The Lost Prince Read Online Free PDF Page A

interest the book you sent concerning life in Vienna, the music, and in the cafés, and I have shared it with my friends. We all agree that the author, Mr. Trumpp, has captured beautifully the atmosphere of our city and has added some remarkable perspective and insight. The account paints our progressive Herr Mahler in a very attractive light, one many in this city would benefit from considering, as I fear he is now a prophet without honor in his own territory. I have yet to share the book with Alma.
    I appreciate greatly your descriptions of rich life in Boston, and as always I wish that I could come visit you there. Perhaps Herr Mahler will take an appointment someday with your symphony orchestra, andAlma will entice me to come join them. That offer would not take much enticement.
    As always,
    Yours,
    Arnauld
    In Boston, Eleanor knew what had to be done, the double life she was destined to pursue. On the one hand, she busied herself establishing the beginnings of a life of social prominence, not just marrying the very respectable Frank Burden but also joining activities in cultural life and the arts expected of her class. All of that working to preserve what Frank called “the valued status quo,” the sacred social practice in that city of, as he said, “keeping the world exactly as we inherited it for the next generation.” At the same time she was mindful of the secret world she was meant to pursue, the world of change.
    Eleanor was expected to make extraordinary investments during her lifetime. She knew that from the beginning. And all those investments were laid out for her, all prescribed on one single page of the journal she had brought from Vienna, a description from the end of her life of all she had accomplished, would accomplish, the details written out with care on that one page. She knew what needed to be done the moment she first read the journal and when she brought it back with her. That was the uniqueness of her destiny, what was to be the long span of her adult life. That was the blessing and the curse. She was going to be living out her life and taking actions based on the details recorded in 1897 from knowledge of her life from now until its end. The whole long journal was filled with prescribed actions, many of them in just one simple handwritten line. Even if she were inclined to share her Vienna knowledge with someone, which she was not, she knew that no one could understand her position, and she would be labeled gullible or deluded, just as Dr. Freud had labeled her years earlier. But of course Eleanor knew that the journal, unbelievable as it might appear, was accurate—it simply was the truth and her destiny, and that’s all there was to it.
    Some of the changes were within her control, some, especially general world events, well outside of her doing. But the one page in particularconcerned itself exclusively with the investments she would make, all spectacular ones, it seemed. And it all began with the simple mention of investment in Cincinnati Soap and Candle, a firm she had never heard of but had recently uncovered in, of course, Cincinnati. She assumed that she was intended to invest all of her funds there. And that was that.
    Again, alone and uncertain of the wisdom of what she was doing, and still without a business helper and uncertain what role her future husband was to play in her business ventures, she consulted Frank Burden. In financial matters at least, Frank was nothing if not thorough.
    “A hypothetical investment,” she had told him by way of an introduction.
    “I am glad it is only hypothetical,” Frank said, and then told with skepticism what he could find about the company and its history, none of it with much enthusiasm, and none with any knowledge of what she had planned. “It is out west,” he said dismissively, as if for a Bostonian that explained all that one needed to know. “A very shaky investment.”
    Afterward, without telling anyone, she planned a trip by