I tried to keep my brother-in-law by my side for a moment or two longer, and induce him to say something more. I asked him: "When will you come and see me? It is a long time since you have been."
He replied, looking at me most strangely:
"What would be the use of coming to see you?"
Rudolph stayed at Meyerling from the evening of January 28 until the morning of the 30th, alone with his mistress. When his guests arrived for the hunt, the gathering was exactly like one of those pagan feasts in the days of Nero and Tiberius, when Death was bidden to the banquet. But the guest condemned to die was the prince himself, and he dragged with him into the abyss the imperious mistress who had first brought him to its brink.
They were found dead in their bedroom. It was a frightful sight, and it was first witnessed by Count Hoyoz, and then by the Prince of Coburg.
If Mary Vetsera was indeed the dominating force, and as Venus would not relinquish her prize, Rudolph, in an access of despair and rage, did not forgive her for placing him in an impossible position; but neither did he pardon himself.
On the morning after a nerve-racking orgy both lovers perished. It all happened with lightning-like rapidity.
It was impossible for Rudolph to continue keeping two households. Impetuous but enslaved, he could not endure a liaison which paralysed his energies, but which he lacked the strength to break, so great was the hold which Mary had obtained over him.
Novelists have often depicted the frightful situation of the thraldom of the body, and the desperate protests of the spirit which can only escape by death.
Rudolph at thirty years of age was utterly out of love with life. He was worn out from living in the atmosphere of a Court which suffocated him. His death by his own hand was due to several causes, of which the following are the principal:
First, his bitter regret of a marriage which did not give him what he expected, after his disappointment in knowing he could not have a son; the impossibility of realizing the wish to dissolve it--an impious wish in the eyes of his relatives, the Holy See and the Catholic Church; and, finally, the certainty he had as to the chances of the longevity of the Emperor, that heartless being, that living mummy, who had embalmed himself with selfish and petty cares.