser Franz Josef's Life Story — Rudolph's Rationalism — His Ideas about Religion

Chapter VII ...... 96

The Vetsera Family in Vienna — Their Levantine Origin — The Empress Elizabeth and Marie Vetsera — " Home- Day " at the Hofburg — Love, Immortality and a Cross- Examination — I discourse to my Master of Love and " Residual Forces " — The Archduke and Women — Confessional — Madame de Stael and Napoleon

Chapter VIII ...... 109

The Viennese Woman — Concerning Mademoiselle — Her Attraction for Rudolph — Archduke taboos Women in Politics — Baroness Larricarda's Salon — Changes in Social Vienna — I become a Visitor at the Baroness's — Germans in Viennese and European Society — I meet KoinofLagajh — A Conversation at my Rooms ' — ~""^

Chapter IX ...... 121

Some Capitals compared — London that was — Anglo- French Characteristics — Social Changes in England and Some Causes — Queen Victoria's Jubilee of 1887 — The Archduke's Party in Paris — His Attitude towards Subordinates — Reception by the English Court — Attitude of British People towards their Royal Family — Upper, Middle and Lower Classes — Women's Social Mania — The Archduke and Prince William of Prussia — An Apt Retort

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I go into Chambers in Vienna during my Master's Absence — An Unexpected Visit from Koinoff — A Question of Finance — Koinoff 's Nationality — His Career, Present and Past — I am willing to accommodate him — Koinoff as " Tommy Atkins " — How he beat a Prussian Spy — Koinoff and his Honour — A Success at Cards

Chapter XI . . . . . 146

Kinsky arrives in Vienna — Occupies my Flat — We discuss the Crown Prince Frederick's Malady — Also the Future Kaiser, Wilhelm II. — His Napoleonomania — Professor Buckle's Ideas — -Prince Henry of Prussia and a Danseuse — To Berlin for the Obsequies of the Emperor William I. — I meet Count Herbert Bismarck — Prince William's Dislike of Herbert — The Dismissal of Ministers considered — Napoleon's Mistakes — Fascination of all the Bismarcks — Herbert a Misanthrope — A Choice of Emperors — Hoping for the Best — I study some Enigmas — Meeting with Wolfram

Chapter XII ...... 158

San Remo's Crowd of Notables — Physicians and Surgeons — Sir Morell Mackenzie — Political Aspects of Frederick's Malady — His Consort's Intervention — What History will say of Frederick's Death — Bismarck's Russophilism — An Imperial Counsel — Bismarck's Press-Agency Work — Austrian and English Views — Foresight of Two Heirs- Apparent — Real Greatness of King Edward — A Romanoff Grand Duke — Rudolph's Independence of Character — German Gutter-Press Stories — The Archduke's Title to Respect — His Versatility — An Essay and Some Correspondence

Chapter XIII ...... 174

Return to Laxenburg Castle — Kaiser Franz's Unexpected Visit to his Son — The Rudolph-Vetsera Liaison — Rudolph's Loyalty to his Sire — Promise to give up Marie

Chapter XIII — continued PAGE

Vetsera — Rudolph and his Mother — Alleged Appeal by the Archduke for Divorce — Prussia's Conquest-Manias — ■ My Turf Successes — Koinoff visits me again — His Gaming Transactions — Count Potocki's Visit — Koinoff's Story of a Mysterious Letter — Bismarck will do no Murder — Ich bin kein sicarius — Who is implicated in Berlin's Murderous Intrigues — Question of the Vatican — The Secular Arm — A New Man and New Measures in Berlin — The most Pathetic Kind of Mediocrity

Chapter XIV . . . • . . 189

Berlin in July 1888 — A City of Martial Law — Return of Wolfram to Vienna — What Kinsky's Cousin had to relate — His Friend the Bocher — Berlin's Money-lenders and their Satellites — Evidence of Inside Information — Forging the Archduke's Handwriting — A Forged Letter from Rudolph — On the Trail of the Enemy— Intentions of Militarists in Berlin — Ineptitude of Berlin's Agents — Sharps versus Flats — Clerics and Conspirators — Prince Henry's New-found Importance — Bismarck and Imponderabilia — The Great Imponderable — Natural End of Pork-eaters — Politico-Spiritual Role of the Vatican — Austria and the Omens

Chapter XV ...... 203

Wolfram, Christiane and Prince Henry — The Prussian Prince's Threats — Lazarus suggests a "Reconciliation" — Kaiser Wilhelm's Various Poses — His Brother's Equally Simian Characteristics — Henry's Affectation of Sailor-like Simplicity — Christiane returns to her old Lover — What she seeks to discover — Plays on Henry's Vanity — Antipathy of the Imperial Brothers towards Rudolph — The Vatican's Enigmatical Role — Monsignore Galimberti's Aspirations — Christiane's Flight to Vienna — Our Precautions to protect Rudolph — His Horror of being " Policed " — Vienna Foreign Office's Ignorance — The Case of Marie Vetsera — Her Regard for Rudolph — Koinoff avoids me — A Successful Double-Event — Rudolph's Debts and Creditors — Where Berlin came in

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Chapter XVI ...... 218

Chez Madame Larricarda — Unpopularity of Myself — Prussians attend her Receptions in Large Numbers — Koinoff a Noteworthy Absentee — Bombelles and Myself — My Last Visit to the Baroness Larricarda's — Some Accomplishments I possess — A Contretemps in the Card-room — A Stiff Retort — Am summoned to the Archduke's Study — Proposed Visit to Meyerling — I am given a Holiday — The Archduke on Game-shooting — The Prince on my Vigilance — What His Highness knew — A Healthy Habsburg Instinct — A Direct Warning from Marie Vetsera — The Archduke's Courage — His Hope for Austria's Future — The Triple Alliance in Practice — The Archduke's Opinion of Wilhelm II. — England's World-Role — " Carthage must be destroyed " — His Hopes for Social Democracy — Prince Philip of Coburg

Chapter XVII ...... 232

Prince Rudolph as Sportsman — His Exploits in Danubian Countries — A Student of Zoological Traits — Some Deductions from his Studies — An Emersonian Bias — Game-hunting in German Countries — A Chapter from Cornhill — A Favourite Keeper — The Ritual of Deer-hunting — Tracking the Roe — Placing the Guns — Beaters at Work — Routing out the Game — Some Democratic Touches — Congratulations on Sportsmanship — A Processional Return Homewards — The Song of the Beaters

Chapter XVIII ..... 242

Prince Rudolph's alleged Suicidal Mania — The Philosophy of Suicides — Pessimists and Optimists — Napoleon's Ideas on Suicide those of the Archduke — Reasons against the Theory of Prince Rudolph's Suicide — 26th January 1889 — The Archduke's Ideas about German Actors and the Theatre in General — '• Elemental Men and Simians " — An Improvised Comedy — The Archduke as Stage Napoleon — Bismarck and Playgoers — Ideas about Music

Chapter XVIII — continued PAOE

" Cleverly harmonised Rumpus " — Wagner's Hypnotic Powers — A Theory of Success in Life — Wagner and the Artistic Temperament — Archducal Ideas on Painting and Literature — A Visit to the Rubens Gallery — Art and a Physiological Question

Chapter XIX ...... 255

The Crown Lands of Baden — The Schloss of Meyerling — Formerly a Cistercian Convent — The Archducal Apartments — Late Hours at the Lodge — A Message from His Highness — A Visit to the Hofburg Library — I meet Wolfram — Decide on a Sojourn at Heiligen Kreuz — A Rencontre at the Southern Station — Another Surprise at Baden — A Walk to Heiligen Kreuz — Herr Wirt of the Gasthaus — His Archducal Visitor — A Bottle of Tokay — A Rough Quartette of Prussians — My Landlord's Recollections — The Witch of Alland — A Prophecy to Kaiser Franz — My Servant fails me — Only appears at Breakfast-time — His Adventures in the Night — The Road to Meyerling and back to the Kreuz

The Pine-woods round Heiligen Kreuz — An Unexpected Rencontre — Dr Widerhofer of Vienna — He announces the Murder of the Archduke and Marie Vetsera — How Baden got the News — We go on to the Lodge — Some Official Declarations and Discrepancies — Joseph Bratfisch's Statements — An Impromptu Entertainment — The Morning of 30th January — Bratfisch and his Master — How the Bodies were found — I visit the Death-chamber — My Importance ceases — A Conversation with Bratfisch — The Alleged Letters of Prince Rudolph — My Wirt arrives — I return to Heiligen Kreuz — A Sad Special to Vienna — Burial of the Crown Prince Rudolph — Koinoff's Last Letter

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

The Archduke Rudolph, aged 30, 1888 . Frontispiece The Archduke Rudolph, aged 24, 1882 To face page 36 Albert Edward, Prince of Wales, 1887 . ,, 60

Mademoiselle Marie Vetsera, January 1888 Prince Bismarck in Retirement, 1890 Mademoiselle Vetsera, January 1889 In the Chapelle Ardente .

214 , 280

PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS

The Archduke Rudolph: Crown Prince of Austria- Hungary, born at Laxenburg Castle, Vienna, 1858, found dead at Meyerling Schloss, 30th January 1889. Universally admitted to have been one of the most intellectual princes in Europe in his day ; a keen politician and a student of democratic and labour movements ; contributor to political and literary newspapers and magazines, two of which he himself helped to edit ; was a noted sportsman ; corresponded with the most important men of his time, and was on terms of especial intimacy with the then Prince of Wales, afterwards Edward VII.

Mademoiselle Marie Vetsera : daughter of a Hungarian baron, whose wife was of the Baltazzi family of bankers, well known in the Levant. Attached to the suite of the Empress Elizabeth, mother of the Archduke Rudolph, Mademoiselle Vetsera, still in her teens and a girl of great beauty, soon attracted the attention and won the heart of the Crown Prince, the liaison lasting from 1888 till January 1889, when, with her lover, she was found dead at Meyerling Lodge in Lower Austria. Mademoiselle Vetsera, it seems clear, was no intrigante or adventuress, but was deeply attached to the Archduke Rudolph.

Count Arthur Potocki : born 1857, a member of the distinguished family of that name, which has given many men and women of note to the political, social and literary life of the Austro- Hungarian monarchy. A relative of the Minister of the same name.

16 PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS

Bn Fr. X. KlNSKY : born 1861, member of a cadet branch of the famous family of Kinsky, the present head of which is Prince Karl Kinsky, who, as Count Kinsky, was a well-known sportsman on the European turf, and steered the steeplechaser Zoedone to victory in the Liverpool Grand National.

COUNT WOLFRAM : a connection, by marriage, of several notable Viennese families, and, until 1905, one of the wealthiest racing-men on the Continental turf.

Herr ISIDORE KOINOFF : an Austrian Pole who migrated to the United States after the tragedy of Meyerling in 1889, and has been successful in amassing, under a new name, a considerable fortune in the Middle West as a publishing newspaperman. Has contributed to the United States press anonymous recollections of his Berlin- Vienna experiences.

Madame " Larricarda " : a member of a good but impoverished Austrian family, of whom it has been said that she "was probably an unconscious agent of Berlin's secret service." This lady was one of several persons who were banished from Austria as a result of the tragedy of Meyerling.

JOSEPH BRATFISCH : a member of the Archduke Rudolph's stable service, who acted, on occasion, either as coachman or as body-servant to His Highness. His cousin, Conrad Bratfisch, was valet to the Archduke's personal secretary.

Chapter I

Concerning Myself and my Family — The Education of a Cosmopolitan — Feldkirch, Stonyhurst, the Sorbonne, Milan — The Making of a Democrat — Viennese Society and the Intellectuals — Kaiser Franz Josef and his Heir — A Constructive King — Bismarck and his Plans for Prussia — Rudolph's Popularity

In attempting to tell the story of the last days of my unfortunate chief and patron, the Archduke Rudolph of Habsburg, as with an excusable enough pride he was wont to speak of himself in familiar and convivial company, it may be proper to set forth my claim to have filled so important a position as that of intimate personal secretary to His Highness, as well as right to explain who I am and how I came to be associated with the heir to the Austrian throne.

I intend to give of my family and its record, just such indications as will provide a warranty of their truthfulness for those who may reasonably be supposed to have had some knowledge of the social and political conditions of Europe in the years 1887, 1888 and 1889. Beyond this I cannot, for reasons which appear obvious, be expected to go. The role which myself played in the social drama of those years was, in view of my comparative youth and inexperience, more that of a spectator than an actor, as will duly be realised in the course of this narrative. My story may, nevertheless, be taken to be the truth, and, as the initiated will not require to be told, I have written nothing which could not be fully substantiated if access might be obtained to the private archives of the imperial houses under consideration. The near future must, in any case, reveal the truth as I bear witness to it.

I am a cosmopolitan by lineage as well as by inclination, although the souche or stock of my family is undoubtedly Austro-German. The estate of my uncle — my dead father's eldest brother — was one of the most considerable in Carinthia, lying in the neighbourhood of Hutt enberg. This uncle's second patrimony was situated to the north-west of Venetia, in Friuli, a region which considers itself, even to these days, Italian ; indeed, it was a source of mild domestic unrest in my uncle's home that his wife, who belonged to the Orsini tribe, always affected to consider herself superior in point of origin to her Germanic husband, and admitted only one recommendation in his favour — namely, the fact that his mother had also been an Italian of the wealthy and newly ennobled Lombardini house. This lady's father had in his time married a lady of the distinguished house of Stapleton, in Yorkshire, a Catholic family, while another brother had married into the Benevento family, which was better known in France by the more illustrious name of Perigord. In the year 1887, when I was in my twenty-fifth year, I was kinsman to men

A COSMOPOLITAN'S EDUCATION 19

who were notables in Austria, in Italy, in England and in France. Add to this the further consideration that a Neapolitan princely relative of my aunt's Roman family, della Rocca by name, had married into the rich German-Jewish family of Heine, the well-known poet who resided for the most part in Paris, and it will be admitted that my pretensions to be a " kosmopolite," as we Teutons term it, are not ill founded. In the capitals of the countries just named I had intimate connections, and indeed may claim to have had both a home and a welcome in all of them.

My father died in Vienna, where, as a Court official, he resided, when I was ten years old, my mother following two years later, after which I was entrusted to the care of the best of uncles. I pass over the years of my early education, which was obtained at the school of Feldkirch ; at the age of fifteen I was sent to England, and passed three years at the Jesuit College of Stonyhurst, in Lancashire ; leaving there, I passed to London, where for two years I studied with a well-known tutor, the intention being that I should proceed to Oxford. The then Cardinal of Westminster, Monsignor Manning, a close friend of my English guardian, a Mr M. Stapleton, counselled, however, against my becoming an Oxford man, and this on the ground, as I was then informed, that residence at Oxford was certain to kill my religious beliefs. In due course I proceeded to Paris, where I entered as a student at the old Sorbonne ; here I spent two years, becoming at the end of that time a licencie-es-lettres and being credited with speaking French unusually well. Languages I found easy of acquirement ; English I spoke almost like a native ; Italian I read and wrote like an educated Roman, so that when, in my twenty-first year, I proceeded to Milan, I soon attained great ease in speaking that language. I mention this gift of tongues for the reason, only, that it was the one which in due course drew towards me the attention of the Archduke Rudolph, himself an accomplished, if somewhat " guttural " linguist, a characteristic, by the way, which he shared with his lifelong friend, Prince Albert Edward of Wales. I left Milan, after a year's stay, in my twenty-third year, and proceeded to Vienna, where my uncle was passing the Court season, in the early summer of 1885.

My life in England, France and Italy had given my character so strong a predisposition towards what is — to Austrians at least — unaccountably called Bohemianism, that the somewhat straitlaced society of Vienna was hardly likely to accord with my tastes. By my cosmopolitan education, of a democratic turn of mind, I disliked any social system which refused even to men of eminent intellectual worth the entree to its first coteries, except on terms of the barest sufferance and in a way which no self-respecting man could tolerate, once he had tested the temper of Viennese aristocracy towards all who had been born outside its narrow circle. In London and in Paris I had had ample opportunity of noting that great talent

EXCLUSIVE VIENNESE SOCIETY 21

practically led the great world of the time, and that the highly placed were really the instruments of its will and ceuvre, no matter what the noble dispensers of hospitality may themselves have thought of relative positions in the matter. In Mayfair and in the Quartier St Germain there were, of course, houses in which the principle of " noble quarterings " still prevailed as the condition of acceptableness ; but these coteries were, for the most part, of the dullest and most tasteless kind, and neither the real London nor the real Paris cared about their existence — in truth, rarely heard of them. Viennese society was, on the contrary, based wholly on the principle of " quarterings," and the attitude of a certain great English noble who once subjected Dr Johnson to the indignity of dining behind a screen, in order to conceal the poverty of the lexicographer's attire from fellow-guests, was practically that of noble Austrians towards distinguished commoners of all kinds.

An important result of this insane exclusiveness was that intellectual Vienna set about establishing its own social unit, equally exclusive and self-contained, and so there sprang into existence a kind of Separate Estate which, by maintaining an intriguing radicalism in its general attitude towards the imperial regime, became one of the fruitful factors in hastening the decay, not only of the monarchy, but also of Austria's political prestige in the eyes of Europe. It is true that Kaiser Franz was too practised a statesman not to realise that his nobility was undermining its own stability as well as the dynasty of the Habsburgs. Himself he sought to neutralise this by affecting the Pauline attitude of being all things to all men — a pose from which he was constitutionally altogether averse, since the divine quality of popular sympathy has always been foreign to his nature. Added to this comes the fact that he is among the least intellectual of men, and although more than once deservedly described as the first gentleman in Europe, it is only in the social or imperial sense that he can be so regarded. What Voltaire, I think, speaks of as the born kindliness which springs from a sympathetic heart has been temperamentally denied to Francis Joseph. In him there is little of the real humanitarian, however much policy may dictate the semblance of that quality, and to my mind he represents a true type of the neopagan — a Roman Emperor in modern military uniform, with something of the ethical veneer of a Borgia cardinal : a man above malice, however, and one whose temperamental failings are due more to a native bloodless indifference than to any hardness of disposition.

Of an entirely different cast was my chief, the Archduke Rudolph. To what particular ancestor he owed his reversionary type would prove a highly speculative problem — to the Emperor Charles V., perhaps. That the gods had especially favoured him is, however, very certain, and it was the opinion of the most considerable men of

RUDOLPH AND ALBERT EDWARD 23

his day that he was of the stuff of constructive kings. To my mind he resembled no prince who has come within the scope of my observation so much as his friend, correspondent and political mentor, the Prince of Wales, who later became Edward VII. There was indeed a marvellous mental and psychical resemblance between the two heirs-apparent. Each possessed a profound personal fascination, an omnivorous interest in all things pertaining to human kind and human progress ; each was in his real heart a man of the people, a lover of peace, and to both had been granted those gifts so rarely bestowed on princes — namely, the faculty of assimilating and grasping the spirit and actualities of the age into which they are born, as well as the intuition which senses its evolutionary process. In rulers who do not possess these gifts, the chief tendency is towards a decadent retrogression, or at least to a stagnant conservatism. The main constituent in the fascination and popularity of both Rudolph and Albert Edward was their active recognition that in the world of their day Democracy held the only cards worth holding, that Feudalism had passed beyond recall, that the final dispatch of Militarism was but a matter of years. Neither had required any Seer to read to him the portents of 1864, 1866 and 1870.

Bismarck, it may be remembered, was on one occasion frank enough to unveil his mind regarding the sincerity of Austria's attachment to the new conditions which gave Prussia the headship of

Germanic Europe. The astute Chancellor saw further than the diplomatic dullards of Berlin.

" Austria," he said in effect, " may forgive us, but can she forget ? "

Would the reversionary heirs of the Caesars permanently consent to abase themselves before the late boors of the Brandenburg Mark ? It was certain that with Austria lay the decision for or against the Hohenzollerns, and Bismarck realised that the only hope for the dynasty he served so faithfully lay in crushing out all hope of an Austrian revival, all attempt to recapture her hereditary position as the arbitress of the Germanic Bond and its destinies in the world. For him, therefore, and his policies, no constructive kings outside Berlin.

Between Kaiser Franz and his heir Rudolph there subsisted a perfect affection — not so uncommon a phenomenon where the parental bond serves as the welding force of two antithetical natures. Unlike many other dynastic families, moreover, the family sense of the Habsburgs is a strongly developed trait. Kaiser Franz, it is well known, has few illusions about his intellectual limitations ; nor was he at all ignorant or jealous of the commanding personal qualities of his heir, to whom, in truth, he looked to restore to the dynasty that prestige of which a succession of political and warlike mischances had robbed it since days dating as far back as Austerlitz and Wagram. The Emperor well knew that the Archduke was pre-eminently well equipped for that role of socio-political compromise for which

AN IDEAL CROWN PRINCE 25

he himself felt he was, temperamentally considered, but poorly fitted. Indeed, it was an accepted axiom in Vienna in the eighties that the prematurely ageing Kaiser was freely willing to abdicate, in favour of his son, a throne to which he clung only from an overwhelming sense of duty to the honour of his House — a sentiment so transparently honest and so actively forceful in him that it has enabled him to retain his crown where any weaker monarch must have lost it beyond redemption for his race. And so it was that conditions ensued within the empire very similar to those which existed during the widowhood of Queen Victoria, when, socially speaking, the Heir- Apparent was King in all but title, the Archduke enacting a corresponding role in Austrian society. Rudolph it invariably was who represented the Emperor in all social movements which were calculated to conciliate the self-isolated Separate Estate — a body which played within the empire the role of destructive critic of the existing regime. To its adherents Rudolph was not only acceptable on the ground of his known sympathy with democratic aspirations ; he was also bound to them by the fact that his private purse had subsidised several publications, one of which was, indeed, owned and partly edited by himself. The Prince had, moreover, written several respectable books of travel and science, and among his closest friends were Austrian journalists and literary men of European note. It was publicly understood, and privately a matter of knowledge, that Rudolph's own inclination was in favour of the strongest possible political relationship with England and Russia as the surest means of curbing Prussian ambitions ; further, that he regarded the Triple Alliance as the outward expression of the policy which was not only reducing Austria to the condition of a vassal of Prussia, but which was also the means by which Bismarck assured her continued subjection. His private life, it was admitted, was hardly such as became the Heir-Apparent to a Most Catholic monarchy; his love affairs were legion, his sacrifices to Bacchus notorious, while his vast debts were the measure of his passion for gambling and dissipation of many varieties. Julius Csesar, it might be recalled, had himself spent a vicious and dissipated youth. Subjects prefer, I think, that their future rulers shall have looked upon life in all its multi-coloured expressions. His life was a sign, moreover, that officious Vaticanism would count for little under Emperor Rudolph ; and, in any case, he was still on the better side of thirty, with ample time for self -reform.

In Germanic countries of his time, Prince Bismarck, it is perhaps hardly necessary to state, towered, without danger of rivalry or comparison, above all men to whom Destiny had assigned a political or diplomatic role in the history of their own age, and it is not to be denied at this stage, one may suppose, that since the age of Napoleon, no such imperious personality had appeared in Europe to work the will of the Fates. The

"RUDOLPH, EMPEROR OF GERMANY!" 27

Chancellor's own marvellous intuitions in matters of intrigue, as well as his sense of imposing portents, whether in men or in matters, were powerfully assisted by a network of espionage and secret service the like of which has been unknown since Hannibal prepared his titanic descent upon Consular Rome. And so it was that Bismarck well knew how widespread throughout political and intellectual Austria -Hungary was the hope that the House of Habsburg should at some undistant day re-enter into the chieftaincy of the Germanic Powers; was well aware with what scorn and contempt the Austrian nobles and the old territorial magnates looked upon the upstart House of Hohenzollern — a tribe which, even Bismarck himself conceded, was not superior in origin to his own ancient line of squirearchs ; was acquainted by his secret informants that a common toast at every mess-table throughout the imperial army was expressed daily in the words : " To Rudolph, Emperor of Germany ! " ; that one of the first great diplomatists of his age — the then Prince of Wales — was entirely in sympathy with the Archduke's determination to detach Austria from the Triple Alliance ; that, in fine, the Bismarckian system of Prussian domination in Europe was menaced by a real force in the person of the Crown Prince of Austria-Hungary, who was backed by the sympathies of the then brewing Triplice — Britain, France and Russia.

It is with this momentous political crux, and all it involved, that my narrative deals.

Chapter II

Fears of Austrian Landowners — I possess my Uncle's Confidence — Am appointed Imperial Messenger — Join Austrian Embassy in London — Oberon's Lincolnshire and Gamecock's National — I return to Vienna with the Archduke

It will be remembered that after the defeat of France in 1870, and the accession of Confederated Germany to the place which Austria had until that time held, many men foretold the approaching break up of the aggregation of countries over which the House of Habsburg ruled, prophesying at the same time a period of revolution within the Empire. It was not surprising, therefore, that some of the territorial magnates of the Dual Monarchy adopted about this time the policy of converting large portions of their estates into ready cash, most of which was transferred to England and there invested in public funds. A certain amount of secrecy was, of course, practised in these transfers, which involved the passing of vast tracts of land into the hands of new men, and in the case of my uncle's properties around Huttenberg and in the Trentino, the proviso was established that the rupture of entails should only be disclosed after his death; in the meantime the purchasers were to occupy their newly acquired demesnes as if in the capacity of tenants only. Possessing, as good fortune willed