successor, [Adolf of Nassau; slain by Albert's own hand; "Battle"
of Hasenbuhel "near Worms, 2d July, 1298" (Kohler, p. 265).]--
Albert was by no means a prepossessing man, though a tough and
hungry one. It must be owned, he had a harsh ugly character;
and face to match: big-nosed, loose-lipped, blind of an eye:
not Kaiser-like at all to an Electoral Body. "Est homo
monoculus, et vultu rustico; non potest esse Imperator italic> (A one-eyed fellow, and looks like a clown; he cannot be
Emperor)!" said Pope Boniface VIII., when consulted about him.
[Kohler, pp. 267-273; and Muntzbelustigungen, xix.
156-160.]

Enough, from the death of Rudolf, A.D. 1291, there intervened a
hundred aud fifty years, and eight successive Kaisers singly or in
line, only one of whom (this same Albert of the unlovely
countenance) was a Hapsburger,--before the Family, often trying it
all along, could get a third time into the Imperial saddle.
Where, after that, it did sit steady. Once in for the third time,
the Hapsburgers got themselves "elected" (as they still called it)
time after time; always elected,--with but one poor exception,
which will much concern my readers by and by,--to the very end of
the matter. And saw the Holy Roman Empire itself expire, and as it
were both saddle and horse vanish out of Nature, before they would
dismount. Nay they still ride there on the shadow of a saddle,
so to speak; and are "Kaisers of AUSTRIA" at this hour. Steady
enough of seat at last, after many vain trials!

For during those hundred and fifty years,--among those six
intercalary Kaisers, too, who followed Albert,--they were always
trying; always thinking they had a kind of quasi right to it;