And yet the suggestion, though improbable, is not quite impossible. The secret police of Vienna are very suspicious and acute; and they are also as unscrupulous as they are polite. The idea that there ever was an actual plot worthy to be called a plot must indeed be discarded for the reasons already set forth; but the idea that there was loose talk and compromising correspondence of a quasi-seditious character is not so fantastic. The secret police may have opened letters, or overheard conversations, or even received information. If they had done so, they would naturally have reported their discoveries, even if these were rather intangible; and if it be true that there is, at the Hofburg, an iron chest, to be opened in the fulness of time, bearing upon the Meyerling affair, a report of the kind indicated is, after all, the thing most likely to be found in it. The blow, however—whatever he knew or did not know—was bound, in any case to be a terrible one to Francis Joseph. When Count Hoyos drove up in a sleigh in the early morning with the news, he broke down and sobbed. Then he mastered himself, and gave the necessary orders, and presently issued this proclamation to his people:— “Deeply moved by a sorrow too profound for words, I humbly bow before the inscrutable decrees of a Providence which has chosen to afflict myself and my people, and I pray to Almighty God to grant to us all the courage to bear the load of our irreparable loss.” And to his Hungarian Prime Minister Tisza, he wrote:— “I have lost everything. I had placed my hope and my faith in my son. There remains to me now nothing but the sentiment of duty, to which I hope to remain faithful as long as my aged bones support me.” He must have thought, indeed, at that hour, that the cup of his sorrows was full, and that the curse at last had done with him. But it was not so. In spite of that devotion to duty to which he had pledged himself, calamity after calamity was still to be heaped upon his head. Our story of the Tragedy of Meyerling has to be followed by the story of the tragic disappearance of John Orth. CHAPTER XXIII The Archduke John Salvator—His many accomplishments—His criticisms of his superiors—His disgrace at Court—His love affair with an English lady—“Your darling Archduckling”—His proposal to abandon his rank and earn his living as a teacher of languages—His love affair with Milly Stübel—He quarrels with Francis Joseph, takes the name of John Orth, and leaves Austria.