TREMENDOUS EFFECTS OF A KISS.
Nicholas and Francis Joseph have met at Olmütz; met and affectionately fraternised. For we are told that "loud applause followed from the spectators as the Emperors publicly kissed each other: and then the Court dinner followed, the two Emperors spending the evening together in undisturbed privacy." But this scene (see last week's Punch) our artist has already immortalised; he having sketched the Imperial couple—even as in an old play—"from behind the arras." The royal salute has been embalmed in the lines of the Austrian Poet Laureat, Doctor Von Wattz:—
"Snakes in their little nests agree,
And 'tis a pretty sight,
When the Emperors of the like kid-ney,
Do kiss left cheek and right."
But other, and deeper effects resulted from that Imperial smack! And such a smack! As though a red-hot poker should have kissed a barrel of gunpowder. For as cheeks were kissed—
Poland writhed and groaned afresh!—
Hungary clenched her red right hand, and renewed her silent vow!—
Turkey, with a flourish of the sabre, set her teeth, and cried "Allah! Bismallah!"
Naples—through King Bomba—cried "Ancora; kiss again!"
And Aberdeen, folding pacific hands, declared, "it was a sweet sight—unco' sweet—to see sick mighty Potentates in sick awmeety."
Punch—meeting his friend Baron Shekels at the Countess of Polkherlegsoff—asked the philanthropic Hebrew his private opinion of that salute. The Baron pathetically observed "it was a sight worth a Jew's eye." And so it was; even if the Jew had been Judas.