Love affairs of the Courts of Europe Part 21

But, although husband and wife were thus at last separated, Milan's resolve to divorce her remained firm. "I have to inform you," he wrote shortly after her departure, "that I have this day sent in my application to our Holy National Church for permission to dissolve our marriage." And that nothing might be lacking to Natalie's suffering and humiliation, he sent General Prot.i.tsch to Wiesbaden with a peremptory demand that his son, "Sacha," should return to Servia.

In vain did Natalie protest against both indignities. Milan might divorce her; but at least he should not rob her of her son, the only solace left to her in life. And when General Prot.i.tsch, seeing that milder measures were futile, gave orders for the Prince to be removed by force, the distracted mother flung one protecting arm round her boy; and, pointing a loaded pistol with the other, threatened to shoot dead the man who dared approach her.

Opposition, however, was futile; the following evening the boy-Prince was in his father's arms, and the weeping mother was left disconsolate.

Thus robbed of her darling "Sacha," it was not long before the second blow fell. The divorce proceedings were rushed through the Synod. A deaf ear was turned to Natalie's pet.i.tion to be allowed, at least, to defend herself in person; and on the 12th October, 1888, the "marriage between King Milan I. and Natalie, born Ketschko," was formally dissolved. Well might this most unhappy of Queens write, "The position is embittered by my conscience a.s.suring me that I have neglected no duty, and that there is not a single action of my life which could be cited against me as a grave offence, or could put me to shame were it brought before the whole world. My fate should draw tears from the very stones; but I do not ask for pity; I demand justice."

If anything could have increased Milan's unpopularity it was this brutal treatment of his Queen. The very men who, at his coronation, had taken off their cloaks that he might walk on them, and the women who had kissed his garments, now hissed him in the streets of his capital. In his own Court he had no friend except the infamous Christ.i.tch; the general hatred even took the form of repeated attempts on his life. If he would save it, he realised he must abandon his crown; and one March morning in 1889, after informing his ministers of his intention to abdicate, he awoke his twelve-year-old son with the greeting, "Good morning, Your Majesty!" Milan was no longer King of Servia; his son, Alexander, reigned in his stead.

Probably no King ever laid down his crown more willingly. He had put aside for ever his Royal trappings, with all their unhappy memories, and their present discomforts and danger; but in distant Paris he knew a life of new pleasure awaited him, remote from the wranglings of Courts and the a.s.sa.s.sin's knife. And within a week of greeting his successor as King, he was gaily riding in the Bois, attending the theatres, supping hilariously with ladies of the ballet, or dining with his friends at Verrey's "where his somewhat rough manner and coa.r.s.e jokes (the legacy of his swineherd ancestry) caused him sometimes to be mistaken for a parvenu," until a waiter would correct the impression by a whispered, "That gentleman with the dark moustache is Milan, ex-King of Servia."

While her husband was thus drinking the cup of Paris pleasure, his wife was still doomed to exile from her kingdom and her son, with permission only to pay two brief visits each year. But Natalie, who had so long defied a King, was not the woman to be daunted by mere Regents. She would return to Belgrade, and at least make her home where she could catch an occasional glimpse of her boy. And to Belgrade she went, to make her entry over flower-strewn streets, and through a tornado of cheers and shouts of "Zivela Rufe!" It was a truly Royal welcome to the great warm heart of the Servian people; but no official of the Court was there to greet her coming, and as she drove past the castle which held all she counted dear in life, not even the flutter of a handkerchief marked the pa.s.sing of Servia's former Queen.

Had she but played her cards now with the least discretion, she might have been allowed to remain in Belgrade in peace. But Natalie seems fated to have been the harbinger of storm. For a time, it is true, she was content to lie _perdue_, entertaining her friends at her house in Prince Michael Street, driving through the streets of her capital behind her pair of white ponies, or walking with her pet goat for companion, greeted everywhere with respect and affection. But her restless, vengeful spirit, still burning from the indignities she had suffered, would not allow her to remain long in the background. She threw herself into political agitation, and thus brought herself into open conflict with the Regents; she inaugurated a campaign of abuse against her husband, whom she still pursued with a relentless hatred; and generally made herself so objectionable to the authorities that the Skupshtina was at last compelled to order her banishment.

When the deputies presented themselves before her with the decree of expulsion, she laughed in their very faces, declaring that she would only submit to force. "I refuse to go," she said defiantly, "unless I am expelled by the hands of the police." A few hours later she was forcibly removed from her weeping and protesting ladies, hurried into a carriage, and driven off, with a strong escort of soldiers, on her journey to exile.

But the good people of Belgrade, who had got wind of the proposed abduction, were by no means disposed to look on while their beloved Queen was thus brutally taken from them. When the cortege reached the Cathedral Square, it was stopped by a formidable and menacing mob; the escort, furiously a.s.sailed with sticks and showers of stones, was beaten off; the horses were taken from the carriage, and the Queen was drawn back in triumph by scores of willing hands, to her residence.

Natalie's victory, however, was short-lived. At midnight, when her stalwart champions were sleeping in their beds, the police, crawling over the roofs of the houses in Prince Michael Street, and descending into the Queen's courtyard, found it a very simple matter to complete their dastardly work. The Queen was again bundled unceremoniously into a carriage, and before Belgrade was well awake, she was far on her way to her new exile in Hungary. A few days later a formal decree of banishment was p.r.o.nounced against her, forbidding her, under any pretext whatever, to enter Servia again without the Regent's permission.

Only once more did Natalie and Milan set eyes on each other--when the ex-King presented himself at Biarritz, to bring her news of their son's projected _coup d'etat_, by which he designed to depose the Regents and to take the reins of government into his own hands. Taken by surprise, the Queen received Milan, but when she saw him standing before her, an aged, broken man, her composure gave way. She could not speak; she trembled like a leaf.

With Alexander's dramatic accession to his full Kings.h.i.+p a new, if brief, era of happiness opened to Natalie. The Regents were no longer able to exclude her from Servia, and by her son's invitation she returned to Belgrade to resume her old position of Queen.

Still beautiful, in spite of all her suffering, she played for a time the role of Queen-mother to perfection, holding her Courts, presiding at b.a.l.l.s and soirees, taking a prominent part in affairs of State, and gradually acquiring more power than her easy-going son himself enjoyed.

At last, after long years of unrest and unhappiness, she seemed a.s.sured of peaceful years, secure in the affection of her son and her people, and far removed from the husband who had brought so much misery into her life.

But Natalie was fated never to be happy long, and once more her evil Destiny was to s.n.a.t.c.h the cup from her lips, a.s.suming this time the form of Draga Maschin, one of her own ladies-in-waiting, under the spell of whose black eyes and voluptuous charms her son quickly fell, after that first dramatic incident at Biarritz, when she plunged into the sea to his rescue and saved him from drowning.

Many months earlier a clairvoyante at Paris had told Natalie, "Your Majesty is cheris.h.i.+ng in your bosom a poisonous snake, which one day will give you a mortal wound." She had smiled incredulously at the warning, but she was soon to learn what truth it held. Certainly Draga Maschin was the last person she would have suspected of being a source of danger--a woman many years older than her son, the penniless widow of a drunken engineer--a woman, moreover, of whose life, before Natalie had taken pity on her poverty, many strange stories were told--how, for instance, she had often been seen in low resorts, "with the arm of a forester or a tradesman round her, singing the old Servian songs."

But she had not taken into account Draga's sensuous beauty, before which her son was powerless. Each meeting left him more and more involved in her toils, until, to the consternation of Servia and the horror of his mother, he announced his intention of making her his Queen. Even Milan, degraded as he was, was horror-struck when the news came to him in Paris. "And this," he exclaimed, "is the act of 'Sacha'--my own son. He is a monster, a thing of evil in the eyes of all men! The Maschin will be Queen of Servia. What a reproach! What an evil! A creature like her!

A sordid creature! Could he not have put aside his love for this low-born woman? But I could never make the fool understand that a King has duties; he has something else to think of but love-making."

When taking leave of the friend who had brought him this evil news Milan said, "I shall never see Servia again. My experience has been a bitter one--everywhere treachery and deceit. And now my own son--_that_ has broken my heart." A few months later, worn out by his excesses, prematurely old and broken-hearted, the man who had prost.i.tuted life's best gifts drew his last breath at Vienna at the age of forty-six.

As for Natalie, this crowning calamity of her son's disgrace did more than all her past sufferings to crush her proud spirit. But fate had not yet dealt the last and most cruel blow of all. That fell on that fatal June day of 1902 when her beloved "Sacha's" mutilated body was flung by his a.s.sa.s.sins out of his palace window, to be greeted with shouts of derisive laughter and cries of "Long live King Peter," from the dense crowds who had come to gloat over this last scene in the tragedy of the House of the Obrenvoie.