THE ROMANCE OF "CARMEN SYLVA."

Pukekohe & Waiuku Times, Volume 4, Issue 47, 18 June 1915, Page 8

THE ROMANCE OF "CARMEN SYLVA."

THE " FLORENCE NIGHTINGALE " OE RUMANIA.

Probably 110 woman is watching the great world-struggle which is now ravaging Europe with more anxious and sorrowful eyes than "Carmen Sylva," the Poetess-Queen Dowager of Rumania, who, probably more than any other Sovereign Lady in history, has known and shared the horrors of war.

Nearly forty years ago. when her husband returned to Bucharest in triumph as tiie hero of Plevna, she wrote to her mother, ''Thank God, Charles is here! I can retire back gradually into my shell—return to my flowers, my birds, my books and my papers—may (iod soon grant a lasting peace to remove the gnawing anxiety from our hearts, and that these terrible times may belong to the past, which dims both our jovs and our sorrows, leaving only the bright impression of the results bohind !"

While Queen Elizabeth's husband wis so bravely fighting the Turks, she was winning the admiration of the world and tlio love of his subjects by her devotion to the wounded and dying. She maintained out of her own purse a hospital for a hundred patients: and day and night she was to be seen earning the sunshine of her presence from ward to ward, smoothing the pillows of pain and ministering to the suffering. She did not even shrink from the horrors of the operating-room: and many a mutilated soldier* smiled through his agony, his hand grasped in hers.

A STORY FROM THE WARDS

How great was tier influence with the wounded the following, among many such stories, proves. A stalwart sergeant whose thigh-bone had been shattered by a shell refused point-blank to allow lu's leg to be amputated, declaring "1 am not a beggar, nor will 1 become one. I will lo.se my lifo, but not my honour and independence." In vain the surgeons and even the Queen herself pleaded with him; he refused to lie moved from his resolve to die rather than suffer mutilation.

At last the Queen, kneeling down by his bedside, took his hand and said, " f'ntil now T have never prayed but to God. Now I will supplicate you to listen to His wish and mine. Let your leg be taken off, and thus save youi life for your family, for your country, and for me; and " "And. if I consent? wh.it then, Marea Ta?" asked the sergeant. "What then?" she rejoined, with a radiant smile, as she rose to her feet, "why I will find you the most beautiful artificial leg that can be made in Europe! 11. will work with springs; and when ve get peace again, you shall come to the palace and dance there with your sons and daughters." "Let it be as you wish." murmured the sergeant, tears bringing in bis eyes—"but you must hold mv hand while thev cut me."

Can ive wonder that the wives of even the poorest Rumanian soldiers were readv to empty their scanty purses to subscribe for a monument in honour of their great-hearted Queen, whom they lovingly dubbed "the mother of the wounded"; or that no soldier passes without a reverential salute to her sculptured presentment in the great square of • Bucharet, holding a cup of water to the parched lips of a wounded warrior. A GIFTED PRINCESS.

But ever since "Carmen Sylva," as she loves to be known, was cradled more than seventy years ago in the Neuwied Palace, she has been the object of en almost idolatrous love. The daughter of the beautiful Princess of Nassau and Prince Herman zu Wied, she inherits her mother's sweetness and loveliness with her father's clever brain. Many a tale is told of her childish precocity—how, as a mite of three, she held her listeners spell-bound by her skill as a reciter: and how at ten she could read and speak half-a-dozen tongues. And we get charming pictures of her —now romping with the village children—the ringleader in all their merry games, and racing like a madcap across country on her pony, with flushed cheeks' and long hair streaming golden behind her; or at other times wandering with her governess in the forests of the Taunus Mountains and listening with sparkling eyes to the romantic legends of which the Rhineland is the home. Again we see her, watching over her invalid brother, Otto, with all a mother's tenderness; or sitting at her father's feet while he revealed to her the treasures of the world s literature. Thus it was that the little Princess grew through a happy childhood to a beautiful and cultured young womanhood, beloved by all and astounding all by her rare talents and richly-stored mind. For music and poetry she developed a passion, and abilityamounting almost to genius. Under the teaching of Rubinstein and Madame Schumann she became a musician of rare skill; and under the inspiration of Ernst Moritz Arndt, a poetess of singular charm and beauty. It was inevitable that a Princess to beautiful and so jilted should many a high-placed lover at her >? e \i but to one and all she turned a cold, it kindlv. shoulder. " Xo," she would answer laughingly, to all their protestations and entreaties, "I never mean to marry. I love my freedom and my happy life at Neuwied too much. There is only one man whose wife T could ever Income—the King of Rumania," she would add mischievously: for at that time Rumania had iio King, nor seemed likely ever to have one! And it was in tins mood of maiden indifference that, under the wine of the Grand Duchess Helene, of Russia, she paid that visit to the Prussian Court, which, though she little dreamt it, was to work such a revolution in her life. Here it was, at the Renin Palace, that, to quote " Politikos,' an adventure befel her: "and if (as Lord Reacom-t-ld asserts) adventures are to the adventurous, it was but right and propel that a romantic accident should befall 'he mercurial Princess Elizabeth. Rushing down the stairs one day with hei UMial inipetuo<it v, she slipped and would have fallen to the bottom, had not a "cntleman who was ascending at tie' same moment, caught her in his arms. It was a fall laden with unexpected conseouences, * for she had stumbled into the arms of her future husband: > IIhough, as yet, .-he was not to rest in them for good." . The fortunate young man whose chivalrous arms had rescued the Princess from a fall on the palace stairs was none other than Prime Charles ot Hohenzollern. then a lieutenant in the Prussian Armv, and .seemingly as remote from a throne as from the moon. Rut the whirligig of Time often brings the most unexpected things in its revolutions: and few more strange than that which made the Prussian subaltern the chosen Lord of Rumania but a feumouths after his adventure in the Rerj; n Palace; to be Rumania's crowned King fifteen years later. Tt is said that a few days after Elizabeth's romantic trip on the stairs, Prince Charles was formally presented to her at a Court Bnll, when she ob-

I served, with a smile and a blush, "I , think we have met before." "1 think so," was his smiling answer, as he gave her his arm for a dance. "From that moment," she has said, "I knew that' he was the only man I could ever marry. And thus it was that, Iv a strange caprice of fortune, I, who had sworn flever to wed any but the 'King of Rumania,' had actually jumped into the very arms of the man who was destined to become that, mythical personage! Need I say that I count that stumble the mast fortunate accident that lias ever happened to me?"