or else not that only, but numerous other things will be demanded
of you!"

Upon which point the Kaiser too, who loved his Duchies, and hoped yet
to keep them by some turn of the game, never could decide to comply.
Whereupon Elizabeth grew more and more termagant; listened to wild
counsels; took up an Alberoni, a Ripperda, any wandering diplomatic
bull-dog that offered; and let them loose upon the Kaiser and her
other gainsayers. To the terror of mankind, lest universal war should
supervene. She held the Kaiser well at bay, mankind well in panic; and
continually there came on all Europe, for about twenty years, a terror
that war was just about to break out, and the whole world to take fire.
The History so called of Europe went canting from side to side; heeling
at a huge rate, according to the passes and lunges these two giant
figures, Imperial Majesty and the Termagant of Spain, made at one
another,--for a twenty years or more, till once the duel was decided
between them.

There came next to no war, after all; sputterings of war twice
over,--1718, Byng at Messina, as we saw; and then, in 1727, a second
sputter, as we are to see:--but the neighbors always ran with buckets,
and got it quenched. No war to speak of; but such negotiating,
diplomatizing, universal hope, universal fear, and infinite ado about
nothing, as were seldom heard of before. For except Friedrich Wilhelm
drilling his 50,000 soldiers (80,000 gradually, and gradually even
twice that number), I see no Crowned Head in Europe that is not, with
immeasurable apparatus, simply doing ZERO. Alas, in an age of universal
infidelity to Heaven, where the Heavenly Sun has SUNK, there occur
strange Spectre-huntings. Which is a fact worth laying to heart.--Duel
of Twenty Years with Elizabeth Farnese, about the eventualities of Parma
and Piacensa, and the Shadow of the lost Crown of Spain; this was the
first grand Spectrality of Kaiser Karl's existence; but this was not the
whole of them.

IMPERIAL MAJESTY'S PRAGMATIC SANCTION.

Kaiser Karl meanwhile was rather short of heirs; which formed another
of his real troubles, and involved him in much shadow-hunting. His Wife,
the Serene Brunswick Empress whom we spoke of above, did at length bring
him children, brought him a boy even; but the boy died within the year;
and, on the whole, there remained nothing but two Daughters; Maria
Theresa the elder of them, born 1717,--the prettiest little maiden in
the world;--