Martyrdom Of An Empress

An excerpt from the beginning of CHAPTER I: "Let them talk, let them slander, let them think what they please about me—I am used to it; it does not hurt me as it did at first; I do not care! And you, my little girl, do not take it to heart; do not try to fight my battles; do not let bitterness come into your life through me, for that, indeed, would give me pain." The Empress stopped her restless pacing up and down the room, and, putting her slender hands upon my shoulders, she looked deep into my eyes with those glorious dark-blue orbs of hers, and added, gently: "You are so young—hardly older than I was when I married. Do not allow my clouds to obscure your sky; you will have enough of your own!" How well she understood the passionate wrath I felt when witnessing the continual prejudices displayed towards her was shown clearly to me by these few words. I was then very young—very inexperienced, truly—but she was all in all to me, and the depth of my love and admiration for her pure, noble, peerless nature bridged over the difference existing in our years, and I was happy in the thought that already at that time I had become well-nigh her only confidante and truest friend. Perhaps it was the singular similarity of our fates which at first drew us so closely together—a similarity which arose from the sweeping contempt with which the haughty Viennese aristocracy had enveloped us both at different periods and under different circumstances; probably, also, because neither of us was of what is called "royal birth," and because neither of us was Austrian born. Moreover, we heartily disliked pomp and pageantry, the empty, vapid amusements of social life, with its hurry and fever, its fussing and fuming, its seething caldron of calumny kept boiling by malice and envy; and both found no pleasure whatsoever in chatting and scandal-mongering with other women, preferring horses and dogs to the company of most human beings! Last, but not least, alas! we had alike failed to find in matrimony what we foolishly fancied we had a right to expect from it, and scorned the very thought of seeking consolation after the fashion common to so many women when thus disappointed. Be all this as it may, we certainly breathed an atmosphere of our own, and held aloof from others as much as possible in these years of close intimacy that make it possible for me to-day, now that she has gone to a sphere worthier of her, to give to the world the only true portrayal of the so much maligned and cruelly treated woman, who was the one faultless figure, the one perfect being among the past and present sovereignty of Europe.