The western sentinel. [volume] (Winston-Salem, N.C.) 1887-1926, 1891-09-10
STORY OF THE ROYAL AUS
TRAN SUICIDE.

The original manuscript OF
higt herto suppressed pamphlet
prepared by the family ofthelate
Baroness Marie Vetzera, of Aus
tri;,, has been published in the
London Times. The New York
World, Sunday, by IL special ar
rangement with the Times, re-
produces the article, illustrated,
giving the full text OF the pam
phlet prepared by the mother of
the unfortunate victim. Baro-
ness Vetzera is the lady who was
found shot to death, together
with her lover, Rudolph, Crown
Prince of Austria, at Mayorling,
on the 3Oth of January, 1889.
The pamphlet was to have been
published to the extent of fifty
copies, to be circulated among a
few friends in order to vindicate
the memory of the unfortunate
young lady. But the Austrian
court, to whom it was distaste-
full to have the Crown Prince go
down to posterity as murderer
or as a suicide, caused the printed
sheets of the pamphlet to be
seized in the publishers hands.
The. original manuscript has, at
last been secured from the family
by the London Times.
Briefly summarized, and as
told in the young girls letters,
the story is that Baroness Marie
Vetzera, then seventeen years
old. fell in love at first sight with
the Crown Prince, and that she
frequently met him in the ordiDa-
ry social way. Finally she en-
trusted her secret to Countess
Larisch, the Empress of Austra's
niece, and this lady at once under
took to act as a go-between,
while taking advantage of her
knowledge of the state of affairs,
to levy blackmail from the
Prince. At one time the mother
of the girl suspected that some
thing was amiss, but Countess
Larisch was ready with some
plausible tale. The facts of all
this are given in great detail in
the mothers pamphlet.
At last the girl fled to Mayor
ling, by Encouragement with
the Prince, and a few hours later
her death was known by the
Emperor, but not by the dis
tracted mother, who in vain i'm
plored the chief of police and
Count Taafe, the Austrian prem
Ter, to cause search to be insti-
tuted for her daughter. The
truth of the double suicide or
murder and suicide is at last
definitely established by this
publication. The news of the
death was broken to the mother
by the Empress of Austria her.
self.
The pamphlet shows that the
Princes mind had long before
been given to thoughts ofsuicide,
but that Marie did her best to
dissuade him from this fatal step.
1t was not until hope for both
of them had fled that she resolved
to share his fate. In her letters
left to her mother, sister and
brother she explains that she
would be happier lying quietly
beside her lover in the cemetery
than living without him in the
world. Her heart was hls-he
commanded, she obeyed, ever
unto death. But there is another
theory advanced by a former
member of the Austrian court to
the effect that the Prince shot
the Baroness and then himself
because he suspected that she
was his half sister. Her mother,
a Levantine of great beauty, was
supposed to have engaged in an
intrigue with the Emperor
Francis Joseph. father of Prince
Rudolph, and the latter's horror
at the discovery of the supposed
relationship between himself and
the woman with whom he was
infatuated led to the tragedy.
kilograms of recent date
claim for the Empress of Austria
a distracted mind. It is said,
indeed that she has been the very
embodiment of excentricity since
this tragedy-the untimely death