PART II

I

“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!”

Alexandra took her Count firmly by the arm and pushed him into a chair. “You don’t look very strong,” she said, “and you will faint if you are not careful.” Her own knees were trembling as she took the chair beside him, but she proceeded coolly, “What an infant you are to be taken in by the cleverest man in Europe—”

“He is the greatest man living,” stammered Zrinyi. “This is a great moment in the history of Hungary, mademoiselle. It should be painted and hung beside Munkacsy’s Árpád, or the Sally of Zrinyi from Szigetvár. He is the man for us!—the man for us!”

“I don’t doubt every mustache in Budapest will stand on end to-morrow. What a pity you have none.”

“Mademoiselle!” he cried, outraged at her flippancy; but she was moving away.

She had looked once at Ranata during William’s speech. The Archduchess, as the Hungarians pushed forward, had withdrawn from the Emperor’s side and stood leaning against the wall, her head bent, her arms rigid. Her face was expressionless, but, Alexandra commented, her hair had never looked so red.

William, as the King, experiencing satiety, led the way to the reception-rooms, turned his head rapidly in all directions, taking a final survey of the scene of his latest triumph. His glance roved over faces angry, approving, terrified, adoring; encountered the amused stare of the American with haughty indifference, then rested suddenly on the face of his young hostess. The Archduchess had dropped her mask. Her head was thrust forward, deliberately waiting for the moment when William’s eyes must meet hers. When they did they lingered. The Hapsburg’s eyes blazed with a hatred so implacable, with a defiance so reckless and contemptuous, that the Almighty’s best-beloved experienced a shock. It seemed to him, for the first time in his triumphant career, that he heard the steel of another will clash menacingly with his own. Sustained in his dizziest flights by his honest belief in his earthly mission, insolently aware that he had the best brain in the royal hierarchy, the most splendid energy, a capacity for work never surpassed, he was fully convinced that he had but to develop his gifts, use all his vigilance and what patience he could find in him, to realize his vast ambitions. But for the moment, in the presence of another human will, and that the will of a woman, he experienced a chill rising of the imperial flesh. He forgot his majesty, flung his head high like an irritated stallion, glared back his defiance, and jerked his eyes away. In a moment he was reminded of his manners.

“Your arm, your Majesty,” said the cold voice of his hostess; and in silence, but with an impressive exhibition of royal self-control, they walked side by side through the first circle-room into the blue drawing-room. He was mightily uncomfortable, however, for in some subtle feminine way she made him feel as if she were towering above him by nearly a foot. It seemed to him that she grew an inch with every step, that her little crown of black pearls was rising higher and higher; and when he finally shot an apprehensive glance upward, almost laughing aloud at his folly, he was relieved to find that her nose was still on a level with his brow. But she was making the most of her height, which, with the diadem on her lofty head and the immense train dragging behind her, would have made a man of her own inches look insignificant. It is doubtful if William ever breathed deeper relief than when, a few moments after arriving in the drawing-room, he was informed that the carriages were waiting to take himself and his suite to the train, and that he must make his adieux.

The guests had scattered through the long line of rooms. Many went out upon the balcony to watch the royal carriages and mounted escort cross the illuminated bridge, and the roar of cheering thousands seemed storming the hill. The royal party retired almost immediately, and Alexandra followed the Archduchess to the sitting-room of her private apartments. Ranata’s ladies had been dismissed, and she had closed the dressing-room door on her tire-women. She was standing alone at the window sobbing convulsively. The room was ringing with Vivats and Élyens, for it was too hot to close the windows.

Alexandra pushed her into a chair, removed the pins and pearls from the heavy mane of hair, and sprayed her head and wrists with cologne. In a few moments the Archduchess had commanded her tears. She threw back her head and looked down upon shouting Pest with a sullen glare.

“What wouldn’t I have given to be able to wring his neck!” she said in a moment. “How dared he! At my father’s table! What insolent cruelty—he, who need fear no one living—to come here and fling his dynamite into the weak foundations of this poor old Empire! I wish to God I were on the thrones of Austria and Hungary. I’d pit myself against him without a qualm. It would be two of our ancestors over again and joy in the fight—I believe that in one of his exalted moments he enrolled Frederick the Great among his ancestors.”

“Well,” began Alexandra, but Ranata did not hear her. She had risen and was standing in the middle of the room, her long hair flaming about her. To the American girl, her quivering slender figure looked ready for a coat-of-mail, her head for the helmet. “I can’t help admiring the brute for flinging his designs in our faces,” she exclaimed furiously. “Did my father understand? The Hungarians?—The Emperor dies. Franz Ferdinand—Franz Ferdinand!—succeeds him. The Empire, bound together by rotten threads, begins its disintegration with my father’s corpse. Do you remember the rapacity of Europe, that greedy horde of vultures, after the death of Charles VI.?—Frederick’s swoop upon Silesia? William, ‘in the manner of a son,’ only awaits the death of his ‘Fatherly Friend’ to devour Austria to the gates of Vienna. And Hungary? Could you not see his bait? Hungary quiescent—Hungary once more an independent kingdom, or with himself as its nominal and indulgent ruler!—Oh, for another Pragmatic Sanction!”

“I have a plan—if you will sit down quietly for a few moments and listen to me. It is a practical plan, and I know it will appeal to you.”

The Archduchess resumed her seat. “Well? Tell it to me quickly. I am panting for a practical idea. But the blood is blazing in my head.”

“William has made a deep impression on the Hungarians, and no doubt they understood him plainly enough. But impressions can be counteracted. He leaves here to-night, and your father will be in no hurry to invite him again. Do you remain here this winter, instead of returning to Vienna with the Emperor—announce that you have found no city so fascinating, that you cannot tear yourself away; entertain constantly and brilliantly; let loose all your bottled personal charm—show them that you are the sister of Rudolf; be seen in public; make a royal pilgrimage through the villages. The Hungarians resent unceasingly that the Emperor spends but a few weeks of the year in Budapest—and they look upon Austria as a mere annex of the great kingdom of Hungary. They will be flattered—your slaves; with your personality, if you will come down off your high horse, they will end by adoring you—especially if you give them a royal good time. So much for the present. When the time comes! When the time comes! When the Empire shakes and William threatens, all you will have to do will be to have a King’s Mount ready, fasten the crown of St. Stephen securely on your head, ride up the mount, and wave your sword to the four corners of the earth. All Hungary would break into deficient Latin and shout, ‘Long live our Lady and King!’ The dust of Maria Theresia would quiver at that old war-cry—and she is no more forgotten here than in Austria. You will be a fool if you throw away the greatest opportunity ever offered to a woman cursed with royal blood.”

“It would almost be like meditating an act of usurpation,” muttered the Archduchess; but her head was thrust forward, her eyes were glittering. “But the alternative!—who knows? It might be for the best. It may be my destiny. These Hungarians! There are no people in the world so easy to arouse by appealing, not to their nerves and passions, but to their chivalry and highest ideals.” She stood up again in her excitement. “Do you remember when Maria Theresia, desperate and almost helpless, with Europe sucking at every vein of the Empire, the Austrian army an army of corpses—do you remember when she came here, young, beautiful, pregnant, eloquent, and appealed to Hungary to save her, how the magnates not only went off their heads and cried that they would die for her, but inspired more than their own retainers with their enthusiasm?—until from every mountain, from regions so remote that William had never heard of them, there poured down tribes so wild and terrible that Europe fled in dismay. If Austria exists to-day, she owes it to Hungary—and no Hapsburg since Maria Theresia has ever acknowledged the debt. And again—when Napoleon bribed and my great-grandfather appealed, how they spurned the one and poured out their blood for the other—who was neither picturesque nor grateful. Throughout their history the Hungarian character has been astonishingly consistent, their nationalism has been as unwavering, in spite of conquests and immigrations, as that of your own countrymen. They are as independent as republicans and as loyal as the British. But it makes them the easier for tact and diplomacy to manage. If I convinced them that I really loved them, that I was capable of the right sort of rule—oh, go now. I will think all night. Come down early, will you?”

V

When Alexandra presented herself at the door leading to the apartments of the Archduchess at ten o’clock on the following morning, she was informed by the groom of the chambers that her Imperial Highness awaited her in the “Hungarian House.” Her arms were full of newspapers and her eyes sparkled with excitement. She ran down the little staircase just beyond the door and out upon the first terrace, blinking in the brilliant sunshine, but pausing to look at the cool gray Danube, the splendid bridges, the gay city opposite; then wandered about aimlessly for a few moments, her enjoyment still keen in the freedom of the Hungarian atmosphere, the unapproachable beauty of Buda, ancient city of kings. The hill which the palace crowns is so abrupt that its many terraces have the effect of the hanging gardens of old; and its pillared galleries of white stone, its wide and narrow flights of steps leading down the steep hill-side, through parterres of flowers or thickets of green to the great gates on the Danube, its upright unshaded lawns and winding ways lost in romantic gloom seduce the imagination away from the crimes that have been committed within the fair walls above, the prisoners that have languished in the dungeons beneath. When the most dazzling of suns floods the tremendous white front of the palace, with its carved and pillared rotunda, its straight and stately wings, the one bit of color in the crown of St. Stephen above; when the statues of kings seem quivering with life and the water of the fountain flies upward in an eager bursting of its bonds to leap outward on all sides and rush back as eagerly, in a confused and glittering mass of foam and spray, then must the most casual sojourner in the city of Pest, smoking his cigar in the shades of its corso, comprehend the proud spirit of Hungary. The royal palace of Buda is the embodiment of that pride, personal and national, the glorified symbol of a thousand years of steady and upward persistence, while battling with every misfortune that can assail a devoted nation.

“No wonder Kossuth lost his head when he was lord here for a few minutes,” thought Alexandra. “If he hadn’t—if he had sent Görgei on to Vienna—well, may I be in at the next death!”

She descended a wide flight of marble steps on the left of the palace, then another, and approached the little “Hungarian House,” built into a portion of the ancient wall, almost hidden by trees as old. It was a gay little tea-house of primitive Hungarian architecture, its inner walls decorated with panels of native embroidery, the whole effect light, Oriental, frivolous.

Two of Ranata’s ladies were reading under a tree nearby. The Archduchess was alone in the one room of the house. Her eyes were heavy. It was evident that she had slept little. They flashed, however, and she suddenly sat erect as she saw the newspapers.

“Ah!” she exclaimed sharply. “What do they say? I did not care to send for them, myself.”

Alexandra threw herself into a chair and rattled the journals viciously. “I have come to read you a few select extracts. Oh, he hit the mark—hit it in the bull’s-eye! I am told they are in such a state of enthusiasm and excitement over there that if he hadn’t left last night he wouldn’t have been able to get out of Hungary at all. Here’s the first gun: ‘The majestic words will find an echo in all parts of Hungary, which will ever remain in the debt of the great Hohenzollern, who has forever conquered the soul of every Hungarian; ... the love and gratitude of the Hungarian nation will follow the guest of our King wherever he goes.’ But that is mere rhetoric. Listen to this: ‘In every line there is so much heart and so much sympathy with the Hungarian nation, its glorious past as well as its promising future, that it seems not the language of politics only, but of a loving friend, on whose well-meaning we may ever rely! Perhaps it will give cause for reflection in those parts of the German Empire which have been prone, without cause, to cast blame upon Hungary, now that they see with how great a sympathy the German Emperor expresses himself in our behalf.’ Here is another: ‘As a political assurance it is the grandest which ever came from the lips of the Emperor William himself.... Many wounds are healed by those words, which put an end to such calumny.’ There are two more. Of course there are columns, but I have marked the significant extracts. ‘The toasts of yesterday will be written in the annals of the nation with letters of gold, and sustain and rejoice the soul of future generations. No Hungarian will read the warm and inspired words of the German Emperor without a joyful and a burning heart. No strange monarch has ever spoken to our nation with so much feeling.’ This is the last: ‘Where did the German Emperor find those colors for his palette? Why, they are our own colors! Where did he find that tune? It is the pulse of our own hearts! God bless this great monarch, who knows so well how to appreciate our striving country! We utter these words of parting to him with a never-dying gratitude!’ There you are!”

“I tasted gall with every word, but I am glad they have been printed, for they will help me to accomplish my object. I need strong arguments—my request to remain here alone will be a tremendous innovation. I shall send these to my father at once, that he may have read them before our interview. They may or may not have been shown to him. If I personally request it, he is sure to read them, no matter who is at his elbow.

“The sole consolation,” she continued after a moment, “is that William is not a Catholic. I doubt if the Hungarians would ever accept a Protestant king. Perhaps if Kossuth had been a Catholic he would have been stronger in his exile.”

“William may have to turn Catholic yet, or Socialist, to keep his throne and get all the other things he wants. Surely religion—the incidental husk of it—cannot mean much to a brain like that.”

“He would never let the Jesuits rule him,” said the Archduchess bitterly. “They have been the curse of the Hapsburgs, and their restoration constitutes Metternich’s chief claim to infamy. But their power over rulers in this enlightened age is incredible—perhaps, however, royalty is not so much enslaved by the Church as by its ancestors. Even I, to whom the Catholic Church is but one of many inherited forms, long since rejected by pride and reason—even I am sometimes the victim of that ancient sea of superstition that murmurs in the soul. I can see my father wash the feet of the poor and feel nothing but amusement. I can see him march bareheaded in the Corpus Christi procession, and only fear that he will get a sunstroke—his face was purple last June. But there are times in the cathedral, on great occasions of ceremony, when the mysterious colored dimness, the long sonorousness of priests, the glorified pageant, the divine music, and the intoxicating incense seem to liberate all the ghosts in my soul and send them to my head. Then I have a confused sensation of being in a past century—old doors are opened, old ecstasies, terrors, desires, creep forth. I long to prostrate myself and grovel, to scourge myself into a spiritual delirium, to feel the foot of the Church on my neck. Then creep out the old lusts of cruelty, of tyranny, of torture—what a mere ghost of power a civilized monarch has to-day! Can you imagine that there have been moments in my life when I regretted that?—when, under the spell of Holy Church, I have, for a moment, been a composite of the worst of my ancestors?”

“You are always picturesque, and you always make me rejoice that I am an American and not descended in the royal line. But I am astonished that you ever permit your reason, your personality, to be submerged in such a fashion! I should think if there was one woman who could seal up her ancestors and leave them to moulder where they belong, it was yourself. You are not morbid, except in erratic, incidental, ancestral streaks.”

“I don’t think I am morbid in the usual sense, for I have too good an appetite and take too much exercise. But I am bound to have deeps and fissures in my soul, for the centuries have cut them there; and what must be in them sometimes affects my imagination. And my ancestors have a curious fascination for me—the idea that they may or may not have the power to shape the destinies of the living. There have been moments when I have been disposed to prostrate myself amid the remains of their mortal part in the crypt and demand their intercession. Did you know that Maria Theresia used to make her daughters, on the eve of marriage, go down into the crypt alone at night and pray among the coffins of their ancestors? There have been times—very rarely—when that idea has appealed to me with an almost irresistible force.”

“For Heaven’s sake stay here in Budapest, where you can live in the sun. You have grown mouldy in the Hofburg this last year, and your ancestors have had it all their own way. I thought you had got over that sort of nonsense long ago. This is the result of William and a sleepless night.”

The Archduchess laughed. “Perhaps. I am willing to suppose that my predecessors have troubled me less all these years than they might have done without the fatal antidote of your American humor. Nevertheless, I have no right to be faithless to them, and I would not forget them if I could. And I find them much more satisfactory to contemplate than most of my living relatives, who, as a rule, have neither morals nor brains.”

“I agree with you there. When Death lays his iron hand upon a mortal’s power to bore, his virtues rise and sit upon the corpse. That is the secret of the superstition which makes us think kindly of the dead. Do you mind if I read a letter from Fess? I have been too excited even to open it.”

“Pray do.” Ranata smiled with both sympathy and interest. Then she sighed. “I believe your brother is the only person I envy—I mean the only person I’d be if some fairy would bid me choose. He has his destiny in his own hands. He has done such wonderful things! He is famous and powerful; his future holds the most astounding possibilities—and he is only thirty-one! Oh, your America! Where will you stop? And what will you do to poor old Europe?”

“Now you’re talking! Come down out of your niche, with the worm-eaten past behind it, and identify yourself with us. Therein lies your only salvation. William and my brother have some great scheme on foot; I don’t know what, but I know that much from a few words I happened to overhear between Fess and my father. William and Fessenden! They could turn the world upside down if they chose! Well?”

The Archduchess was leaning forward, her eyes blazing. “An alliance between William and your brother?” she exclaimed. She composed herself with a manifest effort, and added: “It is really remarkable—I know your father and Mrs. Abbott so well, and yet your brother—I have never seen him—not even his picture. You say those cuts in the newspapers during your war with Spain—”

“Were probably a composite of Roosevelt, John Jacob Astor, and Cervera. Fess, like my father, has never had his picture taken. He hasn’t the patience, and says he has no desire to display his weak side to the world—that the weak side of a man is more likely to come out in his photographs than not. It is hardly remarkable that you have not met him. First those years in South America, putting blood and iron in place of wind inside the Monroe Doctrine; since then he has had too much to do at home to come to Europe, except for two months in summer, when he brings a canoe and a knapsack. About his only other recreation has been the Spanish War. But this letter has the Berlin postmark. I thought he had gone back. Let me see what he has to say.”

She glanced through the short letter. “He is not going back at present. He has one of his periodical attacks of disgust for business and details, and will tramp over here for a month or two longer.”

“Ask him to come here—to Budapest,” said the Archduchess sweetly. “It is high time we met. And as he is the most distinguished of young Americans, I should like him to be one of my court. I intend to have the illustrious of all sorts about me here, in art, in letters, in music, and irrespective of noble birth. I intend to show Europe what a court should be.”

“You have thought it out! And the Emperor? Are you sure? It is my turn to have misgivings. He will see many objections. There is no one so rigid in his traditions.”

“I shall stay,” said Ranata shortly. “He would never go so far as to follow some illustrious examples and shut me up. If the worst comes to the worst, I’ll threaten to go to America and live there.”

“Good! At last my seeds are showing their little green heads. Now I know you will succeed in whatever you put your brain to. You may count on me. I’ll even engage to help you alienate Fessenden’s affections from William, and he is devoted to him.”

VI

The private apartments of the King, at the southwestern extremity of the palace, correspond with the suite on the southeastern corner, which had been furnished for his wife, and was now occupied by Ranata. He had sent his daughter word that he would receive her alone at four o’clock, and when she was announced he was standing on the balcony, looking down into the distant street behind the palace. There were excited groups of people in the street, and he guessed of what they talked. From the many old houses, fine and simple, on the still loftier hill which faced him, and from neighboring slopes above and about, from the villas on the precipitous heights of the Schwabenberg, the flags still floated, and it seemed to him that the German outnumbered the Austrian in the ratio of three to one. As he turned to greet his daughter, she saw that his face was more harassed than usual, but he advanced with the grace and courtesy which, even in his old age, were unsurpassed in Europe. The years which had robbed his heavy Hapsburg features of what beauty youth may have lent them had spared his light erect figure, his exquisite hands and feet. His genial eyes kindled at sight of Ranata, but he kissed her lightly and handed her to a chair. Had she been born twenty years earlier she might have been his idol, and as it was he admired no woman more and was proud of her. But not only had misfortunes, humiliations, reverses of every sort, and the cruellest personal afflictions that in number and degree have ever assailed a monarch atrophied his heart, but he feared to find even the eidola of happiness in this gifted creature, lest the knife be driven into the responsive breast and his own earthly expiation of the sins of all his ancestors be the more complete. His ancient habit of temperate affection for his older and married daughters excited no misgivings. But if Ranata had never been permitted to know him intimately enough to love him, she sympathized with and admired him. If enthusiasm, hope, passion, were dead within him, he was equally without bitterness, without resentment, without jealousy, and in theory, at least, without indifference to the least of his subjects. Even the cruel insult of the day before had not stirred him to anger. He had lost and lost and lost from the day he had ascended the throne, and the driving of Austria from the Germanic Confederation, and substitution in supremacy of Prussia, must forever be associated with his name. In William’s brief career Germany had been reorganized, strengthened, incredibly promoted in industrial importance. William received an occasional snub and reminder that he was two-thirds mortal, but to associate the idea of failure with him was as unthinkable as to imagine him in the robes of a monk praying for humility. Personally the Emperor and King could afford to pass his pyrotechnics by with a smile, but there was more to consider than his own sensations, and he was meditating an early retreat that he might consult with his Austrian ministers.

The room, with its olive walls and its lowered awnings, was cool and dim, but Ranata deliberately rose and placed her chair where the light would fall fullest upon her. Then she turned her powerful gray eyes on the Emperor, and he moved slightly; like the rest of the world, he usually saw his daughter’s eyes through their lashes, and it was now at rare intervals that he was reminded of the problem of his youngest born. He suddenly remembered that when he was, the laurels fell from his brow, and involuntarily he braced himself.

“I need not ask you, sir,” began Ranata, “if you recognized the calculation under William’s impetuosity last night. There is no doubt that he made the deepest possible impression on the Hungarians, that, if present conditions continue, no other subject will be discussed for months to come in this dissatisfied country, even to its remotest villages. At first I was merely humiliated, enraged, terrified. But I have thought all night, sir, and I have reached the conclusion that I have it in my power not only to obliterate the impression he has made, but to create one deeper and more persistent. His, he may not have the opportunity of renewing—you certainly are under no obligation to ask him here again. This is my plan: let me live here and keep the Hungarians, from magnates to peasants, constantly reminded of the great love they bear you. If I can make them love me, so much stronger will the bond be between this restive country and Austria.” She leaned forward and spoke as solemnly as if taking an oath of allegiance. “I know that if I am given my way I can preserve this state to the Empire, avert the calamity which all Europe expects to follow your death. I am willing to pledge every hour of my life to this great mission. I believe that every human being is put on earth to be of use in some form or other. Assuredly usefulness—to the uttermost moment—is demanded of us. So far I have accomplished no destiny whatever, and I do not for a moment believe that I had so many of the characteristics of my house concentrated in me for no purpose—although in endeavoring to find reconciliation to my lot I have sometimes argued myself into a belief of the blind law of cause and effect. But I do not believe in it. I am here for a purpose, and the time has come for the accomplishment of that purpose. I will not marry. I am quite well aware that it is your intention to arrange an alliance for me before my thirtieth birthday; but there is no mortal power, sir, that can force me to the altar. I make no threats. I have no intention of resorting to any desperate measures. I am strong enough in myself. I simply will not marry. But I now represent a sinful waste of high usefulness. Moreover, the emptiness and monotony of my life have become quite unbearable. I ask that I may be permitted to exert, for the good of my country, the best of those qualities which have come to me from yourself and my ancestors.”

The Emperor stared at her for a moment without speaking. He was as astonished as it was in his power to be at anything. Then he gave her the answer she expected.

“It is a subject for deep thought on my part, my dear child. A week from to-day I will give you my decision. Meanwhile there is no reason why you should not remain here if you desire it.” Then, as Ranata merely continued to transfix him with her determined eyes, he continued hastily: “It is a great and generous idea, and I am much gratified to learn that you take so deep an interest in your house. I had thought you absorbed in books and horses. But are you sure you would not pine in this strange country? Remember, you would be obliged to send all your Austrian ladies home, and surround yourself with Hungarians. I, as you know, hardly dare to bring an aide among these people, so fierce in their national pride. The women are as proud as the men, and very independent, quite unused now to leadership of any sort. Every Hungarian woman in the higher aristocratic circles is a sort of queen, is a social law unto herself. You are accustomed to the courtier, to the flexible—”

“I am sick of it! And as tact is one of the prerogatives of royalty, I hope you will give me credit for my share. As for being lonesome, nothing on this earth can ever approach the suicidal ennui I have experienced in the Hofburg. As for Schönbrunn, I loathe the sight of it. This change is necessary, sir. Moreover, Alexandra will be with me. And if there were drawbacks—do you think your daughter is the person to consider trifles when a great object is to be gained?”

The Emperor’s eyes happened to rest on her hair. It flamed against his green walls. “Red-haired women are dangerous,” he thought. “It is well to keep them occupied. Why on earth doesn’t she marry?” Aloud he repeated, “A week from to-day, Ranata, you shall have my answer.”

Ranata, having spent her first round, was content to retire. She knew that a definite answer was not to be thought of until the Emperor had asked the advice of his ministers. “But the idea made an impression on him, no doubt of that,” she informed Alexandra, whom she met in the garden. “And so did I. If I didn’t tell him I would stay here whether or no, I don’t think he has any doubt of my intention. If he won’t give his consent, I’ll spend all my money and all yours; and his refusal of the necessary allowance is the worst he would do, for he wants no more scandals. To remove me by force—and I’d leave Hungary in no other fashion—would be to make the world believe I was mad, and he has had enough of that. Besides, poor man, I made him think I should go mad if I didn’t have my head for a while.”

“We are a wicked unprincipled sex when we want our own way,” commented Miss Abbott. “But to get it—that is the main thing; especially when there is a good and great end in view.”

VII

On the following Thursday Ranata was not surprised to receive a note from her father asking her to grant an audience to his minister Count von Königsegg, who went to Budapest for the purpose.

“Now for it!” exclaimed Alexandra. “Of course he’s brought a corkscrew. Are your brain-cells hermetically sealed?”

“His corkscrew will do him no good. Nevertheless, I feel a certain apprehension—feminine, I suppose. He is the one person who has done me the honor to believe that I might play with politics in a manner to disconcert his clever manipulation of my father, and I have shown my dislike of him by ignoring his existence, as far as possible. He detests me; nevertheless, if I am able to convince him that I have no purpose behind the one I have advanced, I believe he will make no opposition to my plan: he has no desire to see William in the Hofburg and himself in obscurity. He will not have the least objection to using me—he is the sort to feel quite sure that a woman can be disposed of the moment a man sees fit. But if he thought that I had any ulterior design—”

“Try American diplomacy on him if you get in too deep—speak out bluntly and agitate his guile. Let him squirm himself into a corner, and then tell him to speak out or get out.”

“I sometimes feel half an American,” said the Archduchess Ranata Theresia.

Down the long front of the southeast wing of the palace is a suite of some ten or twelve rooms, large and small, beginning with the private dining-room and finishing with the red reception-room. The yellow Throne Room, or Great Hall of Ceremonies, runs parallel, occupying the width of the circle-room and audience-chamber, which flank it at one end, and of the circle-room and blue drawing-room of its southern termination. From this last circle-room opens another, which in turn leads to the private apartments occupied by the Queen of Hungary when there is one. The windows of these apartments, closed during the clouded last years of Elizabeth’s life and since her death, were now open to the sun; the hangings were losing their musty odor, and the numerous belongings of Ranata had already obliterated the little individualities of the Empress. Ranata, whose strong soul had little in common with the unhappy woman who had permitted life to crush her, had tender pity for her mother’s memory, but no great amount of sentiment. Not only were the rooms dingy and oppressive, but her own individuality was too strong to exist comfortably in surroundings stamped throughout many years by that of another; she had made up her mind that the day after her father’s decision, whatever it might be, she should refurnish the four rooms of her suite; and when the Emperor’s letter arrived they were full of stuffs, sent up from Pest for the approval of her Imperial Highness. Some pieces of curious brocade were pinned into the panels, and the dusty old rugs had vanished. The girls, ordered to remain in strict seclusion during this week of deliberation, had entertained themselves in their own fashion.

“I cannot receive him here,” said the Archduchess, when she received the humble petition of the great minister for an audience. “Besides, I don’t want to. If I could help it no one should set foot in my personal surroundings—atmosphere—who was even uncongenial to me.”

“It is a family failing,” said Alexandra dryly. “But I always admired Ludvig for putting his head out of the window when he had to have his tooth pulled rather than have the royal atmosphere polluted by a dentist. It may have been uncomfortable for both, but it was magnificently consistent.”

“I am not Ludvig, and I have no intention of making a fool of myself,” replied the Archduchess, also with some dryness. “I’ll receive him in the tea-room; I like the blue walls. Shall I wear black or white? I look more imposing in black.”

“Oh, look your guileless best—white, by all means.”

Therefore, Ranata caused herself to be arrayed in a bewildering gown of a pellicular Eastern stuff, much embroidered, and billowing about her feet in the fashion of the moment. She wore her heavy hair in a gold net, and a string of pearls about her throat, exposed to the base. She looked girlish, if not ingenuous, and very lovely.

The Archduchess Maria Leopoldina, Obersthofmeisterin, or Grand Stewardess, of Ranata’s Household, together with one of the ladies-in-waiting, the Lectrice, and Alexandra, disposed themselves just beyond the door of the tea-room as the carriage which had been sent for the minister appeared on the bridge below the palace.

“It is fearfully hot, and he’s probably cross,” said Alexandra from the balcony. “Better begin with iced coffee and predispose him to amiability of a sort.”

And thus it came about that the subtle and wary minister tarried for a few moments beneath the youthful presentment of his sovereign in the brave uniform of the Hungarian Hussars, while four women smiled upon him and flattered him with many little attentions. Then he went in to his fate.

Ranata had carefully arranged her features before the mirror, and had succeeded in banishing the expression of haughty dislike evoked by the mere mention of her enemy. When he entered her presence her eyes were half closed as usual, but their visible surface was soft. She dared not receive him with cordiality, but a frank admission of an enemy’s stewardship of the plums she desired involved a certain amount of graciousness.

“This is very kind, your Excellency,” she said gently, giving him her hand to kiss. “Had you permitted any one else to bring me the Emperor’s decision, I should still have been tortured by many doubts; but now I shall know my fate at once.” She leaned forward slightly and deepened her emphasis, her lashes lifting a little. “Of course I shall abide by what you and my father think best; but remember it is little less than life or death to me. No one knows better than you the dreary monotony of the lives of royal women. You know how my mother stood it! You who know men, and must know women so well, must have suspected that had it not been for the constant scandals which seem to be the peculiar curse of my house, I might have taken my life in my own hands before this; but the very years of suppression I have endured, ordered by a sense of duty to the dynasty, has strengthened and deepened that feeling until it rules my life. Now, for the first time, I have had an inspiration, which, if permitted me to act upon, will fill my days with no dishonor to my house. Of the good I may accomplish by remaining here I will not insult your understanding by dwelling upon. But, although we never seem to have been friends, I am so well aware that I am now in your power that I have given you this glimpse of my inner self—so be merciful,” she added, as if with an attempt at playfulness, while a smile rippled through her eyelashes.

For a moment the minister did not reply. He was not a man easy to nonplus, but he had come to test his strength with the haughtiest woman in the Empire, and he found himself staring at the loveliness of a softly impassioned girl. He had come to flatter, and his very spine thrilled at subtle compliments delivered in a voice whose cold music had become as sweet as a harp some one was playing in a distant chamber. He had come to sound with the elastic skill of time-honored methods, and his scornful Archduchess had thrown wide a window of her soul and left him blinking. He had entered with the smile and the supple backbone of the courtier, but quite aware that he might retire with his tail between his legs, and a fully matured enmity in his fertile brain. He was by no means sure of her even now, and he studied her face—she had lowered her eyes that he might; but there is no influence so potent, no wine so heady, as the flattery of royalty to courtier. And the—perhaps unconscious?—flattery of this woman of all women, of whose coldness those nearest to her complained, seemed to rise like a rosy mist to his brain. He swept it back, however; there was too much at stake. Although he did not hate her as much as she imagined, for he was philosophical where women were concerned, he had recognized in her a powerful individuality, a violent will, which, if given its head, might deprive himself of the sweets of existence.