Photo: Boute
PRINCESS VICTOR NAPOLEON
(Princess Clémentine of Belgium)
Francis Joseph was incapable of throwing himself into the fire in order to save anyone. He could not be depended upon for any help in danger. He would have been afraid of spoiling his uniform, or of disarranging his whiskers!
Ah! I can easily understand the despair of his son and his wife, whose only thought in life was to escape from this nonentity.
The Emperor's brother, the Archduke Louis Victor, was the instigator of the hatred of which I was the victim. This man was later to know the tortures of a dishonourable exile, and he died dishonoured. God has punished him. I have seen His might strike this guilty man, who started the persecutions from which I had to suffer.
For many years he laid his devotion at my feet. All Vienna knew it; the Emperor included, and he better than most people, because scandal was his daily bread. To him it was almost an affair of State to know whether the Archduke Louis Victor would succeed in vanquishing the citadel of my virtue.
Nevertheless, the prince could be pleasing when he chose; his was an ardent nature, the excessive inquisitiveness of which dragged him eventually into the scandal of public punishment.
I resigned myself to receive his compliments and his flowers with patience. We all know the exigencies of the world. I had to endure the assiduity of an archduke, the brother of the Emperor, with a smile. But the smile has been especially given by Nature to woman in order to enable her occasionally to conceal her thoughts!
Unfortunately Louis Victor, jealous of the worthy sentiments with which another, who was not a "prince," had inspired me, lost his patience, and from being the object of his love I became the object of his hatred. I own that I had a taste for satirical repartee which I had inherited from the King and which made me many enemies. Was the archduke offended at a little plain speaking? Wounded vanity is prompt to avenge itself. I had henceforth in him an open enemy. He swore that he would force me to leave the Court.
I had inspired jealousy. What woman has not? My rivals ensconced themselves around my former admirer. The usual intrigues began. My freedom of life was attacked by some charitable souls whose only thought was to destroy it, aided by a rejected Don Juan. The archduke was not long in arranging the necessary details. People commenced to talk of the notice which I took of that honourable man, the only person who has filled my life. I have always given him my whole confidence and esteem.
The Archduke Louis Victor went to his brother and told him that he had seen me with his own eyes in a popular restaurant at night, tête-à-tête with a Uhlan officer.