The Austin weekly statesman. (Austin, Tex.) 1883-1898, 1894-11-22
BATHED IN BLOOD.
That Is Said to Be the Secret of Sixteenth
Century Beauty.

Paris has just been edited by work
treating of the life and proceedings of
lady of the sixteenth century, who carried
her care for her beauty to the very utmost
limits. This Is not fairy tale, according
to a writer In the Philadelphia Telegraph,
oHt sober, historical fact backed by many
official documents of undoubted authenticity
and the ladys amiable weakness Is described
with wealth of detail and forcible sim
plicity or description that is apt to turn the
reader fes The lady in question was
dasdy, who married at the age of 15, in
1895, Comte Francois Nadasdy, who was
not OF too mild nature himself, as, when
his, wife complained one day that her maid
mad been impertinent he ordered the erring
handmaiden stripped, smeared with honey
and laid on wasps' nest, from the effects
Of which gentle admonition she subsequently
died. The Countess Elizabeth was left a
to try to keep up the rigorous discipline
enforced by her late husband. Unhappily,
one day she struck her waiting maid and so
wounded her that her mistress hands were
covered with blood. When they were washed
the countess remarked that her hands were
winter and the skin more supple and firm
and thenceforward her naturally cruel ma
ture was spurred by the frenzled desire to
retain her waning beauty at any price.
Odd though 1t may seem in the present
day, she used as cosmetic from that time
on bath of human blood and the tradition
goes that anything so superb In its bril-
liant fairness as her complexion cannot be
imagined She murdered all her waiting
maids, one .y J1c aided by three accom-
plices, her old nurse being one Of them,
and when she could get no woman to enter
her serviCo she cody sent her cmissarles
to kidnap the peasant girls of the neighbor-
hood. A lasi. however, tho CHASTITY scandal
arose to sGch Il pitch that even Hungary
in the middle ages could not afford to close
its ears To the wall Of bereaved families and
the culpri'S first cousin, governor of the
province. entered the castle ON Christmas
eve, 1910, to inquire into the truth Of these
horrible stories and discovered his fair and
honOfed re1t tive, her fair chin propped by
her exquisite hand, calmly watching the
death agonies of three girls while her at
tendants We're filling a bath with the life
blood that was to preserve her beauty. The
countess herself was too great parsonage
to incur capital punishment, but for thirty
years she was shut up in solitary cOntine
mcnt in the castle of Cseibhe, in Hungary,
where she finally starved herself to death. |
As for her accomplices, they had their |
hands cut off and were subsequently burned
nt the stake, as. being common people, there |
was no reason for sparng their lives.
1t is said that this fair dame sacrificed GOO
girls to her radiance of skin, but her biOg
rapher states sOberly that documentary evil |
ience exists of the murder of only go. |
in after years she considered thirty |
years of solitary confinement too high Il
price to pay for six years of unimpaired
beauty it is hard to say, but the Inference Is |
hat she did, since she killed herself, |