The Ephemeral Thrones and the Eternal Theatre To the theatre it will not matter. Whatever Bastilles fall, the
theatre will stand. Apostolic Hapsburg has collapsed; All
Highest Hohenzollern languishes in Holland, threatened with
trial on a capital charge of fighting for his country against
England; Imperial Romanoff, said to have perished miser-
ably by a more summary method of murder, is perhaps alive
or perhaps dead: nobody cares more than if he had been a
peasant; the lord of Hellas is level with his lackeys in repub-
lican Switzerland; Prime Ministers and Commanders-in-
Chief have passed from a brief glory as Solons and Caesars
into failure and obscurity as closely on one another’s heels as
the descendants of Banquo; but Euripides and Aristophanes,
Shakespeare and Moliere, Goethe and Ibsen remain fixed in
their everlasting seats.
