THE CROWN PRINCE OF AUSTRIA'S SUICIDE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXVI, Issue 9307, 9 March 1889, Page 2 (Supplement)

THE CROWN PRINCE OF AUSTRIA'S SUICIDE.

HOW HIS WIPE BECAME ACQUATNTED WITH IT. Count Hoyos assured the Emperor that absolute secrecy had been maintained, and measures were immediately taken to conceal the truth. The Court physician, Michelhofer, was communicated with, and a plausible account of the death due to natural causes agreed upon. It wa,s determined that above all neither the Crown Prince's mother, Empress Elizabeth, nor his wife, the Archduchess Stephanie, should ever become acquainted with the true version of the terrible tragedy. But by a strange fatality all these plans were frustrated. On Wednesday afternoon the body was brought from Meyer ling to the Imperal Palace at Vienna and placed on a catafalque in his bedchamber, in which a chapdle ardente. had been arranged. Here in the evening the heartbroken Empress and the Crown Princess came to pray. The grief of both the Imperial ladies was heartrending, that of Archduchess Stephanie in particular being uncontrollable. She appeared to forget all past quarrels and disputes, and to see in the corpse only the gallant young lover who, nine years ago, bronzed by Oriental travel, had come to woo her at Brussels. Suddenly, in a mad outburst of wild and frantic grief, she threw her arms about her dead husband's head, the cushions fell away, and in a moment she caught sight of the ghastly wound and shattered skull. Uttering a terrible cry, she fell unconscious to the ground by the side of the bier and had to bo carried away by her attendants. All accounts from Vienna refer pointedly to a serious estrangement between husband and wife which of late had amounted to almost an absolute separation. The Crown Prince constantly reproached Archduchess Stephanie with her failure to bear him a son and heir ; and when the medical report was made to him that the Princess would probably never again become a mother he went so far as to contemplate a divorce, but the Emperor was adverse thereto, and since then husband and wife met almost as strangers. The blame is attributed to both sides. Rudolph was considered the most popular Prince of Europe. He was the most amiable, brilliant, and sympathetic. But ho had his faults, and his high-spiri-ted and rather short-tempered wife resented them. There were continuous quarrels, and finally she let him go his own way and had as little to do with him as possible.