Certainly they are not so separated by his own subjects. They not only admire the statesman who has acquired a prestige to which he was not born, and has used it to recover by diplomacy what he has lost in war; they also cherish an affectionate sympathy for the man at whom calamity has dealt blow after blow, whom no blow, however cruel, has struck down, and who, in spite of innumerable sorrows, has continued to confront the world with a dignified, if melancholy, composure. He has had, they perceive, no less trouble with his family than with his Empire; and they have sometimes thought of him—or at least been tempted to think of him—as the one splendidly sane member of an eccentric and decadent House. It follows that one must write of Francis Joseph, not only as an Emperor, but also as a Habsburg—the head of the most interesting of all the royal houses: a House whose members, unpredictable in their insurgent extravagances, have, again and again, moved the Courts and Chancelleries of Europe to consternation. Our picture must be, not only of a great and successful ruler, but also of a brave old man, tried in the fire but not consumed by it, bowed down by sorrows but not broken by them, maintaining the mediæval majesty of royal caste in the presence of his peers, at a time when other Habsburgs—one Habsburg after another—were flinging the prejudices of royal caste to the winds and making, as it must have seemed to him, sad messes of their lives, after the manner of those reprobate relatives who, even in middle-class families, are spoken of, if at all, with bated breath. That being our theme—or a portion of it—we may next speak of the Habsburgs collectively; and we will begin by considering what the eugenists have to say about them. CHAPTER II The House of Habsburg from the standpoint of Eugenics—The “Habsburg jaw”—Degeneracy the consequence of consanguineous marriages—Sound physiological instinct of King Cophetua—And of those Habsburgs who have followed his example—Morganatic marriages—The family organism fighting for its life—Has Francis Joseph understood?—Indications that he has understood in part. The House of Habsburg furnishes the “horrible examples” in two recent works on the new science of Eugenics: _L’hérédité des Stigmates de Dégénérescence_, by Dr. Galippe, and _L’Origine du Type familial de la Maison de Habsburg_, by Dr. Oswald Rubbrecht. The arguments in both cases are based, not only on a study of history, but also on a collation of portraits; and though the writers differ on some points of detail, their general conclusions are identical. For both of them the Habsburgs are “degenerates”; both of them attribute the degeneracy to the same cause. It is, they agree, the cumulative effect of what is technically called “in-breeding”—of a long succession of inter-marriages among comparatively near relatives.