CHAPTER IX
My Sister Stéphanie Marries the Archduke Rudolph, who Died at Meyerling
My younger sister spent a happy girlhood at Brussels. At the age of nineteen she was a radiant beauty. Without knowing whom she was eventually to marry, she had been encouraged to look forward to making a more advantageous marriage than her eldest sister.
The King had never been very enthusiastic over my marriage with the Prince of Coburg. He had higher ambitions for me. My mother, however, desired the marriage. I have already given her reasons.
To avenge himself for his disappointed hopes, the King intended Stéphanie to marry an heir to a throne. He had thought of Rudolph of Habsburg as a possible husband for her, and the Queen agreed with him. What a daring idea! For however honourable the Royal House of Belgium might be, it did not rank so high as that of Austria.
I was not in ignorance, as I shall shortly relate, of the project of this marriage which began under the most dazzling auspices, and terminated in the most appalling tragedy.
History has been more interested in the final catastrophe than in the story of the early days of the married life of Rudolph of Habsburg and Stéphanie of Belgium. I, too, will discuss the finale and describe Rudolph as I knew him on the eve of his death.
Rudolph was then thirty years old. He might easily have called himself "the beloved of the gods." A great Court was at his feet; the most beautiful town in the world, after Paris, was an abode where all might have belonged to him. The people of the Monarchy placed their hopes of the future in him. He had a wife whom everyone envied; a daughter whom he overwhelmed with caresses; a noble and good mother whom he worshipped; and lastly, a father whose great Empire would revert to him; but Rudolph, the ill-fated and unhappy, preferred to die.
Let us, once for all, finish with the legends of Meyerling, and as far as it is possible have done with the lies connected with it. Rudolph of Habsburg committed suicide!
It is said that there is no proof of this. This is wrong; the proof exists. I am able to give it.
The history of the liaison which led Rudolph of Habsburg and Mary Vetsera to the grave has often been told. I will therefore confine myself to relating a few points which are but little known.