"We often went to the Hofburg, where I once had a glimpse of the Empress Elizabeth as she glided through a corridor, looking like some beautiful ghost. She always attracted me strangely, and it may have been that some kind of subtle sympathy between her past troubles and my future ones drew us together.
The Empress was really a lovely woman, and her hair was exquisite. When it was unbound it simply enveloped her, and one maid was specially selected to dress it. The coiffure was carried out in rather a strange way. The carpet in the dressing-room was covered with white
linen sheeting, and the Empress sat on a low chair in the middle of the room. The maid was dressed in white, and a most curious proceeding took place when the process was over of brushing and combing the luxuriant tresses and braiding them into the elaborate plaits affected by the Empress. The maid collected and counted every hair that remained in the brush and comb, and active search was also made on her dress and on the carpet for any other hairs which had fallen out. The number was then told the Empress, who was exceedingly displeased if she thought too many hairs had come out during the "dressing," and the maid had a mauvais quart d/heure in consequence.
The Empress had many eccentricities, mostly well known to the public, but I remember hearing that, on one occasion, when she was stopping at Lainz, she indulged in a very fatiguing escapade. She was in the habit of taking her "Greek Reader" with her on her walks in the lovely woods and park which surround the castle, and she rarely went beyond them. One evening she ventured outside, but as she had a silent fit on, the Reader had perforce to be silent also, and for eight hours of the night the Empress walked round Vienna, wrapped In her own sad and gloomy thoughts, and was only recalled to herself and her surroundings
when day broke and she found that she was outside her own domain with a very patient and footsore Reader in attendance.
I saw the Empress Elizabeth in May 1889, after the tragedy of Meyerhng, when I went to receive from her the Stern Kreuz Order. This Order is always given to Austrian Archduchesses when they attain their majority, and marks their formal presentation at the Court of Vienna. I went to the H of burg with my mother, and the Empress received us in special audience. She was dressed in the deepest black. Her face, which looked out like some pale snow-flower from the folds of her heavy crepe veil, showed traces of incessant weeping, and she had a nervous habit of constantly wiping the corners of her mouth with her handkerchief.
She was very kind to me when I thanked her for presenting me with the Order, and I felt the sharp contrast between myself in all my youth and this sad mother who seemed to have completely finished with the splendour and gaiety of the life to which my Stern Kreuz Order was the passport.
I never again saw her alive. When I stood by her coffin in the Imperial vault of the Capucins, I felt that she was happy at last, and I like to imagine her spirit roaming untrammelled in the Elysian fields, exchanging thoughts with Heine, and reunited to her much-loved Rudolph.
Few people really understood the Empress, and her excessive shyness was often attributed to pride or artificiality. Many troubles had chilled her emotions, and she became a prey to the spirit of unrest ; but as a beautiful woman and a devoted mother Elizabeth of Austria has had few equals".
Luise von Toscana "My own story"
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