IMPERATOR rrw5ssi^*?s52ri t«M» * «s» » t.- • j-rfaa*;*.^ ^UTHOR( IHEMARTYRDOMOFANEMPRESS Class. Book. .Cl JO COPYRIGHT DEPOSIT. IMPERATOR ET REX WILLIAM II. OF GERMANY BY THE AUTHOR OF "THE MARTYRDOM OF AN EMPRESS" ILLUSTRATED HARPER & BROTHERS PUBLISHERS NEW YORK AND LONDON 1904 nt'^'-'^ y CI TWO •loril^i RpTfiwrt SEP 8 1904 ■ICLASS: Ci XXo. No. ' COPY B Copyright, 1904, by Harpbr & Brothers. Alt 7-i^hts reserved. Published September, 1904. 0\ Q ^ TO EMPEROR WILLIAM IL WHO — moving up from high to higher, Becomes on Fortune's crowning slope The pillar of a people's hope, The centre of a world's desire." ILLUSTRATIONS WILLIAM, I. R Frontispiece PORTRAIT AND AUTOGRAPH OF PRINCE WILLIAM AT THE TIME OF HIS ENROLMENT IN THE ARMY Facing p. 1 6 ON THE JUNGFERNSEE THE FOUNDER OF GER- MANY'S NAVAL POWER " 22 PRINCE WILLIAM SKETCHING NEAR BONN ..." 42 PRINCE HENRY OF PRUSSIA, BROTHER OF THE EMPEROR " 76 "what FIERY GLEAMS OF ANGER " " I16 THE EMPEROR, A FEW YEARS AFTER HIS AC- CESSION " 176 AFTER A HARD MORNING's WORK " 1 86 THE EMPEROR " CROSS-COUNTRY RIDING " . . " I96 STEERING HIS BOAT IN THE FJORDS .... " 2o6 RETURNING FROM A CHAMOIS HUNT .... " 222 A LESSON IN strategy! " 234 CHARLOTTE, HEREDITARY PRINCESS OF SAXE- MEININGEN, ELDEST SISTER OF THE EM- PEROR " 240 BERNHARDT, HEREDITARY PRINCE OF SAXE- MEININGEN, HUSBAND OF PRINCESS CHAR- LOTTE, THE emperor's ELDEST SISTER . . " 244 BREAKFASTING, " EN TtTE-A-TETE,'' ON A WINTER MORNING " 276 "let not THY LEFT HAND KNOW" .... " 280 Helmed and tall, on Baltic sands, Gray as the gray steel in her hands, A Valkyr waits, and, piercingly Roving the mist-clad, weary sea. An answer her blue glance demands. Comes the sad Twilight? Shall the strands Of Fate enmesh in bitter bands The Gods — O thou in panoply Helmed and tall? Ah, never, never, while she stands To glimpse the flash of hostile brands! This cup, Germania, to thee I drink. Be ever strong and free. And guard thou royal, loyal lands, Helmed and tall! M. M. IMPERATOR ET REX CHAPTER I The pretty, placid little city of Bonn was sunning itself in the brilliant morning light, where it nestles beside the deep, blue Rhine. The broad river danced and gurgled as it sped away, with shoals of diamonds, emeralds, and sapphires flashing on its gleaming surface wherever the sun caught its ripples ; and on the Es- planade and the Promenade the chestnuts had just burst into pink-and-white bloom, while in the " Hof- garten" there were some delightful bits of greensward, with fountains splashing here and there melodiously above beds of begonias, geraniums, and heliotrope. Now and again clumps of rose-laurel, of pomegranate, dotted with their crimson flowers like crumpled silk crepe, and of sulphur-hued mimosa brought from the Royal Conservatories, raised their more ambitious heads beneath fine old lindens and Italian poplars in all the glory of their spring livery. It was almost noon, and the cloudless splendor of the intensely blue May sky bathed every nook and comer, while in the distance the strains of a military band were faintly audible above the ringing laughter of some golden-locked, blue-eyed Teuton babies, running after flocks of pale tinted butterflies, and the noisy quarrels of countless rowdy sparrows tumbling one another in the IMPERATOR ET REX dew, which, hke a veil of silver gossamer spangled with crystal, still lingered in the thick grass. At the stroke of twelve a young man of nineteen or twenty walked swiftly from the " Universitdts-Gebaude " towards the " Coblenzer-Thor," looking neither to right nor to left, and absent-mindedly touching the visor of his student-cap in silent and almost mechanical acknowl- edgment of the many low obeisances greeting him on all sides. It was difficult not to be struck by the lithe elasticity of the slim figure, betraying a subdued overflow of energy, a sort of repressed vitality, a vigor and a nerve quite unusual. His dark -blue eyes — marvellous, intense, and changeable in tint and expression with every varying mood — were fixed intently before him, as if he could actually see and follow the shining thread of a dream as it wound away from his active brain, and, indeed, in that seductive Lenten weather, a solitary young man's fancy might be much inclined to turn to bright and enticing visions. "There is a lad who will some day astonish the world, for he is cast in no ordinary mould." The speaker was an old man, not very tall, not very heavily built, square-faced, but with delicate, strong features, a rather prominent nose, a large, thin-lipped, sarcastic, firmly chiselled mouth, and humorous, rest- less, deep-set eyes, which were known from one end of Europe to the other as belonging to that King of Wits Prince Gortchakow, Chancellor of All the Russias. He had his weaknesses, his foibles, but he was a true Slav in intuitive sagacity, possessed unerring acumen, and a mind as sensitive in its instincts as an electric wire is to heat, for which excellent reasons his words created a great impression upon me. "This young Hohenzollern," he continued, in his IMPERATOR ET REX well-modulated voice, which had, however, a kind of trenchant edge upon it that gave it an immense amount of character — "this young Hohenzollem will considerably outshine all his predecessors on the Throne; he will " — here he waved a hand, in color like dusky ivory, but still muscular and peremptory — "be the mainspring of Germany, my dear child, and his influence will be felt throughout Europe!" Here the Prince looked at the gold crook of his cane, just as a crystal -gazer into his crystal, and, as if he descried something deliciously comical on its polished surface; the lines about his humorous old mouth deep- ened and quivered, then he glanced up at me. "Ah! you smile, madame! You think that I am overstraining my prophetic gifts," he said, with a chuckle, his eyes swimming in a glow of delighted merriment; "but no, I am not burdening my soul with an anticipatory falsehood, for there lies in wait in this boy's person a tremendous surprise for the Teutonic race, and for the world at large, as well. ' C'est le cas de le direr'' We had by now arrived at the end of the " Hatipt- Allee," and crossed the road to retrace our steps on the opposite side. It appeared to me as if there were a heady fragrance in the air, a something suggestive of a million mysterious voices whispering secrets. The sun was flooding the wide prospect with a marvellously ethereal amber light, and I turned eagerly to my sage political mentor, who I saw was still in the vein of prophecy, "Do you seriously mean all that?" I asked, simply to set him going again. "Do I seriously mean that this at present shy, some- what stilted, and ' efface ' youth will one day astonish the world? Of course I mean it, ' cent fois plus qu'une.' 3 IMPERATOR ET REX I am only astonished that there are not more people to divine it; but, alas! one always has to look closely and minutely to see anything that is really worth seeing; the kind of moral or physical beauty that jumps at you is bound to be shallow and worthless, a mere simulacrum, an approximation to the genuine article. It's absurd — but there it is! Prince William is a nature inexhaustible of promise. He is deep as a well. Wit, generosity, race, nerve, prompt decision, energy in action, absolutely unbending obstinacy of purpose, pluck, and a rare intelligence are all there, with a great deal besides. All the mystery and magic, the essential principles of sovereignty, are there, too. He will be a man in the full acceptation of the word. I see and feel it, and the future, in so far as he is concerned, is miraculously real to me." With which peroration Gortchakow decapitated at one blow of his stout walking - cane six or seven venture- some dandelions staining with their dazzling gold the puritanically immaculate lawn we were skirting. "There is a kind of intangible sense of responsibility in such sayings," I said, picking up the "dear remains" of the dandelions and tossing them meditatively in my left hand. "There is also, perhaps, a very tangible sense of impudence in so coolly appropriating the future of a monarch that is to be," he replied, laughing. "But prophets are the most unprincipled of people, as you may now notice, and never carry delicacy too far. It is by no means a joke, I assure you, to have the 'seeing eye.' Nevertheless, I wish I could live long enough to prove to you that my horoscope is unimpeachable. Unfortunately I shall in all probability be long dead and forgotten when our young friend ascends the dual Throne of Prussia and Germany." 4 IMPERATOR ET REX During the years that elapsed before these words were proven beyond a doubt, they kept recurring and recurring to me, and it is because that prophecy was so startlingly true a one that, after a quarter of a century, I have transcribed it here word for word. Indeed, that May morning is indehbly imprinted upon my memory, as vivid a picture as had I been through this curious experience only yesterday. I can still see the little old town, with the dazzling sun- rays burning upon it, the long, irregular masses of houses standing out in varying shades of gray and dull red against varying shades of green, with a transparent blue penumbra where the clear-cut shadows fell, and the little old man walking beside me, the lines of humor em- phasizing themselves around his faded lips, and his eyes twinkling with that particularly contagious " esprit " which one rarely encounters outside the Slav or Latin races. I remember perfectly, too, the brightness of that spring weather, green and blue like a cluster of larkspurs, and so different from the silvery skies, aquamarine seas, and purple heathers of mine own native land. To-day the quiet, unobtrusive, almost constrained student of the Bonn University has brought to pass all that was then told me, and much more than that; and even Gortchakow, his Prophet in Extraordinary, were he to come to life again, would perchance be amazed at the felicity of the words he pronounced while we strolled together at random under the spreading fragrance of the acacia blossoms and the great limes, gently bending beneath the weight of their intoxicatingly odoriferous clusters of flowerets. Often, also, my retina reacts like a photographic plate, and another picture develops itself — a quite circum- stantial picture it is, too. S IMPERATOR ET REX A stretch of wind-flogged water becomes visible anew to me, and the deck of a small pleasure yacht laboriously- beating its way up the Rhine in the teeth of one of the terrible white squalls so common to that river in the early spring. Prince Gortchakbw, leaning against the bulwarks at my side, and gazing abstractedly at the poignantly sombre sky above us and at the flying foam scattered all over the tumultuous surface of the water, as by a gigantic fan, says, suddenly: "If eyes were made for seeing, see and admire the superb contrast between the glories of this morning and the desolation of this twilight, between the merry songs of the birds we then listened to, the shameless extrav- agance of flowers and verdure and sunshine, the riot of intoxicated insects buzzing in the deep, cool greenery, and the infernal gloom of those bellying clouds like an army with threatening banners zigzagging up from the world's rim to engulf us." "It's my duty to caution you," I remark, prudently, "that you will soon be drenched to the skin if you per- sist in remaining on deck." "I am not dreaming of denying it," replies the Prince, submissively. "But all I have to say, if you can bear the whole improbable truth at once, is that I am going to watch this storm from here. I am appreciative of your kind care, and I may add that you are without exception the nicest child I have ever met, but my obstinacy is proverbial, and remain on deck I will!" At this juncture a small canoe, dangerously narrow and hght, appears within our visual ray. It is tossing like a cork upon the turbulent river, and looks as if at any moment it must heel over and precipitate its occupant into the swift current. As the yacht and the canoe shoot past each other, at the merest fraction of a cable's length, we recognize the slender youth paddling 6 IMPERATOR ET REX against such odds, and with so fierce a contentment ex- pressed in every Hne of his set face and determined blue eyes. "Prince William!" we both exclaim at once, in ter- rified amazement, but almost before we can order the yacht's course to be checked and proffer our assistance the tiny craft has reached the shelter of the city quays ; and although we halt for a quarter of an hour in mid- stream, we know that the Royal lad is safe and that he needs not our assistance, for on that young face there shone a quality of expression rare indeed and wholly reassuring, and in those deep, haunting eyes, the constant miracle of absolute pluck and all-conquering power. "y^ vous V avals bien dit que c'est un gaillard qui n'a pas froid aux yeux!" It is the voice of Gortchakow raised above the shrill clamor of the wind ; then we both look at each other, for the prophecy stands out with singular clearness against the background of our minds; and although the Chan- cellor adds, in his usual bantering tone, " See how mighty is the truth! See how she prevails! See how the scoffer is confounded!" yet I now feel how serious is his mean- ing, how perfect and complete his diagnosis of the future Emperor's character. After a few minutes' silence I remark: "What of that crippled arm one hears so much about? He seemed to be using it pretty freely." "Oh," replies the Prince, dryly, "those reports, like the rest, are far from accurate. It is no disfigurement whatsoever; there is some lack of power, some in- convenience, some discomfort, but with an ardent nature like his this mishap has only served to urge him on to greater effort. In every instance he is bent upon out- doing those who are not hampered by a similar defect, 7 IMPERATOR ET REX and he succeeds; yes, yes, my dear, he is the very em- bodiment of courage, perseverance, and endurance. Don't forget what I said this morning." Why, it is permitted to ask, have misconceptions and misleading statements always wheeled and swerved about that characterful personality, in a relentless flight like that of noxious insects? Why is the world so loath to recognize and acknowledge the resolute and forceful lines upon which it is built and the real beauties it possesses? Truth is often strange, and this one seems particularly so to the ingenious and ill-informed de- tractors who have elected to sit in judgment upon Emperor William ever since 1888, and, alas! even to many of those who have known him intimately from the very beginning. There is scarcely any action or speech of his, be it ever so trivial or insignificant, that has not been seized upon by eager hands and distorted in order to gratify popular prejudices. For instance, it has been adjudged a mat- ter of the most sinister import, that he, a constitutional Ruler, should have written Regis voluntas suprema lex, in the Golden Book of the Munich City Council. Now to me, as a monarchist, there is no maxim more just and right than this in its literal interpretation, but for the benefit of those professing different beliefs be it said, that the right of inscription in the Golden Book is re- served exclusively to members of the Reigning House of Bavaria, and that the Emperor, requested by the Prince Regent to write therein, at first declined, but at length laughingly complied, leaving the terrible Latin sentence merely as evidence of the fact that he did so at the command of the Sovereign. Oh! the alleged failings of this particular Monarch have been highly colored, but — pazienza — misrep- resentation cannot last forever, it is devoutly to be 8 IMPERATOR ET REX hoped, and meanwhile, without being too copious or too communicative, it may be permissible to set right a few distorted facts, which is the aim of this simple volume. On the 27th day of January, 1859, the capital of Prussia was suddenly roused from the despondency into which it had been thrown by the intense gloom of the political horizon and by the incurable malady of its King, Frederick William IV., who, entombed in the grim magnificence of an old Roman palace, was existing rather than living out his miserable days, a mental and physical wreck, under the unceasing care of his devoted consort, Queen Elizabeth. At four o'clock in the afternoon cannon had been fired — one hundred and twenty-one salvoes, if you please — booming loudly beneath the cold, bleak, snow- laden Northern sky, proclaiming to all the good citi- zens of Berlin the birth of a Royal Prince, of a future King of Prussia, and perchance of Great Britain * also — and hi! presto! the general air of dark melancholy, of resentful disenchantment, of sullen fatigue, which had enwrapped the town like a heavy, stifling mantle, made way with surprising swiftness for an atmosphere delight- fully wide-awake, joyous, and bright. The immense crowds of enthusiasts, suddenly filling all the streets and thoroughfares, might have tumbled from the skies, so unlike were they to the usually slow and circumspect population of the City on the Spree. * As the only grandchild of Queen Victoria, and the son of her eldest daughter, he was si.\th in succession to the English throne, the four preceding his mother being the Prince of Wales and his brothers, the Princes Alfred, Arthur, and Leopold. The birth of children to these other heirs has since placed Emperor William far down in the line of succession. IMPERATOR ET REX During thirty-six shots the throng, massed around the '' KronprinzlicJie- Palais " and the " Kupfergraben- Kaserne " — where two batteries of the '* Garde- Artillerie- Reginient" were firing those momentous salutes — had stood swaying with mouths half open, staring excited- ly into space, then,* as the thirty-seventh thundered forth, clear upon the frosty air rose endless shouts and hurrahs quite bewildering in their number, power, and volume, as they rhythmically neared and receded with the fluctuating motion of those closely packed ranks. It was truly a delicious plunge from saddest darkness into dazzling sunshine, from desolation into purest con- fidence and exultation, thrilling and romantic and fairy- like. Nor was there anything of the immature, the un- finished, or the tentative in this spontaneous popular revulsion of feeling, for it had the strength, the poise, the vigor, and the alertness of an absolute resurrection to all that is hopeful, generous and loyal. In the evening Berlin was " en-fete," the labyrinthine streets, avenues and counter-avenues of that, in those days, so frankly unlovely town were superbly illumi- nated, the black - blue of the winter night had been changed, as if at the touch of a magic wand, into golden blue, with broken shafts of prismatic colors caught in every sombre nook and angle, and wonderful chains of pink and blue and green and yellow globes gleaming through the shimmer of elfin-filaments woven by the busy hands of King Winter. A thicker veil, a gauze of pearl and silver, dimmed the glacial blue of the imprisoned river and blurred the solidified surface of the palace lake, but in this dim- ness, in this soft blur, were held in solution all the tints * Thirty-six shots is the salute for a Royal Princess. The thirty-seventh told the people that the Heir was born. IMPERATOR ET REX of the spectrum, so that one could discern elusive greens, fugitive roses, and translucent waves of lilac and amber, forming a sort of enchanted mist all around the spot where the cause of all this magnificence, the new-born babe, slumbered sweetly in his satin-lined crib. Happy as every one was, yet there was somebody happier than the very happiest, and that was the Prince Regent (later Emperor William I.), at the advent of this grandchild, destined one day to reign in his stead! Marvelling, palpitating with new hopes, he, as soon as the auspicious news had been brought to him by his aide-de-camp, Count Perponcher — who now at the age of eighty-five is still a great dignitary of the German Court — flew down the steps of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where he was at the moment, and, breathlessly pulling on his military overcoat as he ran, jumped into a passing cab — since in his impatience he would not await even the summoning of his own equipage — and promising the amazed Jehu a truly princely " douceur," drove in the wretched, mud-bespattered conveyance to greet the dainty morsel of humanity who was thus transforming present and future for him. Bewildered a little by the suddenness of his grand- fatherly beatitude, but conscious — acutely, exultantly conscious — of it as a delectable condition, he arrived at the " Kronprinzliche - Palais ," and the sight that met him there banished immediately all feelings personal, for His Royal Highness Prince Ferdinand-WiUiam-Victor- Albert was not one of those coarse, red-faced, squealing infants who frown themselves sourly into this vale of tears, but a delicate, pretty baby, with an exquisite text- ure of skin, smooth and rosily pale, the tiny blue veins faintly visible at the wee temples, and unusually alert and wide-open sapphire-hued eyes already showing a grave underglow, as if the very beginning of life was for IMPERATOR ET REX him an especially perilous undertaking, to be met with extreme energy. Poor little fellow! the firm curves of his satiny lips indicated already that energy was indeed one of the many gifts he had received as his portion. The first little cry heard by the grandfather startled him; it was a sharp, curious little cry, not of pain, but of simple self-assertion. " I am here!" it seemed to say, and the Regent shook with mirth while yet his eyes were liquid with emotion. Hovering around the little one, his imposing West- phalian nurse — Frau Hagedorn — was busy with a game of make-believe, pretending that some white robes — indescribable complexities of soft laces and airy ruffles — demanded her immediate attention in a distant cor- ner, but by a series of '' etapes" and ''detours'' of ex- ceeding strategic value, ever and ever again approach- ing her newly found hero, with a very commotion of pride and gratification fluttering within her vast bosom. It may be utterly impossible for some people to con- ceive the state of Frau Hagedorn's mind, and yet it is a solemn fact that before the Royal youngster was a week old, she had extracted from what she styled his "phenomenal voice" an immense amount of satisfac- tion. It gave her, she claimed, an impression of intense vitality, of singular power, of unknown possibilities, and, arguing from these premises, she, like Gortchakow, would prophesy. His Royal Highness — Frau Hagedorn was, from the very first, punctilious about such appel- lations — would one day be a noble, free-handed Prince of gigantic moral strength and achievements. It is sin- gular how truly inspired were all those prophecies! In- deed, she was nearly beside herself with pride at having been selected to nurse a scion of Royalty, so obviously IMPERATOR ET REX destined to make himself heard in the world. It is a way women have with their idols ! One day when Field-Marshal von Wrangel (Papa Wrangel as he used to be called) ventured to ask her if she considered little Prince William as " ein hiibscher Junge " (a pretty lad), the indignant nurse turned upon the aged warrior with flaming cheeks and fierce eyes, exclaiming : "A lad! Why, he is no lad at all — he is a Prince!" "But," suggested von Wrangel, as one loath to dog- matize in the tone of absolute assertion, "surely a Prince can be a pretty lad?" The conclusion of the interview is not stated, and I only mention this portion of it to give an object-lesson upon the difference existing between the devotion ram- pant, and the adoration regardant, which love arouses in the hearts of different feminine worshippers, and also to solemnly place on record that this particular Royal nurse was not one to stand dumb if an attack had been made upon her illustrious nurseling. Indeed, in his de- fence she became comparable to a lioness guarding her young, which is exactly as it should always be. The grounds immediately appertaining to the " Kron- prinzliche -Palais " were the undisputed domain of child and nurse, and Prince Willy, " der kleine Fritz " — as he was sometimes called within the family circle during his early youth — was kept as much as possible in the open air during that first winter of his life, in order to harden him, and to combat the delicacy of constitution that had from the first filled his grandfather's heart with so much tenderness and alarm. Months passed, and the weather grew mild, the snow- filled clouds drifted awa}^ the sun came back, and his rays were like gold that has been washed and polished very carefully by a master-hand. 13 IMPERATOR ET REX How good it is to be a toddling baby! How good, especially, to be swathed in the precious laces of a baby Prince, and to try one's first steps among the blue and purple irises, the white violets, and the golden prim- roses of a Royal Park, in gay June weather, with the birds carolling their liquid epithalamiums far above one's curly head, and the unavoidable sparrows coming and going, hopping fussily from twig to twig and loudly twittering of affairs all-important to them, while yet they dart wary little sidelong glances in quest of imag- inary enemies! Everything at that tender age affords especial inter- est and delight — the velvety spiders hanging motionless in their gossamer lairs, watching for giddy gnats and venturesome flies, the green caterpillars crawling under the leaves, the dew clinging in huge iridescent drops to the thick grass, shining ruby-red in the hearts of the roses, or gleaming in the delicately enamelled cups of the " boutons d'or," and, last but not least, the soft, re- current iterations of the cuckoo whispering in the mid- dle-distance untranslatable messages of joy and of hope. When the drowsiness of noon induces slumber, it is not a bad thing to lie curled up in a thick plaid upon the russet carpet of warm, crinkly needles beneath tall, flat-topped Italian pines, and to close one's bright eyes in slumber to the tune of some ancient melody droned by one's vigilant nurse. All these delicious experiences and many others were little Prince Willy's at that period of which I write; but, alas for the uncertain glories of Northern summers and Royal babyhoods! They both have their cold, gray spells, their scudding clouds, their periods of sadness and of lamentation. One cannot, of course, always go on laughing and singing in the face of infelicitous weath- er, when the wind gurgles and hoots in the chimney like 14 IMPERATOR ET REX a distracted banshee, nearly frightening one to death, and when the rainfalls drip, drip, drip, swish, swish, swish, upon the blotted landscape. It would indeed behoove every future Ruler to receive at his birth a toy sceptre, with a thorn of gold set into its handle in such a fashion as to prick the tender flesh of the baby-hand when he plays with it, thus accustom- ing him to what he has to expect from the training he must ultimately receive, that he may be fitted for his lofty office! Our little Prince soon learned to be big enough and wise enough to take interest in sterner things than the bleating of his toy -lamb and the antics of an ex- ceedingly woolly puppy — lamentably oblivious of all the rules of Court etiquette — which was one of his most precious possessions. The time came when he no longer curled himself up in the arms of his nurse like a frozen robin during the half-hour or so of his enforced airings in the snowy desolation of a bitter Berlin winter, but marched boldly forth with a most amusing imita- tion of the guard's "goose-step," or tried to keep up with his doting grandfather, his small, golden head barely reaching that handsome giant's knee. A giant indeed! A kindly, handsome giant, with fine, regular features and a hearty, open-air complexion. A genial -tempered, clean-minded giant, who did not de- vour little children, but adored them — especially this one — and who knew to perfection the difficult art of putting himself " a la portee" of his little compan- ion. During those delightful walks the boy would raise his eyes, aglow with an admiring smile, to the grand, im- perial figure towering above him, while he, the charming giant, so fond of babies and of flowers, smiled too in a tender, proud sort of a way, and pointed out to his little IS IMPERATOR ET REX companion all that seemed of a nature to attract his childish fancy. Nothing, however, pleased him so completely as when the huge sentries on guard at the palace gates presented arms to him, for he was already a passionate enthusiast about things military. Such inclinations are bred in the bone, and there is no getting rid of them. Anybody wearing a uniform appeared to the tiny Prince as if surrounded by a nimbus of gold-dust and pearl- dust, and he would throw back his shoulders, stiffen his supple limbs, and achieve a very commendable counterfeit of the trooper's manner whenever he walked out with his highly amused grandfather. Soon many dim things were to become rather violent- ly and painfully clear to the Royal Boy, many others were to entirely change their aspect and adjust them- selves in new combinations, many more that had seemed pleasant and enticing were to assume a rather alarming significance and importance, and would shake him with tumultuous thoughts and feelings, but of soldiering he never got tired or disillusioned, which was a mercy, since to an exuberant, expansive, warm, sunny nature like his there were too many threatening shadows in that grim, glum. Spartan process which is called the training of a Hohenzollern, not to make an occasional sun-ray desirable. Soon, too, the baby-heart was destined to swell in turn with surprise, grief, resentment, despair, pride, and hope, but his fervent affection for the army never for an in- stant swerved from the height it had attained at a bound as soon as he could walk. " De tous temps'' this feeling has been even more than mere affection, for there was something of himself in it, something poig- nantly, intimately personal, and it is still so to-day. To receive military honors, to have the sentinels pre- i6 PORTRAIT AXIJ AUTOGRAPH OF PRIXCK WILLIAM AT THE TIME OF HIS ENROLMENT IN THE ARMY IMPERATOR ET REX sent arms to him, was, as I have already stated, one of his keenest and earhest joys, and with a view of hast- ening that proud sensation the child on more than one occasion escaped from his nursery, even before his toi- let was completed, to run down the palace steps and confront the sentries at their post with a smile seeming- ly all innocence, but possessing an undergleam of chal- lenge in its quality. Fixedly, intently he would look at them for a moment, then all at once the dimples about his rosebud mouth would narrow, and a ringing little laugh cleave the fresh morning air, as, having received the due of a Hohen- zollem Prince, the mischievous rogue scampered up- stairs to encounter the ominous frowns of his dismayed attendants. It must have been difficult to be severe with a little creature whose eyes darkened so pathetically and wist- fully when he was scolded, but nurses and governesses are proverbially cross-grained, and the melting eyes dep- recating censure, and beseeching indulgence, were pow- erless at last to avert a grim catastrophe. His Royal Highness, the Crown Prince, was informed of his son and heir's delinquencies, and upon the very next occasion when the embryo general, profiting by a momentary relaxation of surveillance, stole away like a thief in the night, and in further emulation of those gentry, shoeless, to go in quest of the honors due his rank, an ignominious disappointment became his por- tion. It was a wondrous spring morning; a shower had fallen during the night and the air was alive with the hum- ming of bees, the bold zigzags of swooping butterflies, and the almost imperceptible tinkle of crystalline drops falling from the glittering boughs into the fragrant bowls of the flowers beneath them, while all around were 17 IMPERATOR ET REX wafted secret and delicious essences distilled by the clean, new earth and the green things growing in it. The two sentinels at their post looked like any other heavy bodies, slow and circumspect and awe-inspiring, as they rhythmically paced up and down, but contrary to time-honored usages they held their course imper- turbably and took no notice whatsoever of the trem- ulous little white figure standing above them. The Baby Prince stared for a matter of some seconds, his level, fair brows knitted together, his lips parted, and many overpowering emotions concentrated in the spasmodic clinching and unclinching of the tiny hand which had been half raised in readiness for the return salute. The great blue eyes flickered anxiously, the rhythmi- cal beating of the lids heroically keeping back rising tears, and one adept in deciphering such signs might have read three or four separate meanings there — boundless amazement, a sort of vague terror, a pro- found humiliation, an absolute incapability of com- prehending why a noble Prince of the Reigning House should be thus publicly insulted, and last, but not least, an overwhelming sorrow. Poor little shoeless Prince, the lesson was almost too hard to bear! Violently, with a sort of catch in his throat, he turned, and, his cheeks the color of flame, his blue eyes flashing, he fled, racing up the broad, low steps and the wide corridors with the rapidity of a train of burning powder, his curls flying behind him, and his tiny stockinged feet never slackening their extraordinary speed until with a last agonized bound he flung himself straight into his father's arms. "I am disgraced!" he gasped; "the sentries refused to salute me! They would not even look at me! Oh! oh! oh!" he concluded in three separate piteous notes IMPERATOR ET REX of anguish, giving away at last to a perfect storm of despairing sobs. Gently but very firmly the Crown Prince unclasped the arms cast convulsively about his neck, and, looking keenly at the weeping child, asked with well -assumed severity : "Are you dressed in a fashion to exact respect and recognition, my son?" Incapable of mastering his voice sufficiently to an- swer, the culprit nodded his head deprecatingly — he just then looked upon life, no doubt, as upon a thing which had beguiled him with false promises, wronged and defrauded him sorely. "No sentinel," continued the Crown Prince oracu- larly, "is permitted to render the honors to a Prince who is not dressed from head to foot" — here he glanced significantly at the little pale -blue socks now quite covered with dust — "as prescribed by the regulations. Go and finish your toilet, and do not leave your apart- ments again in so unseemly a fashion!" During this discourse the boy's sobs had ceased; his soft eyes still swimming with enormous tears had wan- dered to the window — the tall window with its view of the " Courd'Honneitr," in front of which the gigantic sen- tries paced up and down so majestically; then slowly he turned them once more upon his father. They were immensely serious, intensely concerned, and in their farthest recesses still lurked the shame which had over- come him, as, heaving a tremulous sigh, and without noticing that there was a sort of grave relenting in the looks now bent upon him, he turned on his silk-shod heels with admirable military precision and moved towards the door without attempting to excuse his mis- demeanor, but evidently bent on immediate obedience as a token of repentance. 19 IMPERATOR ET REX Ah! poor little Embryo Emperor! He must have had a sense of having stepped out of a world that he knew by heart, and which had hitherto been very pleasant, into a stuffy, threadbare region from which the gilt had been ruthlessly rubbed off, and which from minute to minute would open up new perspectives, bring to pass novel and painful surprises. Indeed, from that very day his life seemed to grow passing strange and intricate, and knotted about him like the threads of a spider's web that a bad fairy has mischievously entangled around a rosebud, for he had entered upon that solemn and portentous period when the training of a Hohenzollern Prince begins, and which, ever since the time when Frederick the Great had his education beaten into him by no gentle hands, has been Spartan enough to outdo Sparta itself in its palmiest days. Fortunately the little Prince was the worthy de- scendant of a valiant race, and at the same time a true child of that Germany where discipline is a deep-rooted principle. His love of all things military helped him, too, because he saw all the rest in relation to them, and translated everything in terms befitting a soldier. The whole universe, indeed, was peopled for him with march- ing armies, and when he walked in the palace gardens I doubt not that he caught glimpses of the god Mars striding through the trees, and heard vaguely the sound of trumpets and of clarions pulsating through the air. In many ways, however, the child was becoming too serious, he used his mind too much, and, although his primordial delicacy had given way to a mere frail lithe- ness, indicating no real physical weakness, yet he gave the impression of being made of too fine and dainty a clay to be thus early subjected to so much mental and physical exercise. He was, nevertheless, by no man- IMPERATOR ET REX ner of means deficient in the instincts of childhood, and enjoyed a game of play as well as any boy of his tender age, but even these periods of recreation he managed to turn into very visions of heroic romance brought to life, in spite of his possessing a very solid and well-bal- anced little head-piece. It was a very amusing sight to watch the little lad of six being put through his paces by tall D rill-Sergeant Klee, with all the " raidcur" and precision that estimable martinet would have used towards an ordinary recruit. Pink with the quick rubbing after his cold tub, his fair locks smoothly brushed, Prince Willy regarded his imposing instructor with absorbing attention, and imitated his every gesture in a magnificently vivid fashion. A difficulty stoically encountered is a difficulty al- ready half vanquished, and truly this child looked like one who would not easily accept defeat, for within him the blood coursed swiftly and the spirit burned alertly and vigorously. He was naturally at times wayward and provoking, as all children are prone to be, but he was always generous and loyal like those in whom there is race as well as nerve and true temperament. A couple of years later Captain von Schrotter, of the Guard Artillery, was appointed as military tutor to him and to his brother Henry, the future "Sailor Prince," who was now old enough to be his inseparable com- panion. From henceforth their joint studies became a serious matter indeed, although the younger Prince could not easily be made to take a gloomy view of anything, for he was one of those rare people who find life a joy, and most fellow-beings a cause of contentment and satis- faction, his cheerfulness and gayety shining like an in- ward sun, by no means subject to the dire changes from IMPERATOR ET REX fair to foul weather which mark our earthly pilgrim- age. He was the right sort, was Prince Henry, and the passage of years has not succeeded in altering him in that respect. Up with the larks in summer, when the wonderful morning air was still keen and light and virginal, the two Royal boys were in the habit of strolling for an hour at random in the park, their thoughts as sparkling as the awakening world, as brisk and cheery as their own im- mediate environments. Their favorite resort was the " Jungfcrnsee" at Pots- dam, and at that early hour, when the sun had not yet dried the millions of liquid gems sparkling on bush and grass, they would canoe, playing at Red Indians — one of Prince William's dearest games — lying in wait for each other with long spears made of bamboo, or gently beat- ing the water with the fiat of their paddles, as a signal to the imaginary braves ambushed behind a screen of ferns, or stooping with paddles poised hearkening to the stealthy approach of hostile tribes quite as imaginary. At other times they would slip out of their canoes, and, boarding the miniature frigate "Royal Luise" — a twenty -ton cutter presented in 1832 to Frederick Will- iam III. by King George IV. of England, which to this day is the first training-ship of every Hohenzollern Princelet — and, standing upon her almond-white deck above the runes of flame written by the sun on the trans- lucent surface of the lake, they would arouse all the neighboring echoes by firing her small cannons, the ordi- nary thunderous charge of lead being replaced by huge horse-chestnuts collected throughout the autumn for that purpose. Prmce William, the bravest of small figures, in his trim blue-and-white sailor suit, with the tiny anchors embroidered on his wide collar gleaming brightly, was, ON THE JUNGFERNSEE THE FOUNDER OF GERMANY S NAVAL POWER IMPERATOR ET REX of course, captain of the " Royal Ltiise," and a very ex- cellent commanding officer he made. This was a sweet, happy time, when the two lads, in extravagantly high spirits, laughed over the most in- different trivialities, their absolute, if but momentary, freedom being the cause for a swift mounting of their spiritual barometers. The beauty of the morning sun, the crisp chill of the lake water in which they loved to dip their hands, the solemn and splendid solitude of the deserted gardens and lawns, and, above all, the calm sheet of blue be- neath them mirroring the boundless turquoise vault overhead, made them feel as blithe and as happy as the goldfinches and robins vigorously ducking, flutter- ing, and preening their soft plumage amid jets of pris- matic spray where they bathed in little rock-formed pools, a hundred yards or so away from them on the banks of the " Jungfernsee." After such exploits the thoughts of those two little Princes were disposed to go wandering, and when they entered their joint school-room, they were apt to give but a veiled and fugitive attention to the dry-as-dust mat- ters upon which they were rather tersely bidden to bend their whole minds. We have all " been there be- fore"! But that is where the superior forcefulness of that famous Hohenzollern training came in, for all laxity was grimly excluded from its make-up, whatever the cause thereof might be. It was hard, to be sure, when a great rutilant sun was swung high in heaven, when no leaf trembled on the green trees, and when the songs of thousands of birds bubbled liquidly in through the open windows, to set- tle down to work, but so it had to be, and so it was. Heavily frowning, and with characteristic determina- tion, the future Monarch would wrestle uncomplaining- 33 IMPERATOR ET REX ly with unattractive figures, with difficult problems, and with abstruse questions that continually tripped and threw him, although his instructors, distinguished men one and all, made a point of putting these things to him with great lucidity and patience. At length, at the beginning of one particularly ink- stained and arithmetical month, there appeared upon the scene the man whose influence was to be all-impor- tant upon the younger years of William II. I have in saying this named Dr. Hinzpeter. In appearance the above-named pedagogue was not particularly prepossessing; tall and spare, with a mouth which gave the impression of secrecy and tightness, and eyes of a singular vagueness of expression, yet his man- ners were those of a man reserved but competent, and it was an unutterable relief to the Prince's parents to confide him to such adequate hands. It was during a visit which the Crown Prince and Crown Princess made to their intimate friends, Count Goertz, President of the Hessian House of Lords, and to his Countess (nee Princess von Sayn- Wittgenstein), at their beautiful country - seat of Schlitz, in Hesse, that they first met the Professor, who had for a num- ber of years been tutor to the Count's own son, and who was destined to become in a great many respects the German counterpart of M. Pobiedonotzow, the illus- trious mentor of Czar Alexander II. of Russia. His treatment of Prince William was shrewd and prompt, for, judging rapidly and correctly, he saw that any undue severity would not answer with the fiery nat- ure he had to deal with, and, although sorely handi- capped by the peremptory instructions given to him to the effect that his young charge's education would have to be absolutely terminated at eighteen, and that at that period he must have become, at whatever cost, the 24 IMPERATOR ET REX most accomplished and the most learned personage in Germany — a modest demand, one must confess — he made a brilliant success of the heavy task imposed upon him, and his " maniere de faire" has been certainly more than justified by its results. It may be said of Dr. Hinzpeter that, oddly enough, he had then many friends and no enemies ; to his credit be it noted, also, that he was too frank by nature to be a toady, and that his opinions were generally expressed, when he found it worth his while to express them at all — which was rare — in an absolutely fearless and even bluff manner. Indeed, when once interested in a sub- ject he was apt to become extraordinarily enthusiastic and eloquent, to the point almost of downright violence, which peculiarity was an overwhelming surprise to those who knew him only as a quiet, retiring, shy, and absent-minded pedagogue, sunk to the very eyebrows in science. One may add that age has brought no chill to his blood, no dulling of those capacities so often wrongly attributed to youth alone. His rusty, professorial black still covers the heart of a boy, the hot brain of a youthful enthusiast burns yet beneath his silvering hair, and he follows his erstwhile pupil with an approving eye, although he has long ceased to be his Imperial Master's political adviser, and contents himself with being the sincerest of his friends and well-wishers. But to return to the time when he first assumed his role as tutor. Immediately, and almost without giving himself a chance to breathe, he became the comrade of his Royal charges in the full acceptation of the word. He entered into the spirit of their games, and in play-hours accept- ed their various incarnations, whether they represented Red Indians, Crusaders armed with wooden sabres, or 25 IMPERATOR ET REX Admirals with paper hats, as most solemnly real, and from that very moment Prince William began to ex- pand. This change was the result of no violent revulsion, but of the kindly impulse given to his whole training by the wise Westphalian Doctor, which caused him to thrive with marvellous alacrity, both mentally and physically. Dr. Hinzpeter had, it cannot be denied, the gift of creating a pleasing and soothing atmosphere about his impressionable pupil, who felt that he was ap- preciated and taken seriously, and he enjoyed this feel- ing exceedingly, for even those who most love excite- ment and stimulus crave for the occasional unbending of the bow, when the soul within them obtains in- telligent companionship and a due amount of praise. CHAPTER II Time flew on and the blunder which cost France the loss of her pre-eminence as a leading nation was per- petrated. Months succeeded months, and the little Princes looked forward to nothing with greater eager- ness than to the hurried letters written home by their grandfather and their father, from beside the bivouac- fires, their young hearts beating high with pride and delight at the news of victory after victory, and their thoughts one vast regret that they had not yet attained the age to wear a real sword and do a man's work. These months of suspense did much to ripen Prince William and to still further develop his passion for sol- diering. Winter settled down upon Germany with its cold, grim silence, and the twelve year-old boy's impatience became intolerable. Greedily he read the despatches, and could hardly be induced to absent himself even for an hour when news was expected from the seat of war. That of the capitulation of Paris reached him as he and his brother, weary of this perpetual watching, had gone to skate on the palace lake in the steel-and-silver still- ness of a windless winter afternoon. Everything glim- mered as with a soft, internal lustre, each spray and sprig on the ice-bound shore was turned into a crystal spear menacing the rack of torn, snow-laden clouds overhead. The sport was excellent, the ice perfect, and the children little heeded the menace of the heavens, for hither and thither they flitted, skimming like swal- 3 27 IMPERATOR ET REX lows on the gleaming surface, where the sharp blades of their skates left long, curved scratches of a matt whiteness. Suddenly they noticed that the faithful Dr. Hinz- peter was beckoning to them from the shore, and they rushed headlong towards him in such breathless haste that for a few seconds they could not even ask their tutor what he had called them for. As soon as he grasped the momentous news, how- ever. Prince William began to dance with joy. "Oh, how glorious!" he exclaimed; "how very, very happy I am!" He broke off short, for a hand was laid on his arm, and Dr. Hinzpeter stood tall and dark over him. "They have fought bravely and endured heroically in vain, those poor people who have just capitulated," he said, gently; "our joy is their despair — do not forget that, Prince William." The boy made no answer, and lowered his eyes, in which swift tears had risen. This was the first time that the other side of the question had struck him, and his warm heart responded at once to the appeal. To triumph over a fallen foe seemed suddenly mean and contemptible to him, and very soberly did he walk back to the palace, his bonny face unusually grave as he thought of the women and children, the sick and wound- ed who for nearly seven months had suffered a slow agony within the walls of the besieged capital of France. All his vividly awakened sympathies could not, how- ever, dampen the delight he experienced when his grandfather, at the head of Germany's victorious troops, re-entered Berlin, and when he. Prince WilHam, was allowed to join the dazzling procession of Sovereign Princes, Great Captains, and Crown Vassals forming the train of the recently proclaimed Emperor. 28 IMPERATOR ET REX Mounted on a little, speckled pony, the Royal lad rode along, feeling himself indeed a Prince and a soldier. On his tenth birthday he had, like all other scions of the House of Hohenzollern, been appointed Lieutenant of the First Regiment of Foot -Guards; he had also re- ceived the order of the Black Eagle, and on that ex- quisitely fresh and brilliant morning of the i6th of June, 187 1, as he passed beneath the flower-laden " Branden- biirger-Thor " on his quaint little steed, between his father and the Grand Duke of Baden, his whole being thrilled with unutterable pride and joy. Many a kind and loving eye was bent in approval upon the gallant little figure, many a strong, manly voice was raised to greet him quite particularly with a resounding "Hoch!" and many a stalwart heart heaved with loyal emotion as this small grandson of a conquering grand- father passed, his rounded cheeks glowing, his blue eyes lighted up, and his head held erect with intense grati- fication. High-spirited and impetuous, overeager and thought- less at times, still Prince William chose the good and rejected the evil almost instinctively; he began also to take a deeper interest in his studies, and, being remark- ably gifted, he went apace with great rapidity, aston- ishing his professors by the thoroughness of his acquire- ment, and the clear and concise manner in which he took hold of a proposition and carried it promptly to its logical end. The lad was desperately in earnest about everything he undertook, and a careful observer could notice that however quiet and precise he might try to appear, there was an almost feverishly intense ardor always quiver- ing beneath the surface ; but he looked the world square- ly and pluckily in the face, and took his fences straight whatever happened. 29 IMPERATOR ET REX It is difficult to say whether Prince WilHam was glad or sorry when he was suddenly told that, in contradiction to all the Hohenzollern traditions, he, the Heir Presump- tive, was on the point of being sent to a public school. The excessively military twist given to his education had certainly prepared him for passive obedience, but he knew without the possibility of a doubt that his be- loved grandfather was opposed to the project, that Prince Bismarck — who to him was the beau-ideal of a soldier — also vehemently combated it, and therefore it may be safely taken for granted that pleasure was not paramount among the young fellow's sensations at the time. The whole affair caused no end of disturbance at Court, and a marked and most ungenial aloofness was observed to exist for- a while between the opposite factions; but the next best thing to winning is to know when you are beaten, and Emperor William I., although vexed with himself for being circumvented and for final- ly yielding, yet never allowed his darling grandson, the pride of his heart, to quite gauge the extent of the pain inflicted upon himself by that new departure in Hohenzollern training. This prudence, however, did not prevent the Prince's heart from being momentarily hardened and chilled, for he adored his kindly grand- father and abhorred the thought of his having been overruled, as also that of being permanently separated from him. The process of thought of a boy of fourteen is some- what curious, not to say obscure, and the results dis- concerting. At that age, too, one is not diplomatic, es- pecially when for the first time in one's life one becomes conscious of a rift in the lute of family aflfections, and thus did a, comparatively speaking, unimportant in- cident cause the birth of a state of things which 30 IMPERATOR ET REX later on was to bear much fruit that was bitter exceed- ingly. It must be confessed that being given the eminently feudal spirit which in those days still reigned in Ger- many, the task of the teachers at the Cassel Gymnasium, which had been selected for the Royal lad's debut at school, was, at " prima-vista,'" a difficult one; but, as a matter of fact, it turned out to be the easiest in the world, thanks to Prince William and Prince Henry them- selves, and thanks also to the tact and wisdom dis- played by Dr. Hinzpeter during the three years which they passed together at Cassel. It had been made clear to the tutor that his two pupils were on no account to be treated otherwise than in the most democratic fashion, and that in no way was he to allow them to be placed on a higher plane than their school-mates. Furthermore, they were not to be addressed as " Royal Highnesses," and, in one word, must be forced to win any distinction they might covet, but were not to profit by those which were theirs by birth. In itself the plan was undoubtedly a good one, for so long as they were to mix with the inmates of a public institution they necessarily in fairness and justice could not make use of any birth privileges, but it is not sur- prising that those who knew the lay of the land, and especially the sensitive, nervous, and diffident nature of Prince William, should have dreaded, and with good reason, such an ordeal for him. The Royal lad himself arrived at Cassel in a ferment of expectation, checkered with a multitude of varying hopes and fears. The mere exhilaration of the unknown boiled up in effervescence within him at one moment, while again an anguish of self-distrust shook him im- mediately afterwards. 31 IMPERATOR ET REX What if, after all, he should prove to be a failure ? At the thought little cold waves stole down his back, for he could not help picturing to himself the awful shame of it! These vague forebodings and the mordancy of such anticipations were wellnigh unbearable to the proud, diffident child, and Dr. Hinzpeter, watching him keenly, had to bring out all his artillery of sagacious fascination to disperse the brooding, the dull, vague aches of regret, and the dreary premonitions obscuring the mind he was there to guide and to train. He hoped, of course, that the actuality would be far less unpleasant than the anticipation, and that when Prince William found himself really face to face with the situation he dreaded, his fears would disappear as com- pletely as a blink of summer lightning; yet these hopes might be utterly at fault, and the Doctor was therefore nearly as anxious as his young charge when they reached their destination. What would come to pass there in the next few months he strenuously forbore to conject- ure, for it was his business to keep his brain cool and collected and to avoid all thoughts which might bias him one way or the other. In the meanwhile Prince William had made an obvious call on his resolution, conquered all signs of his terrible uneasiness, and faced the music like the brave little man he was. It seems a generally accepted theory that William II. considers himself to be the most important personage in creation, a being around whom revolve the world and the stars and all space — at least so we read in the vitri- olic comments of the public press of every shade and description. It is to be regretted that it should have occurred to so few people that the Kaiser's nature is too subtle and complicated a one to be judged by sur- face appearances or by the impulses of a moment. 32 IMPERATOR ET REX Even in those days at Cassel there was a curious sort of eagerness in Prince WilHam's manner, a picturesque- ness in his way of doing things, a deep sense of the pictorial aspect of existence which was somewhat mis- leading, as were also his at times quick, slightly heed- less fashion of speech, his rather high timbre of voice, his extreme impressionability, his reckless and laughing disregard of all danger. All this did not then, and does not now, prevent him from feeling things very strongly and being very far from a self-satisfied, bumptious person. Then, as now, too, he was one of those fortunate wayfarers who see their road clearly before them, and for whom the bar- riers of duty and honor which stand on both sides of the path have no gap in them at any time. The Gymnasium at Cassel was a plain, square, stone building, without any attempt at ornamentation, and the inside was quite as grim and forbidding as the out- side. The town itself was dull exceedingly, but Prince William soon made the discovery that places and sit- uations are never so excellent or so dreadful as we represent them to ourselves before we actually reach them. A new life had begun for him, a quiet, studious, peace- ful life, and yet not devoid of that disquietude which is the inseparable companion of all ambition. So great was this ambition that at first, in his ardor to achieve success, mere outward things became of no account. His clothes, which were mostly shabby — in accordance with a systematized scheme for the repression of vanity and extravagance and the encouragement of a "whole- some" humility — troubled him not in the least; the necessity of stuffing coal into the stove when his turn came round to fulfil this homely duty, devolving on each of the bo3''s in regular rotation, vexed him still less; 23 IMPERATOR ET REX nor did the familiarity of his fellow-students ever ex- cite his indignation. During the cold months, he, together with Prince Henry and Dr. Hinzpeter, lived in the plain, gloomy old " Fiirstenschloss," a place as unamiable to those who gaze at it from without as it is chilling and deplorably depressing to those who have the misfortune to enter its inhospitable portals. It was furnished in a heavy and ungracious style, and what meagre effort at embellishment it boasted gave but an additional frown to the " tout-ensemble " of this once, no doubt, very brilliant "Electoral-Residenz." Such an abode had nothing in its desolation and absence of any but a tarnished and threadbare grandeur, to cheer the heart or raise the spirit, and at the age Prince William was then one cannot be absolutely content with the mere barren sense of duty done, much as one may desire to be so. It cannot, therefore, be doubted that he at times must have felt the void and wearisomeness of this sad place, especially when the searching winds of the harsh German autumn began to beat at the lofty, iron- barred casements of his bare, uncomfortable rooms. In the early spring, fortunately, matters assumed a more cheerful aspect, for as soon as all traces of snow and of frost had disappeared, the two brothers and their faithful tutor quickly left the little capital of Hesse- Cassel, to take up their quarters at Schloss Wilhelms- hohe, the German Versailles, as it is called. The castle stands at the foot of a broad ridge of hills, peopled with companies of beautiful trees; all around run level lawns fringed with fragrant flower-beds of great beauty; and, where the park joins the gardens, hedges of clipped bay shed a healthy perfume upon broad turf seats, where Napoleon III., during his captivity there, used occasionally to sit, casting a melancholy look upon 34 IMPERATOR ET REX the great fountains, which in the days when Jerome Bona- parte was King of Westphaha were the dehght of that impromptu Monarch's heart. Prince WilHam's passion for flowers was gratified by the loveliness of those endless spaces, where the grass was thick with the brilliant gold of daffodils, the straw tints of the primrose, the rich purples and delicate mauves of violets and anemones, and the snowy whiteness of narcissi, blossoming in their millions beneath the clus- tering boughs of Japanese cherry, pink acacia, labur- num and lilac, that stretched their foam of delicate col- oring all over the park. He and Prince Henry stepped there into the sparkling coolness of the young day, just as they had done at Potsdam, the sunshine from without meeting the sun- shine in their souls, gladly and joyously, with a thrill of welcome. But like a monstrous spider spinning its criss-cross threads, the inexorable " Hohenzollern train- ing" tirelessly thickened its web around them, drawing it closer and closer still, although during these summer months Prince William hardly thought of the morrow, and made the most of this " etape " before buckling on his knapsack for good and aye. In the autumn, when the weather became dull and gray, when silvery fogs began to rise from the lake at Wilhelmshohe and trail their shimmering folds over the little river Fulda, the Princely Household moved back under the spreading branches of the secular limes bordering the superb avenue, three miles long, which leads to Cassel and the winter-quarters at the Electoral " Fiirsteripalast." Not without regret did the Prince abandon the leafless woods in their poetic livery of golden bronze and soft, silky gray, the bare fields sliivering at the near promise of snow, for, like all true lovers of the country, those 35 IMPERATOR ET REX clean-souled ones who prefer the gentle creaking of moving scythes, the ripple of running water, and the singing of birds to the rattle and the murky smoke of crowded streets, he understood and enjoyed nature in all its moods, even the grimmest, when frost and ice grip the world in a relentless vise. It would be difficult to give an accurate conception of the kindness, frankness, and friendliness which Prince William displayed throughout his sojourn at Cassel towards his school-fellows. He certainly could not be accused of superciliousness or arrogance, for he treated them all, whatever their birth or social status, with a gentle consideration quite above praise, making no dis- tinction between them, and being only too ready to afford them any pleasures from which their lack of money or position debarred them, as, for instance, the opportunity of spending the hot summer afternoons un- der the cool shade of the park at Wilhelmshohe, etc., etc. The result of all this is that to this day he is looked upon by his former comrades as a friend far rather than as a Sovereign; and not long ago a worthy apothecary, who had been for two years at school with him, wrote a very unsophisticated letter to the omnipotent Em- peror of "All the Germanics, " requesting his permission to open a drug-store at Berlin. Quite simply, too, and without giving a sign of astonishment at this, a rather unusual departure from all etiquette. His Majesty caused a letter to be written to the chemist in question, explain- ing that he had not the least power in such a matter, a fact which he truly regretted, but that he was only too glad to promise his old " Kainarad" his hearty patron- age should the plan be put into execution at any time. Summer or winter. Prince William worked hard, that is certain! Often his young face was pale and drawn, for he had begun in the second term of his sojourn at 36 IMPERATOR ET REX Cassel to make too free a use of the midnight oil; his rooms were hned with well-thumbed volumes of no en- gaging appearance, his tables strewn with papers black- ened by mathematical figures, equations, and algebra. It would be impossible to live more simply than he did ; indeed, a "Maas" of lager-beer and a couple of "Pret- zels'' were quite a dissipation for the boys when Dr. Hinzpeter walked with them in the outskirts of the little town, and they stopped for these homely refreshments at some tree-bowered road-side inn, above which the wind stirred the bare branches of the chestnuts and lindens. Dr. Hinzpeter saw with great sorrow the moment of separation approach. This dread eventuality was daily growing nearer, for at eighteen Prince William would be declared of age, undergo the final investiture of the order of the Black Eagle, and then enter the University of Bonn, there to terminate his education. The affections of the warm-hearted tutor were centred upon the two Royal boys, who for so long had been his hourly care, and to be no miore their constant com- panion seemed to him a calamity beyond compare. Prince William, who was the very apple of his eye, received many admonitions during the last weeks at Cassel. "You are the heir to a glorious Throne," he would re- peat again and again, "to great traditions of honor and valiance, to great duties and obligations; so you have no right ever to think of yourself. You owe it to your future people and to Germany to bestir yourself and to do the uttermost in your power for the good of the "Vaterland." A King is a custodian, a trustee, and he must bear his heavy burden nobly in the sight of the whole world. That is your mission. Prince William, that is the work you are born to do, and I know that you 37 IMPERATOR ET REX will do it, that you will take your life and your mission seriously." The Doctor's vague eyes would light up and glow with enthusiasm when he spoke thus, and his eloquence had a very convincing and conclusive note in it; again and again he would gaze at his beloved pupil, discovering his very soul to him. Positively, the poor man grew thin with speculating about what would come to pass when William came to his own, and when finally he had to bid him good-bye his throat was dry, his pulses pounded, his knees all but knocked together under him, and big, honest tears rolled down his cheeks without his even thinking of concealing them. On his leaving the Gymnasium a very special honor was done to Prince William, and one which filled him with the most genuine pride and satisfaction. It is a time-honored custom at the ''Lyceum Fredericanhim " of Cassel to grant to the most diligent, clever, and meritorious pupil the so-called " Richters-Medatlle" as an especial mark of distinction, and great was the Royal lad's surprise and gratification, when in the pres- ence of the assembled school the head-master conferred it upon him, " in recognition of his uniform and perse- vering diligence and of his excellent achievements." Turning as red as a cherry, the delighted Prince ex- claimed in his characteristic, open-hearted fashion: "You cannot imagine what pleasure the bestoAval of this medal gives me, and especially the thought that it is a distinction I have really earned for myself. It is, therefore, a reward I shall always highly prize, since I honestly did all I could to deserve it!" His appearance as he spoke was so genuine, his alert, luminous eyes sparkled with so deep a pleasure, that thunderous applause followed this little speech — an ab- solute ovation which, nicely appraised by experienced 38 IMPERATOR ET REX ears, denoted not the slightest bit of adulation for the Royal Prince, but a very " bona-fide " admiration, quite untinged with jealousy, for the school-mate thus pub- licly and justly recompensed. Suddenly transported from the inhospitable "Fiirsten- palast " of Cassel to his grandfather's Court, surrounded once more by the glamour and insidious satisfaction af- forded by stately rooms — rooms with mirror-like floors, sumptuously tapestried walls, precious furnishings, and countless art treasures, lighted up by priceless Venetian chandeliers, and always filled with the warm fragrance of exotics — the young Prince was at first a trifle bewildered. The gorgeousness of the great purple Throne he would one day occupy fascinated him; it caused him a little feeling of uneasiness, too — very similar to that which had made his first trip to Cassel so unpleasant. Would he be worthy of this magnificent inheritance, or would he be lacking in those heroic qualities he admired so much in his iron-handed ancestors ? The thought was so appalling that it was a relief to realize that two strong lives still stood between him and that momentous hour, but yet in his inner mind he was busy with this future, to prepare him for which the efforts of his entire " en- tourage" had been bent since his very birth. Ah, well! we can only be young once — more's the pity — and young people are allowed to be pertinaciously, if silently, inquisitive as regards Providence. Prince William was exceedingly so, but outwardly, as was his wont, he gave no sign of the qualms he so often endured, and had already then, in his ardent desire to conceal what he considered a weakness, succeeded in creating the impression that he possessed neither much warmth of feeling nor much ardor. "Et voila coinine on ecrit riiistoire!" when one permits one's self to be misled by appearances. 39 IMPERATOR ET REX The tone almost invariably adopted now by the Heir Presumptive was judiciously compounded of youthful alertness and German bluntness. Equipped therewith, and with a curious play of the eyebrows, which was also as assumed as it was nonchalant, he disarmed all in- vestigation into his private thoughts, hopes, and fears, this ingenuous device carrying him trippingly to the autumn of 1877, when he entered the University of Bonn. No! no! he was not really nonchalant, this indefatiga- ble, eager, enthusiastic boy of eighteen — not the least little bit so — but sociability and confidence were impos- sible to him just then, for he v/as brimming over with the kind of defiance common to all those of whom one expects too much at short notice. " Voila tout I" Attended by Major von Liebenau and Lieutenant von Jacobi, he started one fine autumn morning for the quaint little University town on the Rhine. The "Villa Frank," sleeping within the shadowy still- ness of a big garden laid out in geometrical parterres and smooth lawns, had been selected as his domicile; a garden, however, fanned by the breezes from the river and gilded by the sun to one's heart's content. The in- terior there was, again, excessively plain, comprising neat, rather bare rooms that showed no effort of any kind to relieve their bleakness. Soon, however, the equinoctial storms made havoc with the garden, the pretty, fragrant flowers lay su- pine, their dainty corollas beaten into the ground, the smooth lawns were littered with the gold of fallen leaves, and the pink snow of dismantled rose-petals, and all at once, somehow, one felt the change in nature which so closely resembles that of approaching death. The wild force of winter and its reckless fury arrived, and the smooth-flov/ing Rhine became at times a riot- ous race of headlong water, a grand, rushing volume, vio- 40 IMPERATOR ET REX lent and superb beyond description, striking in huge, feathery masses of interrupted turbulence wherever a rock raised its gray head or a promontory jutted out into the stream. Often the Prince, who regarded the vault of heaven, whatever its color might be, as the only proper roof for humanit}'', marched gayly through the pelting rain or the driving snow to take his constitutional along the river-bank — where, during the summer, he had loved to sketch — his lightness of step not in the least hampered by the splashing gravel or the slippery iciness under his feet, "a brisk walk, whatever the weather," being one of his pet maxims. The years he spent at the celebrated Rhenish Univer- sity were not, however, destined to prove either as be- neficent or as pleasing as the sojourn at Cassel. They were for him a complete transplantation into entirely new surroundings and conditions, for, instead of the easy and unaffected comradeship of mere boys, and the wise and genial companionship of Dr. Hinzpeter, not to mention the delightful and intimate intercourse which he had had with his brother, he now found himself thrown into the constant society of gay and festive "Jimkcrs," who, overjoyed to become intimate with their future Sovereign, and keeping a wary eye on the ultimate advantages to be derived therefrom, created around him an atmosphere of toadyism and adulation. ' Moreover, one of the smartest corps of officers in the German army, the " Konigshnsaren," was then stationed at Bonn, and Prince William, whose military enthusiasm was as thorough as ever, spent a considerable portion of his time, booted and spurred and decked in all the glory of his lieutenant's uniform, with those dashing and hot- headed scions of the German aristocracy. The Hohenzollern training included, before the pres- 41 IMPERATOR ET REX ent era, one feature especially galling to a high-spirited, proud nature, and that was the inadequate and insuffi- cient allowance accorded to the young Princes of the reigning House. In Prince William's case this parsi- mony was redoubled and insisted upon with what one might really call ferocious exactitude, so much so, in- deed, that had it not been for the cleverness and exces- sive economy of Major von Liebenau, who had charge of his household during the sojourn at Bonn, it would have been impossible for him to have lived in a manner befitting his rank — even as a student-Prince. It does not seem to have entered anybody's head at Berlin then, that the young man could really suffer from such a state of affairs — Spartans, as a rule, always lacked imagination, particularly where others were concerned — but pinching and scraping are uncongenial to the young, or else they must have a special vocation for a narrow-minded and miserly existence, which inclination certainly was not to be laid at Prince Wihiam's door. It was, moreover, never willed by Providence that a youth of his complexion should pass the spring-time of his life in wretched cheese-paring plots and plans, thereby missing all which that spring-time had to offer that was sweet and pleasing. It is enough to envenom the heart and soul of any of God's creatures to be put in so false a position, and to make one churlish and sulky as well. It is therefore little short of marvel- lous that so unpleasant a result should not have been evoked in this instance, and yet more so that it should never have occurred to Prince William to make an ap- peal to his grandfather, who would undoubtedly have doubled or trebled his meagre allowance for the mere asking, and without breathing a word of it to any one. That, too, is very characteristic of Emperor William, who abhors anything not quite frank and above board. 42 IMPERATOR ET REX Before long the dreamy, concentrated nature of the young Prince was in a measure wrested from its normal development by this plunge into the world. Indeed, the old state of affairs influenced him only in so far as that he kept himself still somewhat in reserve, and that at times he preserved a strict privacy of his own. He did not become lazy or self-contented, and his professors, among whom were Halschner, Loersch, and von Stintzing, spoke highly of his talents, application, and industry; but, although he refused to lead the silly, frivolous life of the ordinary run of rich students, yet for a boy of his age the satisfaction of almost complete emancipation, flavored with the pungent and penetrat- ing incense of flattery, had its dangers. Greatly to his credit be it therefore said, that his head was not turned by the suddenness of the change from the cool and soothing penumbra of his existence at Cassel to the warm, fragrant, adulatory atmosphere which sur- rounded him at Bonn ; but somehow it was not quite the same Prince William who now went in and out of the erstwhile so silent and peaceful " Villa Frank," amid the pounding of hoofs and the grinding of carriage-wheels, escorted by a veritable " cohue" of vivacious "Seig- neurs,'' who laughed, sang, and joked without cessa- tion; there was a difference, subtle, almost undetect- able, but of which the perverse detractors of Royalty and all that hangs thereto made excellent use, you may believe me. It was not in flesh and blood to remain quite un- moved by the tributes paid to him during these Univer- sity years, especially since that flesh and blood were virgin gold, unstamped as yet and un wrought by the cruel fingers of experience. Say what you will, it is flattery that generally wins the day, and when a youth of eighteen, who has hither- 4 43 IMPERATOR ET REX to been treated with great severity, finds out all at once that he cannot open his mouth without arousing thun- ders of ecstatic approval and admiration, that he can- not express an opinion without its being declared the most novel, original, transcendent, and altogether per- fect ever advanced, is it not natural that this youth should show some superciliousness in the tilt of his nose, a" soupgon" of self-assertion in the twirl of his dawning mustaches, and a faint tinge of masterfulness in the straightening of his shoulders? As a matter of fact. Prince WilHam's faculties were at that period often in a whirl when he pictured his fut- ure to himself. Imagination flew on the wings of his desire, and there that future stood before him in all its sumptuous splendor — strong, powerful, and glowing — and, as he dreamed, his eyes lightened, burned, his blood came and went in his cheeks, his lips parted as if to ex- press the inexpressible — the wild hunger and the wild triumph of his soul. But souls are apt to ache after such commotions, and presently the price had to be paid by a mood of desperate renunciation and discour- agement, of resentment against himself and all his apostles, followed in turn by a kind of exhaustion which made the already-mentioned detractors declare that the Prince was abnormally sulky. These conflicting emotions, so natural in a youth of William's temperament, were not understood during the visits which he paid to Berlin and Potsdam, where the alternate exuberance and depression of his spirit were alike regarded as subjects for condemnation, adminis- tered in a manner peculiarly galling to his feelings, with- out any allowance whatsoever being made for the mould of his character. The Emperor alone never varied in his boundless tenderness and leniency. The dear old man was not in 44 IMPERATOR ET REX the habit of chaining up his natural impulses, and his natural impulses all converged to idoHze his grandson, and to succumb to the enchantment of being first and foremost in his affections. What call had he to be Spartan and severe and a "troiible-fete" when his faith in the boy remained un- shaken by other people's scepticism and subtle reason- ing ? He only cared to dispel the clouds which repeated admonitions brought upon the smooth brow of his dar- ling. At all events, when he saw him with an unsmiling face, all the severe resolutions he might momentarily have been induced to make were checked, and the im- petus of his intent broken like a dry twig, since, for him, there was then nothing more pressing and urgent to do than to coax back the smile which suited those 5''0ung lips so well. Thus did the aged Monarch persevere in his half-humor- ous, wholly good-natured friendliness towards the world in general and his entire family in particular, beloved and honored by all, and fairly worshipped by his grandson. When, on the 2d of June, 1878, Nobihng shot at and very nearly killed Emperor William I., Prince William was completely prostrated by grief at first, his impressionable nature making him revolt with ter- rible anger against this the first great sorrow of his life. The days which followed the cowardly "attentat " upon the noble and kindly old man were for his grand- son indescribably wretched; he relt fagged-out as by some tremendous exertion, and I have it from an eye-witness that his haggard face and miserable eyes were pitiful to behold. Nor is this strange, for I remember what a pathetic impression the wounded Emperor created even upon me, when, as soon as he was able to be moved, he came to the Austrian baths of Teplitz-Schonau, to try and recover a little strength. 45 IMPERATOR ET REX To see the stalwart giant, now bent and tottering, leaning feebly on the arm of an aide-de-camp during his short little walks in the park, where the sun shone strong and clear, the birds flew merrily about their af- fairs, and the flowers breathed forth their perfumes, was a sight to hurt one deeply. All the world was as it had ever been; but, oh! the difference in him! And yet, although one's heart was full of unshed tears at so piteous a sight, when one watched his patient face, his unfailing smile, and heard the brave intonation of his voice, a strange feeling of exaltation took possession of one and made one's heart beat with admiration. He was really a man to renew one's faith in human nature, this old Emperor, so good and so simple, and so plucky — indeed, William the Great — who never uttered a single word of complaint, and in whose eyes so wonder- ful and clear a light shone. How well I remember him walking slowly, slowly backward and forward on the grass one fresh, bright morning, leaning upon the arm of the great Iron Chan- cellor, who had arrived the night before on a visit to him! The contrast between them was almost painful, so insolently healthy and strong did Bismarck appear beside his Imperial Master, who, with his head still band- aged, his arm in a sling, and wearing civilian clothes — in itself a most unusual and alarming thing with this warrior Monarch — clung to the support of his powerful old friend and counsellor. By - and - by they came and sat down on a wicker bench under an awning placed every morning beneath the trees of a side-allee for the patient's convenience. On a little table stood a carafe of water, some tumblers, and a sugar-bowl. Prince Bismarck poured some water into a tumbler, put in two lumps of sugar, stirred the 46 IMPERATOR ET REX mixture with the minute attention he accorded to all he did, and, when the sugar was completely dissolved, added a few drops of some medicine or tonic to it, from a " flacon," which he took from a case on the table, and handed the now rose-colored beverage to the Emperor, who drank it off in a series of little sips. I watched the whole performance from a secluded spot where I was in the habit of walking up and down every- day for an hour after my bath — for I also was there to recover from an injury, occasioned by a severe fall with my horse, which had left me distressingly lame. I had not the faintest idea that I was observed, and purposely kept at a distance, but, as was soon to be proved to me, my hopes were quite fallacious! The park at Teplitz-Schonau is a charmingly pretty place, a surprisingly jolly place, too, with clematis and jasmine climbing all over the queer little kiosks, where military music is played in the afternoon, and where wisteria twines about the trunks of the trees with af- fectionate persistency. Half an hour later, as I was walking home to my second breakfast, along the sunny lawns dotted with flower-beds and rustic benches, and pervaded by a delicious coolness, stillness, and fragrance, I suddenly came, at the turning of a shady path, face to face with the Emperor, accompanied now by one of his aides-de- camp. A smile of indulgent amusement appeared on his lips, and, as I courtesied as low as my stiff knee allowed, it merged into a genuine chuckle, the satisfied chuckle of a man whose tactics have succeeded beyond his hopes. Very much surprised, I looked at him with absolute bewilderment, for I could not understand why I thus aroused his hilarity, nor was I less astonished when he put forth his uninjured hand — disengaging it for that 47 IMPERATOR ET REX purpose from his stolid escort's arm — and deliberately pinched my ear. I was so young in those days that, in spite of " my great dignity as a married woman," the Emperor always treated me as a mere child. "I have caught you finely, madame!" he laughed. " So you deign to show yourself, now that Croquemitaine is gone! I saw you hiding an hour ago, a flitting white- ness amid the green bushes yonder, as if my estimable friend Bismarck was the Werewolf! Tell me why you gave yourself such superfluous pains, since we both saw you as plain as day?" I, too, could not help laughing now, and, catching the spirit of the dear old man's mood, I said, sedately; "With sentiments of the deepest regret I must re- spectfully decline to tell Your Majesty the reasons of my suspicious conduct, which now humiliate me be- yond measure when I recall them." "Oh, my dear child," objected he, " I know your rea- sons very well." He chuckled again. "You knew that you could not take it upon yourself to be graciously friendly, and as under the circumstances you did not wish to hurt my poor, well-meaning friend's feelings, and perhaps burden my own soul with a falsehood too — since I should have been forced to explain that this is your habitual manner — you went into hiding!" Now, ever since France has been a republic and has repudiated her title as Eldest Daughter of the Church, we Bretons hate being classed with the French, but the disaster of 1870-71 has left deep scars on French and Breton hearts alike, and, moreover, in those days my newly acquired Austrian nationality added but fuel to the flame of my very real resentment against Bismarck. A childish feeling, the common -sense people will say, and that is just exactly what it was — a childish feeling, born and bred of the mad exasperation which the mere 48 IMPERATOR ET REX name of the victorious iron-fisted General used to arouse during all the years of my childhood, even in silent, sedate Brittany. So I was a Httle ashamed of myself now for having allowed this " enfantillage " to rob me of the sincere pleasure which the kindly, cheery "good- morning" of the Emperor daily afforded me, and I dare say that I must in consequence have looked exceedingly sheepish. No doubt he noticed this, for he immediately took up the joke again, fearing evidently to pain me by any graver allusion to my feelings in the matter. "Well! well!" he said, with mock truculence. "I wish I could have seen you two quarrelling! But in a universe like ours nothing is impossible, for there are more things in heaven and earth than people generally dream of; so there is no reason why, instead of quarrel- ling, you should not eventually become the best of friends." "Without doubt," I conceded, merrily, "everything is possible, and when one is so far on one's way to the light it is clearly one's duty to go yet further." "That's right, that's right," approved the Emperor, with a third chuckle. "Cultivate the enemy's acquaint- ance, talk with him, set him thinking, and yet" — he concluded with sudden gravity — "if you did that you would be yourself no longer, which would be a thousand, thousand pities, so I will not press the suggestion." Some hours after this characteristic little incident I received an immense bouquet of snowy Marguerites, scarlet poppies, and deep sapphire-blue " Kaiserb lumen," tied by long streamers of white satin powdered with golden '' Fleurs dc Lys." Reposing within the flowers was a card upon which was inscribed, beneath the Im- perial Crown of the august sender: "Admirez ce singidier assemblage, qui satis jera, je Vespere, 49 IMPERATOR ET REX le grand cceur Breton et la petite tete frangaise potir qui il est destine!" (Admire this singular assemblage, which will, I hope, satisfy the big Breton heart and the little French head for which it is destined!) This was typical of Emperor William I., who was an irresistible old man, and to please whom I am certain I could have been brought to smile upon a dozen Bis- marcks, even in those irrational and impetuous days of my early youth. The so-nearly-successful attempt upon his grand- father's life was not the only sorrow which befell Prince William during his University course, for the shade of yet other troubles fell upon him with the death of his brother Prince Waldemar, and that of his aunt Grand Duchess Alice of Hesse, mother of the present Empress of Russia — events which deeply saddened the Imperial Family. During that period of mourning the young man lived very quietly and in almost complete retirement. He walked a great deal about his garden and on the river- path below, along the racing Rhine, or sat down to sketch some of the charming " points de vice " with which that picturesque shore abounds, for already then he was no mean hand with pencil and brush, and was a remark- able colorist as well. When he came home, fagged-out and dusty, he used to spend long hours in his study — a remarkably simple and work-a-day room — reflecting upon the lamentable fact that life is a bundle of pins, and man its pin-cushion — a truism, certainly, but a use- ful one to assimilate. He reverted to his old habit of reading much, choosing haphazard from the miscellaneous collection of volumes, comprising Dickens, Jules Verne, Droz, the German poets, Dumas, Byron, etc., filling the shelves behind his writing-table. Often, also, he would gaze abstractedly 50 IMPERATOR ET REX at the many large, framed photographs of the German fleet hanging on the walls, vaguely promising himself that one day he would create a splendid navy for the Empire — a plan which since the very beginning of his reign he has insisted upon. Meanwhile the seasons came and went with their usual praiseworthy regularity. The shining forests on the Rhine, turned to bronze by the autumn winds, were covered with their first dainty mantle of snow when the Grand Duchess von Hesse died ; the river gleamed violet-gray through the late March fogs when little Prince Waldemar followed her into the grave, and now there came with the spring flowers of 1879 a more than ordinary lavishness of light and color, of depth and at- mosphere into the Prince's life, something immeasurably beyond anything delicious he might have imagined or dreamed. There came into his eyes an unwonted glow — a softness quite delightful to watch. The Prince Charming had found his " Dornroschen." The Prince was in love! CHAPTER III ScHLOss Prinkenau! a fair castle, looking, turret for turret and battlement for battlement, as if torn bodily from the pages of some quaint, beautifully illu- minated volume of old legends. Vast, irregularly pictu- resque, the older portions quite grimly mediaeval — a veri- table lake-side fortress, with ponderous, square towers, gray stone walls, and moss-tinted machicolations — the more modern wings of gleaming granite, with fanciful carvings, spires, and pinnacles, light, gay, and hospitable, profiling their clear outlines against the vivid green of beech-trees, the dark, metallic hue of firs and pines, and the more delicate and silver-dappled tints of sycamores. The facade, mirroring its capricious contours in the waters of an exquisitely transparent little lake, arose proudly from banks of hortensias in full bloom, two swelling waves of purple and mauve, indigo and azure, deep rose and faint pink, whereon the sun-rays lovingly lingered, while to the right and left some gnarled old willows, bending over the waters, supported clambering roses both white and red, spreading to the topmost branches their nodding fragrance. A pretty picture, say you! Yes, undoubtedly, but " Wacht een beche," as the good Dutch say, for there is more to see, something in fact which, when he gazed upon it, made our Imperial hero's heart quicken and tremble. In the depths of the park, where the sun shone gently through a cool, green veil, gilding here and there with 52 IMPERATOR ET REX pinkish gold the points of the spears of grass through the interstices of the fohage, a hammock was swinging between two rose-garlanded firs — roses had a habit of climbing and clambering everywhere at Schloss Prin- kenau — and in that hammock fast asleep lay a girl whose rounded cheeks were flushed with the warm, healthy shell-pink, which is the prerogative of those who prefer the air as God made it to the comparative stuffiness of even the vastest of palaces. She was young, barely more than twenty, with softly chiselled features, hair sombre gold in the shadow, but where the truant sun-rays touched it the hue of liquid topaz — light and sparkling, indeed as if delicately pow- dered with jewel-dust — and a pretty mouth half parted in a smile, as if her dreams were singularly pleasant ones. The picture which she presented was perfect in tone, shape, and coloring. She wore a garden frock of light muslin the soft, bil- lowy folds showing to immense advantage her slender, reclining form, while some stray petals, wafted by the light breeze from the roses above, gave here and there delicious touches of satiny red and pale yellow. Even that sumptuous park would have looked dreary and empty had she not been there, so well did she fit in the princely landscape, so aptly did she form the very climax of that sylvan " niise en scene." The grand old trees seemed to whisper to one another, as did the tall, imperial lilies, the white meadow-sweets, and the haughty peonies, scattered in the grass, that the sight was good to behold, and here and there a little thrill of inexpressible gladness seemed to ruffle like crisping wavelets a field of anemones of all imagi- nable changeful hues stretching " d, perte de vue " the silk of their shivering corollas beneath the spreading boughs. 53 IMPERATOR ET REX Suddenly the branches of a Siberian pine were gently parted, and a young man, erect and graceful, stepped into the bower where the hammock was swung, while a voice, youthful and well modulated, though expressing the extreme of joyful surprise, exclaimed: " Dornrosdicit !" The Prince had found his Princess! This is the true and authentic story of how it came about that Prince William, invited by Duke Frederick of Schleswig - Holstein - Sonderburg - Augustenburg, to visit him and his beautiful wife, the Duchess Adelheid, at their Castle of Prinkenau, left his heart behind him when a few weeks later he returned to his grandfather's Court. When he placed this newly born love of his before his family, he assumed a tone of high detachment, as was his invariable custom when desirous of concealing his deeper emotions, although his heart went hot and cold at the thought of his " Dorjtroschen," and at the inward consciousness that his way of expressing himself was but the blighted bud of what he had planned to say. So once more the ever-ready detractors had fair play, and clamored violently against so persistent a coldness and hardness of heart. After this, indeed, William — now a full-blown Royal Prince, graduated with honors from the University, and, placed in possession of all the privileges of his rank and position — seemed determined to show himself inore stiff and reticent than ever. Decidedly he was becoming a difficult puzzle to solve, for his reserve of manner was singularly impenetrable, he examined everything with his deep-blue eyes, calmly, distantly, and with no ap- parent interest, and when he spoke it was with a sort of gentle but icy indifference, although he certainly con- veyed no impression of sleepiness or abstraction. 54 IMPERATOR ET REX Finding but little sympathy around him, he simply gave none, and was so unlike the ordinary run of young men that it was difficult to imagine him what he really was — imaginative, desirous of sympathy, hungering with a strange, pathetic, and never-satisfied hunger for ap- preciation. Those who, like Gortchakow, looked far, far deeper than the surface, knew that he had been ground in a ruthless mill — a mill which comes perilously near to grinding soul and heart to powder; but how many were there clever enough to thus explain his curious attitude ? Moreover, he was at that period of life when the whole being seems suddenly to become restless with that bewildering sensation of never having really lived, and when the young man scarcely knows how he should proceed to the fulfilment of all the tasks he has set for himself, all the dreams with which his brain aches. It is called by psychologues a " sickness of the soul" — not a bad definition for people who as a rule make a virtue of rendering everything they say unin- telligible and obscure. There was yet another, however, who in those days made no secret of his opinion that Prince William was misjudged, and that he would in a near future surprise the world and make a great and glorious name for him- self. This was King Christian of Denmark, who ever since a visit to Schloss Rumpenheim in Hesse (where a series of magnificent fetes were being given in honor of the aged Emperor William I., and where the Danish Monarch met Prince William) became much attached to him. Indeed, His Majesty of Denmark was so indignant when he witnessed the cavalier fashion in which the Imperial and Royal guests present seemed to wilfully 55 IMPERATOR ET REX wound the German Heir Presumptive, that he threw a great additional warmth into his own treatment of the young Prince and became his constant companion. From early morn till late at night the slender lad of twenty and the big, kindly, gentle-eyed man of sixty were together, and the King, filled with concern and sympathy, managed with the aid of that well-known smile of his, which went as an " avant-garde " to disarm resentment, to delicately probe the wounds inflicted upon his protege, and affably, softly, and persistently applied invisible balm of a very curative nature. When in the company of congenial people, be it said, Prince William was at once transformed, his very voice became brisk and cheerful, and its abruptness was so tempered by manifest good-will that it grew absolutely lovable, especially as there was then and is still to-day something pleasingly boyish in its timbre. At such times, too, he carried his head well thrown back in a singularly un-self -conscious manner, and not a bit rigidly or stiffly, his vehemence of action lending him nothing but an additional and very personal charm. King Christian, a most inspiritingly young old man, dispensed comfort and amusement (two commodities which count for infinitely more with some spirits than stern reprimand and assiduous preachings) unsparingly, with the very natural result that this attitude of his has never been forgotten, and that William II. displays towards few people so great an amount of affection, rev- erence, and touching, almost filial deference, as that which he shows to this consoler of his youthful trials. One of his first visits after his accession to the Throne in 1888 was to this old friend, upon whom he has not ceased to shower the most profuse and lovingly thought- out attentions, for Emperor William possesses to an extraordinary degree "la mhnoire du cceur," and when he 56 IMPERATOR ET REX thinks that he has reason to be grateful, be it for the small- est service, he knows well how to display the deepest and most touching gratitude. There is never with him any question of "shirking or burking it." It is a won- derful quality — that of gratitude — and a very wide- spread belief prevails to the effect that Monarchs from the very beginning of Monarchy have been lamentably lacking in this respect, Not so, however, Emperor William, who never and under no circumstances whatso- ever omits to remember the very slightest kindness done to him or those he loves. With each step that he took forward, now, however, Prince William gradually regained an equanimity that was really natural to him. Although the part he had to play was an odd and a difficult one, he faced the complexities of the game, and by the time his engage- ment was formally announced felt happier than he had ever been since his childhood. His whole nature now aimed at an atmosphere of tenderness and of rever- ent romance; but his entourage did not harmonize with such a mood, and so he kept it carefully concealed, like a man in a climate that does not suit his health, and who takes every precaution against outside influences. All the scurrilous stories circulated concerning the many alleged intrigues of Prince William with women of all classes and conditions are the most abominable tissue of lies ever invented. Immorality of whatsoever a kind has always filled him with a sort of physical dis- gust and a feeling of uncomprehending wonder, certain- ly quite distinct from prudery, but which set him very much apart from other young men similarly situated. The feverish brilliancy of vice was to him utterly hateful. He realized, doubtless, as all other men do, its power and magnetic influence; but those who claim that he yielded to either simply do not know whereof 57 IMPERATOR ET REX they speak, for his purity of life was even frequently made the subject of unkind comment at Vienna, where extraordinary punctiliousness in that particular is not the order of the day — or night! In the days of which I now speak Prince William and Crown Prince Rudolph of Austria were intimate friends, and the latter, who was justly reputed to play sad havoc with feminine hearts, and to be one of the gayest of the gay, looked with amazement upon the singularly blame- less career of his dearest "chum," as he used to call the Prince. Indeed, I have heard him myself declare many a time that it was quite discouraging to try and get Will- iam interested in what usually attracts and fascinates benedicts, because he was so obstinately deaf to the riotous voice of mere pleasure. I have watched him personally during a remarkably vivacious "Faschmg" at the Austrian Court, and was really astonished to see so young a man, look as if he deliberately ignored the brilliant revellers, who were so near to him in body, and appeared so far away from him in mind and similarity of tastes. He impressed me decidedly as some one who has a great purpose in view, which serves him as a very efficient deterrent, and which, like a delicious " mirage " rises and floats before the real scenery that lies temptingly spread along the borders of the "primrose path." He had all the more merit in thus acting, since his birth and youth alone would have given him a marked position in the front rank of the endless turmoil, noise, and intrigue which make up " le nionde ou Von s' amuse,'' and since it falls to the lot of Royal and Imperial Princes to find many beautiful and eminently desirable women, enthusiastically ready to cross in their favor the border-line which separates mere indiscretion from something far worse. Since the day when he found his "Dornroschen," his 58 IMPERATOR ET REX whole attitude has been charmingly chivalrous and ten- der towards the woman he loves, and who so truly de- serves it. This grim War Lord's chivalry is not shift- ing but permanent, and all the romance within him has flowed instinctively and ceaselessly to the fair girl he found asleep amid the roses; all his attentions have clustered around her footstool, and their union has been an absolutely model one, with a great love and a great confidence on both sides. Princess Augusta-Victoria of Schleswig-Holstein-Son- derburg-Augustenburg was a happy, wholesome, light- hearted girl, and since Prince William's visit to Schloss Prinkenau a curious little inward glow, a sense of joy and well-being accompanied her everywhere, mingling w4th and sweetening whatever she thought or did. Something, too, had changed in her young face, a soft change which came and went with all her dreams of him, intensified by a grave, gentle smile, pertaining more to the eyes than to the lips, when she pondered upon her own good chance and the delicious future Fortune had in store for her. Her Prince had appeared, and, behold, his presence had merged with and intensified her " joie de vivre." It had supplied the one feature needed to per- fect her existence! The Princess was neither sentimental nor lackadaisi- cal — she had far too much sound common-sense and health of mind for that — but a curiously deep satisfaction, a feeling that for the moment, at any rate, the world left nothing to be wished for, made her already extreme kind- ness and graciousness of heart and soul yet more con- spicuously so, her light step more airy, her unselfish- ness and generosity more marked. She did not speak of this newly found love-treasure of hers, but her very smile said, just as explicitly as her voice could have done, "I am very, very happy." 5 59 IMPERATOR ET REX She had awakened out of her sleep in the hammock to discover a stranger - Prince who suddenly became to her the person of first importance in the world, by far the most precious and dear, and it gave her the great- est of great joys to think of him and of the fact that soon he would be all in all to her. No wonder that infinite admiration of her filled Prince William's heart, as well as infinite delight at the knowl- edge that he would henceforth have such a life's com- panion, he who had never felt a real, genuine, heart- flutter for a woman. Besides, if he had been — as the ever-eager " chronique scandaleiise" will have it — "in love" a hundred times, it would not have in the least signified, since the senti- ment he entertained for her was as distinct from that unfortunate state as a beautiful, silvery, softly illumi- nating, and all-embellishing moon-ray is from the ir- ritating, depoetizing glare of a gas-fiame. This newly found tenderness was something indescrib- ably sweet to him, who had always felt so much alone, and the reaction when he left her was dreary and dis- piriting in a superlative degree. Fortunately he had her letters to console him, to put the clouds to flight, or at least to illumine them for the time being and trans- figure all around him with a roseate glory. These letters, written at a little desk gay with flowers, within the deep embrasure of a window at the far end of a cool, mediaeval-looking room, overlooking the dense, velvety verdure of the park at Prinkenau, were enough to hearten and cheer the most inveterate misanthrope, so I have been told, for she wrote as if her pen had been dipped in a drop of liquid light, and a ripple of pure happiness and joyful hope ran throagh every line she sent him. All those around her benefited by her sunny state of 60 IMPERATOR ET REX heart and mind, for, always ready to aid and assist every- body, she was now doubly so. Once she and her sister, now Princess Frederick-Leo- pold of Prussia, were walking home through the beauti- ful woods which surround the Schloss. It was late in the afternoon, and already in the west the sky was be- ginning to put on the gold-and-rose splendor of its bed- time hour; the air was inexpressibly calm, yet the green vault above the two young girls and the dense under- growth at their feet were busy with mysterious sound and movement, for sable-winged ravens circled far over- head in the velvety blue, lapwings, bees, crickets, butter- flies, and tree-frogs rustled and murmured unseen, while now and again blackbirds and green-finches gave vent to a sweet, shrill note, and ring-doves repeated and re- peated again and again their soft, melodious love-call before tucking their gentle little heads beneath their silky wings in sleep. Far above the fair pedestrians in the narrow bridle- path, between the two flower-starred walls of ferns bor- dering it, a human figure, bent and burdened, was slowly moving, dragging a hand-cart loaded with fagots. As the Princesses came nearer, they saw that it was a very old woman, ragged, dusty, barefoot, and incredibly wrinkled and toothless. Pale, pinched, hungry, weary, the aged crone had upon her withered countenance an expression of dogged resolution and anxious responsi- bility, pathetic to behold. The fagots were heavy, and for one step that she pulled the cart forward up the hill it recoiled two, so weak were her old, heavily veined, brown hands, and so inadequate to the task they attempted to accomplish; but yet she was facing the ascent resolutely and with unconquerable courage. Down in her heart the poor thing was evidently filled with terror lest the little cart should suddenly escape 6i IMPEHATOR ET REX from her feeble hold, and go crashing down the incline into the valley below, for then what could she do ? Yet she uttered no murmur, and mastered her fears as she did her almost complete exhaustion, with that dogged physical endurance which is the one ineradicable qual- ity of the European peasant of every nationality. Without a second's hesitation. Princess Augusta-Vic- toria motioned to her sister to take hold of one of the shafts, while she grasped the other, and at a smart trot the fagot -laden cart was drawn triumphantly up the remainder of the hill, followed by its amazed and be- wildered owner, who, with arms upheld as in unconscious benediction, hobbled along invoking all the favors of Heaven upon this merry " attslage " of Princesses. At the top of the hill, when she relinquished the res- cued fire-wood, the future Empress emptied the con- tents of her little purse into the thin, trembling hand ex- tended to resume its task, and, without pausing to receive the incoherent thanks of the pitiful old woman, ran lightly on, racing her sister to the very portals of the castle. This is but one of the many acts of kindness performed by the Princess during that period of perfect bliss which preceded her official betrothal, and which have not been forgotten in her own land, you may be sure. The betrothal ceremony was to take place early in the following winter, but the sudden death of the Duke of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Augustenburg was the cause of a delay, during which the Princess's new-found joy was often drowned in bitter tears. The official proclamation of the engagement took place only on June 2, 1880, at the Castle of Babelsberg, one of the favorite residences of William the Great. Babelsberg is a beautiful Gothic building, enthroned on balustered terraces, with countless crenellated towers 62 IMPERATOR ET REX and turrets overlooking an inner " Courd'Honneur " and a formal walled garden divided by yews clipped in fantas- tic patterns. Ivy climbs upon the walls, and so pict- uresque is the whole " tout-cnscmble " that no fitter place could have been chosen for the ceremony. As soon as the fifty-four distinguished guests had as- sembled in the so - called Round Drawing - room, the Grand-Master of the Court, Count Schleinitz, entered and formally announced the engagement of his Royal and Imperial Highness, Prince William, and of Her Highness Princess Augusta-Victoria of Schleswig-Hol- stein, and as he pronounced the last words the double doors at the upper end flew open and the fiancee entered leaning upon the arm of her handsome and still wonder- fully youthful grandfather-in-law that was to be. The Princess looked brilliantly happy and sparkling; her eyes were bent down upon a large bouquet of lilies of the valley and white roses which she carried in her left hand, and which gleamed softly in its circlet of dark-green leaves against the snowiness of her long- trained white silk dress. Upon her sunny head was set a white hat covered with lilies of the valley — " Maiglock- chen" (May -bells), as they so prettily call them over there, and six rows of admirable pearls were fastened at her throat by a magnificent diamond clasp. The after- noon was bright, and the sun flooding in through the open windows shone full upon her and upon the old Em- peror, showing distinctly how strong and powerful this remarkable man still was, spite of time and all that time had brought of fatigue, anxiety, and danger; how stalwart in his perfectly fitting uniform, with his ruddy complexion, and the proud and gratified expression hov- ering around his lips and flickering in his kindly, honest eyes. At a sign from him. Prince William advanced, and, of- 63 IMPERATOR ET REX fering his arm to his betrothed, led the cortege to the banqueting-hall, where a splendid lunch was prepared. Every one present remarked the happiness expressed in the Princess's countenance, and which seemed to visibly emanate from her whole graceful person — the sparkle of her radiant blue eyes, in which there was a suggestion of beautiful hidden depths of love and ten- derness that none had yet fathomed. Far away down in these depths was her soul, her real self, which had been called to life by the voice of her Prince. And the Prince, in this moment when she was being proclaimed his before all the world, gazed at her with a great tenderness in his eyes, and a great wonder, too, as if he, whose thought hitherto had ever been devoted to her happiness, suddenly saw his own barren and rather sad life transformed into an endless succession of days bright with joy and hope. As soon, however, as he felt that he was observed, he froze up again into proud reserve; but when his eyes were irresistibly drawn anew to her, her influence reas- serted itself with the suddenness of a ray of light upon a jewel, transforming him utterly, humanizing him as it were, and melting the surcoat of ice in which that famous Hohenzollern training, and other circumstances too long to recount, had managed to imprison the warm- hearted, ardent youth for so long. It was a great day for all, this betrothal at Schloss Babelsberg. The whole castle was decorated and wreathed with flowers, palms, and blossoming plants ; the " crhne de la creme," the very ''elite'' of the Prussian aris- tocracy, was present, while letters and telegrams from hundreds and hundreds of well - wishers arrived con- stantly. Indeed, it was an event which had had no parallel at the Court of Berlin for many, many years, for was not this love-match between the heir of the 64 IMPERATOR ET REX Hohenzollerns and the daughter of the Duke of Schles- wig-Holstein — whose patrimony had been engulfed in the Kingdom of Prussia — also a sort of reparation, the complete eradication of a feud ? The pretty little Duchies, with their treasures of lovely forests and pasture-lands which " Dornroschen " loved so well, were going to be hers now, once and for all time. Not that she would not willingly have sacri- ficed fifty Duchies for one look of her lover's eyes; but still the cannon firing joyful salutes from the keep at Babelsberg had a singularly triumphant and, yes, peaceful echo in response to its warlike din on that momentous afternoon. Unfortunately such felicitous hours cannot last forever, and soon Prince William, separated anew from his Prin- cess, became once more the grim, glum, laconic young man, whom so few understood or sympathized with. Morose and listless, as if every vestige of sunshine had again been torn out of his life, he turned to military pursuits with almost passionate energy, in order to drive away the persistent melancholy, the unsatisfied yearning engendered by her absence. Interest in everything pertaining to the army was so deeply inbred a characteristic of this son of a warrior race that he really loved spending his days in drilling his men, his evenings in poring over books of strategy or the " Kriegspiel," which both in Austria and in Germany is an obligatory occupation for staff-officers. He per- plexed himself for hours together as to whether the con- dition of the troops in peace or war could not be amelio- rated, and he was a truly gallant figure when, at the head of his men, he sent his commands ringing loud and long upon the early morning breeze with the reso- nance of steel smiting against steel. It was noble and austere, the life led at that time by 65 IMPERATOR ET REX the young Prince, but it was lonely and monotonous, too, at an age when one cares generally for diversion and amusement; still, during these months of separation, the remarkable plans which later on were to bear abun- dant fruit and cause the German army to become the first and foremost in the world, and to bring into exist- ence the fine German navy of to-day, were first origi- nated by that active brain; and so he himself must scarcely now regret that dreary interval. Even those who contemplate a contemporary Mon- arch's life with that sublime indifference which is the only true philosophy ever displayed by the anti-monarchical, cannot deny that Emperor William's career, even if merely set down as a series of events, would make what the literary critics call "good reading." Add the con- necting links which a more intimate knowledge of the question permits,- and the least clever of writers cannot but present to the reading public the portrayal of a man who has always known what he wanted, and has reached his aim with an energy seldom encountered in this age of supreme "veulerie." — I apologize humbly for using French slang, but, as it happens, there is no word in EngHsh which can so well express my thoughts. — But to pursue. Prince William was not a man to forget what he con- sidered to be his duty — you may rely on that. He might have lived a pampered, idle life, had he so willed it, in some sunshiny little garrison town, but he preferred Berlin and its gray skies, its unappreciative atmosphere, constant labor, and the over-exertion that tastes of ut- ter weariness at times, for he believed that an army which stood so conspicuously in the front as did that of Prussia in 1870-71 could be borne on to yet greater efficiency, and he cherished the belief that he, its future Generalissimo, was the man responsible for its ultimate welfare. 66 IMPERATOR ET REX Although this is scarcely yet the moment for me to en- ter into that portion of his work — even were it my inten- tion to do so at length — it might be mentioned that the important new army-laws signed by Emperor William I. on February ii, 1888 — a few weeks before his death — and which were the starting-point of the reforms in or- ganization that have brought the German army to its present state of almost perfection, were inspired in a great measure by Prince William. And be it said again, in spite of all that was murmured at the time against him, both in Germany and abroad, those who had eyes to see must have then, at least, perceived, if looking with understanding at his square chin, his steady, brilliant eyes and clean-cut features, that they stood in the presence of that rare and invaluable creation — a strong man. The power of concentration is a gift in itself, extreme- ly enviable, and this gift Prince William possessed to so unusual a degree that, whatever his study or pursuit of the moment, he gave himself up to it body and soul. On the parade-ground he who was so bitterly and sneeringly accused of caring too much for his appearance and dress, gave not a thought to his muddy boots or to the condition to which wind and weather often re- duced his uniform, but went through all the routine duties pertaining to his rank as an officer with a punc- tiliousness and thoroughness which seemed almost un- conscious and mechanical, as indeed it may well have been, since his brain was always working at a high rate of pressure in the furtherance of his favorite schemes. Surely there is nothing finer than a man who works with his brain as well as with his arm at one and the same time. Fencing was at that period Prince William's pet rec- reation, and it was really a pleasure to watch him in 67 IMPERATOR ET REX what the French call an ' ' assaut d' amies. ' ' So quick were his movements that the eye could scarcely follow them; truly he was as graceful, lithe, noiseless, and swift as a panther, leaping forward and falling back on guard like a flash, performing a hundred tricks of the fencing-floor with marvellous celerity, and touching his adversary on shoulder, arm, and chest so persistently that it took a very first-class blade to oppose his. He never awaited the attack, but was always the assailant, and, although in those bouts his " fleuret" was naturally quite harm- less, yet the way in which he made it resound through the air vividly suggested the threatening note of com- bative steel. Upright and still and thoughtful, with quiet, remem- bering eyes, speaking but little in his gently abrupt way — for the last two years had taught him to weigh every word he uttered, and he never said more than he meant — such was the fiance awaiting the hour that was to unite him to the woman of his choice, and when- ever she saw him he conveyed to her in one look the knowledge that she was the whole world to him, and that his love and boundless trust were thrusting upon her the greatest responsibility that any soul can carry — that of making another life as complete a happiness as human nature is permitted to obtain. She herself said, just before leaving her dear old home to make her formal entrance into Berlin: "I do not in any way imagine that my new life will be a thorn- less bed of roses, but I have faith, and Wilhelm also, and we have agreed to share our sorrows, as we will share our joys, so that the burden, whatever it may be, will never be too heavy for our joint strength." This creed, without compromise, was surely a touch- ing and a beautiful one for a young girl whose destiny was to be the loftiest which the world has to offer, but 68 IMPERATOR ET REX hers was that fine, steely strength which endures through a Hfetime without a flaw, that profound, unchangeable love which, when her eyes rested upon him, lighted them up with a gleam that was strangely adoring and at the same time dimly protecting and mater- nal. She was at the parting of the ways, was Princess Augusta-Victoria; none could point out her path ex- cepting herself, but that path was an assured one, since it led her to the arms of the man who was all in all to her, and whom she so implicitly trusted that she would have liked to cry out aloud what she knew him to be. She was sure of her lover, which is perhaps happiness enough for this world, and at his side she knew that duty would be made easy. The feudal spirit, which is as strong in German and Austrian Princes to-day as it was hundreds of years ago, found in this young girl a very lovable expression. She had taken it, for instance, as a matter of course, that it was her duty to care for the tenants and peasants on the Prinkenau estate, and to relieve as far as lay within her power the distress which comes to the poor during the winter especially, and when the time came to bid them good-bye her heart grew heavy. Clad in a serviceable, short, tailor-made frock and a jacket and cap of black fur, she spent the greater portion of the day walking from cottage to cottage giving a little part- ing souvenir wherever she went, listening patiently to the old story of poverty and privation, and cheering the tellers with her radiant smile, her quick sympathy, and her whispered promises of better things to come. She was brisk and cheerful in her well-doings, this gra- cious lady, destined to ascend the steps of a Throne, al- though somewhat intolerant of anything that savored of laziness or lack of courage, and she parted with a 69 IMPERATOR ET REX good deal of sound advice during her swift rambles along the frozen paths of her domain. The snow lay thickly upon the ground, and often it was quite dark when she returned from visiting some distant cottage in the depths of the pine-woods, the trees around her standing grim and rigid, braced by the iron frost to bear their burden of icicles without creak or rattle. There is no silence like that of a Northern pine forest in winter, nor anything half as magnificent as the pict- ure it presents when the trees are snow-clad, and when the silvery twilight of the crystallized boughs which conceal the noiseless creatures, furred and feathered, that take shelter there, meets the long, golden twilight of those regions, creeping in rosy and metallic gleams to- gether to the most distant corner and hiding-place. At last, just on such an evening, the Princess's task came to its end, and she hurried home to the castle, glowing from its dark setting of evergreens with the brightness of a rare jewel. Quickly she entered the hall where the portraits of her warrior ancestors rose one above the other to the groined and heavily carved ceil- ing, and ran up-stairs lightly as a bird to take leave of the house-servants. Many of them had been there long ere she was born; some of them had told her, when she was as yet little more than a baby, inspiring family legends, full of hazardous exploits and daring courage, narrations pregnant with the simple and unconscious grandeur of the men of days long gone by, to which she had listened, her blue eyes wide open and fixed, fascinated and enthralled until the last word had been spoken and she had heard in imagination the last charge of cavalry thunder past, the last droning rattle of the murderous arquebuses, the last cry of triumph from the heroic victors. 70 IMPERATOR ET REX Now, too, a last word had to be spoken, and it was one of adieu to those faithful souls, who seemed to form part of her own family, so long had they served it. Bravely their young mistress held back her tears and left to them all the remembrance of that fascinating, brilliant smile of hers, so winning and so true; and when the last hand had been pressed, the last benedictions showered upon her fair head, she departed from Schloss Prinkenau, where she had lived so happily and peace- fully, accompanied by the regrets of all. One of the charms of Princess Augusta-Victoria was her honesty of purpose ; her simplicity of manner, which was that of strength — comprising much gentleness and excluding all violence. Her smile, too, was full of loyal confidence, and showed that she never could entertain a doubt about accomplishing her intent. She had agreed with her lover that as long as life endured there would never be any foolish misunderstandings between them, that they were to be frank in all things, and to take frankness each from the other without offence, that any peril to be encountered, any risk to be run, was to be divided share and share alike. So what had she to fear from the future ? Never had she cared so much for him, never had she recognized his value so thorough- ly as at the moment when she set ofE to rejoin him, no more to leave his side. His words of love seemed to go ringing down the world with her, persistent in her ears, spoken with the very accent of his voice. She knew that she would hear them thus to the end of time, and gather from them joy and courage. CHAPTER IV It is a custom with the Hohenzollerns that the Prin- cesses with whom they ally themselves should start from the Castle of Bellevue to make their formal entry into Berlin; and at sunrise upon the morning of January 27, 1 88 1, the men employed in the superb greenhouses of the Thiergarten were already busily decorating, not only Bellevue itself, but the entire " parcoitrs " to be fol- lowed by the bride's cortege. This was to be a very gorgeous pageant, and long be- fore the moment when her great, gilded coach, drawn by eight magnificent black horses, made its appearance upon the rose-strewn avenue leading to the " Branden- biirger -Thor," thousands upon thousands of people lined the way — a ''via triumphalis " garlanded, berib- boned, and oriflammed — which later on was to resound with the loudest cheers and hurrahs heard there since the return of the victorious Emperor in 187 1. The crowd was amazingly well behaved, and, until a flourish of trumpets announced the approach of the fair ''fiancee," silent and impressively still, although it was easy to perceive that every now and then a thrill of expectation passed like a wave over the multitude, which suddenly swayed against the cordon of soldiers standing with grounded arms all the way from the gates of Bellevue to those of the Royal Palace. The whole town was charmingly decorated, rich and squalid portions alike, the palaces, the churches, the hovels, the brilliant emporiums and the dark little 72 IMPERATOR ET REX shops, having hung out flags and pennons, draperies and wreaths of green twigs of oak and laurel and pine, in enthusiastic testimony of an ardent desire on the part of the Berlinese to receive this future Empress fit- tingly. The welcome was very complete, the long magnificence of that dazzling procession, the great thoroughfares with crescents and stars and garlands of flowers emblazoning all the houses, the exuberant joy of the people — every- thing, down to the smallest detail, was perfect, and must have been indeed gratifying to the new-comer. And where, meanwhile, was the bridegroom? With that martial coquetry which has been a characteristic of so many great soldiers. Prince William had determined to greet his " fiancee " at the head of his company of Foot Guards, those gigantic soldiers whose towering peaked shakos of white metal, and uniforms prodigal of gold and embroidery and trappings — and therefore very brilliant and very goodly to behold — remain the same as in the days of Frederick the Great. So, ere break of day, he had started for Potsdam to rejoin his men, this gal- lant, courageous, generous young officer, so greatly be- loved by them, and a few moments before the arrival of his bride had led them, " mitsique en tete," into the " Cour d'Honneur" of his grandfather's palace. The meeting of the lovers was one of the prettiest sights imaginable, and is remembered to this day in Berlin. The bride, after alighting from her great, gilded coach, advanced a step or two towards him, her exquisite white robe gleaming and glowing as she moved, and the flowers at her breast looking no whiter than her face — suddenly blanched with deep emotion — while the Prince, slender, of middle height, but long limbed and well knit like an athlete, took her hands in his, bending low over them, and then kissed her gently on both cheeks. 73 IMPERATOR ET REX The old Emperor, whose face was positively beaming with joy, made the premier-lieutenant of his grandson's company a captain on the spot, so as to enable the Prince to leave his command for the time being, and this gracious act caused a moment of delighted, intent silence — a sort of pause closed by the drums and fifes thrilling suddenly with a startling clearness, like a sharp volley of applause, diminishing and growing again in volume as the colors were dipped in honor of the bridal pair and the promoted officer. In the years which followed, that moment was to recur again and again to the recollection of those pres- ent as something peculiarly solemn and imposing. The big Grenadiers, with their immense, old-fashioned head- gear, the file of gilded equipages, the palace steps thick- ly strewn with rose-petals, the young people gazing so lovingly at each other under the benignant contem- plation of the Great Emperor, the newly appointed cap- tain, red with pride, standing at attention with his drawn sword, and behind him the drums and fifes calling loudly and then dwindling to a sort of soft martial rhythm, beckoning, as it were, the bridal pair towards a brilliant future — all these details made up a picture of which no lapse of time can ever quite efface the splendid coloring and happy significance. The wedding was in itself a truly Regal ceremony. The chapel of the castle, a spacious and lofty octagonal building in the Byzantine polychromatic style, shim- mering in a haze of dazzling light, was filled with flow- ers and crowded with exquisitely gowned women and men in glittering uniforms. Among the guests were Their Majesties of Saxony, Grand Duke Alexis, Crown Prince Rudolph of Austria, the Crown Prince and Crown Princess of Sweden, the Prince of Wales (now King Ed- ward VII.), the Grand Duchess of Baden, Princess Chris- 74 IMPERATOR ET REX tian, the Duke of Edinburgh and his Duchess (nee Grand Duchess Marie-Alexandrowna of Russia), the late Duke of Aosta, and a score of other illustrious person- ages, followed by their Ladies and Gentlemen-in-wait- ing, all attired with the greatest magnificence. The bride herself, who looked remarkably to her ad- vantage, wore white - and - silver brocade and priceless antique lace clasped with flashing diamond buckles which supported trails of freshly gathered myrtle and orange blossoms. On her blond head the crown of Prussia's Princesses sparkled above a tiny fringe of myr- tle, and her long lace veil enwrapped her with a sort of delicately vaporous mystery. Her tall, exquisitely modelled figure carried off the Hohenzollern diamonds to perfection, and as she walked down the aisle, lean- ing on the arm of her young husband, an audible murmur of approval made itself heard — a great and unusual tribute in an assembly which few sights are capable of pleasing or of astonishing. Her train was carried by her four bridesmaids — the Countesses Victoria Bernstoff, Pauline Kalckreuth, Mathilda Keller, and Mathilda Puck- ler, accompanied by the Princess's Grand Mistress of the Robes, Countess Brockdorff — and as the procession left the altar thirty-six salvos of artillery boomed forth, al- most drowning Handel's "Hallelujah" chorus rolling grandly from the organ. Slowly and imposingly the cortege returned to the " Weisse-Saal," from which they had started, and where a " Defiler-Cour " now took place, followed by a " diner de gala " in the " Rittcrsaal." During all this trying ordeal Princess William — as she was henceforth to be called — bore herself with the most charming simplicity and self-possession; she seemed to have a fresh smile for each new person presented to her, and yet there was not in her attitude the least little bit of that modern forwardness which passes under the 6 75 IMPERATOR ET REX name of " bonne camaraderie,'" for she was " tres Grande Dame," which is the highest compHment one can pay even to a Royal Lady. Moreover, her graceful uprightness of carriage and the wholesome rose of her fresh, young face, distinguished her at once among the pallid " inondaines" surrounding her, and made her remarkable, as some free and dignified denizen of the forest in the midst of domesticated lions, or, to be less grandiloquent, like a pure, dew-washed, fra- grant, open-air blossom, raising its dainty corolla above an intoxicatingly perfumed mass of forced hot -house blooms. Added to this she had more to say than other girls, whether Royal or otherwise, a larger stock of knowl- edge, a wider range of serious thoughts, and in giving expression to them she looked brighter, prettier, and more intelligent than they — a novelty, indeed, after the small-change of ordinary Court gossip. Nor is it a small thing to be exposed to the flash of experienced eyes, which see without appearing to look, and to please those mercilessly critical optics, and yet everybody was unanimously conscious that her presence caused a curi- ous "fraicheur" and vitality to permeate the atmosphere, like a breath of reviving and bracing air in a close place. All those assembled there to wish her luck were pleas- urably surprised, and there was a general sense of joyful relaxation as the illustrious guests took their places around the brilliantly lighted board, groaning beneath its weight of massive gold and silver plate, banks of exotics, Venetian crystal, and pyramids of superb fruit. Everybody's characteristics became rather more ac- centuated than before, every one was at Philharmonic pitch and at his or her very best. Popularity and lasting appreciation would have fol- 76 PRINCE HENRY OF PRUSSIA, BROTHER OF THE EMPEROR IMPERATOR ET REX lowed this excellent first impression as naturally as day follows night, but unfortunately those accustomed to read the signs of favor or disfavor in a monarchical firma- ment, felt at once that there was hidden deep below the surface-welcome accorded to the Princess an icy under- current, which it would not be advisable to stem or to disregard, for so to do would be to affront some of the powers that were. Therefore the seeds of much that became painful later on were sown in that very hour. According to an ancient custom dating as far back as the Middle Ages, the younger Hohenzollern Princesses waited upon the Emperor and Empress, the King and Queen of Saxony, and the bridal couple, and at dessert the aged Head of the House rose and proposed the health of Prmce and Princess William, in terms so ten- der and affecting that his words thrilled many hearts with a warmth not felt for years. Prince William himself looked as if he were a little dazed; his bride's all-pervading charm made him per- chance once again distrust himself as utterly as he had done before on the other great occasions of his life ; this newly found joy of his was so intense that it started upon him as if he had hitherto been asleep in a dark room and had now awakened to find it suddenly blaz- ing with lights. Artistically speaking, the change should have been modulated a little more, for it was just a shade too abrupt for comfort, a little too Wagnerian in its violent change of key, and for once, while his grand- father was speaking, he was thrown off his guard, his breast heaved with intense emotion, his blue eyes shone through a mist, and the white line of his teeth just showed closely pressed on his under-lip. But " Bah!" happiness does not unfocus one for long, even when one is unused to it, and it is comparatively easy to adjust one's self to a new view of things when these things are 77 IMPERATOR ET REX pleasant. His beloved grandsire's eloquent phrases, which said enough, but not too much, of the past and the future, with a grace entirely remote from a form of ad- dress generally halting and somewhat uncouth, gave him time to recover his perfect equanimity, and few noticed this strange little break in his customary composure, A woman is never too young or too old, too guileless or too innocent, to be averse to the thought that she can charm, and the bride was not insensible to the deli- cate compliments paid her in that gracious speech, and which throughout dinner in that great hall had been laid at her feet by many of those present; while the guests seated at that magnificent table murmured among themselves that this golden-haired, soft-cheeked, lace-enwrapped " Mariee " was " jolie a croqiier," as she chatted frankly, unaffectedly, and pleasantly, now and again resting a glance of tender affection upon the stately figure of the aged Emperor, or one of deep love upon her young husband. At last the boom of cannon was heard in a final sa- lute, and the " Herrschaften " rose to return to the White-Hall, where the " Fackeltanz " was to take place. This form of entertainment — by no means an unquali- fied entertainment, but a mere matter of form and time- honored usage, infinitely boring for the participants, and not very attractive for on-lookers, satiated with such pageants — began as soon as the Emperor and Empress, together with their Royal guests, had disposed them- selves on and around the dais. The ''Polonaise " was preluded by a brilliant chromatic passage compelling silence, and the twelve Cabinet Min- isters, who were to act as torch -bearers, advanced tow- ards the bridal pair, preceded by the Grand Master of the Ceremonies tapping his ivory wand of office upon the polished floor. 78 IMPERATOR ET REX Suddenly the call of a silver trumpet thrilled through space like a vibrating spear of sound, and at the mo- ment when the twelve Excellencies stepped forth two by two, followed by Prince and Princess William, hand in hand, that call broke like quicksilver into a thousand rounded fragments of harmony, collecting themselves again, quavering and triUing, and ceasing only for a few seconds, quite abruptly, when, having returned to the Throne, the Prince and Princess bowing low before the Emperor, the procession started anew, accompanied this time by the handsome old Monarch himself, while the dazzling crowd, forming a much bediamonded and be- starred hedge on both sides, bent at their approach and straightened itself again like a field of shimmering wheat after a gust of breeze has passed over it. In this fashion, and always preceded by the ministe- rial torch-bearers, the bride and groom performed cir- cuit after circuit of the great hall, she between two Kings or Princes, he between two Queens or Princesses, a rather harassing and tiring ceremony, but during which the honors were severely and justly divided — the Courts of Berlin, Vienna, and St. Petersburg being the only palaces nowadays where scrupulous exactitude is still observed in such matters, and where no " passe- droits " are ever allowed. At last the end came. The long-suffering twelve were relieved of their torches by twelve gorgeously attired pages, and the now slowly paling luminaries were used to light the newly married couple to their apartments. During all this time an army of Court lackeys and small officials were arranging with a great deal of method and quickness the endless array of wedding gifts to be displayed on the morrow " en grand gala." It seemed for the time being as if chaos, a brilliant one, had resumed its reign, or as if all the great shops of 79 IMPERATOR ET REX the universe had been sacked and their contents poured into the Royal palace. Here stood a collection of marvellous Dresden-china vases, big enough to hold AH Baba and his forty advent- urous companions, there some superb bronzes were huddled together for company against rolls upon rolls of priceless rugs and embroideries, creeping like a tide of rainbow hues to where richly framed pictures and ex- quisite engravings lay prostrate. Here again a mountain of '' ecrins " revealed their blaz- ing contents of diamonds, pearls, rubies, emeralds, and sapphires, where they were piled upon cushions of deep purple, while half a hundred pieces of gold and silver plate gleamed beneath the flame of the countless candelabra wherewith the place was illuminated "