Rulers of kings: A novel

by Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

The Archduchess was leaning forward, her eyes blazing. “An alliance between William and your brother?” she exclaimed. She composed herself with a manifest effort, and added: “It is really remarkable—I know your father and Mrs. Abbott so well, and yet your brother—I have never seen him—not even his picture. You say those cuts in the newspapers during your war with Spain—”

“Were probably a composite of Roosevelt, John Jacob Astor, and Cervera. Fess, like my father, has never had his picture taken. He hasn’t the patience, and says he has no desire to display his weak side to the world—that the weak side of a man is more likely to come out in his photographs than not. It is hardly remarkable that you have not met him. First those years in South America, putting blood and iron in place of wind inside the Monroe Doctrine; since then he has had too much to do at home to come to Europe, except for two months in summer, when he brings a canoe and a knapsack. About his only other recreation has been the Spanish War. But this letter has the Berlin postmark. I thought he had gone back. Let me see what he has to say.”

She glanced through the short letter. “He is not going back at present. He has one of his periodical attacks of disgust for business and details, and will tramp over here for a month or two longer.”

“Ask him to come here—to Budapest,” said the Archduchess sweetly. “It is high time we met. And as he is the most distinguished of young Americans, I should like him to be one of my court. I intend to have the illustrious of all sorts about me here, in art, in letters, in music, and irrespective of noble birth. I intend to show Europe what a court should be.”

“You have thought it out! And the Emperor? Are you sure? It is my turn to have misgivings. He will see many objections. There is no one so rigid in his traditions.”

“I shall stay,” said Ranata shortly. “He would never go so far as to follow some illustrious examples and shut me up. If the worst comes to the worst, I’ll threaten to go to America and live there.”

“Good! At last my seeds are showing their little green heads. Now I know you will succeed in whatever you put your brain to. You may count on me. I’ll even engage to help you alienate Fessenden’s affections from William, and he is devoted to him.”

VI

The private apartments of the King, at the southwestern extremity of the palace, correspond with the suite on the southeastern corner, which had been furnished for his wife, and was now occupied by Ranata. He had sent his daughter word that he would receive her alone at four o’clock, and when she was announced he was standing on the balcony, looking down into the distant street behind the palace. There were excited groups of people in the street, and he guessed of what they talked. From the many old houses, fine and simple, on the still loftier hill which faced him, and from neighboring slopes above and about, from the villas on the precipitous heights of the Schwabenberg, the flags still floated, and it seemed to him that the German outnumbered the Austrian in the ratio of three to one. As he turned to greet his daughter, she saw that his face was more harassed than usual, but he advanced with the grace and courtesy which, even in his old age, were unsurpassed in Europe. The years which had robbed his heavy Hapsburg features of what beauty youth may have lent them had spared his light erect figure, his exquisite hands and feet. His genial eyes kindled at sight of Ranata, but he kissed her lightly and handed her to a chair. Had she been born twenty years earlier she might have been his idol, and as it was he admired no woman more and was proud of her. But not only had misfortunes, humiliations, reverses of every sort, and the cruellest personal afflictions that in number and degree have ever assailed a monarch atrophied his heart, but he feared to find even the eidola of happiness in this gifted creature, lest the knife be driven into the responsive breast and his own earthly expiation of the sins of all his ancestors be the more complete. His ancient habit of temperate affection for his older and married daughters excited no misgivings. But if Ranata had never been permitted to know him intimately enough to love him, she sympathized with and admired him. If enthusiasm, hope, passion, were dead within him, he was equally without bitterness, without resentment, without jealousy, and in theory, at least, without indifference to the least of his subjects. Even the cruel insult of the day before had not stirred him to anger. He had lost and lost and lost from the day he had ascended the throne, and the driving of Austria from the Germanic Confederation, and substitution in supremacy of Prussia, must forever be associated with his name. In William’s brief career Germany had been reorganized, strengthened, incredibly promoted in industrial importance. William received an occasional snub and reminder that he was two-thirds mortal, but to associate the idea of failure with him was as unthinkable as to imagine him in the robes of a monk praying for humility. Personally the Emperor and King could afford to pass his pyrotechnics by with a smile, but there was more to consider than his own sensations, and he was meditating an early retreat that he might consult with his Austrian ministers.

The room, with its olive walls and its lowered awnings, was cool and dim, but Ranata deliberately rose and placed her chair where the light would fall fullest upon her. Then she turned her powerful gray eyes on the Emperor, and he moved slightly; like the rest of the world, he usually saw his daughter’s eyes through their lashes, and it was now at rare intervals that he was reminded of the problem of his youngest born. He suddenly remembered that when he was, the laurels fell from his brow, and involuntarily he braced himself.