Another passage of a different kind of significance is that in which Countess Marie tells us how she herself received a proposal of marriage from Count Nicholas Esterhazy, and informed the Empress, and subsequently was visited by the Empress in her bedroom at the dead of night:— “Elizabeth was all in white; her hair was wrapped about her like a heavy mantle, and her eyes shone like a panther’s; in fact, she seemed so strange that I was quite frightened, and waited, trembling, for her to speak. “‘Are you awake, Marie?’ “‘Yes, Aunt Cissi.’ “‘Well, sit up and listen to what I have to say.’ “I sat up obediently, and she continued in cold, decisive tones: “‘It is my duty to tell you that Count Esterhazy has a _liaison_ with a married woman, who loves him. After hearing this, will you accept his proposal?’” What Countess Marie means us to think is clear enough, though she does not tell us; and equally clear is the inner meaning of that Fairy Story which she says that the Empress told her by the side of a mountain tarn at Possenhofen. Countess Marie’s reviewers, occupied mainly with her new facts about the Meyerling tragedy, seem to have thought that Fairy Story unworthy of comment; but when one comes to read it carefully, one finds it a consummate example of the art of conveying a suggestion without making a definite statement. Observe: it is Elizabeth who is represented as speaking:— “Once there was an unhappy young Queen, who had married a King who ruled over two countries. They had one son, but they wanted another to succeed to the other kingdom, which was a lovely land of mountains and forests, where the people were romantic and high-spirited. No child came, and the young Queen used to wander alone in the woods, and sit by just such another lake. One day she suddenly saw the still surface move, the lilies parted, and then a handsome man appeared, who swam towards her, and presently stood by her side.” And now let us see how the dots drop by themselves on to the i’s. Austro-Hungary is known to all of us as “the dual monarchy”; and Hungary—or a portion of it—is justly described as “a lovely land of mountains and forests.” Elizabeth bore only one son—the Crown Prince Rudolph. The date of Prince Rudolph’s birth was 1858; and, for a period of ten years, Elizabeth had no other child. Those indications given, we return to our Fairy Story. It relates how the stranger—who announced himself as “the spirit of the lake”—carried the young Queen down “a crystal staircase” to a mysterious palace, where she “sat beside her lover on his crystal throne, and slept in his arms on a bed of lily leaves,” but afterwards “returned to the King’s palace”; and so we are led along the paths of poetry and fantasy to this conclusion:— “Some months passed, and the Queen knew that she would have a child, and she longed for a son like the Water Spirit, who would reign over the romantic country of mountains and forests which she loved.