“I WISH I had been born in Oshkosh or Massachusetts,” said the Archduchess, with innocent humor.
“What have you been doing with yourself?” asked Alexandra. “Your letters were long enough, but they seemed to say less than usual.”
The Archduchess Ranata Theresia took her friend by the arm and led her to the window. The fine lace which covered it, woven with the double eagle of the House of Hapsburg, concealed every detail of the room from the curious below, but was a mere veil to those behind it.
“Oh, I know this prospect!” exclaimed the American girl.
The private apartments of the Hofburg look down upon the Franzensplatz, an oblong court-yard of inconsiderable size, surrounded by flat and dingy walls, its bare surface relieved only by a bronze Hapsburg leaning upon all the virtues he knew not in life. Opposite is the guard-room. In the court-yard to-day were a few tourists staring at the bronze or the remains of the moat and the gilded armorial bearings on the eastern side. All sorts and conditions of people, from peasants with their market-baskets to the hurrying bourgeois and the member of Parliament, took the short cut through the Palace court-yards, while private carriages, with servants in mediæval liveries, and rickety cabs, driven by reckless shouting kutschers, awoke the hollow echoes of the deep portals, and clattered across the platz. From two of the upper windows housemaids were shaking rugs, and the only ornaments of the dreary scene were the tall well-built house-guards, who, lackeys as they were, carried their all-round horse-hair plumes and glittering uniforms with the elegance and distinction so indiscriminately lavished by Nature upon the Austrian race.
“I know this scene!” repeated Alexandra. “And I usually turn my back upon it. Why—why—doesn’t the Emperor have the private apartments on the Heldenplatz, where at least you might see trees and the tops of the buildings on the Ringstrasse? This would drive some people melancholy mad. You have not been standing at this window ever since I left you, I hope? Trotting solemnly round the riding-school is better than that. But you seem to have been in Vienna more than usual this year. I congratulated myself that this was the year I was detained in New York.”
“That is brutal! I have only left this prison for two months at Ischl. Between the fire at Schönbrunn and various political reasons, we have been here since you left—now eight months ago! And as you are my only real companion—! I do sometimes wish I had been born an American.”
“There is an asylum in America whenever you make up your mind to run. I have a handsome determined and adventurous brother—he has heard of you! You have only to say the word and his yacht will be in the Adriatic.”
“Don’t talk romantic nonsense. I’m not up to it.”
The Archduchess turned her back on the window and sat down before a table in an upright chair. Alexandra took a rocking-chair—one of three she had long since presented to the Hofburg, that she might always be sure of a comfortable seat. Ranata had no idea whatever of comfort. Her morning bath was supplied by a procession of servants bringing the necessary amount of water in ewers—she had never seen water gush from pipes except into a fountain, and she privately believed that rocking-chairs were a relic of the North American Indian. But if her apartments were as high and angular and unhomelike as those of most royal palaces, she had a decided love of splendor, and originality enough to avoid crimson and white-and-gold. The morbid virginal face of young Ludvig von Bayern looked down from the wall opposite the windows of her salon, and although she made sport of his vanity, she gave the portrait a place for the sake of its beauty, and approved of one form his madness had taken. The walls and windows of her salon were panelled with blue velvet lightly embroidered with gold. The tables, most of the ornaments, several chairs, and even the window-seats were made from blocks of lapis lazuli. On one side of the lofty room were her books—English, German, French, and Hungarian—bound in flexible blue-and-white morocco, an unconscious tribute perhaps to her humbler Bavarian blood. Scattered among the embroideries on the walls were many miniatures. In the small writing-room adjoining was a large desk of gilt and lapis lazuli, with furnishings of gold and blue vellum. In this little room was one picture only, a small painting of Rudolf in the costume of the Transylvanian sportsman. The frame of this picture was eternally hidden under a wreath of green or flowers.