Prince Rudolph married the Princess Stephanie of Belgium in 1881, and in 1883 their only child, a daughter, was born to them. She was about six years old when the terrible death of Rudolph fell as a heavy blow on his parents. The hot-headed young man was mixed up in intrigues unsuitable to his responsible position, with the result that he took his own life by shooting himself, and was found dead in a shooting-box at the end of January 1889. It is said that the Empress was never known to laugh again. In the following year her youngest daughter, the Archduchess Valerie, married, and from that time the unhappy Empress travelled about a great deal incognito on the Continent, and staying at her palace Achilleion on Corfu. On this she spent thousands of pounds. Since her death it has been purchased by the German Emperor. The end came on Sunday September 11, 1898, at Geneva, whither she had gone over for a few days from Territet where she had been staying. Accompanied only by a lady-in-waiting the Empress was walking along the quay between one and two in the afternoon to rejoin the boat which was to take her back to Territet, when a man rushed forward and struck her violently over the heart. It was thought at first he had only stumbled against her and caused her to fall, and though he was secured no great apprehension was raised by his strange conduct. The Empress recovered herself and went on board, where she fainted. It was then discovered that he had pierced her heart with a triangular file resembling a stiletto, which had inflicted only a small wound but bled internally. Brought back to Geneva she died in half an hour. The assassin, who had been arrested, turned out to be an Italian anarchist named Luccheni, who seemed to have no special motive for his dastardly crime beyond a general vendetta against crowned heads. Thus died the Empress Elizabeth in her sixty-first year, adding one more heart-rending sorrow to her husband’s darkened life. There is hardly any grief in the range of human relationships that the Emperor has not known. It was in the very year of his wife’s death, in the month of December, that he was preparing to celebrate his jubilee. Up to the present time he has reigned longer than any other European sovereign of whom we have record, having even out-distanced Queen Victoria. There is loyalty of a very deep and true kind amongst all classes of his subjects; it is not the Austrians alone, but the Slavs and Tyrolese and Hungarians, who look with tender reverence on the aged man, now in his eightieth decade, who has lived far beyond the allotted span of man’s life. Loyalty it is none the less because it does not seek avidly the tittle-tattle as to royal doings so eagerly sought in Great Britain, nor does it lead to mobbing the Emperor in his capital when he goes among his subjects.