Sad sign what the Roman Empire had come and was coming to.

The Kaiser's shield, set up aloft in the Roncalic Plain in Barbarossa's time, intimated, and in earnest too, "Ho, every one that has suffered wrong!"-- intimates now, "Ho, every one that can bully me, or has money in his pocket!" Unadmiring posterity has confirmed the nickname of this Karl IV.; and calls him PFAFFEN-KAISER.
He kept mainly at Prag, ready for receipt of cash, and holding well out of harm's way.

In younger years he had been much about the French Court; in Italy he had suffered troubles, almost assassinations; much blown to and fro, poor light wretch, on the chaotic Winds of his Time,--steering towards no star.
Johann, King of Bohemia, did not live to see Karl an acknowledged Kaiser.

Old Johann, blind for some time back, had perished two years before that event;--bequeathing a Heraldic Symbol to the World's History and to England's, if nothing more.

Poor man, he had crusaded in Preussen in a brilliant manner, being fond of fighting.