Part 13 (1/2)

One of the features of the great court functions at Berlin, as well as at Vienna, which excites the greatest surprise of Americans visiting Europe for the first time, is that particular form of homage accorded to royalty which consists in the kissing of the hand or ”handkuss.”

Not only the hands of the royal and imperial ladies are required by etiquette to be kissed when offered to gentlemen, but it is also considered necessary for both men and women to kiss the hand of the sovereign when he condescends to extend it for the purpose. This seems, perhaps, less odd at Vienna, as the emperor is a septuagenarian with snow-white hair and a sad and kindly face, inspiring feelings of sympathy and loyal affection. Indeed there is nothing out of the way in a young girl, and even a man of mature years, kissing the hand of a veteran of the age of Francis-Joseph, just as if he were their father.

But it certainly does appear strange to those from across the Atlantic who are obtaining their first insight into European court life, to see not only grey-haired generals, and white-whiskered statesmen, but also venerable ladies,--grandmothers perhaps--and belonging to the highest ranks of the n.o.bility kissing the hand of Emperor William.

It has always seemed to me that William must have realized for the first time his altered rank when old Field-Marshal Moltke, and the late Prince Bismarck, on hailing him as emperor within a few hours after his father's death, bent down to kiss his hand. This took place more or less in private. But shortly afterwards, when he opened the imperial parliament for the first time as emperor, in the presence of most of the German sovereigns who had come to Berlin for the purpose, and had finished reading his speech, and handed it to the chancellor of the empire, old Bismarck, as he took it, bent almost double to kiss the hand that was tendering the doc.u.ment to him, in the presence of the princes and representatives of the entire German empire.

Kissing, it may be added, forms a great feature of court etiquette in Germany and Austria. It is, for instance, _de rigueur_ that two sovereigns of equal rank visiting each other, should embrace at least thrice, no matter how deeply they may detest each other privately!

A petty sovereign will have to content himself with being embraced merely twice by a monarch such as Francis-Joseph or Emperor William, while a crown prince or heir apparent will receive only one hug.

Mere princes of the blood receive no kisses at all, but only a hearty hand-shake, with which they have to be satisfied, and which is, after all, perhaps the most sensible fas.h.i.+on of greeting.

CHAPTER XV

All royal and imperial people are more or less superst.i.tious, and neither Emperor William nor his brother monarch at Vienna are exceptions to the rule. Striking evidence thereof is furnished by the presence of a large horseshoe cemented into the wall just outside the fourth window of the first story of Empress Frederick's palace at Berlin. One day, some time before his accession to the throne, and before his father was seized with that terrible malady to which he eventually succ.u.mbed, William was invited to dine with his parents.

Finding that he was very late, and knowing the strictness of his father and mother on the score of punctuality, William directed his coachman to drive as fast as he could, and the carriage positively raced up the incline to the portal.

Suddenly one of the big Mecklenburg horses lost his shoe, which in some extraordinary manner, flew up into the air, dashed through the first-story window and fell upon the dinner table, right in front of Frederick and the then crown princess, who, declining to wait any longer, had just sat down to table. The shoe is reported to have grazed the nose of the late emperor. At any rate, the fact that it should have failed to seriously injure anyone is a miracle. It was so regarded by Frederick, his wife and his children, who deemed the queer advent of the shoe, and the escape of everybody from injury, as an indication of good luck. At the suggestion of the present kaiser, it was thereupon cemented into the wall just outside the window through which it had come, and was fastened upside down, in order to prevent the luck from dropping out.

It is not altogether astonis.h.i.+ng that royal personages should be p.r.o.ne to superst.i.tion, for in almost every case they are compelled to make their homes in palaces and castles that have been stained with the blood of one or more of their ancestors. Ordinary people experience an uncanny feeling when forced by circ.u.mstances to live in houses which have been the scene of suicide or murder, even when the victims of the tragedy, or the perpetrators thereof are in no way, even the most remotely, connected with them. What wonder, then, that royal and imperial personages should entertain the same kind of superst.i.tion and sentiments with regard to their palaces, when it is borne in mind that the partic.i.p.ants in the drama have been members of their own families!

For months prior to the a.s.sa.s.sination of Empress Elizabeth, forebodings of an impending catastrophe were prevalent at the Court of Vienna, and so imbued was Emperor Francis-Joseph with ominous presentiments, that he repeatedly exclaimed in the hearing of his entourage: ”Oh, if only this year were at an end!”

These apprehensions on the part of the monarch and his court were due to an incident which took place on the night of April 24, 1898, and which was of sufficient importance to be comprised in the regular report made on the following morning to his military superiors by the officer of the guard at the Hofburg. It seems that the sentinel posted in the corridor or hall leading to the chapel was startled almost out of his senses by seeing the form of a white-clad woman approaching him, soon after one o'clock in the morning. He at once challenged her, whereupon the figure turned round, and pa.s.sed back into the chapel, where the soldier then observed a light. Hastily summoning a.s.sistance, a strict search was inst.i.tuted, but the chapel was explored without any result.

The sentinel in question was a stolid, rather dull-minded Styrian peasant, who was possessed of but little power of imagination or of education, and who was entirely ignorant, therefore, of the tradition according to which a woman in white makes her appearance by night in the Hofburg at Vienna, either in the chapel or in the adjoining corridors and halls, whenever any misfortune is about to overtake the imperial house of Hapsburg.

On each occasion, this spectral appearance to the sentinel on duty has been described in the report of the officer of the guard on the following morning, and is absolutely a matter of official record. The previous visitations of the ”white lady” had taken place on the eve of the shocking tragedy of Mayerling; a few weeks previous to the shooting of Emperor Maximilian of Mexico; and prior to the burning to death of the daughter of old Archduke Albert, at Schoenbrunn; while the very fact that there should have been no supernatural appearance of this kind at the time when Archduke John vanished from human ken, leads the imperial family and the Court of Austria to still doubt the story, according to which he perished at sea while on his way round Cape Horn, from La Plata to Valparaiso.

I do not know the origin of the ”white lady” tradition at Vienna, nor have I ever been able to ascertain anything definite about her history, but there is plenty of doc.u.mentary evidence, as well as a wonderful array of records concerning ”the white lady of the Hohenzollerns,” who makes her appearance in the old palace at Berlin whenever death is about to overtake a member of the reigning house of Prussia. The late Emperor Frederick--the most matter-of-fact and least imaginative prince of his line--was particularly interested in the matter, and collected all the evidence that he could upon the subject, for the purpose of depositing it in the archives of his family.

Perhaps the most important testimony in this connection are the sworn statements signed by Prince Frederick of Prussia, and a number of his fellow officers, to all of whom the ”White Lady” is declared to have appeared as they sat together on the eve of the prince's death at the battle of Saalfeld in 1806.

Moreover, Thomas Carlyle went to no little trouble to procure evidence when writing the history of Frederick the Great, that the ”White Lady”

had appeared to that famous monarch on the eve of his death. The king, it is a.s.serted, was on the high road to recovery from his illness, when suddenly one morning he declared that he had seen the white-clad spectre during the night, that his hour had come, and that it was useless to ward off death any longer. So he refused to take any further medicine or nourishment, turned his face to the wall, and died.

The ”White Lady” is considered sufficiently real by the hard-headed matter-of-fact commanders of the Prussian army, to lead to their adopting special measures whenever her appearance is reported. The moment she is seen, the sentinels within and around the royal palace are at once doubled. The object of this is not so much to protect the royal family from harm, as to prevent the sentinels themselves from following the example of the two who shot themselves while on guard at the palace in the year 1888, one, shortly before the death of old Emperor William, the other, a few days before the demise of Emperor Frederick, the men in each case declaring before they expired that they had seen the ”White Lady,” their story being in a measure borne out by the fact that their faces even after death seemed to be distorted with terror.

The appearances of the ”White Lady” are kept as quiet as possible, the matter is never mentioned at court, save in whispers, and nothing concerning her is ever permitted to appear in print in the Berlin papers.

This dread apparition that forebodes evil to the reigning house of Prussia, is supposed to be the spectre of Countess Agnes Orlamunde, who murdered her first husband, as well as her two children, who const.i.tuted an obstacle to her marriage with, one of the ancestors of the kaiser.

The palace in which the spectre of this historic murderess appears is a huge and ma.s.sive structure of grey stone, the walls of which are pierced by over one thousand windows, and which contains over six hundred rooms. Commenced four hundred and fifty years ago by one of the earliest electors of Brandenburg, it has been added to by each sovereign in turn, until it has attained its present enormous dimensions.

There is probably no structure of the kind in the world the building of which has cost so many lives. Indeed the very mortar used in its construction may be said to have been mixed with blood. The people of Berlin, who from time immemorial have been noted for their democracy and their spirit of independence, have opposed from the very outset the erection of this building in their midst as calculated to endanger their liberty, and many were the attempts that they made to arrest the undertaking, and to destroy the work already accomplished. b.l.o.o.d.y fights took place between the mob and the troops appointed to protect the workmen, and on two occasions the populace even went so far as to cut the dams, and destroy the flood gates, deluging the foundations with the waters of the River Spree, and drowning each time many hundreds of workmen.

Even at the present moment Emperor William is engaged in an angry fight with, the people of Berlin in connection with this palace.

He wishes to surround it with a terrace and a garden, which will naturally add to its beauty. At present the windows look onto the public streets, a fact which, in these days of bombs and dynamite outrages, renders it difficult to protect with any degree of efficiency. The munic.i.p.ality and people of Berlin, however, absolutely decline to consent to the expropriations necessary in order to enable the destruction and removal of the existing houses and buildings which interfere with the execution of his majesty's project.