“He is the one picturesque figure in Europe, my dear.”
“And the one man who could have outshone him is dead! The Hungarians worshipped Rudolf; the peasants will not believe that he is dead; but this romantic hot-blooded people must be enthusiastic about somebody, and my father is too old. William is young; he looks the Emperor; he is as ambitious as Napoleon; there is an idea abroad that he dangles the scales of Europe in his fingers. Oh, if I had been born a man!”
The two girls were standing on the balcony of the private suite of apartments formerly occupied by the Empress Elizabeth when playing the part of Queen of Hungary. Down on their left, beyond the Danube with its mighty bridges, was the beautiful and busy city of Pest. Opposite them, on the most precipitous height of Buda, were the ruins of the citadel. The palace, a vast and symmetrical pile of nearly a thousand rooms, crowns the lowest ridge of a mountain-range which slopes in irregular masses to the river. Behind rises the long shoulder of the Schwabenberg, its arm curved downward in the north to grasp the Danube.
The great hills were brilliant with autumnal color; many boats were on the river; the world was promenading on the corsos; the flags streaming from every window were gayer than the woods. Far below, at the foot of the Palace Hill, in one of the cafés on the quay, the girls could hear the music of the Chardash, and held their breath as its wild note of longing changed to furious appeal.
“This is living!” said Alexandra. “I feel romantic for the first time in my life. Can’t we stay here?”
“It is perfect. I should be happy—almost; content if he were not here. But he must have taught the very Hungarians the hollowness of their fictitious love for my father. They have too much to forgive! They never will forgive it. He is old. He has suffered greatly. They pity him. That is all. And William knows that. He has chosen this moment of uneasiness in Europe to come here, looking the invincible young monarch, bursting with arrogance and daring and the success of his reign. No wonder the susceptible Hungarians think him the chosen of God, and assured of infinite conquest. Did you see the Pester Lloyd this morning? ‘Till now it is the minds of the Hungarians which, with its own mind, Emperor William knew how to conquer, but he evidently knows as well how to conquer the hearts. This he proved to-day once more, and we can only give him the assurance that of all the languages in the world, it is the language of the heart which in Hungary is best understood.’ Oh, if I were a man!”
“I wouldn’t let a little thing like that stop me. Your brain is as good as his, and you have all the courage of all your ancestors. In more ways than one you are like him who prompted the old bishop to cry, ‘Sit fast, Lord God, or Rudolf will occupy thy throne!’ Times are times, but I don’t believe that all your talents were given to you for no purpose.”
“I believe in the blind law of cause and effect. It is only in my wildest moments that I have dreamed that the first Rudolf and Maria Theresia circled low when I was born and shook a bit of their golden dust into my brain-cells—I hate to talk nonsense! Here come two carriages across the bridge, the first of the guests, no doubt. We had better go in, it is a quarter to five. Mind you are careful not to allude to my father here as ‘The Emperor.’ That is a great point in Hungary.”
“If fate ever should whirl you to the throne, Ranata, for Heaven’s sake have dinner at a Christian hour. I have indigestion for a month every time I come back from America.”
The girls, who had stepped out on the balcony in the broad light of afternoon, ignoring the protests of Maria Leopoldina, who, rather than carry the mausoleum of her charms into the sunshine, had retired in dudgeon, were dressed for a great banquet to be given at five o’clock to the guest of the King of Hungary, the German Emperor. The Archduchess, who, with some reason, had come to the conclusion that life with her was to be a sequence of weeds, interrupted by intervals of uncertain duration, varied her black with white only. Nevertheless, she was one of the best-dressed women in Europe, and only her patient tire-women knew the infinite range of her wardrobe. “I often sigh for color,” she confided once to her American friend, “but I am too superstitious to venture. And perhaps it is as well. My rôle is the princess of the antique, the traditional pattern. In white I look ready for a memorial window or a bas-relief in the Augustin.” To which Alexandra had replied practically, “To say nothing of the fact that it makes your own coloring twice as strong as it would be above a brilliant plumage.”