Of the Netherlands, which might be called geographically the head of Austria, alas, the long neck, Lorraine, was once ours; but whose is it?
Irrecoverable for the present,--perhaps may not always be so!" These are Kaunitz's ideas; and the young Kaiser has eagerly adopted them as the loadstar of his life.

"Make the Reich a reality again," thinks the Kaiser (good, if only possible, think we too); "make Austria great; Austria is the Reich, how else can the Reich be real ?" In practical politics these are rather wild ideas; but they are really Kaunitz's and his Kaiser's; and were persisted in long after this Bavarian matter got its check: and as a whole, they got repeated checks; being impossible all, and far from the meaning of a Time big with French Revolution, and with quite other things than world-greatness to Austria, and rejuvenescence on such or on any terms to the poor old Holy Roman Reich, which had been a wiggery so long.

Nobody could guess of what it was that France or the world might be with child: nobody, till the birth in 1789, and even for a generation afterwards.

France is weakly and unwieldy, has strange enough longings for chalky, inky, visionary, foolish substances, and may be in the family-way for aught we know.
To Kaunitz it is pretty clear that France will not stand in his path in this fine little Bavarian business; which is all he cares for at present.

England in war with its Colonies; Russia attentive to its Turk; foreign Nations, what can they do but talk; remonstrate more or less, as they did in the case of Poland; and permit the thing with protest?
Only from one Sovereign Person, and from him I should guess not much, does Kaunitz expect serious opposition: from Friedrich of Prussia; to whom no enlargement of Austria can be matter of indifference.