B008AITH44 EBOK Read Online Free PDF Page A

then again far. / Dwell you perhaps on another star? / If you live, give me a sign by day / That I can hardly hope for or expect. / Long, long ago, long ago! / Keep me waiting no more, / waiting no more!]
     
    When Elisabeth’s niece, Marie Wallersee-Larisch, published her book Meine Vergengenheit (My Past) in 1913 and included the story of the Empress’s masked adventure, Fritz Pacher had proof of what the yellow mask had concealed. But in no uncertain terms he contradicted Marie’s account, which made a richly amorous affair of this episode. “If the Empress’s other adventures were as innocent as the Carnival jest she playedwith me à la Harun al-Rashid, she truly has nothing to reproach herself with.”
    When Elisabeth was a girl, in Munich, even Duchess Ludovika had looked forward to secretly visiting such balls. And in Paris, Empress Eugénie and Pauline Metternich attended such functions, concealed behind masks. The problem was the motives and consequences of such leisure diversions: the Empress of Austria was so unfulfilled that in her case, this kind of amusement not only was a diverting pastime (as it was for Empress Eugénie), but grew into dreams that papered over raw reality.
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    Court society could not keep up with the Empress’s fantasies. Gossip occupied itself with something that was not unusual for beautiful, idle, and unhappy rich women—affairs. It was said, for instance, that “it was an open secret in the Hofburg that Her Majesty was having an affair with Niky Esterházy, and that everyone knew that, disguised as a man of the cloth, he came up through the garden and that the meetings took place in Countess Festetics’s apartments.” 21
    Countess Festetics was excessively puritanical and herself above all suspicion. When she learned of this gossip, her anger took on absolutely frightening proportions.
    The gossip about Bay Middleton ( see here ) ran along very similar lines. Here, too, examination of the sources yields no concrete proof. Even Marie Larisch merely describes a rendezvous the Empress and Middleton had in London—the highlight of the amorous adventure, as it were. Under the pretext of visiting a beauty salon, she wrote, Elisabeth had gone to London using the strictest incognito. She was accompanied by Count Heinrich Larisch, her niece Marie, and two servants. “My aunt gave the impression of a boarding-school pupil who for once had gone on vacation all on her own.” 22
    Arrived in London, the Empress decided to pass up the beauty salon in favor of the Crystal Palace. Two carriages were hired, and suddenly Bay Middleton seemed to be one of the party. Elisabeth lowered her veil over her face and, at Bay’s side, disappeared into the crowd. For a short time, she was (what shocking behavior for an empress!) alone with a man who was not of the aristocracy, in the midst of the booths with trained monkeys, fortune tellers, shooting galleries, in a world of jugglers and magicians, which she had loved as a child but which, because she was an empress, had been forbidden to her ever since. It is hard to find anything in this episode in the adventure at the masked ball—that could be criticized.
    Having had this taste of disappearing into the life outside the court, the Empress dared one more sidestep: She allowed herself to visit a small restaurant. Marie Larisch: “I could hardly believe it, Aunt Sissi with her fanatical diets and timetables wanted to go to a restaurant!” Heinrich Larisch calmed the excited young lady, explaining “that surely one should not begrudge the Empress the innocent pleasure of enjoying her freedom for once.” To Marie Larisch’s astonishment, Elisabeth ate “at this late hour, not only roast chicken, but also Italian salad, drank champagne, and devoured a considerable amount of delicate pastry, things she usually despised.” Never in Vienna had the Empress eaten so much at table.
    During the return trip—without Bay—the Empress was “extremely