I was a year older than he. We were the life and soul of the old palace, and at times I was able to forget its dullness and my own troubles. I was the confidante of Ferdinand, and I did not hesitate to make him mine.
Although Ferdinand later displayed hostility towards me, he devoted himself at this period to pleasing his sister-in-law and surrounded her with flowers, attentions and kindness. But it so chanced (and it remained so for a long period) that the eldest and the youngest of the Coburg brothers were at enmity on my account, although this feeling was not outwardly apparent. I must relate these incidents, otherwise it would be difficult to explain the presence of the many enemies who one day overwhelmed me. This enmity proceeded from the same miserable cause which will eternally be at the bottom of so many human dramas—namely, man's jealousy and his lustful appetites thwarted by rules of morality.
Ferdinand of Coburg, idolized by his mother, accepted as a spoiled child by society, initiated early in the most refined pleasures, allowed himself to be transported by his exalted imagination into a world of his own. I have seen, I still see in him a kind of modern necromancer, a fin de siècle magician. He was a cabbalist in the same way that M. Peladan was a wise man of the East, and from these adventures always proceeds something which influences destiny.
If at first I only saw him making what appeared to me to be strange gestures, without explaining what these signified, I have now arrived, through my experience of men and things, at understanding why he was then so incomprehensible. He must have been possessed by a power beyond this earth. But he did not believe in God; he believed in the Devil. I am only going to relate that of which I am sure. I am only going to say what I have seen. I do not wish to be more superstitious about certain things, or more troubled in soul than Ferdinand of Coburg. I ask myself to what fantastical sect, to what Satanic brotherhood he belonged in his early days, doubtless with the idea of furthering his ambitions and his extraordinary dreams of the future.
I remember that in our palace at Vienna, Ferdinand would sometimes ask me to play to him when we were alone in the evening. He insisted upon the room being only dimly lit. He would then come near to the piano and listen in silence. At midnight he would stand up solemnly, his features drawn and contracted. He then looked at the clock and listened for the first of the twelve strokes, and when they were nearing the end he would say:
"Play the march from Aida." Then, withdrawing to the middle of the room, he would strike a ceremonial attitude, and repeat incomprehensible words which frightened me.
Ferdinand used to articulate cabbalistic formulas, stretching out his arms with his body bent and his head thrown backwards. Amongst the mysterious phrases a word which sounded like Koptor, Kofte or Cophte was often repeated. One day I asked him to write it down. He traced letters of which I could make nothing, excepting that I seemed to recognize some kind of Greek characters.
After these séances I questioned him, because while they were proceeding I had to be silent and play the march from Aida. He invariably answered: "The Devil exists. I call on him and he comes!"
I did not believe this; I mean to say I did not believe in the Devil's actual visit, but I was nevertheless a little frightened, and when my brother-in-law once again began his incantations I would look round to see if there was anything extraordinary in the room. But there was nothing unusual excepting Ferdinand and my own curiosity—and, perhaps, the unrevealed vision of both our futures!
Full of eccentricities, he would bury gloves and ties which he had worn. There was quite a ceremonial attached to this, at which I was sometimes obliged to assist. Ferdinand dug the hole himself, and repeated strange sentences with a mysterious air.