re, of Her Imperial
Highness?"

Well enough did that soul of mud know the letter's contents. Well enough
he knew that Eloin and himself could waste no time on an insane woman.
Their chances of future position were in too critical a state. And the
packet was designed for just such a crisis as the present.

Maximilian frowned, read excitedly. He was swept along as by a torrent.
Fixed on him were the small bead eyes of the priest, darting a light,
like a flame on oil. And when the Emperor gasped quickly and sprang to
his feet with hands clenched in the manner of a strong man, the priest
was ready.

"Good news, then?" he cried. "What fortune! Now Your Majesty will hurry
the faster to Vienna?"

Maximilian gave him a glance, as though he were dense to think so.

"Here, read, read it!"

M. Eloin, sycophant, courtier, had never sung for his royal patron a
roundelay more pleasing than his prose of the moment. It caused to
vibrate the very heart chords of the susceptible prince. There were
subtle appeals to spite ungratified, to wounded pride, to ambition, to
honor. The letter ran:

... Nevertheless, I am convinced that to abandon the throne now,
before the return of the French army, would be interpreted as an
act of weakness.... If this appeal (to the Mexican people) is not
heard, then Your Majesty, having accomplished his noble mission to
the end, will return to Europe with all the prestige that
accompanied his departure; and mid important events that are
certain to happen, he will be able to play the role that belongs
to him in every way....

And then the supreme refrain:

In passing through Austria, I was able to bear witness to the
general discontent that reigns there. Yet nothing is done yet. The
Emperor is discouraged; the people fret and publicly demand his
abdication; the sympathies for Your Majesty are spreading visibly
throughout the entire Empire; in Venetia a whole population wishes
to acclaim its former governor....

Thus it was that Eloin pilfered Jacqueline's lever, and thus he used
another fulcrum, as he had promised Charlotte he would. By pandering to
Maximilian's Austrian ambitions, he showed the weak prince how they
could yet never be realized if prestige were lost in Mexico. To keep
this prestige, to increase it, Maximilian must prove to Austria that he
could hold the empire he already had, and that without foreign bayonets.
He had only to stay a short time after the