So that it was a matter of course that Francis Ferdinand should be required to proclaim _urbi et orbi_ that he was marrying beneath him; that the marriage should be condemned to be a hole-and-corner affair which even the bridegroom’s brothers did not attend; that the bride’s status should be left so undignified that it was not permissible to her to attend the opera with her husband, or to sit in the Imperial stand with him at the races. But though that was Francis Joseph’s official attitude as an Emperor and a Habsburg, he was also a man and a brother, capable of tolerance and condescension—increasingly capable of it as the years went by. Flexibility, good nature, weariness of the long struggle with the Zeit Geist—one does not know to which of these things to attribute the modification of his tone; but he has modified it. Francis Ferdinand has been taken back into favour and allowed to hold the highest offices suitable for him; and Countess Sophie Chotek has been promoted to be Duchess of Hohenberg. She does not yet rank with the Archduchesses, but she does take her place in the hierarchy immediately after them. How will she rank eventually, after the inevitable day on which Francis Joseph is gathered to his fathers? That is a question which must soon, in the course of nature, present itself; and it would be a great mistake to suppose that it was settled, once and for all, when Francis Ferdinand stood before the crucifix and swore that his wife was, and that his children would be, inferior persons, unworthy to be related to him. It is not merely that “Jove laughs at lovers’ perjuries,” or that Francis Ferdinand’s heart rejects the Habsburg superstition to which we have seen him rendering lip service. One must also remember that knots of this kind can never be tied so tightly that no way of untying them can be found by adroit and willing hands. No doubt the Archduke is a religious man who understands the nature of an oath; but he was “brought up by the Jesuits,” and one suspects that he has not been brought up by them for nothing. All Catholics are addicted to casuistry, and the Jesuits specialise in it; nor does one need any extra-ordinary shrewdness to divine the insidious questions which may be invoked as solvents of a situation which Francis Joseph believed himself to have made hard and fast. Let us set them forth in order:— 1. Granted that Francis Ferdinand had the right to swear away his own rights, had he any right to swear away the potential rights of persons still unborn? 2. Granted that Francis Ferdinand is personally bound by his oath, on what grounds can that oath fetter the freedom of action of the Hungarian and Austrian Parliaments? 3. Cannot the Pope, to whom God has given the power to loose and bind, free any man from any obligation, even though he has sworn by bell, book, and candle to bow to it?