“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.