The “terrible year” of the Habsburg annals—Proceedings of Princess Louisa of Tuscany—The taint inherited from the Bourbons of Parma—Princess Louisa’s suitors—Her Marriage to Prince Frederick August of Saxony—She bicycles with the dentist—She runs away to Switzerland with her brother, the Archduke Leopold, and her children’s tutor—Attitude of the Courts towards her escapade—Official notice on the subject in the _Wiener Zeitung_. The “terrible year” in the family annals of the House of Habsburg began towards the end of 1902. Before then, though many Archdukes and Archduchesses had caused trouble, they had raised the flag of rebellion independently—one at a time. Now we see a brother and a sister making a simultaneous and concerted demonstration; Princess Louisa of Tuscany embarking on the adventure which united her, for a season (and still legally unites her) to Signor Toselli, and the Archduke Leopold Ferdinand adopting the style of “Herr Wulfling” in order to be free to follow the promptings of an impulsive heart. Princess Louisa has told her own story. It is the story, of course, of a woman placed on her defence, replying to charges, making out a case for herself, and it therefore requires to be read critically; but the holes which criticism can pick in it do not affect the general verisimilitude of the picture. Most of the facts, after all, were too notorious to be disputed. All that was possible was a manifesto of motives; and Princess Louisa’s exposition of these was entitled to an attentive and respectful hearing. She, at least, might be supposed to know why she did the things which the whole world knew her to have done. It may be, indeed, that she wrote some of her pages as one who desired to deceive; but that desire only related, at the most, to a few points of detail. The net impression of the narrative is one of winning candour. Princess Louisa could not, of course, criticise herself from a detached stand-point; but she explained herself. There seems, at the first blush, to be a certain confusion of thought in her explanations. One cannot always make out whether she is excusing her conduct on the ground that she is a Habsburg and therefore mad, or patting herself on the back for having followed the sane and sensible, as well as the romantic course; but it is also a little difficult to make out which of the two lines would have been the proper one for her to take. There is a point of view—it has already been expounded in these pages—from which her precipitate descent from dizzy heights of grandeur presents some of the aspects of Christian’s flight from the City of Destruction; but it must in justice be added that Princess Louisa, having been born in the City of Destruction, and having spent her impressionable years in it, had herself acquired some of the characteristics of the inhabitants. The true picture, perhaps, is that of an abnormal character stimulated by a sane instinct to sudden, unexpected, and eccentric action.