rush of a fashion, throughout that high Miscellany
or Baker's-Dozen, the general eating of Covenants (which was again
quickened in August, for a reason we shall see): and before November
of that Year, there was no Covenant left to eat. Of the Baker's-Dozen
nobody remained but little George the Paladin, dragging Holland
painfully along with him;--and Pragmatic Sanction had gone to water,
like ice in a June day, and its beautiful crystalline qualities and
prismatic colors were forever vanished from the world. Will the reader
note a point or two, a personage or two, in this sordid process,--not
for the process's sake, which is very sordid and smells badly, but for
his own sake, to elucidate his own course a little in the intricacies
now coming or come upon him and me?

1. ELECTOR OF BAVARIA.--Karl Albert of Baiern is by some counted as a
Signer of the Pragmatic Sanction, and by others not; which occasions
that discrepancy of sum-total in the Books. And he did once, in a sense,
sign it, he and his Brother of Koln; but, before the late Kaiser's
death, he had openly drawn back from it again; and counted himself a
Non-signer. Signer or not, he, for his part, lost no moment (but rather
the contrary) in openly protesting against it, and signifying that he
never would acknowledge it. Of this the reader saw something, at the
time of her Hungarian Majesty's Accession. Date and circumstances of it,
which deserve remembering, are more precisely these: October 20th, 1740,
Karl Albert's Ambassador, Perusa by name, wrote to Karl from Vienna,
announcing that the Kaiser was just dead. From Munchen, on the 21st,
Karl Albert, anticipating such an event, but not yet knowing it, orders
Perusa, in CASE of the Kaiser's decease, which was considered probable
at Munchen, to demand instant audience of the proper party (Kanzler
Sinzendorf), and there openly lodge his Protest. Which Perusa did,
punctually in all points,--no moment LOST, but rather the contrary, as
we said! Let poor Karl Albert have what benefit there is in that fact.
He was, of all the Anti-Pragmatic Covenant-Breakers (if he ever fairly
were such), the only one that proceeded honorably, openly and at once,
in the matter; and he was, of them all, by far the most unfortunate.

This is the poor gentleman whom Belleisle had settled on for being
Kaiser. And Kaiser he became; to his frightful sorrow, as it proved: his
crown like a crown of burning iron, or little better! There is little o