; and Belleisle is seized, perhaps with
important papers of ours; and the Seckendorf-Segur detachments were ill
placed; nay here are the Austrians already on the throat of them, in
midwinter! It is said, a babbling valet, or lord-in-waiting, happened to
talk of some skirmish that had fallen out (called a battle, in the valet
rumor), and how ill the French and Bavarians had fared in it, owing to
their ill behavior. And this, add they, proved to be the ounce-weight
too much for the so heavy-laden back.

"The Kaiser took to bed, not much complaining; patient, mild, though
the saddest of all mortals; and, in a day or two, died. Adieu, adieu,
ye loved faithful ones; pity me, and pray for me! He gave his Wife, poor
little fat devout creature, and his poor Children (eldest lad, his Heir,
only seventeen), a tender blessing; solemnly exhorted them, To eschew
ambition, and be warned by his example;--to make their peace with
Austria; and never, like him, try COM' E DURO CALLE, and what the
charity of Christian Kings amounts to. This counsel, it is thought, the
Empress Dowager zealously accedes to, and will impress upon her Son.
That is the Austrian and Cause-of-Liberty account: King Friedrich, from
the other side, has heard a directly opposite one. How the Kaiser, at
the point of death, exhorted his son, 'Never forget the services which
the King of France and the King of Prussia have done us, and do not
repay them with ingratitude.' [ _OEuvres de Frederic,_ iii. 92;--and see
(PER CONTRA) in Adelung, iv. 314 A; in Coxe, &c.] The reader can choose
which he will, or reject both into the region of the uncertain. 'Karl
Albert's pious and affectionate demeanor drew tears from all eyes,' say
the by-standers: 'the manner in which he took leave of his Empress would
have melted a heart of stone.' He was in his forty-eighth year; he had
been, of all men in his generation, the most conspicuously unhappy."

What a down-rush of confusion there ensued on this event, not to Bavaria
alone, but to all the world, and to King Friedrich more than another,
no reader can now take the pains of conceiving. The "Frankfurt Union,"
then, has gone to air! Here is now no "Kaiser to be delivered from
oppression:" here is a new Kaiser to be elected,--"Grand-Duke Franz the
man," cry the Pragmatic Potentates with exultation, "no Belleisle to
disturb!"--and questions arise innumerable thereupon, Will France go
into electioneering again? The new Kur-Baiern, only sev