THEIR MAJESTIES AS I KNEW THEM

I

THE EMPEROR AND EMPRESS OF AUSTRIA

1.

The infinitely fascinating and melancholy image of the Empress Elizabeth of Austria represents a special type among all the royal and imperial majesties to whose persons I have been attached during their different stays in France; and this both on account of her life, which was one long romance, and of her death, which was a tragedy.

Hers was a strong, sad soul; and she disappeared suddenly, as in a dream of terror. She hovers round my memory crowned with the halo of unhappiness.

The first time that I saw her was at Geneva; and I cannot recall this detail without emotion, for it was at Geneva that she was to die under the assassin's dagger. At the end of August, 1895, the Government received notice from the French Embassy in Vienna that the Empress was about to visit Aix-les-Bains in Savoy. She was to travel from her palace of Miramar through Italy and Switzerland; and, as usual, I received my formal letter of appointment from the Ministry of the Interior, instructing me to go and meet the Empress at the International railway-station at Geneva.

I confess that, when I stepped into the train, I experienced a keen sense of curiosity at the thought that I was soon to find myself in the presence of the lady who was already surrounded by an atmosphere of legend and who was known as "the wandering empress."

I had been told numerous more or less veracious stories of her restless and romantic life; I had heard that she talked little, that she smiled but rarely and that she always seemed to be pursuing a distant dream.

My first impression, however, when I saw her alighting from her carriage on the Geneva platform, was very different from that which I was prepared to receive. The Empress, at that time, was fifty-eight years of age. She looked like a girl, she had the figure of a girl, with a girl's lightness and grace of movement.

Tall and slender, with a touch of stiffness in her bearing, she had a rather fresh-coloured face, deep, dark and extraordinarily bright eyes and a wealth of chestnut hair. I realised later that she owed her vivacious colouring to the long walks which she was in the constant habit of taking. She wore a smartly-cut black tailor-made dress, which accentuated her slimness. The beauty of her figure was a matter of which she was frankly vain; she weighed herself every day.

I was also struck by the smallness of her hands, the musical intonation of her voice and the purity with which she expressed herself in French, although she pronounced it with a slightly guttural accent.

One disappointment, however, awaited me; my reception was icy cold. In spite of the experience which I had acquired during the exercise of my special functions, it left me none the less disconcerted. My feeling of discomfort was still further increased when, on reaching Aix-les-Bains, General Berzeviczy, whom I had asked for an interview in order to arrange for the organisation of my department, answered drily:

"We sha'n't want anybody."

These four words, beyond a doubt, constituted a formal dismissal, an invitation, both plain and succinct, to take the first train back to Paris. My position became one of singular embarrassment. Invested with a confidential mission, I was beginning by inspiring distrust precisely in those to whom this mission was