Читать книгу Their Majesties as I Knew Them - Xavier Paoli - Страница 10

4.

Seven months had elapsed since the day when I left the Empress at San Remo. I was in Paris and read in the papers that she had just arrived at Caux, a picturesque little place situated above Montreux, overlooking the Lake of Geneva. I hastened to write, on chance, to Mr. Barker, her Greek reader, in order to receive news of her. When I came home, on the evening of the 9th of September, I was handed Mr. Barker's reply, in which was conveyed news of the Empress's plans, and a gracious invitation from her to visit her, should I happen to be in the neighbourhood of Geneva.

As I was on leave and had nothing to keep me in Paris, I at once made up my mind and, the next morning, took the train for Geneva. I calculated that, arriving in the evening, I had a chance of still finding the Empress at the Hôtel Beau Rivage; besides, nothing need prevent me from going the next morning to Caux, where I was sure to see her, and, at the same time, to be able to shake hands with General Berzeviczy and Mr. Barker. Who would have thought that the train which carried me through the green fields of Burgundy and Franche-Comté was taking me straight to the scene of a sad and blood-stained tragedy?

When we drew into the station at Geneva, I noticed an unwonted animation on the platforms; groups of people stood about in excited discussion, with a look of consternation on their faces. I paid no particular attention, however, for I was in a hurry. I hailed a fly and told the man to drive to the Hôtel Beau Rivage. We had not gone twenty yards when he turned round on his box:

THE EMPEROR AND EMPRESS OF AUSTRIA

"What an awful crime!" he said.

"What crime?"

"Haven't you heard? The Empress was murdered this afternoon."

"Murdered!"

Livid and scared, I could hardly listen to the pitiful story of the tragedy. The Empress, it seemed, had been stabbed to the heart by an Italian anarchist when about to embark on the 1:40 steamer for Territet; she sank down on the Quai du Mont Blanc. The people around her thought that she had fainted, and carried her on board the boat; when they bent over her, she was dead.

I sprang quickly from the carriage, when it pulled up at the hotel, rushed into the hall, which was full of people, flew up the crowded staircase and along a corridor in which English, German and Russian travellers were hustling one another, with scared faces, all anxious to see. At last, catching sight of a servant:

"Countess Sztaray?" I asked.

"In there," he replied, pointing to a door standing ajar.

I knocked, the door was opened and Countess Sztaray, red-eyed, her features distorted with grief, gave me a heart-broken look and, with a sob, said:

"Our poor Empress!"

"Where is she?"

"Come with me."

Taking me by the hand, she led me and General Berzeviczy, who had also just arrived, to the next room. There lay the Empress, stiff and already cold, stretched on a little brass bed under a thin, white gauze veil. Her face, lit up by the flickering flame of two tall candles, showed no trace of suffering. A sad smile still seemed to hover over her pale and lightly-parted lips; two long tresses fell upon her slim shoulders; the delicate features of her face had shrunk; two purple shadows under her eyelids threw into relief the sharp outline of her nose and the pallor of her cheeks.

She appeared as though sleeping peacefully and happily. Her tiny hands were crossed over an ivory crucifix; some roses, already almost withered—roses which she had gathered that morning and which she was carrying in her arms when she received her death-blow—lay scattered at her feet.

I stood long contemplating the corpse. My self-possession deserted me. In spite of myself, the tears came to my eyes, and I cried like a child.

Why had fate decreed that the Empress should go to Geneva? Curiously enough, the idea came to her suddenly, it appeared, on Thursday, the 8th of September. She had arranged to pay a visit to her friend, Baronne Adolphe de Rothschild, who was staying at her country house, the Château de Pregny, at the western end of the lake. But it was a long excursion to make in a single day; and the Empress, contrary to the advice of Countess Sztaray, decided to sleep at Geneva, after leaving Pregny, and not to return to Caux until the following afternoon. She arrived at the Hôtel Beau Rivage in the evening and went out after dinner. She was up the next day at five o'clock. After filling a portion of her morning with the complicated cares of her toilet and her correspondence, she went for a walk along the shady quays of the Rhone. Returning to the hotel at one o'clock, she hurriedly drank a glass of milk. Then, accompanied by her lady-in-waiting, Countess Sztaray, she hastened down to the steamboat pier, intending to take the Territet boat that started at 1:40. She had come to within two hundred yards of the footplank connecting the steamer with the Quai du Mont Blanc, when Lucchini flung himself upon her and struck her a blow under the left breast with a three-cornered file clumsily fitted to a wooden handle. The violence of the blow broke her fourth rib.

Death was not instantaneous. She had the strength to walk as far as the boat and for this reason: the instrument, in its course, had pierced the left ventricle of the heart from top to bottom. But, the blade being very sharp and very thin, the hemorrhage at first was almost insignificant. The drops of blood escaped very slowly from the heart; and its action was not impaired so long as the pericardium, in which the drops were collecting, was not full. This was how she was able to go a fairly long distance on foot with a stab in her heart. When the bleeding increased, the Empress sank to the deck.

The poor Empress, therefore, had the energy to drag herself to the boat, where a band of gipsies was playing Hungarian dances (a cruel irony of chance), while the steamer began to move away from the landing-stage. At that moment, she fainted. Countess Sztaray, who believed her to be stunned by a blow of the fist—for no one had seen the weapon in the assassin's hand—tried to bring her to with smelling-salts. The Empress, in fact, recovered consciousness, spoke a few words, cast a long look of bewildered astonishment around her and then, suddenly, fell back dead. The dismay and excitement were intense. The boat at once put back to the pier; and, as there was no litter at hand, the body was carried to the hotel, shrouded in sails, on an improvised bier of crossed oars.

Had the Empress received a presentiment of her tragic end, which a gipsy at Wiesbaden, and a fortune-teller at Corfu had foretold her in the past? Two strange incidents incline one to think so. On the eve of her departure for Geneva, she asked Mr. Barker to read her a few chapters of a book by Marion Crawford, entitled "Corleone," in which the author describes the abominable customs of the Sicilian Mafia. While the Empress was listening to this harrowing story, a raven, attracted by the scent of some fruit which she was eating, came and circled round her. Greatly impressed, she tried to drive it off, but in vain, for it constantly returned, filling the echoes with its mournful croaking. Then she swiftly walked away, for she knew that ravens are harbingers of death when their ill-omened wings persist in flapping around a living person.

Again, Countess Sztaray told me that, on the morning of that day, she went into the Empress's room, as usual, to ask how she had slept, and found her imperial mistress looking pale and sad.

"I have had a strange experience," said Elizabeth. "I was awakened in the middle of the night by the bright moonbeams which filled my room, for the servants had forgotten to draw the blinds. I could see the moon from my bed; and it seemed to have the face of a woman weeping. I don't know if it is a presentiment, but I have an idea that I shall meet with misfortune."

During the three days that preceded the departure of the remains for Vienna, I stayed at Geneva and shared the funeral watches with the little court, once so happy and now so pitifully robbed of its mistress. General Berzeviczy, Countess Sztaray and I sat for long hours conjuring up the memory of her who was now sleeping her last sleep beside us. Countless anecdotes were told, countless tiny and charming details. It already seemed almost a distant past which we were recalling for the last time, a bright and exquisite past which the gracious Empress was taking away with her.

I went to see the murderer in his cell. I found a perfectly lucid being, boasting of his crime as of an act of heroism. When I asked him what motive had driven him to choose for his victim a woman, a sovereign living as far removed as possible from politics and the throne, one who had always shown so much compassion for the humble and the destitute:

"I struck at the first crowned head," he said, "that came along. I don't care. I wanted to make a manifestation and I have succeeded."

The unhappy Empress's destiny was to be strange and romantic until the end, until after her death. Her body, carried to an hotel bed-room, departed for Austria without pomp or display, amid an immense and silent crowd. The Swiss Government had not the necessary time to levy a regiment to show her the last honours.

But it was better so, for she had, as her escort, a respectfully contemplative nation and, as her salute, the bells of all the towns and all the villages through which the funeral train passed. And this, I am certain, was just the simple and poetic homage which her heart would have desired.

A few days after the tragedy, the Emperor Francis Joseph deigned to remember my respectful attachment to the consort whom he had loved so well; and I received the following telegram:

Wienburg, September 15th, 1898.

To Monsieur Paoli, Ministry of the Interior, Paris,—

His Majesty the Emperor, greatly touched by your sincere sympathy, remembers gratefully the devoted care which you showed the late Empress and thanks you again with all his heart.

Paar.

Principal Aide-de-camp to H. M. the Emperor of Austria.

I also received from the archduchesses, the daughters, a hunting-knife which their mother, the poor Empress, valued most particularly. I keep it religiously in my little museum. Sometimes I take it out and look at it; and it invariably summons up one of the most touching memories of my life.

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