Love in a Shooting Lodge

Love in a Shooting Lodge

IDYLL'S END--Claude Anet--Dodd, Mead ($2.50). On a morning in January, 1889, in a shooting lodge at Mayerling, Austria, the bodies of Crown Prince Rudolph, heir to the great Dual Monarchy, and Marie Vetsera, pretty young noblewoman, were found by horrified attendants. Since then controversy has raged: 1) whether they were both killed (by order of Emperor Francis Joseph); 2) whether they died voluntarily in a suicide pact. Author Claude Anet, and many another, thinks Rudolph shot Marie, then himself. Rudolph, as Author Anet shows him to us, was intelligent, able, liberal-minded. But he was married to a wife he detested, his father ignored his suggestions about army and government. In despair Rudolph wined and wenched till late at night, but always rose betimes for his full-scheduled, boring days. When he saw 16-year-old Marie Vetsera at the theatre he liked her, but nothing might have come of it had it not been for his scheming cousin who acted as go-between. Marie and the Prince soon adored each other; he thought of a morganatic union. But when he foolishly sought the Pope's assistance in annulling his marriage, the Emperor heard of it and made him promise to see Marie only once again. Rudolph kept his word. Author Claude Anet (real name: Jean Schopfer), onetime (1892) French tennis champion, collects Persian art, has translated from the Russian Pushkin, from the Persian Omar Khayyam. Other books: End of the World, While the Earth Shook, Ariane.

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