If one could hold Francis Joseph personally responsible for these atrocities, one would, indeed, have to regard him as a sinister youth who has since grown into a sinister old man. One must hope, on the contrary—and one may fairly hope, as he was less than nineteen at the time—that he was only the dummy of a sanguinary camarilla, and the obedient son of a hard-hearted, ambitious, and self-righteous mother. But he assumed the posture of a sinister youth, whether he assumed it consciously or not, by refusing mercy even when mothers, who had succeeded in obtaining audience, knelt weeping at his feet, and pleaded for the lives of their sons, and replying cynically to a remonstrance against Louis Batthyany’s execution that “the Imperial word had been pledged that every Austrian subject without distinction should be equal in the eye of the law.” So that the Vienna correspondent of the _Kölner Zeitung_ wrote:— “Hanging and shooting—shooting and hanging. Such is at present the manner in which the men in power say good morning and good night to the nations of Austria. The strong hand in Austria is a bloody hand, and the slaughter once begun is so tempting that our rulers cannot think of leaving off. The whole of the civilised world protests against the present doings in Hungary. Schwarzenberg and his fellows cause public opinion to extend its imprecation to a greater person—to the Emperor whom the people ought not to be taught to associate with cruelties and deeds of blood, violence, and vengeance. Under the absolute government of former times, the people of Austria were fond of their Emperor; for whatever they suffered they threw the blame on the aristocracy and the bureaucracy. They said: ‘If the Emperor could but know of it, he would help us.’ At present nobody thinks of saying such a thing. They say, ‘The Emperor knows it and he does it.’” Cynicism reached its height—one cannot say whether it was Francis Joseph’s own cynicism or not—in the attempt to maintain the gaiety of the Court in the midst of this Reign of Terror. As Baroness von Beck puts it:— “Ball followed ball, _soirées_ were announced, and assemblies were held, but Rachel wept still for her children, and refused to be comforted. The _Lloyd_ published day after day the most magniloquent reports of the Court festivals, long lists of the beauties who assisted at them, descriptions of the gorgeous costumes with which they were adorned; but they were read without any emotion. It would not do; the city was in mourning; such fantastic attempts at mirth were out of season. They jarred upon the public feeling. If they ever won a moment of public approbation, it was like a smile upon a widow’s countenance, speedily followed by a blush of reproach at her momentary forgetfulness of the one great sorrow.”