The rest his Imperial Majesty considers to be of sublimated blockhead type, it appears.

Prince Eugene had died lately, and with Eugene all good fortune.
And then, close following, the miseries of that Turk War, crashing down upon a man! They say, Duke Franz, Maria Theresa's Husband, nominal Commander in those Campaigns, with the Seckendorfs and Wallises under him going such a road, was privately eager to have done with the Business, on any terms, lest the Kaiser should die first, and leave it weltering.

No wonder the poor Kaiser felt broken, disgusted with the long Shadow-Hunt of Life; and took to practical field-sports rather.
An Army that cannot fight, War-Generals good only to be locked in Fortresses, an Exchequer that has no money; after such wagging of the wigs, and such Privy-Councilling and such War-Councilling:--let us hunt wild swine, and not think of it! That, thank Heaven, we still have; that, and Pragmatic Sanction well engrossed, and generally sworn to by mankind, after much effort!-- The outer Public of that time, and Voltaire among them more deliberately afterwards, spoke of "mushrooms," an "indigestion of mushrooms;" and it is probable there was something of mushrooms concerned in the event, Another subsequent Frenchman, still more irreverent, adds to this of the "excess of mushrooms," that the Kaiser made light of it.

"When the Doctors told him he had few hours to live, he would not believe it; and bantered his Physicians on the sad news.

'Look me in the eyes,' said he; 'have I the air of one dying?
When you see my sight growing dim, then let the sacraments be administered, whether I order or not.'" Doctors insisting, the Kaiser replied: "'Since you are foolish fellows, who know neither the cause nor the state of my disorder, I command that, once I am dead, you open my body, to know what the matter was; you can then come and let me know!"' [_Anecdotes Germaniques_ (Paris, 1769), p.
692.]--in which also there is perhaps a glimmering of distorted truth, though, as Monsieur mistakes even the day ("18th October," says he, not 20th), one can only accept it as rumor from the outside.
Here, by an extremely sombre domestic Gentleman of great punctuality and great dulness, are the authentic particulars, such as it was good to mention in Vienna circles.