“The young Emperor” (he wrote), “I confess I like very much, there is much sense and courage in his warm blue eye, and it is not without a very amiable merriment when there is occasion for it. He is slight and very graceful, but even in the mêlée of dancers and Archdukes, he may always be distinguished as the _Chef_.... He keeps everyone in great order without requiring for this an _outré_ appearance, merely because he is the master, and there is that about him which gives authority, and which sometimes those _who have the_ _authority cannot succeed in getting accepted or in practising_. I think he may be severe _si l’occasion se présente_: he has something very _muthig_. We were several times surrounded by people of all classes, and he certainly quite at their mercy, but I never saw his little _muthig_ expression changed either by being pleased or alarmed.” Lady Westmorland also wrote, at about the same time, to Mr. Hood:— “I am very much pleased with the young Emperor, and especially with his tender affection for his mother, and his tender and respectful manner to her. He looks even younger than he is, and is not handsome, but has a well-built, active figure and a most intelligent and expressive face. He has a thoughtful face, and is perfectly unaffected. His mother is a very interesting person, and is wrapped up in this son, who seems likely to justify the pride she takes in him. The father is a very poor creature, who cares for nothing but having his leisure unmolested.” The picture, save for the reference to the inadequate Archduke Francis Charles, is a pleasant one. The portrait of Francis Joseph is the portrait of a man whose personality was already a great asset to his country; not at all the portrait of a man who was conscious of having been cursed by the woman whose son he had slain, and feared that the blows of fate would smite him—blow after blow from youth to age—in untiring fulfilment of that curse. On the contrary, it is the portrait of a fairly strong man who is also a decidedly cheerful man, with a mind conscious of rectitude; and no doubt it is accurate as far as it goes, for one cannot expect portraits to be prophetic. But the years were nevertheless to be full of trouble: political trouble was soon to strip the Habsburgs of treasured territorial possessions; while family troubles were to make their name a by-word as that of the most tragic house in Europe.