A mere list, it will be seen, eloquent in his simplicity: a list which takes cognisance of nothing except violent deaths, but enumerates ten such deaths among the near relatives of the Emperor and Empress. It is a list which we shall have to lengthen by the inclusion of calamities of other kinds: scandals due to the proceedings of those whom Bismarck styled “Austria’s idiot Archdukes,” and of more than one Archduchess; and outrageous marriages, as they generally seemed to Francis Joseph, on the part of scions of his house—some of them quite close to the throne—who made light jests about his agreeable relations with Katti Schratt, and left him alone in his glory, turning their backs upon the exclusive magnificence which seemed to him essential to the time-honoured grandeur of the House of Habsburg, and quitting imperial for theatrical and bourgeois circles, not reluctantly, but with an eagerness which suggested a hurried flight from a plague-stricken city. All these catastrophes will have to be reviewed; and we will speak first of the bitter fate of that young Archduke Maximilian, who, at the very time when his brother was adding a kingdom to an Empire in Europe, was led out into the Square of Queretaro and shot for pretending to be an Emperor in Mexico. CHAPTER XVII Francis Joseph’s brother Maximilian—Invited to be Emperor of Mexico—Hesitates, but consents to please his wife—Resignation of his rights as a Habsburg—The _Pacte de Famille_ and the quarrel about it—The compromise—The last meeting of the brothers—Maximilian’s melancholy—He composes poetry—He receives the benediction of the Pope and departs for his Empire. The tragic circumstances of the death of the Emperor Maximilian—pulled off his imperial pinnacle to be shot to death in a public square—have encircled his memory with a halo to which the bald facts of his case do not entitle him. The word “martyr” has even been used in the connection; and a letter has been published in which his wife, quoting Scripture, compares him to “the Good Shepherd who lays down his life for the sheep.” He was, in truth, if metaphor be wanted, merely the titular leader of a pack of wolves who came to a violent end in conflict with another pack of wolves; and, if metaphor be dropped, the best that can be said for him is that he was a weak and vain man who allowed himself to be fooled into undertaking a task for which he had no qualifications except an agreeable manner and an historic name.