A Description of Crown Prince Rudolph's Deterioration

From the autumn of 1883, ever since he had been officially residing in Vienna, the Crown Prince had been gratifying his sexual passions without restraint. Before long, being satiated with amorous intrigues which had a more or less romantic aspect, he went completely off the rails and plunged into the lowest depths of vicious debauchery.

On several occasions he had the idea of forcing the Archduchess Stephanie to accompany him on what he called "nights out." It gave him a sadistic pleasure to show her all that was most squalid and sordid in Viennese night life. This was really his exquisite stroke of revenge upon Spanish etiquette, upon the hieratic ceremonial of Charles the Fifth and Philip the Second. The Archduchess agreed to go there, "just for once." In order to escape recognition, she went attired as the wife of an ordinary citizen.

"I was unable to conceal my surprise when I noticed how little the heir-apparent troubled to keep to his disguise. My amazement increased still more when we visited together the cafés-chantants and other dubious places in Vienna and the outlying parts. It was difficult enough to breathe the vitiated atmosphere, poisoned by fumes of garlic, rotten meat, wine and tobacco. However, we remained seated at bare and greasy tables until the first streak of dawn, in the company of cabmen who were playing cards, whistling and singing. Dancing was, always going on. Girls would keep jumping on tables, and seemed never tired of putting themselves in the same vulgar sentimental postures, to the accompaniment of a wretched orchestra that likewise seemed never tired of playing.

"I was willing enough to be amused, but the visits to these dens disgusted me altogether. They were not only vile, but utterly boring into the bargain. I could not understand what pleasure the heir-apparent was able to find in it all."

In the month of February, 1886, Rudolph contracted a serious and mysterious illness, alarming enough to prompt the despatch of an urgent summons to the Empress to return to Vienna. Elizabeth was then at Miramar, on the point of leaving for a cruise. A casual encounter had infected him with venereal disease. On the 1st March, in order to hasten his cure, the doctor prescribed a long stay in the island of Lacroma, opposite Ragusa, where his wife was to keep him company.

But Stephanie had hardly arrived at Lacroma before she, in her turn, fell seriously ill. "For weeks I was confined to bed and my sufferings were terrible. The doctors, summoned from Vienna and from Trieste, diagnosed peritonitis. By orders from above, strict secrecy was maintained regarding my state of health, and the doctors were pledged to silence. My sister, Louise of Coburg, hastened to my bedside, and did not leave me...." Two months later she had recovered.

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From this time onward, Rudolph's life entered upon a new phase. All who came in contact with him were struck by the physical and moral transformation which he had undergone. He nearly always looked utterly exhausted, with a dry skin, a livid complexion, trembling hands, and restless and burning eyes. He passed through strange alternations of sorrow and of anger. He was either in a state of loquacious excitement or of sullen silence.

From chance remarks that escaped him, it became apparent that he was utterly and completely disillusioned. The splendid visions that had buoyed him up but a short time before, for the regeneration of Austria, now seemed to him but foolish and absurd fancies.

To conjure away his gloomy thoughts and his perpetual lassitude, he began secretly resorting to the dangerous antidotes of morphia and of alcohol, whence he derived a few daily hours of consolation and exaltation, but, under this regime, his organic deterioration proceeded apace.

Tragic Empress: The Story of Elizabeth of Austria by Maurice Paléologue. (1939). Pages 101-3.