“To my beloved emperor, Joseph.
The sun here is warm and the sea is dazzlingly beautiful, but my heart has sunk heavier than the cloudy skies of Vienna. To think I must wait a full month to receive your letter—how am I to soothe this tedium?
I will be honest with you. It is far too desolate here. On nights when I hear nothing but the sound of the waves, I ache with longing for your low voice and the children’s laughter.
The physician says my cough has subsided, but I feel as though I will fall ill in my heart. The lodgings are cramped, the bed is hard, and I have even run out of books to read. Vienna may run perfectly well without me, but what about the children without their mother? What if Rudolf forgets my face?
Please let me return now. What happened in London was merely overwork. I want to return to your side.
Your lonely Sisi.”
“To my eternal angel, Sisi.
When I received your letter, my heart felt as if it were being torn apart. I wish more than anything that I could launch a ship at once and bring you home, but forgive me for being unable to do so.
Dr. Skoda’s diagnosis is firm. He says you must breathe warm air for at least a year if your lungs are to recover completely. That day when you collapsed, coughing blood, I thought my heart had stopped as well. I do not wish to suffer the danger of nearly losing you ever again. Please, if only for my sake, endure a little longer.
Do not worry about the children. Mother, too, is keeping quiet this time, and every night I tell the children stories of you. Rudolf greets your portrait every morning, so there is no chance he will forget you.
And even if you returned to Vienna now, there would be nowhere for you to rest. The city is nothing but a pit of dust from the demolition of the walls. Taking advantage of the commotion, I have begun the construction of the private bathroom in the Hofburg that you so desired.
We are installing the latest English drainage pipes. Your ladies-in-waiting will no longer have to suffer carrying heavy buckets of water. So please, at least until the construction is finished, do not say you are coming.
The one who prays only for your health.”
“Dear Joseph.
A bathroom! Truly? You are making certain to install a faucet from which hot water comes out by itself, and even a drain for the water to flow away, aren’t you? Goodness, I never knew you remembered my complaints. I feel as though I can finally breathe a little.
But if the Hofburg is a construction site, where are you staying now? Surely you are not spending this midwinter in the detached palace at Schönbrunn, where the heating barely works?
I hear flowers are blooming here, while Vienna is swept by snowstorms. With your soldierly spirit, I am certain you are foolishly holding out, saying two stoves are enough.
For such a you, I am sending a gift. It is a portrait of me painted by an artist here. Since it shows me with my hair let down, you cannot hang it officially, but when you miss me, keep it in your desk drawer and look at it from time to time.
And the rumors coming from Vienna are rather troubling, are they not? Word has reached even here that His Majesty the Emperor is chasing after some actress at the theater. Have you been unable to bear your loneliness and turned your eyes elsewhere?
Elisabeth, burning with jealousy.”
“My only love.
When I received the portrait you sent, I was unable to attend to any work for some time. Your beauty cannot be fully captured even in a painting, but those eyes seemed alive.
But was this painting perhaps done by a man? The thought that another man saw you with your hair let down has kept me awake for several nights.
Schönbrunn is livable enough. To a soldier, the seasons are not important. As for the ink, if I hold it near a candle for a moment, it soon melts, so there is no need to worry.
And an actress? Absurd. It seems my having encountered her a few times for the sake of supporting the theater has been distorted. Where would there be room in my eyes for any woman but you? I swear, the place at my side is kept empty only for you.
So please, do not trouble your heart with jealousy, and care only for your health beneath the warm sunlight. Once the bathroom construction is finished, I shall send a letter to you first.
I love you, Sisi.
The man who waits forever for you alone.”
… Goodness, we wrote a great deal over nothing much.
Joseph did not gamble with my health.
“Your Majesty, it is time to return.”
I shook my head at Königsegg’s words.
“Königsegg. What month is it now?”
“It is December.”
Right, if I go back, there will be a whole string of religious events starting with Christmas.
Let’s rest just a little longer before going.
“I still wish to call you all by your given names a little longer.”
In any case, when I am with Esterhazy, I cannot even call them by their family names.
The ladies-in-waiting, including Hunyadi, shook their heads as if I were hopeless.
“When spring comes and the flowers bloom, then we shall go.”
Besides, I like that the winter here is surprisingly warm.
Next, I read the letters concerning official business.
So Finance Minister Karl Ludwig von Bruck has been dismissed.
The finance minister who had tried to bind the Zollverein into Mitteleuropa. A man born a commoner who became finance minister through ability alone and received the title of baron.
“Königsegg.”
“Yes, Your Majesty.”
“What did the count say?”
“He said it seems the military has pinned the responsibility for the defeats at the start of the war on him.”
Originally, by now imperial authority would have fallen, and with no money left, he would have ended up reluctantly taking the hand of the liberal Plener—but now, I doubt he will even do that.
“I must write to the court minister. Tell him to clear Baron Bruck of these false charges.”
He is still necessary in order to weaken the power of the German nobility.
Before the initiative for reform passes not to the imperial family but to the liberals, and before their power swells like in France and strangles the imperial household, we must make the first move. For that, Bruck absolutely had to survive.
Joseph is not as indecisive as Louis XVI, but because of Archduchess Sophie, he has wasted ten years. In effect, he is an emperor who has only just begun to rule in his own right.
Would that fastidious Archduchess Sophie and the conservative nobles back down because of a single letter?
“… Let us just go.”
A letter will not be enough.
I was the one who had just said we should not go, but now I was anxious.
“I will prepare for the journey home.”
It seems both Joseph and I are still not strong enough to fight Archduchess Sophie alone.
*
At the tail end of the Little Ice Age, Vienna’s winter was not merely chilly, but cold.
The fog lay so thickly that it was hard to tell whether this was London or Vienna…
“We will set out again.”
The streets had repeatedly thawed and frozen over with snow, turning so muddy that it was difficult for the carriage to move.
“The wheels are getting stuck more often than I expected.”
It was not for nothing that Joseph was carrying out the Ringstrasse project.
They say no person has only one side, but Joseph remains difficult to understand no matter how much I learn.
He seems to possess a conservative, absolutist nature, yet he is more progressive and civic-minded than anyone else in the imperial family.
Then again, if he truly had been a completely rigid conservative, he would never have shown the flexibility of the later Compromise and would have collapsed as he was.
If he had been an obstinate wall one could not reason with, I would have abandoned him and fled.
As soon as I arrived at Schönbrunn, I headed straight for Joseph’s study.
There was only one place Joseph was likely to be.
“Joseph, it’s me.”
I sensed movement beyond the door, and then, as if he had been waiting, the door flew wide open.
“Sisi?”
His eyes seemed to ask why I was here.
“I came because I missed you.”
It is so cold.
There is a fireplace, but the draft is far too severe.
I sat on the sofa before the fireplace and looked at Joseph.
“I heard Baron Bruck was dismissed?”
“… There was no helping it. Count Rechberg, Count Goluchowski, and Count Crenneville pinned the blame for the early mistakes of the war on him.”
As I sipped the warm coffee Grünell had poured for me, I searched my memory for who they were.
Rechberg, the de facto prime minister. Since he had been Joseph’s mentor, it must have been difficult to go against his will.
Goluchowski was… a Polish magnate, was he not? In this case, it is highly likely Joseph misunderstood my actions and accepted his advice.
Crenneville must have been looking for a scapegoat to preserve his own faction.
Putting all this together… they intend to move toward a decentralized economy.
There are already many problems even under the current centralized economic system, and they want to move to a decentralized one?
“Joseph, use Bohemia and Venetia.”
Cutting Bruck is not simply a change of ministers. It is the same as saying we should go back to the Middle Ages.
“If you decentralize according to Goluchowski’s words, Lombardy will use it for the Italian unification movement, not for Austria.”
“I know that as well. But if I do not listen to them, I will ultimately have to place in that position a liberal who will call for the establishment of a parliament.”
In the end, it all comes back around to my mother-in-law.
Not once had my mother-in-law’s name appeared in our conversation, but the gathering of the conservatives is taking place under the archduchess’s power.
… If we drive her out now, there is the war with Prussia to consider. But if we leave her be, it seems we will return to the Middle Ages.
No. Something is strange.
“Sisi? Are you leaving already?”
“I think there is somewhere I need to go.”
I leaned toward Joseph and whispered in his ear.
“I will see you later in the bedroom.”
After taking my leave that way, the place I headed to at once was Archduchess Sophie’s study.
“What is the matter? For you to seek me out first.”
My mother-in-law is a person who worked to make my husband emperor.
And such a person would tell him to acknowledge decentralization?
Just as being a liberal does not make me an independence activist.
“Who is behind them?”
Being a conservative does not mean one is also a centralist.
Therefore, there is another force behind them.