And what one says of that marriage—the one which made the first effective breach in the wall of Habsburg pride and prejudices—one may say of the marriages of various other bridal couples who presently insisted on following through the breach which had been made: the marriage of Archduchess Stéphanie to Count Lonyay; of Stéphanie’s daughter, the Archduchess Elizabeth, to Otto von Windischgraetz; and of the Archduke Francis Ferdinand to Countess Sophie Chotek.
Even against those marriages—or against some of them—the breach which Princess Elizabeth and Otto von Seefried zu Buttenheim had made was to be defended; but the stories are of sufficient interest and importance to be related separately.
CHAPTER XXVIII
The marriage of Archduchess Stéphanie to Count Lonyay—Attitude of the King of the Belgians towards that marriage—Attitude of Francis Joseph—He sanctions the union, but snubs the bridegroom—Marriage of the Archduchess Elizabeth to Otto von Windischgraetz—Francis Joseph’s approval—The Windischgraetzes raised to the rank of Serene Highnesses.
Through the breach which Princess Elizabeth had made the Archduchess Stéphanie presently insisted upon marching; and it would indeed have been cruel to have hindered her from doing so. Her life had been an unhappy and a lonely one; she had been made to feel that, wherever she might be, she was not really wanted. She wished, after Rudolph’s death, to return to Brussels; but the King of the Belgians would not have her there—his treatment of her being only less shameful than his treatment of her sister, Princess Louise of Saxe-Coburg. Remaining in Austria, she realised that neither the Emperor nor the Empress liked her, though they had no grievance against her beyond the fact that she had not attracted Rudolph sufficiently to save him from himself. Her estrangement from Rudolph was perpetuated after his death by the discovery that his will deprived her of the guardianship of her only child.
Of course there was talk to the effect that she was consoling herself—there always is such talk in such cases, and there is no need to attach importance to it. Presently all the other rumours were silenced by the announcement that she loved, and was resolved to marry, Count Lonyay, a gentleman of her household. His quarterings were few; but experience had not taught Stéphanie to associate blue blood with devotion and fidelity. Nothing was more natural than her desire to make a dash for happiness without reference to equality of rank; and as her imperial relatives were treating her as a person of no importance, there was no particular reason why they should object. As a matter of fact Francis Joseph did object, and did defend the breach; but his resistance was weakened, and his surrender precipitated, by the uninvited appearance of Stéphanie’s father as his ally.
For who, after all, was this King of the Belgians that he should make himself the champion of royal and imperial exclusiveness? He was a mere parvenu among Kings: one whose territory had, within quite recent times, formed a portion of the Austrian dominions, and whose subjects were such aggressive democrats that they did not even allow him to possess a crown; a scandalous King, too, whose ostentatious intrigues with dancing girls were derided in all the comic papers of Europe, and who punished no one for lèse-majesté when his portrait and theirs were offered for sale side by side in the kiosks at Ostend. How could the Head of the House of Habsburg stand shoulder to shoulder in support of his caste with such a man as that? The cause was obviously compromised by the alliance, and the dignified course for Francis Joseph was to show that he could afford to be magnanimous, even if Leopold II. could not.
He took that dignified course, and made that magnanimous gesture. “In the name of tradition,” Leopold II. stopped his daughter’s allowance—it was only £2,000 a year—and deprived her of her title of Royal Highness. Francis Joseph retorted by giving his daughter-in-law a considerable sum of money, and announcing that she might retain her imperial dignities. He cut the nobler figure of the two; and praise of his magnanimity rewarded him. But his pride nevertheless had to find utterance; he had to make it clear that, though he consented, he did not approve, but regarded Count Lonyay as an intruder in a family infinitely above him. When Stéphanie came to Court, she had to come without her husband; and when Stéphanie’s daughter was married, Count Lonyay, though suffered to be present in the crowd at the religious ceremony, received no invitation to the subsequent luncheon.
It sounds petty; and one need not suppose that Stéphanie did not care. But if Francis Joseph could make her unhappy for a day, he could not make her unhappy on the whole. One cannot leave the subject of her marriage without quoting once again her own joyous anticipation of it:—
“Is it possible? A long, long terrible night has gone by for me, and I see a rosy dawn of hope on the clouded sky, a ray of light which tells of the rising sun of joy. Will the sun rise in full glory? Will he warm me with his rays, and dry the tears from my cheeks? Come, my sun, come! You find a poor faded flower whose freshness has been destroyed by the hard frost of fate.”