Bavaria's, not ours. Of the Netherlands, which might be called
geographically the head of Austria, alas, the long neck, Lorraine, was
once ours; but whose is it? Irrecoverable for the present,--perhaps may
not always be so!"

These are Kaunitz's ideas; and the young Kaiser has eagerly adopted them
as the loadstar of his life. "Make the Reich a reality again," thinks
the Kaiser (good, if only possible, think we too); "make Austria great;
Austria is the Reich, how else can the Reich be real?"

In practical politics these are rather wild ideas; but they are really
Kaunitz's and his Kaiser's; and were persisted in long after this
Bavarian matter got its check: and as a whole, they got repeated checks;
being impossible all, and far from the meaning of a Time big with French
Revolution, and with quite other things than world-greatness to Austria,
and rejuvenescence on such or on any terms to the poor old Holy Roman
Reich, which had been a wiggery so long. Nobody could guess of what it
was that France or the world might be with child: nobody, till the birth
in 1789, and even for a generation afterwards. France is weakly and
unwieldy, has strange enough longings for chalky, inky, visionary,
foolish substances, and may be in the family-way for aught we know.

To Kaunitz it is pretty clear that France will not stand in his path
in this fine little Bavarian business; which is all he cares for at
present. England in war with its Colonies; Russia attentive to its Turk;
foreign Nations, what can they do but talk; remonstrate more or less, as
they did in the case of Poland; and permit the thing with protest? Only
from one Sovereign Person, and from him I should guess not much, does
Kaunitz expect serious opposition: from Friedrich of Prussia; to whom
no enlargement of Austria can be matter of indifference. "But cannot we
perhaps make it worth his while?" thinks Kaunitz: "Tush, he is old and
broken; thought to be dying; has an absolute horror of war. He too will
sit quiet; or we must make it worth his while." In this calculation
Kaunitz deceived himself; we are now shortly to see how.

Kaunitz's Case, when he brings it before the Reich, and general Public
of mankind and its Gazetteers, will by no means prove to be a strong
one. His Law "TITLE" is this:--

"Archduke Albert V., of Austria, subsequently Kaiser Albert II., had
married Elizabeth, only Daughter of Kaiser Sigismund SUPER-GRAMMATICAM:
Albert is he who got three crowns in o