The old man thrust his arm under the pillow and turned his face to one side. With a satisfied sigh he closed his eyes, and after a few minutes he fell asleep—in the sleep that knows no waking.
Egidy wrote me as follows regarding the Empress Elisabeth’s death:
... The most affecting word that has been spoken about your Empress’s death is that from her own husband’s mouth: “It is incomprehensible how a man could lay his hand on this woman, who in all her life had never harmed any one and had done nothing but good.”
A touching truth is to be found in this thought, and at the same time, also, the earnest call to think the thought again. Possibly the innocent woman had to die this sudden death in order that deep sorrow might come upon the best of all peoples, in order that all might mourn with the bereaved husband and Emperor, and also in order that we might repeat that lamentation in our thought, and comprehend, should the grief-stricken Emperor in humble realization come to the following resolution:
“Henceforth men who have never done any one any harm shall cease mercilessly thrusting the deadly steel into one another’s hearts. Henceforth I will not allow men whose lives are confided to my protection to march to fields of battle; no longer will I train to war the nations that are under my scepter. The labor of the remaining years that Providence shall vouchsafe me belongs to internal and external preparation for the warless epoch.”
Egidy still further elaborated this idea in the October number of his Versöhnung (“Reconciliation”).
The plans for the meetings to be held in Lisbon in the year 1898 fell through. The Iberian peninsula seemed little fitted to arrange for peace congresses as long as the Spanish-American War was in progress; so this year the two Bernese councils met for consultation in different places, having for their object the decision of what attitude to take regarding the Russian circular. The Interparliamentary Union met in Brussels, the International Peace Bureau in Turin, where a World’s Exposition was being held.
We went to Turin, My Own and [I], in spite of our bereavement, starting a fortnight after the old baron had been laid away in the family tomb at Höflein.
A letter which I wrote to a friend tells of our visit to the capital of Piedmont:
Turin, Grand Hôtel d’Europe,