She must have dropped hints in the hearing of her maid, for between lunch and afternoon tea at the Savoy one mild September day she found a pleasant-mannered gentleman beside her, who opened a conversation, and deftly extracted a statement from her concerning her husband. This person happened to be a journalist, and, the same day, the wires were busy conveying the startling information that the heir to the throne of Austria had married Maria Hussmann, Frederick Krupp's lady housekeeper!
Meanwhile the bridegroom had also read the statement in a London paper, and without a trace of annoyance had questioned his wife. Maria confessed that she had been unable to resist the temptation to proclaim her pride and happiness, and he did not reprove her harshly. It was only human, after all, he said, for girls do not marry archdukes every day, so he kissed her and went downstairs, and she never saw him again.
A third person read about the affair with, perhaps, more interest than anybody else, and he was the real Francis Ferdinand. He was staying at his palace in Hungary, and the announcement of his marriage tickled even his dormant sense of humour. Three years were to elapse before he was to become the husband of the Countess Sophy Chotek, later Duchess of Hohenberg, and seventeen ere their double murder was to precipitate the greatest of all wars.
There was no difficulty in exposing the fraud, but when a detective from Scotland Yard called at the hotel he found only a weeping bride. Her husband had disappeared, and she was desolate. The truth was broken to her, and a benevolent lady in London made arrangements for her to return to Essen. The authorities had no use for her now. Their energies were concentrated on discovering the retreat of the impostor.
His history was a peculiar one. Johann Schmidt—his real name—was the son of a Berlin bookmaker, who after numerous terms of imprisonment had become an inmate of a criminal lunatic asylum. He escaped from this prison by impersonating one of the doctors, and, having made his way to Aix-la-Chapelle, wooed and won the impressionable lady housekeeper from Essen.
The impostor was not, however, brought to trial, as Maria would not prosecute him. All she wished was to be allowed to bury herself in obscurity. But she was scarcely more annoyed than the Chauvinistic German journalists that her husband was not the real Simon Pure.
"No wonder he could pose so successfully as Francis Ferdinand," one of them wrote, "he was for six years in a lunatic asylum."