Sisi, page 19
And now, turning back to Victoria, Sisi leaned close as she said, “It is as our court composer said to me once. You are familiar with Master Strauss?”
“But of course, all of Europe has waltzed to the music of Johann Strauss the Second. He’s yet another reason why Vienna’s court is the envy—I mean, admiration—of the world.”
Sisi nodded, continuing: “Well, I once asked Master Strauss why he thinks his waltzes are so popular.”
“And what did he say?”
“He laughed and told me, ‘Illusion makes us happy.’ ”
Later that night, following a long dinner and an interminable ball given in honor of Crown Prince Frederick and his wife, Sisi sat opposite Franz in the coach returning them to the Hofburg. “Would it pain him to smile, even just once?” Sisi asked, remembering the crown prince’s implacable scowl throughout the entire ball. “Victoria is so lovely and warm. And his mother—the foghorn—even she is pleasant, though she speaks about Berlin too much. But Frederick…”
“He’s a Prussian. What do you expect?” Franz yawned, quickly lifting his gloved hand to conceal such an undignified display of weakness.
“It’s quite all right, you know,” Sisi said, smiling at her husband.
“Pardon?”
“You may yawn in front of me. You’re tired.” Sisi shrugged. “Is that such a crime?”
Franz let the remark go unanswered, looking out the window, his face catching the regular intervals of light from the streetlamps as the carriage rolled past them in quick succession. Sisi shut her eyes and leaned her head back against the coach. After a moment, his voice so quiet as to be barely audible, Franz said, “Thank you, Sisi.”
Sisi opened her eyes and looked across the shadowed coach. “For what?”
Franz’s face was drawn with fatigue, his lips curling downward as if defeated by the effort of having worn a smile all day. “For all of it,” he said. “For being here. For this morning. And this evening. You are the reason today was a success.” Franz turned back toward the coach window, sighing as if he could fall asleep before even reaching the palace gates.
Because it was dark and because the din of the horse hooves and carriage wheels clamored so loudly outside the window, Sisi wasn’t sure she heard the next part correctly. From where she sat, across from Franz Joseph, she thought—but wasn’t certain—that she heard him say, “You will never know how badly I need you.”
No sooner had the German royals left than Queen Victoria’s heir and representative, her eldest son, the Prince of Wales, arrived from England. If Frederick had been dispassionate and stern, his entire countenance like that of a soldier who had declared war on all cheer and merriment, Prince Edward proved to be his opposite in nearly every way. A handsome young man, Prince Edward did not dress in military uniform but instead wore a cool summer suit and a hat that dipped rakishly to one side. He carried himself more like a dapper bachelor looking to enjoy himself than a royal dignitary visiting on official state business.
On his first day in Vienna, Edward arrived late to the exposition grounds, having kept Franz, Sisi, and Rudolf waiting for nearly an hour. Sauntering up, a relaxed grin on his face, his long gait as easy as if he’d already enjoyed an entire bottle of wine—which Sisi suspected he might have—the crown prince offered no apology for his tardiness.
“Well, then, shall we make our way into the rotunda?” Franz asked, a tone of forced joviality in his voice as he examined this offender of protocol. It was a muggy day in early summer, and the Austrians in their full dress had already grown quite warm—and irritable—while waiting for their English guest.
“Yes, my dear, let’s go in,” Sisi said, sweeping her husband along with her.
Edward was closer in age to Rudolf than Frederick had been, and he seemed to want to make an ally—or a drinking companion—of his fellow crown prince. As the small group made its way into the hall, Sisi overheard the young prince, while slapping Rudolf on the shoulder as if they were old buddies from university, whisper: “Right, then, let’s get this over with so we can cut right to the ball, shall we? How are these Viennese women, huh, Rudy? As warm and creamy as your famous strudel? The few I’ve seen so far have definitely stoked my appetite.”
Edward had his sister’s pleasant affability as well as her pale coloring and dark hair, but he seemed to lack any of Princess Victoria’s restraint or sense of the decorum expected of his station. At the ball given in his honor, Edward flirted openly with Sisi and several of the pretty young Viennese debutantes, asking multiple girls to dance and resting his hand brazenly on their waists long after the songs were over.
Later in the evening, the crown prince slid up to Sisi’s side, his hands full with a pair of champagne glasses. “Join me in a toast, Empress?”
“Of course, Prince Edward.” Sisi took the crystal flute he now extended toward her, offering him a measured grin.
His features, by contrast, were relaxed and merry, his dark waves falling haphazardly around his flushed face, his collared shirt unbuttoned. “To you, Madame.” Edward lifted his glass, spilling a splash of champagne down his front as his unsteady hands wobbled. He ignored—or didn’t notice—the wet spot as he continued: “This city is filled with many beauties. Why, look around this hall! But let me simply say that you…Empress Sisi…stand out alone. And I’d love nothing more than to go inside…your rotunda.”
“Cheers to Your Majesty’s health,” Sisi said, sipping from her glass before turning toward her husband. Franz was clearly horrified, muttering to his wife that he had never seen such a mortifying display, but Sisi simply giggled with bewildered amusement. As the night progressed, there was no denying that Edward danced well and possessed a certain uncouth charm. He might have been a cad, but he was young and harmless and far more agreeable than Germany’s Frederick had been, and he’d certainly piqued the interest of many of Vienna’s young ladies. Sisi was grateful that, at last, Rudolf seemed to be enjoying himself. Her son had shed some of his customary surliness beside the gregarious and cocksure English prince, and Sisi even saw him dance throughout the course of the evening.
Apparently not of his mother’s school of thought on sobriety or personal piety, Edward continued to partake liberally of the wine and champagne as the gala stretched on. At one point, complaining that the pavilion in which they were dancing was too hot, he tried to open a window. Failing to do that, Edward simply picked up a chair and hurled it through the window, causing a spray of shattered glass and female shrieks to spill across the hall. The horrified gasps of Franz and the rest of the courtiers in the room were overshadowed only by the sound of Edward’s uproarious guffawing laughter.
“I think more than one young Viennese lady feels her heart leaving on this train back to London,” Sisi said as she stood beside Franz Joseph, waving farewell to the departing Prince of Wales. A silent Rudolf stood with them, sulking as if he wished he could leave with his new English friend.
“He takes some of the ladies’ hearts,” Franz said, offering one final wave to the vanishing train, “and I daresay, perhaps their virtue, too.”
“He certainly came to conquer.” Sisi suppressed a chuckle. It was nice, for once, to have someone take her place as most gossiped about in the newspapers and court circles, even if it wouldn’t last.
“And now it’s time to prepare for a Russian winter,” Franz sighed in reply.
The climate in Vienna did in fact go from wild and frivolous to frosty and serious as Edward left and they looked ahead to the arrival of the Russian tsar and his entourage. Andrássy, the diplomat and conductor, playing his role as foreign minister with aplomb, warned both Sisi and Franz to prepare for a taxing few days.
“It’s not fair, really,” Sisi complained to Franz the night before the Russian tsar and tsarina were to arrive. “They come one at a time and have all the energy needed for a few frenzied days. But you and I? We are expected to keep this show going at a breakneck pace, day in and day out, for months on end. And each guest thinks that he is the most important visitor.”
“If we wish to avoid making enemies,” Franz sighed, “then, indeed, each visitor must continue to think that he is our most important visitor.”
But Sisi felt less like a diplomat than a marionette, dancing on display and entertaining with rehearsed lines and acts. Her stomach was in coils from constantly wearing a corset and tight-fitting dresses; her head throbbed from the elaborate hairdos and diadems that pulled on her scalp. She had had her fill of feasting and champagne and the overheated, crowded halls, of exchanging cheery, tiring pleasantries with demanding guests. And she had barely seen Valerie in weeks. “I wish I could just take off to Gödöllő and actually enjoy this summer,” she muttered in the coach on the way back to the palace after yet another Viennese ball.
Franz sighed, perhaps agreeing with her, but he never would have said so. For him, his own personal happiness or comfort mattered little when compared to the demands of the empire and his role in it.
Andrássy spent days fastidiously preparing for the arrival of the Russian imperial party. He warned Franz and Sisi that the Russians were now second only to the Germans as the most important friends and allies of Austria-Hungary. With his vast realm bordering the Habsburgs to the east, Tsar Alexander ruled over an empire of millions, as well as crucial wheat crops and rich mineral stores. And the tsar’s waterways would only grow more critical for Austro-Hungarian trade and military security in the coming decades. Tsar Alexander was a most desirable ally—and would prove an even more undesirable foe.
“And to them, as hereditary rulers for centuries, ritual and tradition are sacred,” Andrássy said. He and Bellegarde were standing with Sisi and Franz on Vienna’s train platform, awaiting the Russian cortege.
“We know a thing or two about ritual and tradition.” Sisi sighed.
“No.” Andrássy shook his head. He leaned in close now, speaking in a low voice so that only Sisi might hear over the roar of the approaching train. “The Habsburgs believe they rule by the blessing of God. Well, the Romanovs have convinced their pious and downtrodden people that they themselves are gods.”
Sisi considered this, her eyebrows gliding upward as the train slowed to a halt before them.
“The Romanovs make the Habsburgs look pliant and easygoing in comparison,” Andrássy added.
“Goodness.”
As Tsar Alexander stepped onto the platform, his mustached lips tight and unsmiling, Sisi bowed her head, careful not to look directly into his eyes. Next she turned to kiss the Tsarina Maria’s hand before accepting kisses on her own hand from the remaining female members of the imperial Russian party. Perfectly rehearsed—perfectly executed. So far, she seemed to have avoided a misstep, and Andrássy looked on approvingly.
“Welcome, Your Imperial Highness,” Franz greeted the tsar, stepping forward in his own crisp and starched version of the Russian military uniform. Sisi had dressed for them, as well—she wore a tight-fitting gown of lilac silk under a jacket of white Siberian fox fur.
“Of course there is no creature more beautiful than your Siberian fox,” she said to the tsar, her eyes lowered, hoping he didn’t notice the beads of sweat that dappled her brow. Or with a warmer coat, she thought, panicking. She was already overheated in the summer weather, and they hadn’t even begun their day at the packed, swarming fairgrounds and the parade that they were scheduled to watch with delighted smiles. Would the Blessed Tsar be irreparably offended if she had to shed the Siberian fox coat?
The tsar smiled only once throughout his whole stay in Vienna, and it was at dinner on his final evening, when Sisi told him of her desire to ride her horse along Russia’s Neva River. “You have somehow bewitched that stern old Romanov,” Andrássy said, pulling her aside the next day in the halls of the Hofburg. “Well done, Sisi.”
Next came the magnates from the Balkans. While their kingdoms were not as vast or influential as Russia or Germany, these diverse regions had long and interwoven histories with the Austrian Empire. Franz Joseph hoped that in ingratiating himself with the regions’ leaders, he might gain additional support from them in suppressing their restless and often hostile populaces in his southern lands. First came Prince Milan of Serbia, who was unshaven and tardy to nearly every scheduled appointment, often appearing as if he had just tousled his dark hair in a fight with a gambling rival or an angry lover. Or perhaps both. There was Prince Nicholas of Montenegro, a swarthy, staggeringly handsome man with ruddy features and a full Montenegrin uniform covered with a collection of blades and weaponry draped across his chest and waist.
Next came King Leopold of Belgium, a solicitous and fawning man whose only shortcoming was that he brought his presumptuous daughter Princess Stéphanie with him. Sisi took an almost immediate dislike to Princess Stéphanie; she found the girl unbecoming with her frumpish wardrobe and boxy build, and she didn’t like the way Stéphanie flirted openly with Rudolf in front of the others, making her ambitions plain. Nor did Sisi like the girl’s combustive and artificial laughter. She noted how Stéphanie erupted in fits of giggling any time Rudolf spoke, more, it seemed, to flatter him than to express any genuine mirth. Fortunately Rudolf still thought like an underdeveloped boy, and he seemed as unimpressed by the Belgian princess’s inauthentic flattery and artless attempts at coquetry as his mother was.
Leopold and Stéphanie left and were replaced by Queen Isabella of Spain, a tall and imposing woman with black hair and dull, yellowing skin. Isabella dressed well enough and held herself with a certain regal dignity, but she was not at all pleasant to be around, giving Sisi the impression that she would much rather have been back in Madrid. Just as well, Sisi thought, for I’d rather be elsewhere myself. Isabella’s reticence spared Sisi some of the forced and cheerful chatter she was finding so increasingly wearying as the days dragged on.
—
The fair—with both its architectural feats and its endless rows of booths—was universally acclaimed as a success. But though the exhibitions and the halls both dazzled and impressed, news of the troubles occurring elsewhere in Vienna couldn’t help but seep into the grounds. The crowds were not coming in the numbers Franz’s ministers had projected. Nor was the fair earning money at the rate it needed to in order to be profitable, or simply break even. Adding to these concerns, a cholera epidemic had broken out across the city, causing many to flee to the countryside in search of cleaner air during the hottest months of the year.
More bad news came when the city’s cab drivers decided to go on strike, preventing many who might have gone to the fair from getting there. As news of the fair’s lackluster performance spread, the stock market crashed, the impact rippling from the lowest to highest tiers of society and setting off a sudden spike in suicides; during the summer when it had hoped to be named the world’s capital of culture and art, Vienna was instead dubbed the suicide capital of the world.
Franz weathered these repeated and recurrent blows with his usual stoicism and resilience, withdrawing inward whenever he was not attending to a public appearance, but by the time of the King and Queen of Saxony’s visit, Sisi felt exhausted and ravaged. She did not have the energy for one more parade, dinner, ball, or exhibition tour. She was petrified of the cholera epidemic, both for her own sake and for Valerie’s. Plus she had come down, inexplicably, with a summertime cough and was now suffering from daily headaches.
“Please, can we leave the capital, only for a week? What does the visit from the King of Saxony mean anyway? Have one of your ministers show them around. They don’t need the Emperor of Austria-Hungary. Bellegarde can manage it. Besides, he’s more on their level.”
“Sisi, we cannot insult the Saxons like that,” Franz said, his voice carrying a twinge of disapproval—or was it simply fatigue? “Saxony was our most faithful ally against the Prussians. They have always been there for us.” How could Franz do it, honoring his duty day after day? Sisi wondered. Subjugating all personal desires and needs to serve, work, and fulfill? She marveled at his fortitude, chastising herself for her own human frailties and petty selfishness, and yet, she could not imagine living like that.
“And besides, after the Saxons, we have our greatest visitor of all….” Franz said, perking up slightly. “And I’m certain you will not want to miss him.”
“Who is that?”
“The shah of Persia.”
“Tell me one more time. I can hardly believe it.” Sisi sat in her bedchamber, preparing for the dinner during which she and Franz would welcome the shah of Persia to Vienna. Outside, it was a roasting summer evening, and inside, the palace buzzed with a current of anticipatory giddiness, so outlandish had this foreign ruler proven to be before even setting foot in the palace.
“Nor can I believe it, Empress!” Marie Festetics could barely keep from giggling as she laid out Sisi’s evening gown. “They say that he has traveled here with his own horses, their manes colored pink, as well as forty rams, a herd of gazelles, and a pack of dogs, all because he heard that Your Majesty adores animals. He plans to give the gazelles to you as a gift, Madame.”
“And what of the people with whom he travels?” Sisi asked.
“He has brought his entire family, numbering in the dozens, as well as several ‘ladies of pleasure.’ ”
Sisi’s eyes widened.
“I apologize, Empress. I’ve offended you.”
“No, Marie.” Sisi clutched her stomach, trying not to laugh for fear of the corset’s punitive pinch. “Go on, go on.”
“Also in his entourage are dozens of ministers, his soothsayers, his doctors, his grand vizier—who he insists must be with him at all times—and his astrologers.”
“Ah, yes, the blessed astrologers!” Sisi said, rising from her chair. “The shah canceled his appointment earlier in the day, refusing to meet me and Franz at the exposition grounds because his astrologers had declared ‘the stars were not propitious for the meeting.’ ”
