All royal and imperial people are more or less superstitious, and neither Emperor William nor his brother monarch at Vienna are exceptions to the rule. Striking evidence thereof is furnished by the presence of a large horseshoe cemented into the wall just outside the fourth window of the first story of Empress Frederick's palace at Berlin. One day, some time before his accession to the throne, and before his father was seized with that terrible malady to which he eventually succumbed, William was invited to dine with his parents. Finding that he was very late, and knowing the strictness of his father and mother on the score of punctuality, William directed his coachman to drive as fast as he could, and the carriage positively raced up the incline to the portal.
Suddenly one of the big Mecklenburg horses lost his shoe, which in some extraordinary manner, flew up into the air, dashed through the first-story window and fell upon the dinner table, right in front of Frederick and the then crown princess, who, declining to wait any longer, had just sat down to table. The shoe is reported to have grazed the nose of the late emperor. At any rate, the fact that it should have failed to seriously injure anyone is a miracle. It was so regarded by Frederick, his wife and his children, who deemed the queer advent of the shoe, and the escape of everybody from injury, as an indication of good luck. At the suggestion of the present kaiser, it was thereupon cemented into the wall just outside the window through which it had come, and was fastened upside down, in order to prevent the luck from dropping out.
It is not altogether astonishing that royal personages should be prone to superstition, for in almost every case they are compelled to make their homes in palaces and castles that have been stained with the blood of one or more of their ancestors. Ordinary people experience an uncanny feeling when forced by circumstances to live in houses which have been the scene of suicide or murder, even when the victims of the tragedy, or the perpetrators thereof are in no way, even the most remotely, connected with them. What wonder, then, that royal and imperial personages should entertain the same kind of superstition and sentiments with regard to their palaces, when it is borne in mind that the participants in the drama have been members of their own families!
For months prior to the assassination of Empress Elizabeth, forebodings of an impending catastrophe were prevalent at the Court of Vienna, and so imbued was Emperor Francis-Joseph with ominous presentiments, that he repeatedly exclaimed in the hearing of his entourage: "Oh, if only this year were at an end!"
These apprehensions on the part of the monarch and his court were due to an incident which took place on the night of April 24, 1898, and which was of sufficient importance to be comprised in the regular report made on the following morning to his military superiors by the officer of the guard at the Hofburg. It seems that the sentinel posted in the corridor or hall leading to the chapel was startled almost out of his senses by seeing the form of a white-clad woman approaching him, soon after one o'clock in the morning. He at once challenged her, whereupon the figure turned round, and passed back into the chapel, where the soldier then observed a light. Hastily summoning assistance, a strict search was instituted, but the chapel was explored without any result.
The sentinel in question was a stolid, rather dull-minded Styrian peasant, who was possessed of but little power of imagination or of education, and who was entirely ignorant, therefore, of the tradition according to which a woman in white makes her appearance by night in the Hofburg at Vienna, either in the chapel or in the adjoining corridors and halls, whenever any misfortune is about to overtake the imperial house of Hapsburg.
On each occasion, this spectral appearance to the sentinel on duty has been described in the report of the officer of the guard on the following morning, and is absolutely a matter of official record. The previous visitations of the "white lady" had taken place on the eve of the shocking tragedy of Mayerling; a few weeks previous to the shooting of Emperor Maximilian of Mexico; and prior to the burning to death of the daughter of old Archduke Albert, at Schoenbrunn; while the very fact that there should have been no supernatural appearance of this kind at the time when Archduke John vanished from human ken, leads the imperial family and the Court of Austria to still doubt the story, according to which he perished at sea while on his way round Cape Horn, from La Plata to Valparaiso.
I do not know the origin of the "white lady" tradition at Vienna, nor have I ever been able to ascertain anything definite about her history, but there is plenty of documentary evidence, as well as a wonderful array of records concerning "the white lady of the Hohenzollerns," who makes her appearance in the old palace at Berlin whenever death is about to overtake a member of the reigning house of Prussia. The late Emperor Frederick—the most matter-of-fact and least imaginative prince of his line—was particularly interested in the matter, and collected all the evidence that he could upon the subject, for the purpose of depositing it in the archives of his family.
Perhaps the most important testimony in this connection are the sworn statements signed by Prince Frederick of Prussia, and a number of his fellow officers, to all of whom the "White Lady" is declared to have appeared as they sat together on the eve of the prince's death at the battle of Saalfeld in 1806.
Moreover, Thomas Carlyle went to no little trouble to procure evidence when writing the history of Frederick the Great, that the "White Lady" had appeared to that famous monarch on the eve of his death. The king, it is asserted, was on the high road to recovery from his illness, when suddenly one morning he declared that he had seen the white-clad spectre during the night, that his hour had come, and that it was useless to ward off death any longer. So he refused to take any further medicine or nourishment, turned his face to the wall, and died.