One has no difficulty in believing it; for that is what the Habsburgs are like. One after another, they find their way to the common lot by taking a perfectly sincere and simple interest in the ordinary occupations and amusements of ordinary people. Sometimes those interests are domestic, as in the case of the Archduke Charles Ferdinand, who is said to have proposed marriage in the kitchen; they sometimes are artistic, as in the case of Princess Louisa of Tuscany, who was at the piano when she first spoke of love to Signor Toselli. So that it was quite in conformity with the family traits that the Archduke John Salvator should forget his rank, in order to talk musical criticism with the ballet-girl; and it was equally in accordance with the family traits that the talk should soon become affectionately intimate. They talked of marriage: to the Austrian ballet-girl, as to the English lady, the Archduke spoke of his ability to earn a competence by the sweat of his brow—not, this time, as a teacher of languages or a keeper of wild beasts, but as a skipper in the merchant service. In a sense it was idle talk, for he had money enough in the bank to keep both himself and a wife in comfort; but he wanted the common lot, and labour, as well as matrimony, was a part of it. Nor was he making an empty boast; for he had passed the tests, and held a master mariner’s certificate. That was the condition of things with him when, not long after the Meyerling tragedy, he had his final quarrel with Francis Joseph. The ultimate grounds and the immediate occasion of that quarrel remain uncertain. From Countess Marie Larisch’s narrative one would gather that, whatever the proximate cause may have been, the final cause was the Hungarian plot. Princess Louisa, on the other hand, has a story that Francis Joseph ordered him to apologise for language which he had used to the Archduke Albert, and that he refused to do so. Both stories may be true; and the Archduke’s determination to marry an opera nymph may also have been a contributory cause of disagreement. The actual scene is described by Princess Louisa, who may be supposed to have had her information from the Archduke himself:— “Uncle John” (she tells us) “said in his bold way that he would leave the army and the Court rather than be dictated to, and he concluded by declaring that he did not care in the least whether he was a member of the Imperial House. A storm followed this rank apostasy, and my uncle, in a fit of ungovernable rage, tore off his Order of the Golden Fleece, and flung it at the Emperor.”