hey have
discredited, completing the carefully prepared revenge of the injured
stranger, is supreme in its artistic triumph. "The Man that Corrupted
Hadleyburg" is one of the mightiest sermons against self-righteousness
ever preached. Its philosophy, that every man is strong until his price
is named; the futility of the prayer not to be led into temptation, when
it is only by resisting temptation that men grow strong--these things
blaze out in a way that makes us fairly blink with the truth of them.

It is Mark Twain's greatest short story. It is fine that it should be
that, as well as much more than that; for he was no longer essentially a
story-teller. He had become more than ever a moralist and a sage. Having
seen all of the world, and richly enjoyed and deeply suffered at its
hands, he sat now as in a seat of judgment, regarding the passing show
and recording his philosophies.

CCIII. AN IMPERIAL TRAGEDY

For the summer they went to Kaltenleutgeben, just out of Vienna, where
they had the Villa Paulhof, and it was while they were there, September
10, 1898, that the Empress Elizabeth of Austria was assassinated at
Geneva by an Italian vagabond, whose motive seemed to have been to
gain notoriety. The news was brought to them one evening, just at
supper-time, by Countess Wydenbouck-Esterhazy.

Clemens wrote to Twichell:

That good & unoffending lady, the Empress, is killed by a madman, &
I am living in the midst of world-history again. The Queen's
Jubilee last year, the invasion of the Reichsrath by the police, &
now this murder, which will still be talked of & described & painted
a thousand years from now. To have a personal friend of the wearer
of two crowns burst in at the gate in the deep dusk of the evening &
say, in a voice broken with tears, "My God! the Empress is
murdered," & fly toward her home before we can utter a question
--why, it brings the giant event home to you, makes you a part of it
& personally interested; it is as if your neighbor Antony should come
flying & say, "Caesar is butchered--the head of the world is
fallen!"

Of course there is no talk but of this. The mourning is universal and
genuine, the consternation is stupefying. The Austrian Empire is being
draped with black. Vienna will be a spectacle to see by next Saturday,
when the funeral cortege marches.

Clemens and the others went into Vienna for the funeral ceremonies and
witne