THE COBURG ROMANCE.

Evening Post, Volume LXVIII, Issue 98, 22 October 1904, Page 13

THE COBURG ROMANCE.

( In 1895, when the Princess Louise was driving in the Prater, the great park of Vienna, on the banks of the Danube, she saw a young officer in the smart uniform of the 13th Uhlans engaged in a fierce tu&sle with an unruly horse. Always a keen horsewoman, the Princess watched the issue of the struggle with absorbed! interest. This was her first meeting with Count Geza Mattachich. From that day the young officer shadowed her whenever she left the palace. At Abbazia, where the rigour of Court etiquette was relaxed, he succeeded in being presented to her, and thenceforward their intimacy set all tongues wagging. The Princess appointed him her Master of Horse (hence, perhaps, the story that Mattachich was at first her riding master), and sko-wed her liking for his society unmistakably. As time went on she hardly took the trouble to make a secret of her infatuation. The Hofburg was shocked, and the harassed Emperor was forced to intervene. Mattachich received' an emphatic hint that Ous absence from Vienna was desired, and the Princess was summoned to the presence of the Emperor. The interview was dramatic. "Your Royal Highness," said 1 the Emperor, gravely, "I deeply regret that you will not be able to attend Court this year. Grave indiscretions have been committed. lam in receipt of exact information." Hereafter the Princess was formally reckoned a declassee, and her conduct became utterly reckless. In the following year an Imperial decree, signed by the Premier, expelled her from the Austrian territories. Smarting under her disgrace, and with nothing more to lose, she took up her residence in the Riviera, where Mattachich joined her in open bravado. During their sojourn at Nice an Austrian field-marshal arrived with a challenge from the Prince of Coburg, who consented to waive his rank to wipe out the stain on his honour. A meeting was arranged at Vienna. Two shots were exchanged to no purpose. Mattachich claims to have fired deliberately into the air. They then tried conclusions with sabres, and the Prince received a slight flesh wound in the arm. The wound, however, seems by no means to have cooled the Prince's resentment. He persisted in refusing to divorce his wife, and demanded that she should rejoin him. She refused lyShortly after the duel and the marriage of her xlaughteft Princess Dora to the Grand Duke G.i.her of Schleswig-Hol-stein, the Genw.fj Emperor's brother-in-law, another bolt from the blue fell. A firm of Viennese moneylenders suddenly took it into their heads to ques.tion the authenticity of signatures of the Princess Louise and the Archduchess Stephanie on eleven notes of hand, representing several thousand pounds, in their possession. The Archduchess declared hers to be a forgery, and the Princess was at her wits' end to meet the notes before they became due, lest they should fall into /the hands of her husband. This, it is alleged, was the reason of her sudden visit in March, 1898, to London, where she hoped to raise the money, according to Mattachich, by a personal appeal to Queen Victoria, who had, on the very day of her arrival, left England for the Riviera. Then she decided to face the music, and returned to Austria as the guest of Count Mattachich's relatives — another occasion for scandal. The only excuse urged is that, caafc off by (her father and deserted by her sisters, the unfortunate woman had nowhere else to turn. Mattachich, shortly after his return to Austria, was arrested by the military authorities. With all convenient despatch and avoidance of publicity he was sentenced by court-martial' behind locked doors "to six years' imprisonment and solitary confinement for the seventh month of every year of his sentence," on the charge of forging the signatures of Princess L.ouise (though she herself admitted signing the bills) and of the Archduchess Stephanie with intent to defraud. He pleaded innocence vigorously, and it certainly was never suggested even by his Coburg accusers that he had turned the money to his own uees. His appeals to the superior Courts were quashed. Nevertheless throughout the term of his incarceration members of the Diet kept his case prominently before the eyes of the Government, and at length, on the interpellation of his kinsman Kolomame yon Mattachich, he was liberated "as an act of grace" in 1902, after a term of four and a half years' imprisonment. In the meanwhile the unfortunate Princess was spirited away to Vienna, where the doctors agreed, though it seems by no means unanimously, that she was of uisound mind, and not responsible for her actions. It was, however, perhaps the most convenient way to hush up a very ugly scandal. She was interned in a private asylum of Lindenhof, near Dresden, where she Jias remained until recently under very strict supervision.