gone so far as to attend with her husband
public meetings in favor of the restoration of the temporal power of
the Papacy, at which King Humbert was bitterly denounced and abused
as a usurper! There seemed no reason whatsoever why her consort should
not live to succeed his elder brother, and as the archduke possessed
a singularly strong constitution, and had scarcely suffered a single
hour's illness since his childhood, there was no cause to fear any
untoward event. Indeed he might have been alive at the present moment
had it not been for his unfortunate pilgrimage to Jerusalem, where
in some way he contracted the malady which carried him off so very
suddenly. He enjoys the distinction of being the only member of his
house whose whole body reposes in the vault of the Capuchin Church
at Vienna, where so many hundred Hapsburgs sleep, some in coffins of
silver and gold, others in caskets of exquisitely ornamented copper.
According to a very gruesome custom in vogue with the reigning house
of Austria for many centuries, the heart is extracted from the body of
the imperial dead within twenty-four hours after their demise, placed
in a silver urn filled with spirits of wine, hermetically sealed, and
then conveyed with the utmost pomp and ceremony, though at night,
to the old cathedral of St. Stephen, where it is received with much
solemnity by the clergy, and placed in niches of the wall, near the
high altar. The entrails are in the same way removed, and conveyed
with identically the same ceremonies to the ancient church of the
Augustines, and it is only what is left that is buried in the vaults
of the Capuchin Church.

Archduke Charles-Louis did not relish this extraordinary yet
traditional treatment of his remains after death, and fervently
believing in the resurrection of the body in the flesh, thought it
distinctly uncanny that his heart and his entrails should each have
to go hunting through the city for his body on the Day of Judgment.
Accordingly, he was laid to rest just as he died, instead of being
entombed, like all the other members of the House of Hapsburg, in
sections.

CHAPTER XI

If I have refrained in the preceding chapter from making any mention
of the attainments of the Dowager Empress Frederick, either as
a sculptor or as a painter, it is because she is so immeasurably
superior to all other royal personages in the realms of art that she
can no longer be regarded as a mere amateur, no matter how