love is an incalculable force, driving all
of us at times irresistibly to deeds of civil and ecclesiastical
wedlock. He was a soldier, a good soldier, in itself an unusual and
suspicious characteristic in one of the Hapsburg blood. He was a
musician and a man of culture--qualities that, in a prince, must be
taken as dangerous indications of an unbalanced mind. He was an intimate
friend of the Crown Prince Rudolph, that bewildering personality, whose
own fate was so unhappy, so obscure. Skill in war, intelligence,
knowledge, friendship all marked him out as a man only too likely to
bring discredit on Archducal tradition. His peers in birth shook their
heads, and muttered the German synonym for "crank." Worse than all, he
was in love--in love with a woman of dangerous virtue. What could such a
man do against temptation? Struggle as he might, he could not long repel
the seductive advances of honourable action. He loved, he fell, he
married.

In London, of all places, this crime against all the natural dictates of
Society was ultimately perpetrated. We do not know what church lent
itself to the deed, or what hotel gave shelter to the culprits' shame.
By hunting up the marriage register of Johann Orth (to such shifts may
an Archduke be reduced in the pursuit of virtue), one might, perhaps,
discover the name of the officiating clergyman, and we can confidently
assume he will not be found upon the bench of Bishops. But it is all
many years ago now, and directly after the marriage, as though in the
vain hope of concealing every trace of his offence, Johann Orth
purchased a little German ship, which he called by the symbolic name of
_Santa Margherita_--for St. Margaret suffered martyrdom for the sin of
rejecting a ruler's dishonourable proposals--and so they sailed for
South America. By what means the wedded fugitives purposed there to
support their guiltless passion, is uncertain. But we know that they
arrived, that the captain gave himself out as ill, and left the ship,
together with most of the crew, no doubt in apprehension of divine
vengeance, if they should seem any longer to participate in the breach
of royal etiquette. We further know that, in July 1890, the legal lovers
sailed from Buenos Ayres, with a fresh crew, the Archduke himself in
command, and were never heard of more.

An Austrian cruiser was sent to search the coasts, in vain. No letters
came; no ship has ever hailed the vessel of their iniquity. The
insuran