Embalmments

At the end of every, story there is always someone to inquire, "And then what happened?" Seldom enough is there an answer. But now and then the answer crops up to a question too mad for even a busybody to ask. Who, for example, has ever asked, ". . . and after the Archduke Francis Ferdinand of Austria and his wife were shot at Serajevo, find after the World War was thus started AND after Serajevo itself was made part of the new state of Jugoslavia, then who had to pay the fee of the man who embalmed the bodies in which were embedded the bullets which started the War?"

Though almost any fond parent would spank the daylights out of a child who asked such a question, it was both answered and put off last week.

The Embalmer. Dr. Paul Kaunitz, house doctor of the Serajevo City Hospital, was the man who embalmed that extraordinary pair of passionately devoted lovers, the Archduke and Sophie (Countess Chotek) whom he had raised to the state of morganatic wife and to the title of Princess Hohenberg, despite the opposition of the entire Austrian court yet with the sympathetic aid of the Vatican (1900) since he was a devout Catholic.

As Dr. Kaunitz performed the task, the bodies under his hands indeed gave silent proof of the Archduke's love and courage, if proof were needed. The bullets which pierced his wife had passed through his body first; for he sprang before her when the assassin leaped up and threatened them both with an automatic pistol.

The Fee. Dr. Kaunitz may possibly have anticipated that his services would be highly rewarded, since the Archduke, as everyone knows, was heir-apparent to the throne of Austria-Hungary. Confidently Dr. Kaunitz waited for someone to pay him--waited throughout the War. At last he presented a bill for 20,000 crowns ($400) to Dr. Thun of Tenchen, the guardian of Max Hohenberg,* 24, eldest son of the murdered Archduke. Dr. Thun indignantly refused to make payment. Said he: "Dr. Kaunitz was only carrying out the duties incumbent upon him as an Austrian state medical official, when he performed these embalmments. There can be no question of payment."

The Suit. Dr. Kaunitz straightway commenced suit against Max Hohenberg in the Czechoslovakian courts, and was awarded the sum of 10,000 crowns, according to despatches from Prague last week. He did not get them, however. Thoroughly roused, the redoubtable Dr. Thun has now carried the suit to a higher court.

*At the time of the Archduke's marriage, he was compelled to renounce the succession rights of any children resulting from this union, "the first between a Habsburg prince and a woman not of the blood royal."