B008AITH44 EBOK Read Online Free Page A

of the fox hunts, in which at the time the Empress participated enthusiastically, who did not take his eyes off her and seemed to pierce her with his looks whenever we passed him. Even at the time, I felt that he suspected or perhaps even knew who was hidden behind this mask.”
    The conversation between the woman in yellow and Fritz Pacher turned to personal matters—Pacher’s life, their shared love of dogs, finally Heinrich Heine, a topic Elisabeth found inexhaustible. Elisabeth was open about her partisanship without giving herself away by so much as a word. She paid Pacher compliments and complained, “Oh, yes, people! Whoever has come to know them as I have can only despise them, the flatterers.” She put him off when he wanted to see at least her hand without a glove, fobbing him off with the possibility of a tryst at some later time in Stuttgart or Munich: “For you must know that I have no home and am constantly traveling.”
    Pacher’s suspicion that the Empress was hidden behind the yellow mask grew stronger. He also felt that his companion was “an intelligent, cultured, and interesting woman, with a touch of originality, to whom everything ordinary was completely foreign.”
    Long after midnight, the woman in red (Ida Ferenczy) came back; according to Pacher, she had “been hovering around us somewhat anxiously.” The three descended the large staircase to the principal approach, where they had to wait a few minutes for a carriage. When they said good-bye, Pacher boldly tried to unmask at least his companion’s chin. The disguise was so tight-fitting that he was foiled, but his attempt caused the woman in red to utter “a bone-chilling scream in her ultimate alarm, which to me spoke volumes.”
    The adventure was not yet at an end. A few days later, the woman in yellow, who called herself Gabriele, sent a letter to her cavalier, postmarked Munich. It was Elisabeth’s own handwriting, though it was disguised. She continued to toy with him and was not very modest as regarded her supposed effect. “You have talked with thousands of women and girls, you have even thought yourself amused, but your spirit never encountered a kindred soul. Finally, in a lively dream, you found what for years you had searched for, perhaps to lose it again forever.”
    Gabriele’s next letter arrived a month later from London. She apologized for the long delay.
    My spirit was weary unto death, my thoughts did not take wing. Many a day I sat at the window for hours staring at the desolate fog, then again I was wild with joy and rushed from one diversion to the next…. You want to know about my doings and my life. It is not interesting. A couple of old aunts, a vicious pug, many complaints about my extravagance, for recreation a drive each afternoon in Hyde Park. In the evenings,a party after the theater, and there you have my life, with all its desolation and vapidity and boredom to the point of despair .”
     
    This was just as unmistakably Elisabeth’s style as were the sarcastic sentences, “Are you dreaming of me at this moment, or are you launching yearning songs on the still night air? For the sake of those who live near you, I hope for the former.”
    A third and final letter followed, this one also from London, containing the familiar teasing allusions, the deceptions. Between them flashed a glimpse of truth. “So you want to know what I read. I read a great deal, quite unsystematically, just as my whole life is unsystematic—from one day to the next.”
    After this letter, the only messages were from a masked woman named Henriette, who (unsuccessfully) demanded the return of Gabriele’s letters—two years later.
    In his tales, Pacher mentioned that he saw the Empress once, years later, in the Prater. He was on horseback and she in her carriage. He was certain that she recognized him. This impression was confirmed in Elisabeth’s verses. 
    Ich seh’ dich reiten, ernst und traurig,
In Winternacht im tiefen