"I admired my young emperor, in those terrible days, for his outward calm, through which the storm-flood of all his emotions never burst loose before the eyes of the world. Directly after the funeral, the ceremony of signing the five sacred deeds; the immediate agitation of the accumulated affairs of state.... A month later, the new elections, the constitutional majority in the house of deputies, the resignation of the ministry.... All this you will have seen in the papers.... After that, the birth of our son and then our coronation, at the moment when Liparia seemed shaken to its foundations! And now Othomar is at Lipara, because of the new constitutional ministry.... Then Count Myxila, who does not agree with Othomar's modern ideas and who has even ventured to reproach him with some vehemence for abandoning all his father's views upon government so shortly after his violent death and who is now tendering his resignation.... Othomar will make an effort to keep him, though he himself realizes that it will not be possible.... And the revision of the constitution in the immediate future, with so many drastic changes, probably with the inauguration of the upper and lower chambers, while the house of peers will continue its outward existence, but will be actually nothing more than an honorary consulting body. These are concessions, if you will have it so, but then, you know, Othomar has quite different ideas from his father's and, when he makes these concessions, he undoubtedly makes them to the past and not to the future nor to himself.... "Life is cruel, cruel in its changes and cruel even in its renascences; and for us rulers all this is perhaps even more cruel; but the world belongs to the future.... "The Empress Elizabeth is still here: she has suddenly grown so old, so grey and very dull and depressed; and she does not know what to do: whether to remain with her household at the Imperial, to stay on here at St. Ladislas, or to retire to Castel Xaveria.... All the imperial palaces and castles are whirling through her poor head: her private properties and the crown domains; she does not know where she wants to go; we of course continue to urge her not to leave the Imperial: it is large enough to enable her to retain almost all her own military and civil household....