The Prince of Coburg did not return to the palace until the night of the 31st, after having passed many hours alone with the Emperor. He came at once to my room. His disturbed condition and his wild words showed how distraught he was. I pressed him to give me some of the details of the tragedy. "It is horrible, horrible," he said. "But I cannot, I must not say anything except that they are both dead." He had sworn to the Emperor to keep silent, as had Rudolph's other friends who had gone to shoot at Meyerling. The secret was well kept. The servants who might have spoken have, for very good reasons, disclosed nothing. When I went to see the Empress, at her request, I found myself in the presence of a marble statue covered with a black veil. I was so agitated that I could hardly stand. I passionately kissed the hand she extended, and in a voice broken like that of the mother at Calvary she murmured: "You weep with me! Yes, I know that you too loved him." Oh, unfortunate mother! She adored her son. He helped her to bear that life smothered in ashes which his malicious father led beside one who was so noble. After Rudolph had been snatched from her and from his Imperial future, the Empress fled from this Court which henceforth held nothing for her, and she met death alone. It is known by what a sudden and cruel blow she died--the innocent victim of the penalty of her rank. I saw, I see in the successive dramas of the House of Austria a punishment sent by Heaven. A chain of bloody fatalities which recalls the tragedies of Sophocles or Euripides is not simply a game of chance. The justice of the gods is always that of God. The Court of Vienna was destined to perish horribly. It had betrayed everything; first of all its traditions, for nothing noble remained--even its intrigues were base. It was only a servants' hall for the valets from Berlin. And after Francis Joseph appeared at the famous Eucharistic Congress on the eve of the war, and stood before the altar as Prince of the Faith, he went to finish the dull day at the house of Madame Schratt, and listen to the backstairs gossip of Vienna and the unsavoury reports of the police news! Rudolph died of sheer disgust! CHAPTER X Ferdinand of Coburg and the Court of Sofia The glory of the Coburg family reached its zenith at the time of Leopold I and the Prince Consort. They gave to the world a series of princes who were veritably made to rule. Their direct influence on Belgium, and indirectly on England, created a period of peace and an "Entente," of which the beneficial results are so well known. Later, when my father continued the brilliant work bequeathed to him by King Leopold, Duke Ernest, Prince Regent of the Duchy of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha, proved himself no less inferior to his cousin at Brussels. In Vienna Prince Auguste, who was so good and with whom unfortunately I had very little to do as a father-in-law, also proved that he was a man of valour.