And the nature of those terms? This is not a Court history, and there is no need to gloss them over,—they shall be described with absolute frankness, and in plain language. The stipulation which the prestige of the House of Habsburg was held to require was this: that affronts should be publicly put on the bride before, during, and after the ceremony. The view officially taken of her may be said to be summed up in the carefully worded speech which the Emperor, gorgeously attired in his Field-Marshal’s uniform, read at a special meeting of his Privy Council. Every phrase in it should be noted with care:— “I have invited the members of my House, my Privy Councillors, and my Ministers to attend to-day’s ceremony because the declaration which will be made is of the highest importance to the monarchy. Inspired by the wish always to provide as best I can for the members of my high House, and to give my nephew a new proof of special love, I have consented to his marriage with Countess Sophie Chotek. The Countess descends, it is true, from noble lineage; but her family is not one of those which, according to the customs of our House, we regard as our equals. Now, as only women from equal Houses can be regarded as equal in birth, this marriage must be regarded in the light of a morganatic marriage, and the children which, with God’s blessing, will spring from it cannot be given the rights of members of the Imperial House. The Archduke will, therefore, to make this certain for all time, to-day take an oath to the effect that he recognises all this, that he recognises his marriage with Countess Chotek to be a morganatic one, that the consequences are that the marriage cannot be regarded as one between equals, and that the children springing from it can never be regarded as rightful children, entitled to the rights of members of our House. I beg the Minister of my Imperial House to read the oath which the Archduke will swear.” The Emperor’s voice is said to have been “full of emotion” while he recited this solemn manifesto. One would like to attribute at least a little of the emotion to regret that his family pride required him to insult a woman who, far from doing him any harm, had saved his nephew’s life by coaxing him to obey his physicians; but it is difficult to picture Francis Joseph as melted to tenderness by the idyll of the cod-liver oil. In any case, his emotion, whatever it may have been, was not allowed to interfere with the ceremony, which was continued with an ecclesiastical pomp indicating that Francis Joseph does, indeed, at times, mistake himself for God and the Archdukes for archangels, who are failing to behave as such.