THE UNHAPPY PRINCESS STEPHANIE.

Timaru Herald, Volume LXXVIII, Issue 11980, 31 January 1903, Page 3 (Supplement)

THE UNHAPPY PRINCESS STEPHANIE.

Her Singularly Sorrowiul Oaroer. lAnurican Papty.) In the history of Europe's royal families are many sad stories, and one of the most unhappy, in late years, is that of the Princess daughter of King Leopold, of Belgium. "When her mother, Queen Henrietta, died recently, she was not permitted to attend the funeral, was, indeed, ordered away from Brussels by the King, owing to his long-cherished anger over her marriage to Count Lonyay. Stephanie was born in 1864, eleven years after her father's marriage with the Archduchess Marie Henrietta, who was the cousin of the Austrian Emperor. She was scarcely seventeen when, she was married at Vienna to her second cousin, the Emperor's only son, Rudolph, who was six years her senior.

The royal families of Belgium and Austria were related in more ways than one, for the princess's aunt had married the unfortunate brother of the Emperor, Maximilian of Mexico. But the Austrian Empress, Elizabeth, was bitterly opposed to the Belgians. The author of that remarkable book, "The Martyrdom of an EmpressT 1 published by the Harpers a few years ago, while an out-and-out admirer of the Empress, admits her antagonism to Stephanie, King Leopold and Queen Henrietta. On the wedding day, Rudolph "looked anything but'cheerful," the Empress gave way to a " violent fit of weeping," and Stephanie was " most insignificantly homely and ill at ease." The Empress is said to have declared of Stephanie : " She has pride, but not of the best kind ; it is a vainglorious kind of a pride, and it will not come to her assistance when she has wounds to conceal. It will all crumble to dust."

Besides being disliked by her mother-in-law, Stephanie had a mortal enemy in the Empress's niece, the Countess Larisch, whose father had maxried morganatically, and therefore put the Countess out of court as a possible bride for Prince Rudolph, whom she was keen on marrying. The Princess's alliance -was certainly not a success-; how could it be -when her environment made up its mind to dislike her? The apologist of Rudolph declares that Stephanie nagged the Prince—" scenes which were indeed of the most bourgeois kind became more and more frequent." He hunted; she " adopted the pose of a neglected and abandoned wife"; and so "Rudi" did everything to rid himself from the " perfect hell upon earth" in which he was living, and at last carried the art of flirtation with other women " further than he ought to have done." At last Rudolph met at the Polish ball of the Viennese carnival a beautiful girl. She was the daughter of Baron Vetsera, who had married the daughter of the famous Greek banker, Baltazzi. Marie Vetsera was just nineteen—" tall, slender, with magnificent dark eyes." He fell violently in love with the girl. Then gossip, aided and abetted by the Countess Larisch., began to work with deadly effect. In 1887 the Crown Prince and Princess were preparing to come to London to represent the Emperor at the fiftieth anniversary celebration of Queen Victoria's reign. It happened that Marie Vetsera was also in England at the time, attending her sister, who was ill. Stephanie immediately declined to come, "thereby wounding the feelings of the aged British Queen beyond pardon." This story, however, is not quite on all fours with the wreath which the Princess sent to the Queen's funeral thirteen years later, inscribed, " To my beloved and dearest aunt, from her faithful Stephanie." The tragedy moved swiftly forward. Rudolph wrote to the Pope begging him to dissolve his marriage with Stephanie. The Pope advised the Emperor, and the father had to tell his only son that the marriage could never take place for reasons too horrible to state. The Prince took Marie to his box at Mayerling, where the young girl took a dose of strychnine, and Rudolph blew his brains out on Jan. 29, 1889. The whole affair is a fearful mystery. The fact of suicide alone remains. The Empress's heart was broken, and the tragedy was com P kted when Luc cteni, the anarchist, stabbed her at Geneva in September, 1897. Stephanie herself remained a widow for oyer eleven years, and then in March, 1900, sue married Elmtr Count Lonyay de NagyLonya et Vasaros-Xamenv, a young Hungarian nobleman. The Hapsburgs are a proud race, but, although Stephanie had done an unpardonable thing f rom the court etiquette point of view, her father-in-law, the old Emperor, save her his blessing and a handsome dowry on nuinviug the maji of her heart. Since that time the Princess has practically retired into private life, and is now staying in England. .Such is the account given in "The Martyrdom of an Empress," but this is not the only version of the dreadful mystery. Some people declare that the girl's lover killed 1 Rudolph, and others that Rudolph killed

her and then committed suicide. The fact, however, remains, Rudolph himself did commit suicide. Why he did so will probably always remain as much a mystery as the Man in the Iron Mask, for the Viennese Court authorities took every trouble to gag the people who had been intimately connected with the incident. Among these were Prince Philip of Coburg, who married Stephanie's sister, Count Hoyos, and the Duke of Braganza, the father of the unfortunate Prince, who recently figured under disagreeable circumstances in London. One thing is certain, that the affair finally broke up the health of the Empress Elizabeth. The Emperor has tried to fill his lonely life with Rudolph's only child, the little Archduchess Elizabeth, who followed her mother's example, and has married out of the Royal circle.

The latest incident in her career is, perhaps, the saddest and most sordid of all, but she has the satisfaction of knowing that she possesses the sympathy of her father's subjects and the commiseration of the Viennese.