Custer weekly chronicle. [volume] (Custer City, S.D.) 1890-1931, 1895-02-02
ONE WoMAN's SECRET OF BEAUTY.
Bathed la the Blood Of Maidens, for which
Hundreds Were Put to Death.

Paris has just been edited by a work
treating Of the life and proceedings of q
lady of the sixteenth century who car
ried her care for her beauty 10 the very
utmost limit. says the Philadelphia Teie-
graph. This is not 4 fairy tale. but q
sober, historical fact, backed by many
official documents of authenticity and
the lady's amiable weakness is described
with a wealth of detail and forcib!e SIM
plicity Of description that is apt TO turn
the reader sick.
The lady in question was named
Elizabeth Bathoory, Countesse Nadas-
dy. who married at the age of IL, in
1895, Comte Francois Nadasdy. who
was not of too mild a nature himself.
rs, when his wife complained one day
that her maid had been impertinent, he
ordered the erring handmaiden stripped.
smeared with honey and laid on q
wasps' nest, from the effects of which
gentle admonition she subsequently
died.
The Countess Elizabeth was left a
widow in 1904 and began simply at first
to try to keep up the rigorous discipline
enforced by her late husband. Unhap-
PLY, one day she struck her waiting
maid and SO wounded her that her mis-
tress' hands were covered with blood.
When they were washed the countess
remarked that her hands were whittier
and the skin more supple and firm and
thenceforward her naturally cruel ma
ture was spurred by the frenzied desire
to retain her waning beauty at any
price.
Odd though il may seem in the pres
ent day, she used as n cosmetic from
that time on a bath of human blood. and
the tradition goes that anything SO SIT
perb in its brilliant fairness as her CON-.
plexion cannot be imagined. She u
dered all her waiting maids. one by
one, aided by three accomplices. her old
nurse being one of them, and when she
could get no women TO enter her service
she coolly sent her emissaries to kidnap
the peasant girls of the neighborhood.
Al last, however, the CHASTITY scandal
rose TO such n pitch that even Hungary
in the middle age could not afford to
close its ears to the wall of bereaved
families and the culprit's first cousin,
governor of, the province, entered the
castle on Christmas eve, 1910, to in.
quire into the truth OF these horrible
stores and discovered his fair and hon.
ored relative, her fair chin propped by
her exquisite hand. calmly watching
the death agonies If three girls, while
her attendants were filling a bath with
the life blood that was to preserve her
beauty.
TIE countess herself was too great
q parsonage TO incur capital punish
ment, but for thirty years she was shut
up in solitary confinement in the castle
OF Cseibhe. in Hungary, where she
finally starved herself TO death. As for
her accompliccs, they had their hands
cut of and were subsequently burned
at the stake. as being conmo people.
Ii Is said that this fair dame sacrificed
COO girls 10 her radiance Of skin. but the
~biographer states soberly that docu-
mentary evidence exists Of the murder
of only $50. Whether in after years
she considered thirty years Of solitary
confinement too high q price 10 pay for
six years OF unimpaircd beauty 1t 10
hard to ay. but the inference IL thai
che did, since She killed herself.