by C. M. Mayo
Wisdom and its companion compassion are bought, as the saying goes, with years and tears. Had Charlotte been a few years wiser, she might have perceived the dangers and, it must also be recognized, the strengths, though in a very different line of endeavors, of such an acutely sensitive personality as her husband’s. She might have realized that the esteem she so craved from him was not going to come from pushing him. She might also have realized that things are not always as they appear to be, for there are those who actively seek to deceive us, knowing that we look out at the world, and politics in particular, through the filters of our own fears and longings. We can be our own enemies, blindly injuring ourselves, but we must, if we are to go on with any hope of happiness, learn to forgive ourselves. At the hard, unripe age of twenty-three, however, Charlotte had the single-mindedness of an amazon. Mexico was Maximilian’s destiny and duty, his rightful prize, and she, by God, was going to win it for him! Girded for battle, as it were, she took the train to Vienna to take on the Kaiser.
Franz Joseph, though so consternated he kept rubbing his eye and crossing and uncrossing his leg, was impeccably polite to his sister-in-law. He had thought his own wife, Sissi, was stubborn, but Lieber Gott, she had competition! In the three hours behind closed doors, there were two occasions of such high color that he got up and went to the window, but Charlotte went on arguing at his back! Insisting and insisting, swinging and lunging with her arguments, what-ifs and exotic interpretations, coming at it from this direction and that, until finally, the Kaiser put his hand up. He conceded a fig leaf’s worth of money and a few thousand volunteers. On the Family Pact, however, he remained as immovable as a post sunk ten meters into the ground. Before accepting a throne, Maximilian was going to have to sign the pact.
Behind his back, the Kaiser heard the rain sleeting against the window, and through the closed door the growing hum of the crowd that had been kept waiting in the reception area. It was impolitic to keep people waiting. Among them were the governor of Croatia and the chief of the Geheim Polizei, the secret police. To signal the end of this meeting, which had already (and only to mollify his mother’s feelings) gone on far past the point of decency, he stood up. But Charlotte—this was a pungent breach of protocol— remained seated. The Kaiser stared at her. It seemed to him she was grinding her teeth. She pushed her palms into the edges of her chair’s armrests. A strand of her coiffure hung at a peculiar angle over her ear. She noticed that he had noticed. She brushed it back.
A look of despair flashed across her eyes, immediately replaced with a face of steel. “Surely,” she said, standing up at last, “you do not expect Max to have come here to sign the Family Pact.”
“He can sign it at Miramar.”
Charlotte thrust her jaw at him. Her earrings bobbled. “The least you can do is give him the dignity of your presence, as Kaiser and as head of the House of Habsburg.”
He almost laughed. “You want me to come to Miramar?”
“Yes,” she said.
“I do not think Max would want that.”
“You are wrong.”
Soon after Charlotte’s return to Miramar, the letters came: Charlotte’s father, King Leopold of the Belgians, advised Maximilian to sign the Family Pact. Maximilian’s mother, Archduchess Sophie, also advised him to sign it. As she had told Charlotte back in the Hofburg: It breaks my mother’s heart, but it is too late. And there is nothing for him here; you know that better than anyone.
Dr. Jilek, with a face like a victim of the Gorgon, permitted Charlotte to enter; at Maximilian’s bedside, in tears, Charlotte knelt and said, “My love, I did my best.”
Through the open drapes there was nothing to be seen of the Bay of Gri-gnano. A foghorn sounded, low and mournful. “You are my angel,” Maximilian said, and he kissed her hands.
He got out of bed and had his valet dress him.
AEIOU, Alles Erdreich Ist Österreich Untertan, the whole world is subject to Austria, the mystical motto of his ancestor, the Emperor Frederick, had been his creed, the creed of the House of Habsburg. He was an officer. He was a gentleman. He had given his word to the pope, to Louis Napoleon, to the financiers of Paris, and—this also counted for something—the Mexican people. His own mother thought he should accept the throne. And Charlotte so dearly, so valiantly, wanted it. He could not quite admit to himself that he had, for many months already, succumbed to the siren song of power. What he told himself was that to remain in Europe would be not only to forfeit his honor but to crush Charlotte’s spirit. For her sake, he would accept. But a part of him yet hesitated, squeezed his eyes shut, and hoped that somehow— some way—perhaps—it might be possible to avoid having to sign that damned Family Pact.
On April 9, 1864, the Kaiser arrived at Miramar Castle with Count Rech-berg, seven archdukes, three chancellors, the governors of Venetia and Istria, and a crowd of officers. With due pomp Maximilian and Charlotte received them, and then, alone, the two brothers met in the study on the ground floor. It was a cozy room looking out on the sea. The walls were covered in elaborate hardwood paneling, and the parquet floor shone with the oval reflection from the skylight. The room was not so bright as it might have been, however, for the ceilings fell unusually low in emulation of the officer’s mess room in the Novara. Outside the window, in the bay, could be seen the stern of that frigate, the same frigate that had taken him once to Brazil. Coal and provisions and almost all hands on board, it was waiting to carry him and his retinue to a destiny on the far side of the ocean. He did not want to go. He did not want to stay.
The brothers faced one another across the table. Both slender as whippets, they had the same shape of face, the same large ears—though Franz Joseph’s protruded slightly. The Kaiser was then thirty-four years old, and his blond hair, always thin, had begun receding. His eyes were warm but resolute. Maximilian was the taller, his whiskers redder, and extravagant by comparison. The All-Highest wore his general’s uniform: white with a gold lace collar and red trousers. Maximilian wore his admiral’s uniform, a midnight blue with gold epaulettes and gold braid on the cuffs.
Having kissed his brother’s hand, Maximilian stepped back and stood to attention. (One did not sit in the presence of an emperor without an express invitation to do so.) The Kaiser, meanwhile, put his hands behind his back and with occasional deep breaths taken in by the nostrils, moved clockwise about the room, ostensibly inspecting the artworks in which, they both knew, he had no interest whatsoever. He was moving toward the spot, the exact spot where, as he could stand in shadow, Younger Brother would be blinded by light. This went on for what felt to Maximilian a Dante-esque eternity. It seemed that, having paused before the bronze of Marcus Aurelius, Franz Joseph was going to make some comment. But, with a sniff, he swung around and, taking the larger chair:
“Please,” he said, indicating, for Maximilian, the smaller chair.
Maximilian sank into it and crossed his arms over his chest. “I cannot fathom the point in this.”
Franz Joseph first helped himself to the dish of salted almonds. He chewed thoroughly. Then he answered with the exact words he had used before, that, though, as a brother it sincerely pained him, as a sovereign he was obliged by an oath before God to put the interests of the empire first. In the event of his death, in which case his son, Prince Rudolph, would assume the throne, it would be impossible to have the next in line on the other side of the sea, having taken a solemn oath of loyalty to an alien people, and with financial and military entanglements with France.
“But these are my birthrights!”
“But this is the situation.”
“I never would have gotten into this if I had known these were your terms!”
They went round and round with the same arguments, until Maximilian burst out: “You want to be rid of me!”
“Max . . .”
Since they were children, it had always gone this way. “You humiliate me!” Maximilian banged his fist on the table.
“You forget yourself.�
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Maximilian stood up and began breathing hard. The veins on his forehead throbbed. He steadied himself on the back of the chair; then, without a word to his brother, he threw open the doors and stalked out onto the terrace. He could be seen out here by the men on the Novara and the Themis, by the gardeners—he didn’t care. Up and down he walked, gulping the sea air, wringing his hands, shaking his head. He talked to himself: I won’t be bullied, this is an outrage, I won’t go, no, no, I shall tell them, I want to stay here, but I shall be, I can’t, I must, oh, God! After a while, when he had calmed somewhat, he stood with his hands on the balustrade. A pair of gulls circled high above; below, a pelican trailed its shadow over the whitecaps. The water slapped violently against the seawall and the rocks. There was pattern in the surf; he watched the foam as it slithered, sparkling, over the rocks. The wavering shreds of seaweed. The breeze on his cheeks. The scissor-like screams of the gulls. If time could stop, he could stay here, right here, as if inside a bell jar. The unholy thing he was about to do—he was about to be forced to do—had not yet been done.
“Sir!”
Maximilian put his fingertips to his temples. Slowly, he turned around. It was the Kaiser’s aide-de-camp.
“Sir, the Kaiser says that it would be good of you to come back inside.”
Stiffly, Maximilian came back inside. The Kaiser had left the study, he was standing at the foot of the staircase. “Let’s get it over with,” he said, and without waiting for Maximilian’s answer he started up the stairs. Maximilian followed. In the stateroom, there must have been thirty people assembled there. They had been waiting all this time, and Maximilian wondered now, with a tightening knot in his stomach, had they seen him down on the terrace stalking about like a lunatic? Before the Kaiser, the crowd parted. The air was ripe with cologne and hair lotions and bootblack. There on the table, upon a stretch of green and gold morocco leather, lay the document and the quill, a white feather.
Maximilian’s heart sank to his shoes. Lieber Gott in Himmel, a small voice within him cried. Dear God in Heaven, help me.
With a trembling hand, he set down the quill. There it was: his signature. And with it he had sacrificed what was most dear to him in the world. Rage welled again in his throat. The child in him wanted to rip the paper to shreds and toss them in the air, let them fall over the carpet like snow. He put his hand on the edge of the desk. It took him a moment to find his breath.
There was a banquet afterward. With each course, as always, the instant the All-Highest set down his cutlery, all plates were whisked off the table. (Maximilian only poked at his food, but he noticed Charlotte, at the Kaiser’s right, had had the chance for but a single spoonful of her Topfenknödel with chocolate gelato.) By one o’clock the Kaiser was at the train station to return to Vienna. In front of everyone, the Kaiser broke all protocol. “Max!” he cried, and he held out his arms. With all the feeling of a stone, Maximilian stepped up and allowed himself to be embraced.
His coronation took place in that same stateroom the following day. Maximilian wore his Austrian admiral’s uniform. His skin felt clammy. His stomach lurched. Charlotte, serene and stately, was in rose pink satin and her diamond crown. The Mexicans spoke. Maximilian read a prepared statement. Then, the Bishop of Trieste received his oath, and Charlotte’s oath. The document was placed upon a small but most apt table: a wedding gift from His Holiness, its round black scagliola top covered with oval mosaics, Saint Peter’s, the Parthenon, the Colosseum, the ruins of the Forum, Temple of Vesta, Arches of Septimus, Severus and Titus.
Bugles, drums. The Mexican imperial flag, a tricolor with the medallion of the crowned Aztec eagle perched on a cactus and devouring a snake, was run up the pole on the tower.
For Maximilian, the next three hours dissolved in a smear. He woke slumped over his desk, the back of Charlotte’s hand, so cool, on his forehead.
“You are burning up,” she said.
Dr. Jilek prescribed strictest bed rest. No visitors. And, Maximilian told Charlotte, please, not one word about Mexico. And so it was that the empress of Mexico presided over the coronation banquet with the Mexican delegation, alone.
It took three days for Maximilian to “find his sea legs,” as it were, but he did.
On April 14, with his empress on his arm, Maximilian descended the steps to the jetty. They moved slowly through the vast crowd that lined the seawall and the road all the way from Trieste. People were touching their clothes, kissing their hands, calling out, God keep you! Arrivederci! Goodbye! Flowers pelted his shoulders and sailed over his head: roses, daisies. The band struck up the thumping drone of the brand-new Mexican Imperial Anthem, so peculiar after always, for all one’s life, reverently singing along to Gott Erhalte Unsern Kaiser, God Save Our King. At the end of the jetty crouched the little stone Sphinx, a souvenir of his cruise to Egypt; people crowded around it; a small boy was perched, legs swinging, on its head. Maximilian had planned, as was his custom, to touch its nose for luck, but it was impossible to do anything but help Charlotte into the launch, and then, somewhat shakily, step in himself. He waved to Dr. Jilek, Radonetz, all the faithful retainers and friends.
This dazzling day had a sky the color of a robin’s egg. Beyond the jetty, the Bay of Grignano was filled with tugs and frigates and steamers and fishing boats. From the smokestacks of the Novara and the Themis sooty coils worked their way into the sky. Salvos of cannon erupted from the warships, from the forts, from the city itself. It was in this clamor, being carried over the water, as if not by the sailors’ rowing but by the fading cheers of the Triestini, that Maximilian looked back upon his castle, its ivory towers luminous against the sky, the strange flag flapping in the breeze, and the hills rising lush and green behind it with ilexes, oaks, and ash trees, and he began to cry.
Once onboard the Novara, he went below deck, and giving strict orders that unless the ship were in danger of sinking he was not to be disturbed, shut himself into his cabin. The dim and the rumbling of the engines soothed him. It seemed to him that he had been murdered and, like a Hindu, sent back into a kind of womb to be reborn. Yo soy mexicano, I am Mexican: he practiced saying it, though it seemed ridiculous. He stood before his shaving mirror. Yo soy el emperador de México. He stayed there in anguished communion with himself until after breakfast the next day.
Then he joined the others up on the deck. There was Count Karl “Charlie” Bombelles, whose father had been their tutor, and old Professor Bilimek, the botanist, and Schertzenlechner, and Monsieur Eloin—a whole party of blue bloods and expert advisors. The thrill of the adventure of a lifetime coursed in their veins, lightening their eyes, and bringing bursts of laughter to every exchange.
They steamed down the coast of Apulia: Trani, Bari, Brindisi—ancient Brundisium, from which Octavian set out to conquer Mark Anthony and Cleopatra. By the time they rounded the coast of Calabria, his spirits were buoyant. They passed through the Straits of Messina without incident. On the other side, they caught sight of the two-thousand-foot-high smoking island of Stromboli. By late afternoon, they were cruising close enough to make out the goats grazing on its steep flank. When the sun sank behind it, the cone turned the most exquisite shade of dusky lavender, and the sea to blood. It was one of the most awe-inspiring sunsets that he, a connoisseur of sunsets, had ever seen. That night, a waxing moon polished the waves, and Stromboli’s sparks danced, red sprites, in midair. The stars made a canopy of diamonds. God’s blessing was upon their enterprise, Charlotte said, and again, he kissed her hands.
The following day, when they were enveloped in fog and could not see Mount Vesuvius, he was overcome by a pique of melancholy, but neither did this last. In Rome, where his reception by His Holiness was more than any sovereign could hope for, he felt young again, with more than enough energy to climb the Palatine Hill, and then hike through the Forum, leaving their cicerone, a German painter, behind with the ladies, and go leaping over fallen columns and rubble (Charlie was the only one who could keep up; Schertz
enlechner and Eloin fell behind, those two fatties sweating like a pair of draft horses). Because of the Roman fever, it was imprudent to be outside at dusk— but one felt simply bulletproof! They toured the Colosseum under moonlight, and their cicerone gave such vivid descriptions that, as the Mistress of the Imperial Household Frau von Kuhacsevich said with a shiver, she could verily hear the roars of the lions and the screams of the Christian martyrs.
They visited the Baths of Titus, and the Pantheon, that sublime work of genius commissioned by the Emperor Hadrian, where they had the unearthly privilege of watching a light mist falling from the oculus. They admired the late baroque Trevi Fountain; they strolled through the gardens of the Villa Borghese with its superb statues and its trees and bushes dripping with the most delicious-smelling blossoms. One kept in mind Goethe’s admonition: “Only in Rome can one educate oneself for Rome.” This city of Michelangelo, Maderno, of Borromini and Bernini, and all the specters of emperors past: the Eternal City, Cradle of Civilization, of art and architecture of unparalleled majesty, how it made his spirit soar—and then plunge. Because after Rome, Mexico City? Having seen Brazil’s Rio de Janeiro, he could well imagine what he would find: a child-like people whose sense of taste is all in the mouth.
On the month-long crossing to America, his moods came in waves: anger, galloping enthusiasm, bitterness, gratitude. Charlotte was often green with seasickness. They spent most of their days shut in their respective cabins, working. They both understood the iron rule of orderly government, the fortress, as it were, that defended a people’s peace and prosperity against bloody anarchy: that the sovereign’s prestige be preserved and maintained by means of an elaborate and rigidly respected protocol. There was much to do: rules of etiquette detailed, the court organized, categories of rank defined, privileges assigned, medals of honor created. Each afternoon, they met to take tea and compare notes. He found intelligence in a woman tiresome—he bristled whenever Charlotte contradicted something he had written—but he was grateful for her assistance. They were creating a monarchy from the ground up: a titanic task. As the daughter of King Leopold of the Belgians, first cousin of Queen Victoria of England, and granddaughter of King Louis-Philippe of France, Charlotte was an expert on protocol. Nonetheless, Maximilian considered her young, and more than a bit enamored of pomp. She claimed she was not, but it was obvious: she gloried in it. In Milan, when he was viceroy, Charlotte, so thrilled to be vicereine, could not wait to go out onto the balcony of her palace and receive the cheers of her subjects. With the Mexican delegation it was the same—and in the Hofburg! How she relished her elevation, being the equal in rank to her sister-in-law Empress Sissi. Charlotte was like a little terrier after a chicken bone. It was a defect in her character; he had pointed it out to her many times.
