Rumour added that these proceedings were only preliminary to the celebration of a morganatic marriage between the Emperor and the actress; morganatic marriages being, as is well known, contrivances for reconciling the human passion which over-rides the barriers of rank with that family pride which does not over-ride them. But rumour, for once, was wrong. A Berlin paper—the _Lokal Anzeiger_—sent its representative to ascertain what Frau Schratt had to say on the subject; and Frau Schratt opened her heart freely to the reporter, and, in doing so, supplied the confirmation of the story which we have quoted, with provisional scepticism, from Countess Marie Larisch. All this talk about her marriage with the Emperor, she said, was “nonsense.” Those who engaged in such talk knew neither her nor the Emperor. And then came the allusion, for which we have been looking, to the part played in the matter by the Empress:— “That high-minded and noble lady was my most gracious patroness and friend. In the unrest caused by the mental and bodily pains which drove her from one place to another, it was a comfort to her to know that a good-tempered, light-hearted woman cheered up her husband, and gave him many a pleasant, harmless hour by chatting with him and relating all sorts of anecdotes and stories; attending him in his morning walks in the Schönbrunn Gardens whilst he was taking his Carlsbad water, and never abusing her extraordinary position for intrigues or to push _protégés_. It was the Empress herself who, hating the stiff Court life and Court dignitaries and ladies-in-waiting, had created my position, which I then maintained owing to the gracious confidence and gratitude of the Emperor. Every spring I was the first to bring the late Empress, wherever she was staying, the first violets, and I always spent a few days with her. An Empress, however magnanimous and high-minded she may be, remains in certain questions above everything a woman. And is it, therefore, really possible to believe that the Empress would have honoured me with her grace and confidence in such an extraordinary way if even the possibility had existed in her thoughts that, after her death, I might marry the Emperor?”