Love affairs of the Courts of Europe by Thornton Hall

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Not that Olympe was always to remain the plain, unattractive child
Madame de Motteville describes in 1647. Each year, as it passed, added
some touch of beauty, developed some latent charm, until at eighteen she
was very fair to look upon. "Her eyes now" says Madame de Motteville,
"were full of fire, her complexion had become beautiful, her face less
thin, her cheeks took dimples which gave her a fresh charm, and she had
fine arms and beautiful hands. She certainly seemed charming in the eyes
of the King, and sufficiently pretty to indifferent spectators."

That she had wooers in plenty, even before she was so far advanced in
the teens, was inevitable; but her personal preferences counted for
little in face of the Cardinal's determination to find for her, as for
all his nieces, a splendid alliance which should shed lustre on himself.
And thus it was that, without any consultation of her heart, Olympe's
hand was formally given to Prince Eugene de Savoie, Comte de Soissons, a
man in whose veins flowed the Royal strains of Savoy and France.

It was a brilliant match indeed for the daughter of a petty Italian
baron; and Mazarin saw that it was celebrated with becoming
magnificence. On the 20th February, 1657, we see a brilliant company
repairing to the Queen's apartments, "the Comte de Soissons escorting
his betrothed, dressed in a gown of silver cloth, with a bouquet of
pearls on her head, valued at more than 50,000 livres, and so many
jewels that their splendour, joined to the natural eclat of her beauty,
caused her to be admired by everyone. Immediately afterwards, the
nuptials were celebrated in the Queen's chapel. Then the illustrious
pair, after dining with the Princesse de Carignan-Savoie, ascended to
the apartments of his Eminence, the Cardinal, where they were
entertained to a magnificent supper, at which the King and Monsieur did
the company the honour of joining them."

Then followed two days of regal receptions; a visit to Notre Dame to
hear Mass, with the Queen herself as escort; and a stately journey to
the Hotel de Soissons, where the Comtesse's mother-in-law "testified to
her, by her joy and the rich presents which she made her, how great was
the satisfaction with which she regarded this marriage."

Thus raised to the rank of a Princess of the Blood, Olympe was by no
means the proud and happy woman she ought to have been. She had, in
fact, aspired much higher; she had had dreams of sharing the throne of
France with her handsome young playmate, the King; and to Louis, wife
though she now was, she had lost none of the attraction she possessed
when he called her his "little sweetheart" in their childish games
together. "He continued to visit her with the greatest regularity," to
quote Mr Noel Williams; "indeed, scarcely a day went by on which His
Majesty's coach did not stop at the gate of the Hotel de Soissons; and
Olympe, basking in the rays of the Royal favour, rapidly took her place
as the brilliant, intriguing great lady Nature intended her to be."

It is little wonder, perhaps, that Olympe's foolish head was turned by
such flattering attentions from her sovereign, or that she began to give
herself airs and to treat members of the Royal family with a haughty
patronage. Even La Grande Mademoiselle did not escape her insolence;
for, as she herself records, "when I paid her a thousand compliments and
told her that her marriage had given me the greatest joy and that I
hoped we should always be good friends, she answered me not a word."

But Olympe's supremacy was not to remain much longer unchallenged. The
King's vagrant fancy was already turning to her younger sister, Marie,
whose childish plainness had now ripened to a beauty more dazzling than
her own--the witchery of large and brilliant black eyes, a complexion of
pure olive, luxuriant, jet-black hair, a figure of singular suppleness
and grace, and a sprightliness of wit and a _gaiete de coeur_ which the
Comtesse could not hope to rival. It soon began to be rumoured in Court
that Louis spent hours daily in the company of Mazarin's beautiful
niece; a rumour which Hortense Mancini supports in her "Memoirs." "The
presence of the King, who seldom stirred from our lodging, often
interrupted us," she says; "my sister, Marie, alone was undisturbed; and
you can easily understand that his assiduity had charms for her, who was
the cause of it, because it had none for others."

And as Louis' visits to the Mancini lodging became more and more
frequent, each adding a fresh link to the chain that was binding him to
her young sister, Madame de Soissons saw less and less of him, until an
amused tolerance gave place to a genuine alarm. It was nothing less than
an outrage that she, who had so long held first place in the King's
favour, should be ousted by a "mere child," the last person in the world
whom she could have thought of as a rival. But the Comtesse was no woman
to be easily dethroned. Although at every Court ball, fete, or ballet,
Louis was now inseparable from her sister, she affected to ignore these
open slights and lost no opportunity in public of vaunting her intimacy
with His Majesty, even to the extent on one occasion, as Mademoiselle
records, of taking Louis' seat at a ball supper and compelling him to
share it with her.

But such shameless arrogance only served to estrange the King still
further, and to make him seek still more the company of the young
sister, who had already captured his heart as the Comtesse had never
captured it. When Louis made his memorable journey to Lyons to meet the
Princess Margaret of Savoy, it was to Marie that he paid the most
courtly and tender attentions. "During the journey," says Mademoiselle,
"he did not address a word to the Comtesse de Soissons"; and, indeed, on
more than one occasion he showed a marked aversion to her.

At St Jean d'Angely, Louis not only himself escorted Marie to her
lodging; he stayed with her until two o'clock in the morning. "Nothing,"
her sister Hortense records, "could equal the passion which the King
showed, and the tenderness with which he asked of Marie her pardon for
all she had suffered for his sake." It was, indeed, no secret at Court
that he had offered her marriage, and had taken a solemn vow that
neither Margaret of Savoy nor the Infanta of Spain should be his wife.
But, as we have seen in a previous chapter, both the Queen and Mazarin
were determined that the Infanta should be Queen of France; and that his
foolish romance with the Mancini girl should be nipped in the bud.

There was also another powerful influence at work to thwart his passion
for Marie. The indifference of the Comtesse de Soissons had given place
to a fury of resentment; and she needed no instigation of her uncle to
determine at any cost to recover the place she had lost in Louis'
favour. She brought all her armoury of coquetry and flatteries to bear
on him, and so far succeeded that, we read, "the King has resumed his
relations with the Comtesse; he has recommenced to talk and laugh with
her; and three days since he entertained M. and Madame de Soissons with
a ball and a play, and afterwards they partook of _medianoche_ (a
midnight banquet) together, passing more than three hours in
conversation with them."

Meanwhile Marie, realising the hopelessness of her passion in face of
the opposition of her uncle and the Queen, and of Louis' approaching
marriage to the Spanish Princess, had given him unequivocally to
understand that their relations must cease, and the rupture was complete
when the Comtesse told the King of her sister's dallying with Prince
Charles of Lorraine, of their assignations in the Tuileries, of their
mutual infatuation, and of the rumours of an arranged marriage. "_Cela
est bien_" was all Louis remarked, but the dark flush of anger that
flooded his face was a sweet reward to the Comtesse for her treachery.

A few days later her revenge was complete when, in the King's presence,
she rallied her sister on her low spirits. "You find the time pass
slowly when you are away from Paris," she said; "nor am I surprised,
since you have left your lover there"; to which Marie answered with a
haughty toss of the head, "That is possible, Madame."

One formidable rival thus removed from her path, Madame de Soissons was
not long left to enjoy her triumph; for another was quick to take the
place abandoned by the broken-hearted Marie--the beautiful and gentle La
Valliere, who was the next to acquire an ascendancy over the King's
susceptible heart. Once more the Comtesse, to her undisguised chagrin,
found herself relegated to the background, to look impotently on while
Louis made love to her successor, and to meditate new schemes of
vengeance. It was in vain that Louis, by way of amende, found for her a
lover in the Marquis de Vardes, the most handsome and dissolute of his
courtiers, for whom she soon developed a veritable passion. Her vanity
might be appeased, but her bitterness--the _spretoe injuria
formoe_--remained; and she lost no time in plotting further mischief.

With the help of M. de Vardes and the Comte de Guiche, she sent an
anonymous letter to the Queen, containing a full and intimate account of
her husband's amour with La Valliere--the letter enclosed in an envelope
addressed in the handwriting of the Queen of Spain. Fortunately for
Maria Theresa's peace of mind the letter fell into the hands of Louis
himself, who was naturally furious at such treachery and determined to
make those responsible for it suffer--when he should discover them. As,
however, the investigation of the matter was entrusted to de Vardes, it
is needless to say that the culprits escaped detection.

Madame de Soissons' next attempt to bring about a rupture between the
King and La Valliere, by bringing forward a rival in the person of the
seductive Mlle de la Motte-Houdancourt, proved equally futile, when
Louis discovered by accident that she was but a tool in Madame's
designing hands; and for a time the Comtesse was sent in disgrace from
the Court to nurse her jealousy and to devise more effectual plans of
vengeance.

What form these took seems clear from an investigation held at the
close of 1678 into a supposed plot to poison the King and the Dauphin--a
plot of which La Voisin, one of the greatest criminals in history, was
suspected of being the ringleader. During this inquiry La Voisin
confessed that the Comtesse de Soissons had come to her house one day
"and demanded the means of getting rid of Mile de la Valliere"; and,
further, that the Comtesse had avowed her intention to destroy not only
Louis' mistress, but the King himself.

Such a confession was well calculated to rouse a storm of indignation in
France, where Madame de Soissons had made many powerful enemies. The
Chambre unanimously demanded her arrest; but before it could be
effected, Madame, stoutly declaring her innocence, had shaken the dust
of Paris off her feet, and was on her way to Brussels.

During her flight to safety, we are told, "the principal inns in the
towns and villages through which she passed refused to receive her"; and
more than once she was compelled to sleep on straw and suffer the
insults of the populace, which reviled her as sorceress and poisoner.
"We are assured," Madame de Sevigne writes, "that the gates of Namur,
Antwerp, and other towns have been closed against the Countess, the
people crying out, 'We want no poisoner here'!" Even at Brussels,
whenever she ventured into the streets she was assailed by a storm of
insults; and on one occasion, when she entered a church, "a number of
people rushed out, collected all the black cats they could find, tied
their tails together, and brought them howling and spitting into the
porch, crying out that they were devils who were following the
Comtesse."

In the face of such chilling hospitality Madame de Soissons was not
tempted to make a long stay in Brussels; and after a few months of
restless wandering in Flanders and Germany, she drifted to Spain where
she succeeded in ingratiating herself with the Queen. She found little
welcome however from the King, who, as the French Ambassador to Madrid
wrote, "was warned against her. He accused her of sorcery, and I learn
that, some days ago, he conceived the idea that, had it not been for a
spell she had cast over him, he would have had children.... The life of
the Comtesse de Soissons consists in receiving at her house all persons
who desire to come there, from four o'clock in the evening up to two or
three hours after midnight. There is, sire, everything that can convey
an air of familiarity and contempt for the house of a woman of quality."

That Carlos' suspicions were not without reason was proved when one day
his Queen, after, it is said, drinking a glass of milk handed to her by
the Comtesse, was taken suddenly ill and expired after three days of
terrible suffering. That she died of poison, like her mother, the
ill-fated sister of our second Charles, seems probable; but that the
poison was administered by the Comtesse, whose friend and protectress
she was and who had every reason to wish her well, is less to be
believed, in spite of Saint-Simon's unequivocal accusation. Certainly
the crime was not proved against her; for we find her still in Spain in
the following spring, when Carlos, his patience exhausted, ordered her
to leave the country.

After a short stay in Portugal and Germany, Madame de Soissons was back
in Brussels, where she spent the brief remainder of her days--"all the
French of distinction who visited the City" (to quote Saint-Simon)
"being strictly forbidden to visit her." Here, on the 9th October, 1690,
her beauty but a memory, bankrupt in reputation, friendless and poor,
the curtain fell on the life so full of mis-used gifts and baffled
ambitions.

CHAPTER XXVIII

AN ILL-FATED MARRIAGE

Few Kings have come to their thrones under such brilliant auspices as
Milan I. of Servia; few have abandoned their crowns to the greater
relief of their subjects, or have been followed to their exile by so
much hatred. But a fortnight before Milan's accession, his cousin and
predecessor, Prince Michael, had been foully done to death by hired
assassins as he was walking in the park of Topfschider, with three
ladies of his Court; and the murdered man had been placed in a carriage,
sitting upright as in life, and had been driven back to his palace
through the respectful greetings of his subjects, who little knew that
they were saluting a corpse.

There was good reason for this mockery of death, for Prince Alexander
Karageorgevitch had long set ambitious eyes on the crown of Servia, and
resolved to wrest it by fair means or foul from the boy-heir to the
throne; and it was of the highest importance that Michael's death, which
he had so brutally planned, should be concealed from him until the
succession had been secured to his young rival, Milan. And thus it was
that, before Karageorgevitch could bring his plotting to the head of
achievement, Milan was hailed with acclamation as Servia's new Prince,
and, on the 23rd June, 1868, made his triumphal entry into Belgrade to
the jubilant ringing of bells and the thunderous cheers of the people.

Twelve days later, Belgrade was _en fete_ for his crowning, her streets
ablaze with bunting and floral decorations, as the handsome boy made his
way through the tumults of cheers and avenues of fluttering
handkerchiefs to the Metropolitan Church. The men, we are told, "took
off their cloaks and placed them under his feet, that he might walk on
them; they clustered round him, kissing his garments, and blessing him
as their very own; they worshipped his handsome face and loved his
boyish smile." And when his young voice rang clearly out in the words,
"I promise you that I shall, to my dying day, preserve faithfully the
honour and integrity of Servia, and shall be ready to shed the last drop
of my blood to defend its rights," there was scarcely one of the
enthusiastic thousands that heard him who would not have been willing to
lay down his life for the idolised Prince.

It was by strange paths that the fourteen-year-old Milan had thus come
to his Principality. The son of Jefrenn Obrenovitch, uncle of the
reigning Michael, he was cradled one August day in 1854, his mother
being Marie Catargo, of the powerful race of Roumanian "Hospodars," a
woman of strong passions and dissolute life. When her temper and
infidelities had driven her husband to the drinking that put a premature
end to his days, Marie transferred her affection, without the sanction
of a wedding-ring, to Prince Kusa, a man of as evil repute as herself.
In such a home and with such guardians her only child, Milan, the future
ruler of Servia, spent the early years of his life--ill-fed, neglected,
and supremely wretched.

Thus it was that, when Prince Michael summoned the boy to Belgrade, in
order to make the acquaintance of his successor, he was horrified to see
an uncouth lad, as devoid of manners and of education as any in the
slums of his capital. The heir to the throne could neither read nor
write; the only language he spoke was a debased Roumanian, picked up
from the servants who had been his only associates, while of the land
over which he was to rule one day he knew absolutely nothing. The only
hope for him was his extreme youth--he was at the time only twelve years
old--and Michael lost no time in having him trained for the high station
he was destined to fill.

The progress the boy made was amazing. Within two years he was
unrecognisable as the half-savage who had so shocked the Court of
Belgrade. He could speak the Servian tongue with fluency and grace; he
had acquired elegance of manners and speech, and a winning courtesy of
manner which to his last day was his most marked characteristic; he had
mastered many accomplishments, and he excelled in most manly exercises,
from riding to swimming. And to all this remarkable promise the
finishing touches were put by a visit to Paris under the tutorship of a
courtly and learned professor.

Thus when, within two years of his emancipation, he came to his crown,
the uncouth lad from Roumania had blossomed into a Prince as goodly to
look on as any Europe could show--a handsome boy of courtly graces and
accomplishments, able to converse in several languages, and singularly
equipped in all ways to win the homage of the simple people over whom he
had been so early called to rule. As Mrs Gerard says, "They idolised
their boy-Prince. Every day they stood in long, closely packed lines
watching to see him come out of the castle to ride or drive; as he
passed along, smiling affectionately on his people, blessings were
showered on him. There was, however, another side to this picture of
devotion. There were those who hated the boy because he had thwarted
their plans." And this hatred, as persistent as it was malignant, was to
follow him throughout his reign, and through his years of unhappy exile,
to his grave.

But these days were happily still remote. After four years of minority
and Regency, when he was able to take the reins of government into his
own hands, his empire over the hearts of his subjects was more firmly
based than ever. His youth, his modesty, and his compelling charm of
manner made friends for him wherever his wanderings took him, from Paris
to Constantinople. He was the "Prince Charming" of Europe, as popular
abroad as he was idolised at home; and when the time arrived to find a
consort for him he might, one would have thought, have been able to pick
and choose among the fairest Princesses of the Continent.

But handsome and gallant and popular as he was, the overtures of his
ministers were coldly received by one Royal house after another. Milan
might be a reigning Prince and a charming one to boot, but it was not
forgotten that the first of his line had been a common herdsman, and the
blood of Hapsburgs and Hohenzollerns could not be allowed to mingle with
so base a strain. Even a mere Hungarian Count, whose fair daughter had
caught Milan's fancy, frowned on the suit of the swineherd's successor.
But fate had already chosen a bride for the young Prince, who was more
than equal in birth to any Count's daughter; who would bring beauty and
riches as her portion; and who, after many unhappy years, was to crown
her dower with tragedy.

It was at Nice, where Prince Milan was spending the winter months of
1875, that he first set eyes on the woman whose life was to be so
tragically linked with his own. Among the visitors there was the family
of a Russian colonel, Nathaniel Ketschko, a man of high lineage and
great wealth. He claimed, in fact, descent from the Royal race of
Comnenus, which had given many a King to the thrones of Europe, and
whose sons for long centuries had won fame as generals, statesmen, and
ambassadors. And to this exalted strain was allied enormous wealth, of
which the Colonel's share was represented by a regal revenue of four
hundred thousand roubles a year.

But proud as he was of his birth and his riches, Colonel Nathaniel was
still prouder of his two lovely daughters, each of whom had inherited in
liberal measure the beauty of their mother, a daughter of the princely
house of Stourza; and of the two the more beautiful, by common consent,
was Natalie, whose charms won this spontaneous tribute from Tsar
Nicholas, when first he saw her, "I would I were a beggar that I might
every day ask your alms, and have the happiness of kissing your hand."
She had, says one who knew her in her radiant youth, "an irresistible
charm that permeated her whole being with such a harmony of grace,
sweetness, and overpowering attraction that one felt drawn to her with
magnetic force; and to adore her seemed the most natural and indeed the
only position."

Such was the high tribute paid to Servia's future Queen at the first
dawning of that beauty which was to make her also Queen of all the fair
women of Europe, and which at its zenith was thus described by one who
saw her at Wiesbaden ten years or so later: "She walked along the
promenade with a light, graceful movement; her feet hardly seemed to
touch the ground, her figure was elegant, her finely cut face was lit up
by those wonderful eyes, once seen never forgotten--brilliant, tender,
loving; her luxuriant hair of raven black was loosely coiled round the
well-set head, or fell in curls on the beautifully arched neck. For each
one she had a pleasant smile, a gracious bow, or a few words, spoken in
a musical voice." No wonder the Germans, who looked at this apparition
of grace and beauty, "simply fell down and adored her."

Such was the vision of beauty of which Prince Milan caught his first
glimpse on the promenade at Nice in the winter of 1875, and which
haunted him, day and night, until chance brought their paths together
again, and he won her consent to share his throne. That such a high
destiny awaited her, Natalie had already been told by a gipsy whom she
met one day in the woods of her father's estate near Moscow--a meeting
of which the following story is told.

At sight of the beautiful young girl the gipsy stooped in homage and
kissed the hem of her dress. "Why do you do that?" asked Natalie, half
in alarm and half in pleasure. "Because," the woman answered, "I salute
you as the chosen bride of a great Prince. Over your head I see a crown
floating in the air. It descends lower and lower until it rests on your
head. A dazzling brilliance adorns the crown; it is a Royal diadem."

"What else?" asked Natalie eagerly, her face flushed with excitement and
delight. "Oh! do tell me more, please!" "What more shall I say,"
continued the gipsy, "except that you will be a Queen, and the mother of
a King; but then--"

"But then, what?" exclaimed the eager and impatient girl; "do go on,
please. What then?" and she held out a gold coin temptingly. "I see a
large house; you will be there, but--take care; you will be turned out
by force.... And now give me the coin and let me go. More I must not
tell you."

Such were the dazzling and mysterious words spoken by the gipsy woman in
the Russian forest, a year or more before Natalie first saw the Prince
who was destined to make them true. But it was not at Nice that
opportunity came to Milan. It was an accidental meeting in Paris, some
months later, that made his path clear. During a visit to the French
capital he met a young Servian officer, a distant kinsman, one Alexander
Konstantinovitch, who confided to him, over their wine and cigarettes,
the story of his infatuation for the daughter of a Russian colonel, who
at the time was staying with her aunt, the Princess Murussi. He raved of
her beauty and her charm, and concluded by asking the Prince to
accompany him that he might make the acquaintance of the Lieutenant's
bride-to-be.

Arrived at their destination, the Prince and his companion were
graciously received by the Princess Murussi, but Milan had no eyes for
the dignified lady who gave him such a flattering reception; they were
drawn as by a magnet to the girl by her side--"a child with a woman's
grace and an angel's soul smiling in her eyes"; the incarnation of his
dreams, the very girl whose beauty, though he had caught but one passing
glimpse of it, had so intoxicated his brain a few months earlier at
Nice.

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