Briskly, he walks through the French Quarters, crosses Jackson Square, turns around the Saint Louis Cathedral and reaches the gates of the cemetery bearing the same name. Now, he is no longer in a hurry. He takes his time to dawdle amongst the graves, looking for the one on which to lie. The moon, shining…
As luck would have it, Marie Laveau soon after met the love of her life, Christophe Duminy de Glapion. She would never marry him, for the simple reason that he was white and that the law of the time forbade such an union, but they had many children – fifteen according to legend! In any…
Marie Laveau was born in 1794, baptised and registered at the parish. Her origins remain, truth be told, rather murky: in her white and black blood mixed. It was even suspected that she had Native American blood. Some even said she was the daughter of a white nobleman and a black slave. In 1819, as…
Marie Anne of Savoy, who was married to the short-lived emperor Ferdinand before the 1848 revolutions replaced him with his nephew, Franz Joseph. Elisabeth, Duchess of Bavaria, Empress of Austria, the famous Sissi. Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria, heir to the throne, assassinated in Sarajevo in 1914. Zita, the last empress of…
At an evening hosted by the countess Zichy-Ferraris in Vienna, in 1808, was to be found, among several elegant women of the high society, the charming Princess Schwarzenburg, born to the House of Aremburg. Prince Louis de Rohan was playing with his deck of cards; he believed himself to possess a great talent for fortune…
The trial of Elizabeth Bathory took place during the reign of King Rodolph II of Hungary. The great lady was desperate about preserving her youth. Witchcraft provided her with a magic remedy, and an astonishing degree of perversion was involved in her attempts to apply it. She had a considerable number of young girls kidnapped…
The alarm had been sounded. The guards, torches in hand, combed all the paths of the park. They found Isabellita, still unconscious, her nightclothes stained in blood. With great care, they took her back to the castle and brought her to her chamber. A few seconds later she emerged out of her unconsciousness, and was…
Her father, the Duke, made his way into the studiolo and found his daughter at her desk, busily engaged in writing a treatise. Being of a brutal and insensitive nature, as is often the case with men of little intelligence, he displayed no great tact, announcing to his daughter straight away that she had been…
When, in 1759, the child Isabelle of Parma, known as Isabellita, reached the age of eighteen she was, without any doubt, one of the most accomplished princesses in Europe. Tall, with a beautiful figure, an oval face adorned with big, brown eyes and long black hair and snow–white skin. All the men were attracted to…
A young high society woman was travelling in Austria many years ago. She had a young daughter, just two or three years old, whom she loved dearly. One evening, she arrived at an inn that was part of an old landowner’s domain. The walls were extremely thick and the doors and windows were low and…