After such a small calamity came a long laboriousness in the summer heat. At Trieste harbor he was piped aboard the Austrian dreadnought Viribus Unitis, which carried him down the humid Illyrian coastline to the mouth of the Narenta river, where he was transferred to the yacht Dalmat, which in turn sailed upstream to the Hercegovian town of Metkovic, where the archducal party entrained once more, this time heading for Bad Ilidze, a spa just outside the Bosnian capital of Sarajevo.
On the steamy, rainy afternoon of June 25, Franz Ferdinand reached Ilidze at the end of almost forty hours of ceaseless traveling. He bounded out of his rail car and past the honor guard, remarkably unfatigued.
So far the trip had been refreshing hard work. His advisers had primed him on the St. Vitus Day problem. Just during the weekend ahead, Serbs in Serbia as well as on the Austrian side of the border would celebrate their great ethnic holiday. To defuse resentment he had taken a good deal of trouble learning some Serbo-Croat sentences that said how pleased he was to acquaint himself first hand with the history, traditions, and festive occasions of this important region.
He was no linguist. His tongue struggled with those Slavic consonants. A public smile did not come easily to him. Yet he produced the consonants and the smile before any crowd organized for him along the way. Each time, people were surprised by such cordiality from the Archduke notorious for his frown. He, in turn, was exhilarated by their enthusiasm.
He was exhilarated again at Bad Ilidze, a pleasant suburb of Sarajevo. Despite a downpour, a sizable throng awaited him, shouting their "Zivio!" ("Long may he live!") and waving their umbrellas. That was nice. Nicer still, the embrace of his wife who had arrived earlier on her much less labyrinthine journey. General Conrad also presented himself, saluting with a grimness that carried, here at least, no power. To avoid the contretemps of previous army exercises, the Chief of Staff had asked to attend this time as a purely passive observer.
Under the Archduke's sole command, then, the simulated war between the "North Camp" (the 15th Austrian Army Corps) and the "South Camp" (the 16th Army Corps) began. For two shower-splattered days it thundered up and down the craggy hills west of Sarajevo, some cautious eighty kilometers away from the Serb border. At the Archduke's order the field pack of each man was ten pounds lighter than the weight set by General Conrad. This prevented exhaustion and enhanced the spirit of the troops. Franz Ferdinand was impressed by the dispatch with which the men handled the most modern equipment. He liked the way the heavy howitzers moved so fast through mud deepening with every squall.
Nothing could dampen the Archduke's uncharacteristic good mood. Usually his aides must try to restore his calm. Now he reversed the process. Once as he observed a "battle" from a hummock, a man suddenly broke out of the underbrush with a black instrument. Nervous bodyguards jumped the suspect. Franz Ferdinand chortled: "Oh, let him shoot me. That's his job! That's just a camera in his hand-he's a court photographer. Let him make a living!"
***
On Saturday, June 27, at 10 A.M. the Archduke's signal ended the maneuvers. Shortly thereafter he sent a telegram to Bad Ischl where the Emperor had begun his summer sojourn on the same day.
I beg to report most humbly that my journey has been excellent despite the unsteady weather; the reception… very gratifying and patriotic… The condition of the soldiers and their performance were outstanding and really beyond praise. Almost no injured or sick, everybody is healthy and well. Tomorrow I visit Sarajevo, to depart from there at night. In deepest devotion I lay myself at the feet of Your Majesty
Your most humble Franz
This, his last report to the Emperor, the Archduke scrawled vigorously in his own hand, using not the Gothic script he preferred but Roman characters as demanded by Army regulation for military cables. And Franz Ferdinand also conformed to another, more hurtful rule. His message said "Tomorrow I visit Sarajevo…" Morganatic restriction forbade "Tomorrow we visit Sarajevo…" We would include his wife on an equal basis. The long arm of Vienna's protocol reached even into this remote corner of the Empire.
It reached-and struck-the Archduke again, a few hours later, when he showed his First Lord Chamberlain Baron Rumerskirch the toast he had drafted for the evening gala. The Baron sighed and said he was compelled to suggest that the first three words of the phrase "my wife and I" should be omitted. The toast would not only enter the official minutes but no doubt be widely published in Vienna. It should be framed with care so that the court cabal could not use it against His Imperial Highness.
His Imperial Highness re-framed it with care.
That shadow apart, the day was splendid, ending sumptuously. On the night of June 27 the Archduke hosted a banquet (the very one to which Finance Minister von Bilinski had received no invitation) at his personal headquarters in Ilidze, the Hotel Bosna. General Potiorek attended the dinner together with the region's luminaries. Everybody enjoyed the potage regence, souffles delicieux, blanquette de truite a la gelee, followed by main entrees of chicken, lamb and beef, followed by creme aux ananas en surprise and cheeses, ice cream, candies. Sommeliers poured an array of wines from Madeiras to Tokays and including, as a bow to local taste, Bosnian 2ilavka.
Graciously the Archduke raised a goblet even to General Conrad, then gave a smooth, morganatic, wifeless toast. After all, his Sophie sat quite unmorganatically between two Archbishops. And tomorrow he would make sure that all Imperial obeisance shown him would be hers as well at Sarajevo.
Mist smothered the Bosnian sunrise on Sunday, June 28, 1914. The Archduke and the Duchess began the day on their knees. They prayed at an early Mass in a room specially converted to a chapel at the spa hotel. Afterwards he retired to his bedroom to practice, over and over again, the Serbo-Croation paragraph ending the speech he was to make at Sarajevo's City Hall. Those Slav consonants hadn't gotten any easier, but when he finished work, Sophie rewarded him with a happy bulletin just telephoned from Vienna. Their older son Max had done very well in his examinations at the Schotten Academy. The parents congratulated the boy with a cable anticipating the family reunion set for the day after tomorrow.
By then it was just past 9 A.M. Their train awaited them for the brief ride to Sarajevo. It steamed into the terminal there at 9:20 A.M. On the platform a band of the 15th Army Corps cymballed the Imperial Anthem. Red-carpet formalities over, Franz Ferdinand helped his wife climb into the high, huge Graf & Stift convertible. That moment the weather changed as dramatically as during their entrance at the Vienna Derby three weeks earlier. The mist lifted like a curtain. Brightness fell on a resplendent pair. The Archduke, tall and rugged, shone in the ceremonial uniform of an Austrian Cavalry General-sky-blue tunic, gold collar with three silver stars, black trousers with red stripes; the green peacock feathers of his helmet bounced above the pale-blue gleam of his eyes, the black spear tips of his upturned hussar's mustache. His Duchess was a stately vision in white: white picture hat with a gossamer white veil, long white silk dress with a red and white bouquet of roses tucked into her red sash, ermine stole draped over her shoulders.
After a long siege of rain, the sun shed on them the radiance of a doubly special day. This Sunday marked not only St. Vitus Day for the Serbs but also the anniversary of a marriage sorely tried yet victorious. Exactly fourteen years ago, on June 28, 1900, Crown Prince Franz Ferdinand and the Countess Sophie Chotek had taken their vows in stealth, in disgrace, in the pointed absence of the Emperor and the entire Imperial clan. For fourteen years the Crown Prince had had to announce his own wife's inferiority of blood. During all court functions of all those years she had had to enter alone after the Emperor; he had had to wait for Sophie to creep in at the tail end of protocol, after the youngest Archduchess toddled by in diapers.