LOVE BROUGHT SORROW

New Zealand Times, Volume LI, Issue 11786, 24 March 1924, Page 4

LOVE BROUGHT SORROW

BELGIAN PRINCESS DIES. LONDON March 2. Princess Louise of Belgium, whose elopement with an Austrian count made a sensation in 1897, has died, saya the Wiesbaden correspondent of the “Weekly Dispatch. 1 On a fine morning in the spring of 1897, Count Mattacbioh, an officer of the Austrian Imperial Guard, stopped in the Vienna Prater a runaway carriage and pair, in which was Princess Louise, eldest daughter of the late King Leopold of Belgium, and wife of Prince Philip of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha. They fell in love, and two years later elopied during the royal ball given is Vienna. The courts of Vienna, Brussels, and Berlin tried to hush the matter up. The couple were hunted down, and the Princess was declared to be insane. She was placed in an asylum, and constantly moved from place place. Count Mattaehioh was charged with forgery, and imprisoned. After four years he was released, and his first thought was to save the Princess. For years he failed in his attempts, but in 1904 he traced her to a German water-ing-place and daringly carried her on under t-he eyes of her guardians. Thev fled to France, and after years ol poverty the Count died in Paris. Hta wife remained with him till the end, and declared that she had nothing more to live for. “He was all my life,” she said recently when sixty-five years old. “To-dav 1 am without friends or money,-' _