Sir Hall Caine

The Drama of Three Hundred & Sixty-Five Days Sir Hall Caine

Book Excerptthe superstitious indignation of the Archduke, who demanded that the lady should retire from the room instantly, or he would order his carriage and leave the hotel at once. Of course, the inevitable happened--the Archduke's will became law, and the lady went upstairs in tears, while I and two or three others (Catholics among us) thought and said, "Heaven help Europe when the time comes for its destinies to depend largely on the judgment of a man whose be-muddled intellect cannot distinguish between morality of the real world and of an entirely fantastic and fictitious one."ONE OF THE OLDEST, FEEBLEST, AND LEAST CAPABLE OF MENThat time, as we now know, never came, but a still more fatal time did come--the cruel, ironical, and sinister time of July 28, 1914, when one of the oldest, feeblest, and least capable of living men, the Emperor of Austria, under the pretence of avenging the death of the heir-presumptive to his throne, signed with his trembling hand, which could scarcely hold