On the Christmas Eve following the death of the Crown Prince, her mother’s fifty-second birthday, the Archduchess Marie Valerie was betrothed to her cousin Franz Salvator, Duke of Tuscany, an event that was a cause of happiness and satisfaction to all concerned. Next to her parents’ blessing she was anxious to have that of her grandmother, and the day after Christmas accordingly she left for Munich, accompanied by her mother and her lover. Duke Max had died in 1888, shortly after the diamond wedding celebration at Possenhoffen, but the Duchess Ludovica, though bowed with age and many sorrows, had lost none of her mental acuteness and the meeting between the old lady and her daughter and granddaughter was most touching. From there they went to Wiesbaden and Heidelberg, where they spent the spring months. As they were returning to Vienna, they narrowly escaped death by the derailing of the train near Frankfort. Several of the coaches were overturned and crushed, but none of the imperial party, strange to say, was injured. Scarcely had the Empress reached home when she was called to Regensburg by the sudden death there of her eldest sister, Helene of Thurn and Taxis, and after the funeral she went again to Munich to comfort her grief-stricken mother. The marriage of Marie Valerie and Franz Salvator that summer was one of the few happy events of Elizabeth’s later life. On that occasion she laid aside her mourning for a pale gray silk gown, and for the first time since Rudolf’s death made an effort to smile and appear cheerful. But the brief gleam soon vanished. The Archduchess had been the one bright spot in her life, and even though she was to remain in the country as the wife of an Austrian prince, Elizabeth realized that the relations between them could never be the same again. She had lost her dearest companion. On the twenty-fifth of January, 1892, her burden of sorrow was increased by the death of her mother, and she retired to Achilleon, where she had had a monument erected to her unfortunate son that she might be alone with memories of her beloved dead. Even her attendants saw her for only a short time each day, and she lived mostly in a world of dreams. Her favorite poets still afforded her solace and diversion, but she grew to care less for books than for the solitude, which she peopled with creations of her own fancy. Her reader sometimes tried to interest her in new authors, but her thoughts would soon wander and her absent expression prove the uselessness of such attempts. Only Shakespeare or Heine had power to fix her attention, and she would often interrupt her reading to recite favorite verses or passages to herself.