She made Ferdinand d'Este a man capable of action and energy. Her chief fault and that of her husband was that through fear of showing weakness, they did not know how to show kindness. The hereditary archduke and his wife were strict in maintaining their landed possessions, and they taxed the people with great severity. It needed little to aggravate the latent hatred against the heir to the thrones in a state divided against itself, and, added to this rivalry, jealousy and general restlessness existed, and certain trifling matters due to the severity of Francis Ferdinand and the Duchess of Hohenberg were perfidiously exploited against them. The day of their death was decided, the way was prepared, and the instruments selected. But I must pass over the terrible events of yesterday, the result of which does not justify me to speak. The hereditary archduke and his wife had a powerful camarilla against them. They were not in need of partisans and they could have opposed cabal after cabal, but their adversaries, who were nearly all hidden, had plans outside the Monarchy. This is not the place or the moment to discuss the conflict of influences of which Vienna was the battlefield. It will be the work of some penetrating and impartial genius who will perhaps be in a position to enlighten the world as to the general worthlessness of the Court of Austria during the ten or fifteen years before 1914. He will then make known to the world the history of one of the most formidable conflicts of self-interest and vanity which the world has ever known. At the Court of Vienna there was a camarilla consisting of a group of men, more or less filled with ambition, who gathered around the Sovereign, guarding every approach to him, and they exploited the Prince to the best of their hatred and avidity. As the Emperor became more and more of a figure-head the old favourites saw themselves confronted with the coming power. This power, for the less important reasons which are known, and for others greater than these, recognized the morganatic marriage of Francis Ferdinand, and the ardent Catholicism of the Duchess of Hohenberg, who, owing to her character and her ambitious dreams for her children, possessed both interior and exterior enemies. There resulted, therefore, a third camarilla, the most secret and the most redoubtable, for the simple reason that, in a Court where individuals fight amongst themselves, they indirectly fight the whole world. They do not betray merely this one and that one--they betray their whole country. CHAPTER IX My Sister Stéphanie Marries the Archduke Rudolph, who Died at Meyerling My younger sister spent a happy girlhood at Brussels. At the age of nineteen she was a radiant beauty. Without knowing whom she was eventually to marry, she had been encouraged to look forward to making a more advantageous marriage than her eldest sister.