“The sole consolation,” she continued after a moment, “is that William is not a Catholic. I doubt if the Hungarians would ever accept a Protestant king. Perhaps if Kossuth had been a Catholic he would have been stronger in his exile.”
“William may have to turn Catholic yet, or Socialist, to keep his throne and get all the other things he wants. Surely religion—the incidental husk of it—cannot mean much to a brain like that.”
“He would never let the Jesuits rule him,” said the Archduchess bitterly. “They have been the curse of the Hapsburgs, and their restoration constitutes Metternich’s chief claim to infamy. But their power over rulers in this enlightened age is incredible—perhaps, however, royalty is not so much enslaved by the Church as by its ancestors. Even I, to whom the Catholic Church is but one of many inherited forms, long since rejected by pride and reason—even I am sometimes the victim of that ancient sea of superstition that murmurs in the soul. I can see my father wash the feet of the poor and feel nothing but amusement. I can see him march bareheaded in the Corpus Christi procession, and only fear that he will get a sunstroke—his face was purple last June. But there are times in the cathedral, on great occasions of ceremony, when the mysterious colored dimness, the long sonorousness of priests, the glorified pageant, the divine music, and the intoxicating incense seem to liberate all the ghosts in my soul and send them to my head. Then I have a confused sensation of being in a past century—old doors are opened, old ecstasies, terrors, desires, creep forth. I long to prostrate myself and grovel, to scourge myself into a spiritual delirium, to feel the foot of the Church on my neck. Then creep out the old lusts of cruelty, of tyranny, of torture—what a mere ghost of power a civilized monarch has to-day! Can you imagine that there have been moments in my life when I regretted that?—when, under the spell of Holy Church, I have, for a moment, been a composite of the worst of my ancestors?”
“You are always picturesque, and you always make me rejoice that I am an American and not descended in the royal line. But I am astonished that you ever permit your reason, your personality, to be submerged in such a fashion! I should think if there was one woman who could seal up her ancestors and leave them to moulder where they belong, it was yourself. You are not morbid, except in erratic, incidental, ancestral streaks.”
“I don’t think I am morbid in the usual sense, for I have too good an appetite and take too much exercise. But I am bound to have deeps and fissures in my soul, for the centuries have cut them there; and what must be in them sometimes affects my imagination. And my ancestors have a curious fascination for me—the idea that they may or may not have the power to shape the destinies of the living. There have been moments when I have been disposed to prostrate myself amid the remains of their mortal part in the crypt and demand their intercession. Did you know that Maria Theresia used to make her daughters, on the eve of marriage, go down into the crypt alone at night and pray among the coffins of their ancestors? There have been times—very rarely—when that idea has appealed to me with an almost irresistible force.”
“For Heaven’s sake stay here in Budapest, where you can live in the sun. You have grown mouldy in the Hofburg this last year, and your ancestors have had it all their own way. I thought you had got over that sort of nonsense long ago. This is the result of William and a sleepless night.”
The Archduchess laughed. “Perhaps. I am willing to suppose that my predecessors have troubled me less all these years than they might have done without the fatal antidote of your American humor. Nevertheless, I have no right to be faithless to them, and I would not forget them if I could. And I find them much more satisfactory to contemplate than most of my living relatives, who, as a rule, have neither morals nor brains.”
“I agree with you there. When Death lays his iron hand upon a mortal’s power to bore, his virtues rise and sit upon the corpse. That is the secret of the superstition which makes us think kindly of the dead. Do you mind if I read a letter from Fess? I have been too excited even to open it.”
“Pray do.” Ranata smiled with both sympathy and interest. Then she sighed. “I believe your brother is the only person I envy—I mean the only person I’d be if some fairy would bid me choose. He has his destiny in his own hands. He has done such wonderful things! He is famous and powerful; his future holds the most astounding possibilities—and he is only thirty-one! Oh, your America! Where will you stop? And what will you do to poor old Europe?”
“Now you’re talking! Come down out of your niche, with the worm-eaten past behind it, and identify yourself with us. Therein lies your only salvation. William and my brother have some great scheme on foot; I don’t know what, but I know that much from a few words I happened to overhear between Fess and my father. William and Fessenden! They could turn the world upside down if they chose! Well?”