Rulers of Kings

A Novel

By
Gertrude Atherton

Harper & Brothers Publishers
New York and London
1904

All rights reserved.
Published April, 1904.

To
Poultney Bigelow
one of the
small band of American writers
who dares at all times to tell the truth
whose patriotism is genuine and useful
and who has revealed to us so
much of modern Europe

May it not be that in every family there are unborn children—souls that have come too late perhaps to find a medium, yet, in consequence of their hereditary particles, unable to seek it elsewhere? We know not what mysterious dissolutions and recombinations of spirit take place in the realm where the released forces go, with what deliberation the essences of families are remixed; oftenest, no doubt, with commonplace results; sometimes with intent to bring humiliation and disaster upon a house which has transgressed too many laws; yet again, combining the great characteristics of mind and soul and temperament of those who have distinguished themselves in history, with such weaknesses as must inevitably destroy all three—as in the notable instance of the last Rudolf von Hapsburg. Again, the best may have been remixed with only enough of human weakness and passion that love may be inspired instead of awe, that happiness without disaster may be possible. And yet the most fortunate of these fusions may be finished too late for its generation, and be forced to bide its time invisible; or perhaps, by some spiritual statute of limitations, is deprived of its earthly rights forever. Nevertheless, it may linger in spirit where it should walk in its servant of flesh, and unknown, unsuspected, take its part in the daily life of its kin, having its own influence perhaps on their destinies and on history. And the romanticist, so much of whose time is spent in the unreal world, may fancy, once in a way, that one of these belated souls has swum into his ken, and that his privilege is to rescue it, to fit it to the part for which Nature so tirelessly equipped it.

Note.—The dinner described in Chapter IV., Part II. occurred in 1897, but it being necessary that the action of the story should take place several years later, I have brought it forward. This of course could not have been done had certain circumstances arisen which might have given immediate historic results to the speech of the Emperor of Germany. Those circumstances not having arisen, it makes little difference whether the speech was delivered yesterday or six years ago. Otherwise, the dinner, the speech, its effect upon the Hungarian magnates present, its reception next day by the Hungarian press and people, were as described.