“‘As to you, my dear Marie Antoinette,’ continued the Emperor, not heeding her, ’I see you have made great progress in the art of painting.  You have lavished more colour on one cheek than Rubens would have required for all the figures in his cartoons.’  Observing one of the Ladies of Honour still more highly rouged than the Queen, he said, ’I suppose I look like a death’s head upon a tombstone, among all these high-coloured furies.’

“The Queen again tried to interrupt the Emperor, but he was not to be put out of countenance.

“He said he had no doubt, when he arrived at Brussels, that he should hear of the progress of his sister, the Archduchess Maria Christina, in her money negotiations with the banker Valkeers, who made a good stock for her husband’s jobs.

“‘If Maria Christina’s gardens and palace at Lakin could speak,’ observed he, ’what a spectacle of events would they not produce!  What a number of fine sights my own family would afford!

“‘When I get to Cologne,’ pursued the Emperor, there I shall see my great fat brother Maximilian, in his little electorate, spending his yearly revenue upon an ecclesiastical procession; for priests, like opposition, never bark but to get into the manger; never walk empty-handed; rosaries and good cheer always wind up their holy work; and my good Maximilian, as head of his Church, has scarcely feet to waddle into it.  Feasting and fasting produce the same effect.  In wind and food he is quite an adept—­puffing, from one cause or the other, like a smith’s bellows!’

“Indeed, the Elector of Cologne was really grown so very fat, that, like his Imperial mother, he could scarcely walk.  He would so over-eat himself at these ecclesiastical dinners, to make his guests welcome, that, from indigestion, he would be puffing and blowing, an hour afterwards, for breath.

“‘As I have begun the family visits,’ continued the Emperor, ’I must not pass by the Archduchess Mariana and the Lady Abbess at Clagenfurt; or, the Lord knows, I shall never hear the end of their klagens.—­[A German word which signifies complaining.]—­The first, I am told, is grown so ugly, and, of course, so neglected by mankind, that she is become an utter stranger to any attachment, excepting the fleshy embraces of the disgusting wen that encircles her neck and bosom, and makes her head appear like a black spot upon a large sheet of white paper.  Therefore klagen is all I can expect from that quarter of female flesh, and I dare say it will be levelled against the whole race of mankind for their want of taste in not admiring her exuberance of human craw!

“’As to the Lady Abbess, she is one of my best recruiting sergeants.  She is so fond of training cadets for the benefit of the army that they learn more from her system in one month than at the military academy at Neustadt in a whole year.  She is her mother’s own daughter.  She understands military tactics thoroughly.  She and I never quarrel, except when I garrison her citadel with invalids.  She and the canoness, Mariana, would rather see a few young ensigns than all the staffs of the oldest Field-marshals!’