"This is an ordinance that will enchant the youths of Vienna," replied the count, gayly.
"Here is another which will equally rejoice their hearts as well as those of all the pretty women in Vienna," added the emperor.
"Your majesty means to revoke the power of the committee on morals?"
"Not quite. I dare not fly so soon in the face of my lady-mother's pet institutions," returned Joseph, laughing; "but I shall suspend them until further notice. Now the pretty sinners may all go to sleep in peace. Now the young girls of Vienna may walk the streets without being asked whither they go, or whence they come. Reform! reform! But hark! there are the church-bells; I go to exhibit myself to my subjects. Come, let us away."
"But your majesty has not made your toilet. The valets are now waiting with your Spanish court-dress in your dressing-room."
"I make them a present of it," said the emperor. "The day of Spanish court-dresses is over. The uniform of my regiment shall be my court-dress hereafter, so that you see I am dressed and ready."
"Then allow me to order that the carriage of state be prepared for your majesty."
"Order that the carriage of state be left to rot in the empress's stables," returned Joseph. "The day of etiquette, also, is over. I am a man like other men, and have as much use of my limbs as they. Let cripples and dotards ride—I shall go to church on foot."
"But your majesty," remonstrated Rosenberg, "what will the people say when they see their emperor stripped of all the pomp of his high station? They will think that you hold them too cheaply to visit them in state."
"No, no. My people will feel that I come among them, not with the cold splendor of my rank, but with the warmth of human sympathy and human nature, and they will greet me with more enthusiasm than if I came in my carriage of state."