feet in a golden basin filled with rose water, the ewer being carried by the heir to the throne, while the prelate who holds the office of court chaplain hands to his majesty the gold-embroidered towel with which the feet are dried after having been washed.  When the emperor has reached the end of the line there are more prayers, and the blessing; then a banquet is served to the old men, at which they are waited on in person by the emperor, the various dishes being handed to him by the archdukes and princes of the blood.  The old people are finally sent home, each with a purse containing gold pieces, and a large hamper, wherein are placed several bottles of fine wine and the remains of the various dishes and gastronomical masterpieces which have figured on the table during the banquet.  As a rule, the old men dispose of these for considerable sums of money to wealthy Viennese, who are only too delighted to purchase them, and thus to be able to boast of having partaken of the emperor’s hospitality!

Brought up by parents who axe renowned for their religious bigotry, in the absolutist school of the great Prince Metternich, Emperor Francis-Joseph has experienced the utmost difficulty in reconciling his religions belief with his obligations as a constitutional monarch, for he has been repeatedly obliged to give his sanction as a sovereign to reforms enacted by the legislature of Austria, and particularly of Hungary, which were strongly opposed by the Roman Catholic Church, fiercely denounced by the clergy, and condemned by the Vatican.  That he should in matters such as these have sacrificed his religious prejudices and conscientious scruples to what he conceived to be his duty as a constitutional monarch, speaks volumes for his strength of character, and for his uprightness as a ruler.  There is only one thing that he has declined to do, in spite of all the pressure brought to bear upon him by his ministers and by his allies:  he has absolutely declined to visit Rome so long as the Pope remains deprived of his temporal sovereignty.  Ordinarily the most chivalrous and courteous of monarchs, and extremely punctilious in the fulfilment of all the obligations imposed by etiquette, he has up to the present moment refrained from returning the visit paid to his court at Vienna by King Humbert and Queen Marguerite nearly twenty years ago.  Leo XIII., like his predecessor, has intimated that he would regard any visit paid to the King of Italy in the former Papal Palace of the Quirinal at Rome, by a Catholic sovereign, as a cruel affront to the occupant of the chair of St. Peter.  The only Catholic ruler who has visited King Humbert at the Quirinal, in spite of this papal protest, is Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria, who was at the time subject to the ban of the church, in consequence of the conversion of his little son from Catholicism to the Greek orthodox rite, in order to insure his own (Ferdinand’s) recognition by Russia as ruler of Bulgaria.  But Francis-Joseph has never consented to set his foot in Rome, although it has been pointed out to him that the existence of the triple alliance was imperilled by this slight placed upon King Humbert and Queen Marguerite.  He did not hesitate to declare that he would rather forego the alliance than affront the Pope by visiting Rome under the present circumstances.