d Leo X. merely as a successful rival who had
thwarted his own plans, espoused, with cautious development, but with
true interest, the cause of the reformer. And now came the great war of
the Reformation, agitating Germany in every quarter, and rousing the
lethargic intellect of the nations as nothing else could rouse it.
Maximilian, with characteristic fickleness, or rather, with
characteristic pliancy before every breeze of self-interest, was now on
the one side, now on the other, and now, nobody knew where, until his
career was terminated by sudden and fatal sickness.

The emperor was at Innspruck, all overwhelmed with his cares and his
plans of ambition, when he was seized with a slight fever. Hoping to be
benefited by a change of air, he set out to travel by slow stages to one
of his castles among the mountains of Upper Austria. The disease,
however, rapidly increased, and it was soon evident that death was
approaching. The peculiarities of his character were never more
strikingly developed than in these last solemn hours. Being told by his
physicians that he had not long to live and that he must now prepare for
the final judgment, he calmly replied, "I have long ago made that
preparation. Had I not done so, it would be too late now."

For four years he had been conscious of declining health, and had always
carried with him, wherever he traveled, an oaken coffin, with his shroud
and other requisites for his funeral. With very minute directions he
settled all his worldly affairs, and gave the most particular
instructions respecting his funeral. Changing his linen, he strictly
enjoined that his shirt should not be removed after his death, for his
fastidious modesty was shocked by the idea of the exposure of his body,
even after the soul had taken its flight.

He ordered his hair, after his death, to be cut off, all his teeth to be
extracted, pounded to powder and publicly burned in the chapel of his
palace. For one day his remains were to be exposed to the public, as a
lesson of mortality. They were then to be placed in a sack filled with
quicklime. The sack was to be enveloped in folds of silk and satin, and
then placed in the oaken coffin which had been so long awaiting his
remains. The coffin was then to be deposited under the altar of the
chapel of his palace at Neustadt, in such a position that the
officiating priest should ever trample over his head and heart. The king
expressed the hope that this humiliation