All for LoveAll for Love

A brilliant reconstruction of the operatic--and catastrophic--romance of a Hapsburg princess and a lowly cavalryman It was a great European scandal: she was the wife of a prince, the daughter of King Leopold II of the Belgians, and a familiar figure in the court of the aged emperor Franz Joseph. Her lover was Second Lieutenant Gža Mattachich. Ten years younger than the princess, a dashing figure in his fitted tunic and shiny boots, he was an undistinguished subaltern of dubious origin and extravagant ambition. Ahead of them both lay assignations, adultery, flight, the squandering of a fortune (not his; not hers either, as things worked out), a duel, imprisonment, bankruptcy, madness. And, as well, a genuine heroine--in the form of canteen worker Maria Stg̲er--who was no less ready than the princess and her soldier to risk all for love. With sparkling, satirical prose, All for Love moves from one end of pre-World...