Memoirs of Bertha von Suttner: The Records of an Eventful Life (Vol. 1 of 2)Suttner, Bertha von
History
Memoirs of Bertha von Suttner: The Records of an Eventful Life (Vol. 1 of 2)
Suttner, Bertha von
Peace; Suttner, Bertha von, 1843-1914; Women -- Austria -- Biography
This plan we carried out in the year 1890–1891. We took rooms in a small
palazzo on the Grand Canal. A delectable little palace, on the outside
gilded and gayly colored—the Palazzo Dario; we rejoiced in the view of
it every time we saw it from the gondola. The interior also pleased us
immensely, for the rooms were wholly in old Venetian style. We had taken
a gondola by the month. One of the two gondoliers was likewise our
valet. The landlady furnished us with good Italian cooking, and I had
engaged a pretty girl as my waiting maid. You are not to suppose that we
had discontinued our work. The forenoon hours were regularly
appropriated to writing. We were happy as happy could be. _Die Waffen
nieder_ had been out now for a year, and I was still receiving critical
articles from the periodicals and letters from the public regarding it.
How round the world really is, and how small! Wherever one goes one
always meets friends and acquaintances from the remotest regions. So it
was here. We were introduced into society by our consul general, Baron
Kraus, and quite unexpectedly we met dear old friends.
Princess Tamara of Georgia, in whose house in Tiflis, and again four
years before in Paris, we had spent so much time, was now settled in
Venice and was there introducing her two daughters into society. I even
found a friend of my girlhood days—Marietta Saibante—in the Marchesa
Pandolfi, whose salons in the Palazzo Bianca Capello were a
meeting-place for Venetian society. We had not seen each other in nearly
twenty-five years, and had quite lost track of each other; so it was a
delightful surprise to both of us to meet again so unexpectedly. Her
husband, a member of the Italian parliament for Sicily, had just come
from Rome. He is the same Marchese Benjamino Pandolfi who afterwards
took a prominent part in the peace movement.
One forenoon my husband and I were sitting and chatting together after
breakfast, when a card was brought in. On it was written the inquiry
whether Mr. Felix Moscheles of London, who had chanced the day before to
learn through Sir Austen Henry Layard that the author of _Die Waffen
nieder_ was in Venice, might be permitted to present his respects.
I sent down word that it would be a pleasure to me.
My husband went to meet the visitor in the anteroom.
“My wife will be much pleased ...” he began politely.
“What! How is this?” cried the other. “Can you be Baron Suttner? So you
are not dead? Why, you were shot in Paris!”
“Excuse me, no....”
Thereupon the two gentlemen came in where I was, and the stranger
explained why he had been so surprised to find me in the possession of a
living spouse, when he knew from the story of my life, which he had
lately read, that I had lost my two husbands, and he had not supposed
(somewhat reproachfully) that I was married for the third time.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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