“In the life of every man there comes a time when his inner life becomes extinct.”
“I know that he who revolts suffers a hundred times more than he who is resigned; but resignation is a thing of which I am not capable.”
“I should like to be buried near the sea, so that the waves might beat against my coffin. Then all the stars in Heaven would shine on me, and the cypresses would lament for me far longer than either men or women.”
Such phrases sound, as it were, the leit motif of the mystery of Elizabeth’s life. She seems to have thrown them out, without telling anyone what sorrow or disappointment had inspired them. Each reporter who tries to guess at their meaning offers a different conjecture. The unkindness of Francis Joseph, who was not unkind—the unkindness of some lover, who was—the tragic deaths of her son, her cousin, her brother-in-law, and her sister—all these things have been cited, by one chronicler or another, as explanations of her funereal gloom. But, as she confided in no one, no one need pretend to know, or to do more than draw the picture of a woman as unhappy as she was beautiful—clinging to her unhappiness as she clung to her beauty—wandering restlessly through Europe like a shadow pursuing shadows, but running home from time to time to keep up appearances.
And the picture, to be complete, should also show the figure of Francis Joseph, doing his full share in the keeping up of those appearances, and taking long journeys in order to pay periodical visits to the Empress, who was making it so clear, to all who cared to look, that she was happiest away from home, and always wearing on his countenance that look of bland and imperturbable serenity with which his innumerable portraits have made Europe familiar. It is a picture full of lights and shadows and strange contrasts; but we must not dwell upon it any more. Our attention is claimed by the supplementary spectacle of the Emperor at odds with fate, confronting the difficulties which threatened to tear his Empire to tatters, and gradually getting that Empire into some sort of order.
CHAPTER XII
Francis Joseph’s snub to Napoleon III.—Proposal to address him as “Sir” instead of “Brother”—The consequences—Napoleon asks: “What can one do for Italy?”—Austria at war with France and Italy—The crimes committed by Austria in Italy—Battles of Magenta and Solferino—Francis Joseph compelled to surrender Lombardy, but allowed to retain Venetia.
Other things besides his wife’s secret sorrows—or even his own—claimed Francis Joseph’s attention through the ’fifties, ’sixties, and ’seventies. The hour for the fulfilment of Countess Karolyi’s curse had not yet sounded; but it did seem as if that “break-up” of Austria which statesmen think about when they lie awake at night was imminent. Hungary was sullen; Prussia was ambitious and jealous; the Italian subjects of the Habsburgs hated them. It was the Italians who were destined to speak first.
They had already spoken in 1848; but then they had been silenced, because Radetzky had been a good general, and Charles Albert a bad one. But Victor Emmanuel was a greater man than Charles Albert, and he had Cavour to guide him. Italia fara da se—Italy will work out her own destiny—had been Charles Albert’s motto. Victor Emmanuel and Cavour played a more subtle game, and looked out for allies; and in Napoleon III. they found an ally who was quite willing to help them; a sympathetic man who had once been involved in the Carbonari movement; a sensitive man whom the head of the House of Habsburg had snubbed as a parvenu by proposing to address him as “Sir” instead of “Brother.”
So Napoleon’s sympathies were worked upon, and the wires were pulled. It is said that the beautiful Countess Castiglioni helped to pull them, adding the influence of her charms to that of her arguments; and the statement is probable enough, for the Emperor of the French was susceptible. At any rate, he presently asked Cavour the point-blank question: “What can one do for Italy?” and a little later, in July, 1858, he had a quiet talk with Cavour at the Baths of Plombières, and arranged what should be done, and what should be his own share of the plunder.