7. The Archduke William—the uncle of the Archduke Eugène—preceded him in the Grandmastership; but, in his case, the possibilities of chastity appear to have been limited. The stories of his assignations with ladies in the _cabinets particuliers_ of restaurants are numerous, and some of them are diverting. The landlord, on one occasion, was so proud of his patronage that he could not keep the secret of it. Not realising what the consequences might be, he whispered to a friend that the Archduke William was, at that moment, doing him the honour of pursuing a courtship in an upper chamber. The consequence was that, when the Archduke descended with the lady from the upper chamber, to take his carriage, he found a vast crowd of loyal supporters assembled on the pavement, to receive him with musical honours. His case must have been even more embarrassing than that of Francis Joseph, when the cook knelt at his feet and sang the national anthem, in the small hours of the morning, in Frau Schratt’s villa. 8. The Archduke Leopold—brother of the Archduke Rainer—was, at one time, commander-in-chief of the corps of engineers; but he suddenly disappeared, and people wondered what had become of him. Epilepsy—that curse of the House of Habsburg—had struck him down. He was removed to the remote castle of Hornstein, where he had to be kept in the seclusion of a mental invalid until he died. 9. The Archduke Otto—brother of the present heir-apparent, and consequently Francis Joseph’s nephew—was the most amazing of all the Archdukes, and the one whose case most fittingly illustrates the usual generalisations about Habsburg degeneracy. The common people rather liked him; for he had the negative merit of not being proud, and was, in the main, the sort of gay and festive buffoon to whom the hearts of the common people, when untrammelled by considerations of morality, go out. But people who were not so common took a different view of him; and Austria was filled with stories of his misdeeds and the discomfiture which they brought him. Meeting a funeral procession, when he was out riding, he insisted that the coffin should be laid upon the ground in order that he might leap his horse over it. Getting drunk in a fashionable _café_, he more than once executed a dance, apparelled in nothing except a képi, a sword-belt, and a pair of gloves; and once, in order to express his contempt for things in general and Habsburgs in particular, he poured the contents of a dish of spinach over the Emperor’s bust. A furious lady cyclist once assailed him with a whip for breaking up a cycle race on the high road on which he was driving; and the Austrian journalists who aspersed his private character were acquitted by the juries when he ventured to take proceedings against them.