ne year, Hungary, Bohemia, Romish
Reich; and 'we hope a fourth,' say the Old Historians, 'which was a
heavenly and eternal one,'--died, in short (1439, age forty). From him
come the now Kaisers.

"In 1426, thirteen years before this event of the Crowns, Sigismund
GRAMMATICAM had infeoffed him in a thing still of shadowy nature,--the
Expectancy of a Straubingen Princedom; pleasant extensive District,
only not yet fallen, or like falling vacant: 'You shall inherit, you
and yours (who are also my own), so soon as this present line of
Wittelsbachers die!' said Kaiser Sigismund, solemnly, in two solemn
sheepskins. 'Not a whit of it,' would the Wittelsbachers have answered,
had they known of the affair. 'When we die out, there is another Line of
Wittelsbachers, plenty of other lines; and House-treaties many and old,
settling all that, without help of you and Albert of the Three Crowns!'
And accordingly there had never come the least fruit, or attempt at
fruit, from these two Sigismund Sheepskins; which were still lying in
the Vienna Archives, where they had lain since the creation of them,
known to an Antiquary or two, but not even by them thought worthy
of mention in this busy world. This was literally all the claim that
Austria had; and every by-stander admitted it to be, in itself, not
worth a rush."

"In itself perhaps not," thought Kaunitz; "but the free consent of Karl
Theodor the Heir, will not that be a Title in full? One would hope so;
in the present state of Europe: France, England, Russia, every Nation
weltering overhead in its own troubles and affairs, little at leisure
for ours!" And it is with Karl Theodor, to make out a full Title for
himself there, that Kaunitz has been secretly busy this long time back,
especially in the late critical days of poor Kurfurst Max.

Karl Theodor of the Pfalz, now fallen Heir to Baiern, is a poor idle
creature, of purely egoistic, ornamental, dilettante nature; sunk in
theatricals, bastard children and the like; much praised by Voltaire,
who sometimes used to visit him; and by Collini, to whom he is a kind
master. Karl Theodor cares little for the integrity of Baiern, much
for that of his own skin. Very long ago, in 1742, in poor Kaiser Karl's
Coronation time, we saw him wedded, him and another, to two fair Sister
Sulzbach Princesses, [Supra, viii. 119.] Grand-daughters of old Karl
Philip, the then Kur-Pfalz, whom he has inherited. It was the last act
of that never-resting old