"Were you made a sovereign by any power of yours?" asked Kaunitz. "Had you the choice of becoming an empress or remaining an archduchess? What did your majesty say to me when the insolent Charles of Bavaria tried to wrest your imperial crown from your head?—'I received my crown from the hands of God, and I must defend my divine right!' Floods of noble blood were spilled that Maria Theresa might preserve her right; and does she now intend to dim the glory of her crown by sacrificing it to her sorrow as a wife?"
"I am tired of life and of the world, and I intend to take refuge from their troubles in a cloister. Say no more! I am resolved to go, and the palace at Innspruck shall be my convent. There, on the spot where he died, will I make my vows; and as an abbess will I spend my life praying that God may give him eternal rest. My vocation as a sovereign is at an end; I resign my sceptre to my son." [Footnote: Coxe, "History of the House of Austria," vol. v., page 188.]
"That means that your majesty will destroy with your own hands the structure you had commenced; that you have grown faint-hearted, and are unfaithful to your duty and to your subjects."
"I will follow the steps of my great ancestor, Charles V.," cried the empress with energy. "I lay down my earthly dignity to humble myself before God."
"And your majesty will be quite as unhappy as your ancestor. Do you suppose that the poor monk ever was able to forget that he had been a great prince?"
"And yet Charles V. remained for several years in a cloister." "But what a life, your majesty! A life of regret, repentance, and despair. Believe me, it is far better like Caesar to die pierced by twenty daggers on the steps of a throne, than voluntarily to descend from that throne to enter the miserable walls of a cloister."
"Better perhaps for those who have not renounced the world and its pomps," cried the empress, raising her beautiful eyes to heaven. "But it is neither satiety nor weariness of grandeur that has drive me to a cloister. It is my love for my emperor, my yearning to be alone with God and the past."
"But, your majesty," said Kaunitz with emphasis, "you will not be alone with the past; the maledictions of your people will follow you Will they hold you guiltless to have broken your faith with them?"
"I shall not have broken my faith; I shall have left to my people a successor to whom sooner or later they will owe the same allegiance as they now owe me."
"But a successor who will overturn all that his mother has done for Austria's welfare. Your majesty laid the foundations of Austria's greatness. To that end you called me to the lofty station which I now occupy. Remember that together we pledged our lives and love to Austria. Be not untrue to the covenant. In the name of that people which I then represented, I claim from their emperor, Maria Theresa, the strict fulfilment of her bond. I call upon her to be true to her duty as the ruler of a great nation, until the hand of God releases her from her crown and her life."