"But, with your eyes fixed upon that banner, you may fall into the precipices which your enemies have dug for you. I have often told your majesty that politics can never be successful without stratagem. Let your standard be that of Truth, if you will, but when the day looks unpropitious, fold it up, that fools may rally around it unawares."
"Perhaps you are right," sighed the emperor; "but all this is very sad. I have meant well by my subjects, but they misinterpret my actions, and accuse me of tyranny. I go to them with a heart full of love, and they turn upon the as though I were an enemy. But I will not relent! I must be free to act as seems best to myself. The Joyeuse Entree is in my way. 'Tis a gordian knot which must be unloosed before Belgium can be truly mine; I have no time to untie it—it must be cut in twain!"
Just then the door of the chancery opened, and one of the secretaries came forward.
"Sire," said he, "a courier has arrived from Brussels, with dispatches from Count Belgiojoso to his highness."
"I had ordered my dispatches to be sent after me, your majesty," paid
Kaunitz, taking the papers, and motioning the secretary to withdraw.
"Does your majesty allow me to read them?"
"By all means. Let us hope that they bring us good news. I gave stringent orders to Belgiojoso to see that my will was carried out in Belgium. I bade him inform the people that they should not: have their precious soap-boiler back; that he was my subject, and I intended to have him tried here. I told him, moreover, that, like all my other subjects, the Belgians must pay new taxes without expecting to be consulted as to the expediency of the measure."
"Belgiojoso has obeyed your majesty's commands," remarked Kaunitz, who had just finished the first dispatch. "And the consequence is, that the good people of Brussels broke his windows for him."
"They shall pay dear for those windows." cried Joseph.
"He told them, furthermore, that in spite of the eighth article of their constitution, they should pay extraordinary taxes; whereupon they answered him with the fifty-ninth article."
"What says the fifty-ninth article?"