This sense of tedium, of endless bowing and scraping, of ritual hand-kissing, of special clothes for court, of pretty compliments, was in practice interrupted the whole time, but these and the endless masses were the backdrop against which the Emperor took his decisions. He met his council, his key generals, his confessor (a crucial but now wholly mysterious figure), members of his family, but all the time the final say on any important subject lay with him alone. He sat at the hub of this highly complex but thoroughly wobbly wheel while large stretches of Europe waited.
