Read "Rulers of Kings" by Gertrude Atherton online for free on Textopian. Full text with search, annotations, highlights, and AI-powered reading aids.
The next morning at ten o'clock the Emperor and his guests entered the great brown and gold and crimson throne room with its imposing frieze of Hapsburg rulers, its illustrated genealogy of the blended houses of Hapsburg and Lorraine, crowned so naïvely with Maximilian and Carlotta, its eleven graceful chandeliers, and its meagre and apologetic throne. This the Emperor, in the full-dress uniform of an Austrian general, ascended with no apparent sense of its incongruity, thankful, no doubt, that it stood ready for the occasion. Before it was a table spread with a formidable-looking document. On either side of the throne stood the archdukes and the ministers, also in full uniform. The Primate, in his robes of ceremony, faced the Emperor, and Fessenden stood close to the table, his father beside him. The rain had passed, the gay southern sunshine flooded the fine room, where, for the first time in its history, an emperor stood on its mockery of a throne.
It had been built for balls and other functions of young and wealthy royalty, and in those days the crimson tapestries had not been woven.