On the emperor's arrival at Vienna, he found new couriers awaiting him, with still more alarming intelligence. The people were frantic, and, with the clergy at their head, demanded the restoration of the "Joyeuse Entree." [Footnote: The "Joyeuse Entree" was the old constitution which Philip the Good, on his entrance into Brussels, had granted to the Belgians.]
"And all this," cried the emperor, "because I have summoned a soap-boiler to Vienna for trial!"
"Yes, your majesty, but the Joyeuse Entree exacts that the people of Brabant shall be tried in their own country," said Prince Kaunitz, with a shrug. "The Brabantians know every line of their constitution by heart."
"Well, they shall learn to know me also by heart," returned Joseph, with irritation. "Brabant is mine; it is but a province of my empire, and the Brabantians, like the Hungarians, are nothing but Austrians. The Bishop of Frankenberg is not lord of Brabant, and I am resolved to enlighten this priest-ridden people in spite of their writhings."
"But, unhappily, the priests in Belgium and Brabant are mightier than your majesty," returned Kaunitz. "The Bishop of Frankenberg is the veritable lord of Brabant, for he controls the minds and hearts of the people there, while your majesty can do nothing but command their ungracious obedience. It is the Bishop of Frankenberg who prejudiced the people against the imperial seminaries."
"I can well believe that they are distasteful to a bigot," cried Joseph; "for the theological course of the priests who are to be educated there is prescribed by me. I do not intend that the children of Levi shall monopolize the minds and hearts of my people any longer. This haughty prelate shall learn to know that I am his emperor, and that the arm of the pope is powerless to shield where I have resolved to strike."
"If your majesty goes to work in this fashion, instead of crushing the influence of the bishop, you may irretrievably lose your own. Belgium is a dangerous country. The people cherish their abuses as constitutional rights, and each man regards the whole as his individual property."
"And because I desire to make them happy and free, they cry out against me as an innovator who violates these absurd rights. Oh my friend! I feel sometimes so exhausted by my struggles with ignorance and selfishness, that I often think it would be better to leave the stupid masses to their fate!"
"They deserve nothing better," replied Kaunitz, with his usual phlegm. "They are thankless children whom he can win who feeds them with sugar. Your majesty, perhaps, has not sufficiently conciliated their weakness. You have been too honest in your opposition to their rotten privileges. Had you undermined the Joycuse Entree by degrees, it would have fallen of itself. But you have attempted to blow it up, and the result is that these Belgian children cry out that the temple of liberty is on fire, and your majesty is the incendiary. Now, had you allowed the soap-boiler to be tried by the laws of his own land, the first to condemn and punish him would have been his own countrymen: but your course of action has transformed him into a martyr, and now the Belgians are mourning for him as a jewel above all price."
"I cannot make use of artifice or stratagem. With the banner of Truth in my hand, I march forward to the battle of life."