Love affairs of the Courts of Europe by Thornton Hall

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All the fairest women of Bergen were gathered at this ball, the host of
which was their coming King, but it was to the fruit-seller's daughter
that all eyes were turned, in homage to such a rare combination of
beauty, grace, and modesty. Many a fair lip, it is true, curled in
mockery, recognising in the belle of the ball the low-born girl of the
market-place; but it was the mockery of jealousy, the scornful tribute
to a loveliness greater than their own.

As for Prince Christian, he had no eyes for any but the "little dove"
who outshone all her rivals as the sun pales the stars. It was the maid
of the market whom he led out for the first dance, and throughout the
long night he rarely left her side, whirling round the room with her,
his arm close-clasped round her slender waist, not seeing or indifferent
to the glances of envy and hate that followed them; or, during the
intervals, drinking in her beauty as he poured sweet flatteries into her
ears. As for Dyveke, she was radiantly happy at finding herself thus
transported into the favour of a Prince and the Queendom of fair women,
for whose envy she cared as little as for the danger in which she stood.

If anything had remained to complete Christian's infatuation, this
intoxicating night of the ball supplied it. The "little dove" had found
a secure nesting-place in his heart. She must be his at any cost. She
and her mother alone, of all the guests, were invited to spend the rest
of the night at the castle as the Prince's guests; and when he parted
from her the following day, it was with vows on his part of undying love
and fidelity, and a promise on hers to come to him at Upsala as soon as
a suitable home could be found for her.

Thus easily was the dove caught in the toils of one of the most amorous
Princes of Europe; but it must be said for her that her heart went with
the surrender of her freedom, for the Prince, with his ardent passion,
his strength and his magnetism, had swept her as quickly off her feet as
she had made a quick conquest of him.

Thus, before many weeks had passed, we find Dyveke installed with her
mother in a sumptuous home in the outskirts of Upsala, queening it in
the Prince's Court, and every day forging new fetters to bind him to
her. And while Dyveke thus ruled over Christian's heart, her
strong-minded mother soon established a similar empire over his mind.
With the clever, masterful brain of a man, the Amazon of the
market-place developed such a capacity for intrigue, such a grasp of
statesmanship and such arts of diplomacy that Christian, strong man as
he thought himself, soon became little more than a puppet in her hands,
taking her counsel and deferring to her judgment in preference to those
of his ministers. The fruit-seller thus found herself virtual Prime
Minister, while her daughter reigned, an uncrowned Queen.

When the Prince was summoned to Copenhagen by his father's failing
health, Frau Sigbrit and her daughter accompanied him, one in her way as
indispensable as the other; and when King James died and Christian
reigned in his stead, the women of the Bergen market were installed in a
splendid suite of apartments in his palace. So hopeless was his
subjection to both that his subjects, with an indifferent shrug of the
shoulders, accepted them as inevitable.

For a time, it is true, their supremacy was in danger. Now that
Christian was King, it became important to provide him with a Queen, and
a suitable consort was found for him in the Austrian Princess, Isabella,
sister of the Emperor Charles V., a well-gilded bride, distinguished
alike for her beauty and her piety. Isabella, however, was one of the
last women to tolerate any rivalry in her husband's affection, and
before the marriage-contract was sealed, she had received a solemn
pledge from Christian's envoys that his relations with the pretty
flower-girl should cease.

But even Christian's word of honour was seldom allowed to bar the way to
his pleasure, and within a few weeks of Isabella's bridal entry into
Copenhagen, Dyveke and her mother resumed their places at his Court, to
his Queen's unconcealed disgust and displeasure. More than this, he
established them in a fine house near his palace gates; and when he was
not dallying there with Dyveke, he was to be found by her side at the
Castle of Hvideur, of which he had made her chatelaine.

The remonstrances of Valkendorf and his other ministers were made to
deaf ears; his wife's reproaches and tears were as futile as the
strongly worded protestations of his Royal relatives. Pleadings,
arguments, and threats were alike powerless to break the spell Dyveke
and her mother had cast over him. But Dyveke's day of empire was now
drawing to a tragic close. One day, after eating some cherries from the
palace gardens, she was seized with a violent pain. All the skill of the
Court doctors could do as little to assuage her agony as to save her
life; and within a few hours she died, clasped to the breast of her
distracted lover!

Such was Christian's distress that for a time his reason trembled in the
balance. He vowed that he would not be separated from her even by death;
he threatened to put an end to his own life since it had been reft of
all that made it worth living. And when cooler moments came, he swore a
terrible vengeance against those who had robbed him of his beloved. She
had been poisoned beyond a doubt; but who had done the dastardly deed?

The finger of suspicion pointed to the steward of his household, Torbern
Oxe, who, it was said, had been among the most ardent of Dyveke's
admirers, and had had the audacity to aspire to her hand. It was even
rumoured that he had had more intimate relations with her. Such were the
stories and suspicions that passed from mouth to mouth in Christian's
clouded Court before Dyveke's beautiful body was cold; and such were the
tales which Hans Faaborg, the King's Treasurer, poured into his master's
ears.

Hans Faaborg little dreamt that when he was thus trying to bring about
the downfall of his rival he was sealing his own fate. Christian lent an
eager ear to the stories of his steward's iniquities; but, when he found
there was no shred of proof to support them, his anger and
disappointment vented themselves on the informer. He had long suspected
Faaborg of irregularities in his purse-holding, and in these suspicions
found a weapon to use against him. Faaborg was arrested; an examination
of his ledgers showed that for years he had been waxing rich at his
master's expense, and he had to pay with his life the penalty of his
fraud and his unproved testimony.

But Faaborg, though thus removed from his path, was by no means done
with. Rumours began to be circulated that a strange light appeared every
night above the dead man's head as he swung on the gallows. The city was
full of superstitious awe and of whisperings that Heaven was thus
bearing witness to the Treasurer's innocence. And even the King
himself, when he too saw the unearthly light forming a halo round his
victim's head, was filled with remorse and fear to such an extent that
he had Faaborg's body cut down and honoured with a State funeral.

He was still, however, as far as ever from solving the mystery of
Dyveke's death; and the longer his desire for vengeance was baffled, the
more clamorous it became. Although nothing could be proved against
Torbern Oxe, Christian was by no means satisfied of his innocence, and
he decided to discover by guile the secret which all other means had
failed to reveal. He would, if possible, make his steward his own
betrayer. One day, at a Court banquet, he turned in jocular mood to the
minister and said, "Tell me now, my dear Torbern, was there really any
truth in what Faaborg told me of your relations with my beautiful Lady!
Don't hesitate to tell the truth, which only you know, for I assure you
no harm shall come to you from it."

Thus thrown off his guard and reassured, the steward, who, like his
master, had probably drunk not wisely, confessed that he had loved
Dyveke, and had asked her to be his wife. "But, sire," he added, "that
was the extent of my offence. I was never intimate with her." During the
remainder of the banquet Christian was most affable to the indiscreet
steward, not only showing no trace of resentment, but treating him with
marked friendliness.

The following day, however, Torbern was flung into prison, and charged,
not only with his confession, but with the murder of the woman he had
so vainly loved; and, in spite of the storm of indignation that swept
over Denmark, the pleadings of the Papal Legate, Arcimbaldo, and the
tears of the Queen, was sentenced to death for a crime of which there
was no scrap of evidence to point to his guilt.

This gross act of injustice proved to be the beginning of Christian's
downfall. His cruelties and oppressions had long made him odious to his
subjects, and the climax came when a popular uprising hurled him from
his throne and drove him an exile to Holland. An attempt to recover his
crown ended in speedy disaster, and his last years were spent, in
company with his favourite dwarf, in a cell of the Holstein Castle of
Sondeborg.

As for Sigbrit, the woman who had played such a conspicuous and baleful
part in Christian's life, she deserted her benefactor at the first sign
of his coming ruin and ended her days in her native Holland, bemoaning
to the last the loss of her "little dove," whom she had seen raised
almost to a throne and had lost so tragically.

CHAPTER IX

THE ROMANCE OF THE BEAUTIFUL SWEDE

Augustus the Strong, Elector of Saxony and King of Poland, owes his
place in the world's memory to his brawny muscles and to his conquest of
women. Like the third Alexander of Russia of later years, he could, with
his powerful arms, convert a thick iron bar into a necklace, crush a
pewter tankard by the pressure of a mighty hand, toss a heavy anvil into
the air and catch it as another man would catch a ball, or with a wrench
straighten out the stoutest horse-shoe ever forged.

And his strength of muscle was matched by his skill in the lists of
love. No Louis of France could boast such an array of conquests as this
Saxon Hercules, who changed his mistresses as easily as he changed his
coats; the fairest women in Europe, from Turkey to Poland, succeeded
each other in bewildering succession as the slaves of his pleasure, and
before he died he counted his children to as many as the year has days.

Of all these fair and frail women who thus ministered to the pleasure of
the "Saxon Samson," none was so beautiful, so gifted, so altogether
alluring as Marie Aurora, Countess of Koenigsmarck, the younger of the
two daughters of Conrad of Koenigsmarck. Born in the year 1668, Aurora
was one of three children of the Swedish Count Conrad and his wife, the
daughter of the great Field-Marshal Wrangel. Her elder sister, little
less fair than herself, found a husband, when little more than a child,
in Count Axel Loewenhaupt; her brother Philip, the handsomest man of his
day in Europe, was destined to end his days tragically as the price of
his infatuation for a Queen.

Betrayed by a jealous woman, the Countess Platen, whose overtures he
spurned, this too gallant lover of Sophia Dorothea of Celle, wife of the
first of our Georges, was foully done to death in a corridor of the
Leine Schloss by La Paten's hired assassins, while she looked smilingly
on at his futile struggle for life, and gloated over his dying agonies.

On the death of her father, when she was but a child of three, Aurora
was taken by her mother from her native Sweden to Hamburg, where she
grew to beautiful young womanhood; and when, in turn, her mother died,
she found a home with her married sister, the Countess Loewenhaupt. And
it is at this period of her life that her romantic story opens.

If we are to believe her contemporaries, the world has seldom seen so
much beauty and so many graces enshrined in the form of woman as in this
daughter of Sweden. Her description reads like a catalogue of all human
perfections. Of medium height and a figure as faultless in its exquisite
modelling as in its grace and suppleness; her hair, black as a raven's
plumage, and falling, like a veil of night, below her knees, emphasised
the white purity of face and throat, arms, and hands. Her teeth, twin
rows of pearls, glistened between smiling crimson lips, curved like
Cupid's bow. Her face of perfect oval, with its delicately moulded
features, was illuminated by a pair of large black eyes, now melting,
now flaming, as mood succeeded mood.

To these graces of body were allied equal graces of mind and character.
Her conversation sparkled with wit and wisdom; she could hold fluent
discourse in half a dozen tongues; she played and sang divinely, wrote
elegant verses, and painted dainty pictures. Her manner was caressing
and courteous; she was generous to a fault, with a heart as tender as it
was large. And the supreme touch was added by an entire unconsciousness
of her charms, and an unaffected modesty which captivated all hearts.

Such was Aurora of Koenigsmarck who, in company with her sister, set
forth one day to claim the fortune which her ill-fated brother, Philip,
was said to have left in the custody of his Hanoverian bankers--a
journey which was to make such a dramatic revolution in her own life.

Arrived at Hanover the sisters found themselves faced by no easy task.
The bankers declared that they had nothing of the late Count's effects
beyond a few diamonds, which they declined to part with, unless evidence
were forthcoming that the Count had died and had left no will behind
him--evidence which, owing to the secrecy surrounding his murder, it was
impossible to furnish. And when a discharged clerk revealed the fact
that the dishonest bankers had actually all the Count's estate, valued
at four hundred thousand crowns, in their possession, the sisters were
unable to make them disgorge a solitary mark.

In their extremity, they decided to appeal to the Elector of Saxony, who
had known Count Philip well and who would, they hoped, be the champion
of their rights; and, with this object, they journeyed to Dresden, only
to find themselves again baffled. Augustus was away on a hunting
excursion, and would not return for a whole month. His wife and mother,
however, gave them a gracious reception, as charmed by their beauty and
sweetness as sympathetic in their trouble.

When at last Augustus made his tardy appearance at his capital, the fair
petitioners were presented to him by the Dowager Electress with words of
strong recommendation to his favour. "These ladies, my son," she said,
"have come to beg for your protection and help, to which they are
entitled both by birth and their merits. I beg that you will spare no
effort to ensure that justice is done to them."

His mother's pleading, however, was not necessary to ensure a favourable
hearing from the Elector, whose eyes were eloquent of the admiration he
felt for the two fairest women who had ever visited his land. Aurora's
beauty, enhanced by her attitude of appeal, the mute craving for
protection, was irresistible. From the moment she entered his presence
he was her slave, as anxious to do her will as any lovesick boy.

And it was to her that, with his courtliest bow, he answered, "Be
assured, dear lady, that I shall know no rest until your wrongs are
repaired. If I fail, I myself will make reparation in full. Meanwhile,
may I beg you and your sister to be my guests, that I may prove how deep
is my sympathy, and how profound the respect I feel for you."

Thus it was that by the magic of beauty Aurora and her Countess sister
found themselves installed at the Dresden Court, feted like Queens,
receiving the caresses of the Court ladies, and the homage of every man,
from Augustus himself to the youngest page, of whom a smile from their
pretty lips made a veritable slave. As for the Elector, sated as he was
with the easy smiles and favours of fair women, he gave to the Swedish
beauty, from the first, a homage he had never paid to any of her
predecessors in his affection.

But Aurora was no woman to be easily won by any man. She listened
smilingly to the Elector's honeyed words, and received his attentions
with the gracious complaisance of a Queen. When, however, he ventured to
tell her that "her charms inspired him with a passion such as he had
never felt for any woman," she answered coldly, "I came here prepared
for your generosity, but I did not expect that your kindness would
assume a form to cause me shame. I beg you not to say anything that can
lessen the gratitude I owe you, and the respect I feel for you."

Here indeed was a rebuff such as Augustus was little prepared for, or
accustomed to. The beauty, of whom he had hoped to make an easy
conquest, was an iceberg whom all his ardour could not thaw. He was in
despair. "I am sure she hates and despises me, while I love her dearer
than life itself," he confessed to his favourite Beuchling, who vainly
tried to console and cheer him. He confided his passion and his pain to
Aurora's sister, whose hopeful words were alike powerless to dispel his
gloom.

When Aurora held aloof from him, he sent letter after letter of
passionate pleading to her by the hand of the trusty Beuchling. "If you
knew the tortures I am suffering," he wrote, "your kindness of heart
could not resist pitying me. I was mad to declare my passion so brutally
to you. Let me expiate my fault, prostrate at your feet; and, if you
wish for my death, let me at least receive my sentence from your own
sweet lips."

To such a desperate state was Augustus brought within a few days of
setting eyes on his new divinity! As for Aurora of the tender heart, her
lover's distress thawed her more than a year of passionate protestations
could have done. She replied, assuring him of her gratitude, her esteem
and respect, and begging him to dismiss such unworthy thoughts of her.
But she had no word of encouragement to send him in the note which her
lover kissed so rapturously before placing it next his heart.

So alarmed, indeed, was Aurora, that she announced her intention of
leaving forthwith a Court in which she was exposed to so much danger--a
project to which her sister gave a reluctant approval. But the Countess
Loewenhaupt was little disposed to leave a Court where she at least was
having such a good time; for she, too, had her lovers, and among them
the Prince of Fuerstenberg, the handsomest man in Saxony, whose devotion
was more than agreeable to her. She preferred to play the part of
Cupid's agent--to exercise her diplomacy in bringing together those two
foolish persons, her sister and the Elector.

And so skilfully did she play her part, appealing to Aurora's pity, and
assuring Augustus of her sister's love in spite of her seeming coldness,
that before many weeks had passed Aurora had yielded and was listening
with no unwilling ear to the vows of her exalted lover, now transported
to the seventh heaven of happiness. One condition she made, when their
mutual troth was plighted, that it should, for a time at least, remain a
secret from the Court, and to this the Elector gratefully assented.

Such was the strange wooing of Augustus and the Countess Aurora, in
which passion had its response in a pity which, in this case at least,
was the parent of love.

It was with no very light heart that Aurora set forth to Mauritzburg, a
few days later, to keep "honeymoon tryst" with Augustus, who had
preceded her, to make, as she understood, the necessary preparations for
her reception. With her sister and a mounted escort of the most
beautiful ladies of the Court, she had ridden as far as the entrance to
the Mauritzburg forest, when her carriage suddenly came to a halt in
front of a magnificent palace. From the open door emerged Diana with her
attendant nymphs to greet her with words of welcome, and to beg her to
tarry a while to accept the hospitality of the forest gods.

In response to this flattering invitation Aurora left her carriage and
was escorted in stately procession to a saloon, richly painted with
sylvan scenes, in which a sumptuous banquet was spread. No sooner were
she and her ladies seated at the table than, to the strains of beautiful
music, the god Pan (none other than the Elector himself), with his
retinue of fawns and other richly and quaintly garbed forest gods, made
his entry, and took his seat at the right hand of his goddess. Then, to
the deft ministry of Diana and her satellites, and to the soft
accompaniment of pipes and hautboys, the feasting began, while Pan
whispered love to the lady for whom he had prepared such a charming
hospitality.

The banquet had scarcely come to an end when the jubilant sound of horns
was heard from the forest. A stag dashed by a window in full flight, and
Aurora and her ladies, rushing excitedly to the door, saw horses
awaiting them for the hunt.

In a moment they are mounted, and, gaily laughing, with Pan leading the
way, they are galloping through the forest glades in the wake of the
flying stag and the music of the hounds, until the stag, hotly pursued,
dashes into a lake, in the centre of which is a beautiful wooded island.
Dismounting, the ladies enter the gondolas which are so opportunely
awaiting them, and are rowed across the strip of water just in time to
witness the death of the gallant animal they have been chasing.

The hunt over, Aurora and her ladies are conducted to the leafy heart of
the island, where, as by the touch of a magician's wand, a gorgeous
Eastern tent has sprung up, and here another sumptuous entertainment is
prepared for them. Seated on soft-cushioned divans, in the many-hued
environment of Oriental luxury, rare fruits and delicacies are brought
to them in silver baskets by turbaned Turks. The island Sultan now
appears, ablaze with gems, with his officers little less gorgeous than
himself, and with deep obeisances craves permission to seat himself by
Aurora's side, a favour which she was not likely to refuse to a Sultan
in whom she recognised her lover, the Elector. Troupes of dancing-girls
follow, and the moments fly swiftly to the twinkling of dainty feet, the
gliding and posturing of supple bodies, and the strains of sensuous
music.

Another hour spent in the gondolas, dreamily gliding under the light of
the moon, and horses are again mounted; and Aurora, with Augustus riding
proudly by her side, heads the splendid procession which, with laughter,
and in the gayest of spirits, rides forth to the Mauritzburg Castle at
the close of a day so full of delights.

"Here," was the Elector's greeting, as he conducted his bride to her
room with its furnishing of silver and rich damask, and its pictured
Cupid showering roses on the silk-curtained bed, "you are the Queen, and
I am your slave."

Such was the beginning of Aurora's reign over the heart of the Elector
of Saxony--a reign of unclouded splendour and happiness for the woman in
whom pity for her lover was soon replaced by a passion as ardent as his
own. Fetes and banquets and balls succeeded each other in swift
sequence, at all of which Aurora was Queen, the focus of all eyes, and
receiving universal homage, won no more by her beauty and her position
as the Elector's favourite than by her sweetness and graciousness to the
humblest. No mistress of a King was ever more beloved than this daughter
of Sweden. Even the Elector's mother, a pattern of the most rigid
propriety, had ever a kind word and a caress for her; his neglected wife
made a friend and confidante of the woman of whom she said, "Since I
must have a rival, I am glad she should be one so sweet and lovable."

We must hasten over the years that followed--years during which Augustus
had no eyes for any other woman than his "uncrowned Queen," and during
which she bore him a son who, as Maurice of Saxony, was to win many
laurels in the years to come. It must suffice to say that never was
Royal liaison conducted with so much propriety, or was marked by so much
mutual devotion and loyalty.

But it was not in the nature of Augustus the Strong to remain always
true to any woman, however charming; and although Aurora's reign lasted
longer than that of any half-dozen of her rivals, it, too, had its
ending. Within a month of the birth of her son, Augustus, now King of
Poland, was caught in the toils of another enslaver, the beautiful
Countess Esterle. Aurora realised that her sun had set, and
relinquishing her sceptre without a murmur, she retired to the convent
of Quedlinburg, of which Augustus had appointed her Abbess.

Thus in an atmosphere of peace and piety, beloved of all for her
sweetness and charity, Aurora of Koenigsmarck spent her last years until
the end came one day in the year 1728; and in the crypt of the convent
she loved so well she sleeps her last sleep.

CHAPTER X

THE SISTER OF AN EMPEROR

When Napoleon Bonaparte, the shabby, sallow-faced, out-of-work captain
of artillery, was kicking his heels in morose idleness at Marseilles,
and whiling away the dull hours in making love to Desiree Clary, the
pretty daughter of the silk-merchant in the Rue des Phoceens, his
sisters were living with their mother, the Signora Letizia, in a sordid
fourth-floor apartment in a slum near the Cannebiere, and running wild
in the Marseilles streets.

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