The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe, Volume I. | Page 7

of his family. Although a nice and gentle-looking girl, Augusta-Victoria was far from shining either by her beauty or her elegance at a court which is one of the most cruelly critical and satirical in all Europe. Moreover, she labored under the disadvantage of being the daughter of the Duchess of Augustenburg, who is not credited with a robust intellect, and, in fact has passed the greater part of her life in retirement, and of the Duke of Augustenburg, who was famed thirty years ago for the dullness of his mind. In fact, after Prussia had undertaken in his behalf the conquest of the Duchy of Schleswig-Holstein, to which he was entitled by right of inheritance, and which had been unlawfully seized by Denmark, Prince Bismarck refused to permit the duke to assume the sovereignty thereof, on the publicly expressed ground that it would be an act of the most outrageous tyranny to subject any state to the rule of so intensely stupid a man as the duke.
This utterance on the part of Bismarck, which may be found in most of the German histories printed prior to the accession of the present Emperor, was naturally recalled to mind at the Court of Berlin, when the daughter of the duke became the bride of Prince William, and the widespread belief in her inherited dullness of intellect was further increased by the mingled impatience and pity which characterized the behavior of her husband's mother and sisters towards her.
There is much that is chivalrous in the nature of the present German emperor, and it was precisely the unkindness and slights to which his bride was subjected that had the effect of drawing him more closely to her. He did not conceal the fact that he strongly resented the attitude of his family towards her, and his friendship with Countess Waldersee owes its origin to the motherly way in which she behaved to his wife, acting as her mentor, as her adviser and guide in the intricate maze of Berlin society, and of court life. Debarred from all intimacy with her sisters-in-law, who were ever ready to scoff at, and to make fun of her, Augusta-Victoria was wont to have recourse to the countess in all her difficulties, and inasmuch as Count Waldersee himself is the most brilliant soldier of the German army, and was designated at the time by the great Moltke as his successor and his principal lieutenant, Prince William and his wife ended by becoming very intimate indeed with the Waldersees, and almost daily visitors at their house.
The countess is of a deeply religious turn of mind, with a strong disposition towards evangelism, and already before the marriage of Prince William, she had become conspicuous as one of the most influential leaders of the anti-Semite party in Prussia. It was in her salons at Berlin that the great Jew-baiter Stoecker was wont to hold his politico-religious meetings, denouncing the Jews, and it was through her influence, too, that he obtained appointment as court chaplain, in spite of the opposition of the father and the mother of Prince William. It was also under the roof of the Countess Waldersee that the present emperor became imbued with that very religious,--one might almost say pietist--disposition, which has since been so marked a feature of his character.
True, the hereditary tendency of the sovereign house of Prussia is distinctly religious, leaning in fact towards fanaticism, and King Frederick-William III., his son Frederick-William IV., and likewise old Emperor William, entertained the most extraordinary ideas on the subject of Providence, with which they believed themselves to be in constant communion, as well as its principal agent here on earth. In fact, there is hardly a public utterance of any of these three sovereigns, which is not marked throughout by a deep religious tone, and by a degree of familiarity with the Almighty which would be blasphemous were it not so manifestly sincere. This hereditary tendency towards religion was, to a certain extent, obliterated by the education which William received, and which was of a nature to dispose him to be both a materialist and a free-thinker. He may be said in fact to have been brought up in an atmosphere of Renan-ism and Strauss-ism, for which his extraordinary and mercilessly clever mother, Empress Frederick, was largely responsible, and at the moment of his marriage it looked as if he were destined to figure in history as quite as much of a philosopher, and even atheist, as Frederick the Great, for whom he professed the most profound veneration.
It was Countess Waldersee who revived all the inherited and latent religious tendencies of his character.
Up to the time when he ascended the throne, Prince William and his consort were constant and devout attendants at the prayer-meetings held in the salons of