Chapter One.
Concerns a Court Intrigue.
The bright moon shed a white light over the great, silent courtyards of the Imperial palace at Vienna.
A bugle had just sounded, the guards had changed with a sudden clang of arms that rang out in the clear night, followed by the sound of men marching back to the guardhouse. A sharp word of command, a second bugle note, and then all was quiet again, save for the slow, measured tread of the sentries at each angle of the ponderous palace.
From without all looked grim and gloomy, in keeping with that strange fate that follows the hapless Hapsbourgs; yet beyond those black walls, in the farther wing of the Imperial palace were life and gaiety and music; indeed there was presented perhaps the most magnificent scene in all Europe.
The first Court ball of the season was at its height, and the aged Emperor Francis-Joseph was himself present—a striking figure in his uniform and orders.
Filled with the most brilliant patrician crowd in all the world—the women in tiaras and blazing with jewels, and the men in Court dress or in gorgeous uniforms—the huge ballroom, with its enormous crystal electroliers and its gold—and—white Renaissance decorations, had never been the scene of a more dazzling display. Archdukes and archduchesses, princes and princesses, nobles and diplomatists, ministers of the empire and high functionaries of State danced or gossiped, intrigued or talked scandal; or those whose first ball it was worried themselves over points of etiquette that are always so puzzling to one not born in the Court atmosphere.
The music, the scent of the flowers, the glare and glitter, the beauty of the high-born women, the easy swagger of the bestarred and beribboned men, combined to produce a scene almost fairy-like.