E-text prepared by Christine Bell & Marc D'Hooghe
(http://www.freeliterature.org)
PREFACE
TRANSLATOR'S NOTE
CHAPTER I
CHAPTER II
CHAPTER III
CHAPTER IV
CHAPTER V
CHAPTER VI
The betting-book in one of London's oldest and most famous clubscontains a wager, with odds laid at one hundred sovereigns to ten, that"within five years there will not remain two crowned heads in Europe."The condition—"in the event of war between Great Britain andGermany"—was imposed by the date of the wager, for one member wasventuring his hundred to ten at a moment when another was dining withhim to kill time before the British prime minister's ultimatum tookeffect: the imperial German government had to deliver its reply beforemidnight, by Greenwich time, or eleven o'clock, by Central Europeanreckoning.
Since the fourth of August, 1914, the King of the Hellenes, the Czar ofBulgaria, the Emperor-King of Austria-Hungary, the German Kaiser and ahost of smaller princes have abdicated and sought asylum in countriesleft neutral by the war; the Czar of All the Russias also abdicated, butwas executed without an opportunity of escape. Thus, though republicanand royalist may protest that the wager was too sanguine or toopessimistic, the challenger must have taken credit for his prescience,as three of the great powers and two of the lesser converted, one afteranother, their half-divine sovereign into their wholly material scapegoat;by no great special pleading he might claim that the bet was won inspirit if not in fact when the morning of Armistice Day shewed monarchysurviving only in Spain, Italy, Roumania and Greece, in the smallliberal kingdoms of Scandinavia and the Netherlands, in the minuteprincipality of Monaco, in the crowned republic of Great Britain andIreland and in the eternal anachronism of the Ottoman Empire. And thetime-limit of five years had been exceeded by only three months.
In the peaceful period, four times longer, between the publication ofMajesty in 1894 and the outbreak of the Great War, historians werekept hardly less busy with their record of fallen monarchs andextinguished dynasties: King Humbert of Italy was assassinated in 1900;King Alexander of Servia, with his queen, in 1903; King Carlos ofPortugal, with the heir-apparent, in 1908; and the Sultan Abdul Hamidwas deposed and imprisoned in 1909. Before the year 1894 no ruler ofnote had removed himself or been removed since the assassination of theCzar Alexander II in 1881; this study of "majesty" in its strength and,still more, in its weakness was published at a time when even theautocrat was more secure on his throne than at any period since "theyear of revolution," 1848.
If Majesty is to be regarded as a roman à clef, there is atemptation, after six and twenty years, to call Couperus 'prophetic:' tocall him that and nothing else is to turn blind eyes to the intuitiveunderstanding which is more precious than divination, to ignore