The Emperor of Austria, the Emperor of Germany, Mr. Abbott, and Fessenden Abbott sat in secret and informal conclave in a small audience-chamber in the Hofburg. The host sat behind a table between two high and heavy golden candlesticks. The Emperors, erect in their uniforms, were imposing figures. They had the free supple upright carriage of men whose lives have been more than half passed in the saddle, and their eyes sparkled with the evidence of exercise and fresh air, regular habits, and systematic care. Mr. Abbott, in a frock-coat, was huddled in a perpendicular chair of crimson velvet and gilded oak, in a vain endeavor to make himself comfortable, and surreptitiously consuming tabloids; suffering in the stomach he had failed to treat as a brother the tortures of the damned. He looked with envy at the older Emperor who had been born some twenty years before himself, had endured enough public cares and private castigations to kill half a dozen Americans, and looked more vigorous than many in their youth. It was even possible that he might outlive the young man who aspired to be his son-in-law; toward whom his eyes, in spite of his will, wandered in the fascination of a shock from which he found himself unable to recover. It was now a fortnight since he had been made aware that nothing less was asked of him than that he should give his daughter in marriage to a scion of a country not only devoid of every tradition of royalty, but of an hereditary aristocracy; and while he was still stunned and dully alarmed for what he conceived to be his failing wits, this demand had been backed up by an offer which had awakened him, it is true, but, he having outlived the age of romance and enthusiasm, had by no means met with favor, nor even credulity. To avoid war in any form was the final ambition of his life, and he was proud of his position as keeper of the peace of central and eastern Europe. On the other hand, he admitted that were he forty years younger he would doubtless have grasped any reasonable opportunity to rid Europe of the governments of Russia and Turkey, civilize and give happiness to those two countries, estimable enough in themselves, and mount to a place in history high above the mistakes and disasters of his unfortunate reign. But he was old, and with the selfishness of the old had long since resolved that he would close his reign in peace could it be done without dishonor. As for the inventions, they seemed to him as chimerical as the prospective telegraph did to his forefathers, as the telephone would seem to an Esquimaux. Moreover, that the restless and uncertain quantity who claimed him as his “fatherly friend” was the one from whom the astounding proposition came, was enough to fill his bosom to repletion with distrust; the more especially as the invention was the property of an American notoriously the German’s friend. The Emperor took little interest in American history or affairs, but it