the motives with which this luminary had presented itself. The Emperor
knew very well, says a contemporary German chronicler, that it portended
pestilence and war, together with the approaching death of mighty
princes. "My fates call out," he cried, and forthwith applied himself to
hasten the preparations for his departure.

The romantic picture of his philosophical retirement at Juste, painted
originally by Sandoval and Siguenza, reproduced by the fascinating pencil
of Strada, and imitated in frequent succession by authors of every age
and country, is unfortunately but a sketch of fancy. The investigations
of modern writers have entirely thrown down the scaffolding on which
the airy fabric, so delightful to poets and moralists, reposed. The
departing Emperor stands no longer in a transparency robed in shining
garments. His transfiguration is at an end. Every action, almost every
moment of his retirement, accurately chronicled by those who shared his
solitude, have been placed before our eyes, in the most felicitous
manner, by able and brilliant writers. The Emperor, shorn of the
philosophical robe in which he had been conventionally arrayed for
three centuries, shivers now in the cold air of reality.

So far from his having immersed himself in profound and pious
contemplation, below the current of the world's events, his thoughts,
on the contrary, never were for a moment diverted from the political
surface of the times. He read nothing but despatches; he wrote or
dictated interminable ones in reply, as dull and prolix as any which ever
came from his pen. He manifested a succession of emotions at the course
of contemporary affairs, as intense and as varied, as if the world still
rested in his palm. He was, in truth, essentially a man of action. He
had neither the taste nor talents which make a man great in retirement.
Not a lofty thought, not a generous sentiment, not a profound or acute