St. Louis Post-Dispatch
May 11, 1913

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fsa a ee ee ; ATH Rs 332. pee 4 — _ are 3 SS Ui esis se so" ae pate Tes peoeaereste tr | Si apehg attest ssc ee ba rt! fi Hi u Pity - ol thie, LSpHaaEe SSeS: . ei Biwi pe praeites ages 228h 2 7 eu ———— | 2 VOL. 65 65. NO. 264. ST. LOUIS, SUNDAY MORNIN G, MAY 11, 1913. | ROYAL AUSTRIAN SECRETS COURT INTRIGUES AND | , Countess bod on “Larisch for Year the Confidante of the Empress, Writes Franbly of Imperial a in Vi a low "Elisabeth 7 Peete “{}- Wh, Perished = an com — 's Dagger, W orshipped Her Beauty. “{h- “(j= . Putnam's Sons of New York who have given the Bunday Post-Dispatch special permission to Bee the accompanying excerpts. An Empress Who Worshipped At Her Own Beauty’s Shrine. LIZABETH was fond of her little niece from the beginning and when Marie was 16 she was taken completely into the confidence ef her aunt. She says: “at this time I did not quite understand the $mpress. I loved her and she fascinated me, and gradually, as she took me into her confidence, ghe told me how irksome she found her life afd how much she hated the pomp and circumstances, avhich surrounded her as Empress of Austria. T fate the ceremonies of life,” she declared. “One thing struck me forcibly at this real be- ginning of our intimacy and that was my aunt's absorbing passion for her beauty. She loved her foveliness like a pagan and she worshipped it as 2. well, The sight of her perfect body gave her pure - gesthetic delight; anything that marred its per- fection was inartistic and distasteful to her. “*ah! the horror of growing old,’ she exclaimed: eo feel the hand of Time lgid upon one’s body, @o watch the skin wrinkling, to awake and fear @he morning light, and to know that one is no YJonger desirable! Life without beauty would be worthless to me.’ ° ° ° “The Emperor occasionally came to Feldafing for a few days, but he did not like the place. cis Joseph 414 not care about wearing mufti, &@ the Empress used to annoy him by saying out of uniform he looked for al) the world ‘ke a shoemaker in his Sunday clothes. Eliza- Beth never called Francis Joseph by his name, “ut invariably addressed him as ‘Du’ (thou). Du, -@ome here,’ she would say to the autocrat of _ Austria, before whose power the whole of his family trembled, and at whose command defiant rchdukes went into exile. But ‘Du’ could some- times hold his own with his wife.” pete Dinrers Given by Mad _ King Ludwig to Departed Guests. Countess writes at length and sympatheti- yi oe of her relative, the mad King Ludwig — The accOmpanying photographs as well as the excerpts from the Countess von La- risch’s book are reproduced by the Post- Dispatch by special permission of the pub- lishers, G. P. Patnam’s Sons of New York. | CROWN PRINCE. RUDOLPH (OF, AUSTRIA. the world might never have had Wagner's match- less compositions. It was Ludwig who fostered and encouraged Wagner’s genius when the composer was condemned by the then elect of the music world. It was Ludwig’s custom to sit alone in his private opera house through performances of Wagnerian operas, (usually “Parsifal’”) which al- ways began at midnight and lasted until morning. Indeed, it was Ludwig’s purpose as far as pos- sible to turn night into day. Another fantastic habit of the mad monarch was Yo give dinners at midnight at which he would invariably have, in his imagination, 18 historic pe nages as his guests. With the magnificent staté\dining room brilliantly illuminated, he would his imaginary guests, whose names were y announced by his chamberlain. He onceé press Elizabeth of one of these dinners fecribed his guests as he imagined he saw arie Antoinette magnificently robed !n but with a thin red line about her neck, ne the course of the guillotine; Mary Queen Sots, lovely in black velvet but with the crimijon kiss of death on her cheek; Catherine the ‘Great, Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Alenader, Dio- genes end Constantine, all were believed by him to be (itting at his table and breaking bread with him. The Empress Elizabeth who was as supersti- tious as a peasant, once told the Countess of a visit she asserted she had received at night from the spirit of Ludwig, who in a drunken rage drowned himself and his doctor in a lake at the castle where he was confined. Said the Empress Told by Empress of Austria tf A heard a monotonous drip, drip of to my window,” so I took ‘no further notice until according to the chronicler: A Wonderfal Ghost Story S I lay awake in the lonely hours, thoughts assailed me and I fancied I water. “It must be raining,” I said to myself, “and the drops are falling on the leaves close the noise was succeeded by the unmistakable of | {% Kisses the & ee OO ag te ce tr a te ON a a OO IO ett tl ti et et el a Oat tga gay itil agi , — “(= see death T shall turn fato a seagull great spaces of the , or shelter tn of some frowning rock; then I, the fe beth» shall be free at last, ‘tor my. heve known the way of If destined to become old, nobeayakall se a3 4 4 When once x have vous kiased | | Hp gre and dg doubt whether a patriotia’ — “