The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1898-09-21

she, TOO, might nave Deen mistaken IOI
a syIph. Ludwig of Bavaria mistook her
for saint To err poets and princesses
are liable alike. There is a thinker an
nounced, as much mud in the upper clas-
ses as in the lower. Only, he added, in
the former it is gilded. In the case of
this young woman Ludwig appears to
have discovered the mud, but with the
gilth off and the guilt on. Whether it
was that or the tendencies which were in
him from which the maniac developed,
one may surmise, yet never know.
But a fact remains. II not a saint, the
girl was at least human. When ulti-
mately, in cups of champagne strained
through ViOIets, he tried TO drown
himself, the Duchess dAlencop lost
her reason. Subsequently she lost
her life. These instances may or may
not indicate the finger of fate, but none
the less are they tolerably suggestive of it.
SO, too, are the incidents connected with
the late empress second sister the lady
who today Is known as the ex-Queen of
Naples. In the green and quiet of the
slumbrous wood she also waited the COM
ing of a prince. When the latter appeared
1t was through what is technically known
as procuration. The title he bore was
that Of Duke of Calabria- He was the son
of Bombay, the taciturn tyrant King of
the Two Sicilies, whose crueIties lacked
only the artistic touch of an imperial hand
to equal those of Nero.
The girl then was just eighteen, a fes-
tfval of beauty IN the festival of life The
prince five years her elder was a vaci-
liant braggart, insolent of eye and craven
of heart.
The match ill-sorted was for that reason
perhaps, doubly celebrated: first at Mum
ich then in Naples. Presently it occurred
to Bombay that he had done all the evil
that ne could. Amid the clamors and
cries of sedltion and hatred he vacated
the planet, leaving behind nothing but
a rotten reputation and a rickety throne.
The one still subsists, the other has gone.
i Yet that throne, however rickety, it took
GaIfbaldi to overthrow. The young queen
fought for it, not for herself, but for her
child, pushing her husband TO the front
Wrenching the sword from his trembling
hand, brandishing it in her own. holding
ana defending Gaeta, the last Bourbon
stronghold, against Victor Emmanuel
hlinself. So splendid was that defense
mat 1t threw Europe into paroxvxrns of
where in interude OF her girlbood she
"au danced quadrille of royals. every one
or whom on her return was either dead
exfled or insane.
men came the succession of incidents
which Daudet has told so alertly and 50
We'll the transformation of her husband
from AZ coward into canaille; the miser-
les Oh the shabby genteeI, the backseat
OF outiaWed monarchy. incidents poignant
III themselves, yet followed by others
more poignant still, the suicide of her
cousin, the murder of her nephew. the
destruction of one sister. and the assassi-
nation OF another. If ever a woman has
supped on horrors it is she.
1t was a road less tortuous. perhans
Yet quite as golgothic, on which Eliza
oeth of Austria urod. In Vienna tho
prince who had won her, quickly turned
20 WOO elsewhere. Such things can for
lure woman. An empress NAV on,v
smile. Moreover in the sple1dor of rho
imperial court, she was regarded as n
BaNarlan peasant. Such things viii keen
woman awake. An empress NAV not
Seem TO heed. Then came other things
more unbearable, and with them moments
when agony must have reached its apo-
gee. when she felt herself diademed not
with a tiara but with pain; when she
would have bartered her regalia to he
back again, girl once more, in the peace
Of the great green wood.
II was then that these excursions began
which filed the press From ireland TO
the Aegean, from Trieste to Tunis. cease
leSSly she wandered in search of that
oblivion which an anarchist brought her
week ago. Diana meanwhile had been
| turned by destiny into Niobe The wan
| tonneSs OF her assassination has stung the
world. yet the brutality OF it is trte be-
side the mystery of the murder Of Ru-
| dolph, her SON
The name OF Witte'sbach is in-omened
enough, but that Of HapsburC is signia-
cant Derived from Hablchtsburg. it
means Nultures Nest. Rudolph re-
semoled peacock. yet who so looked a
I nm twice saw beside the hrliIiance Of
the plumage the beak and talons of the
bird Of prey. The latter were ancestral
and hereditary and had ne lived would
have been transmitted and rnairt aimed.
/ When life was struck from him. not by n
I bullet, as had been said, but by a bottle
which, parentheucaIy. crushed his skull
there ensued a general stupor into which
| presently filtered the discernment that
the house Of HapsbuTg was doomed. that
vultures Of another brood. birds of prev.
thai rssted not within the realm. but
without were already lowering at the
frontiers waiting but for the emperor OF
Austrias death 10 batten on Austria 5
heart
Il would be convenient as already
noted. and Il would also be in accordance
with the traditions which Mrs South
worth Miss Corelu and otter lady novel
lists have preserved and presented. to
aScube The tragedy Of Rudolph's death
to the malign influence of a family curse
But fiction and history direr Even
otherwise, and admitting the literary ai-
vantage OF such . process. in this instance
il would De detective In the Wi.tels-
bach gallery there Is one portrait which
as yet fake has left unmarried. L is mat
OF Eiza6ech's third sister. the least
known Of the original four.
The prince VINO came 70 her founi her
not among the oaks OF the forest. bur in
the cawNari1ess OF the Naples court He
too. was a son Of Boruba- a younger
brother Of che coward OF Gaeta, ye1 in
making her Countess Of TRAM K Is ru-
mored thar he omitted 10 make Sesr IN
happy as well Their union toie-ably ef-
faced and entirely obscure. resulted in a