The Empress Elizabeth’s personal fortune was a large one. Her jewels alone—presents from Franz Joseph and other royal personages—were valued at four million gulden. Her will was made at Budapest in 1896. It was very short and written in her own hand. Her palace at Lainz was bequeathed to her daughter Valerie; Achilleon, in Corfu, to the elder, Gisela. All her servants and ladies-in-waiting received legacies, and a number of old friends were also remembered. To her old reader and companion, Ida von Ferenczy, who had been with her for thirty years, she left an annuity, besides a considerable sum of money and a life residence in the imperial palace. In earlier days Elizabeth had expressed a wish to be buried at Gödöllö, then her favorite residence, but in her will she mentioned Achilleon as her chosen place of burial. Her desire was not fulfilled, however. Indulgent as Franz Joseph had been toward his wife’s eccentricities during her lifetime, he was not willing that her hatred of conventionality should be exhibited in her death, and determined that her body should be laid to rest with those of former Empresses and members of his family. In the heart of Vienna there stands an insignificant-looking chapel belonging to the Capuchins. Above a side door are the words “Imperial Vaults,” and a flight of well-worn steps leads down into the dim burial-place of the royal race of Hapsburg. It was into this chamber that the great Maria Theresa used to force her gay young daughters to descend to meditate on the perishability of all earthly greatness, and here she herself would spend hours beside the tomb of her husband. At the end of a cross passage stands the tomb of the murdered Empress, between that of her brother-in-law, the murdered Emperor of Mexico, and her son Rudolf, who also met with a violent end. In life she had shunned all religious observances; now masses are said day and night for the repose of her soul. Every morning the gates of the crypt are opened, and she who in life so loved solitude and seclusion is a mark for the gaze of hundreds of curious sightseers. How much more fitting a place of rest for the nature-loving Empress the sunny shores of her Greek island would have been than the gloomy burial chamber of the Capuchins! How much finer a requiem the sighing of winds and waters than the chantings of vestured priests!