The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe, Volume I. | Page 2

abrupt, commanding, I would almost say arrogant. In fact he would
give one the impression that he was playing a rôle--the rôle of
emperor--that he was, in one word, posing, even if it were only for the
benefit of the menial who had interrupted us. But when the intruder had
vanished, William would, like a flash, become his own charming self
again. That is what made me exclaim just now, 'if only the kaiser would
be true to himself!--be natural, in fact.'"
"I fully agree with you, my dear S----," I remarked, after a short pause.
"If the emperor has remained anything like what he was prior to his
ascension to the throne, your estimate of his character is correct." And I
went on to relate a little incident which occurred on the occasion of my
first meeting with the emperor many years ago.
This meeting took place on that particular spot where the empires of
Germany, Austria, and Russia may be said to meet, the frontier guards
of each of those three nations being within hail of one another. The
great autumnal military manoeuvres were in progress, and a merry
party, including a number of ladies, were riding home from the mimic
battlefield. We passed through a narrow lane, bordered on each side by
groups of stunted willows and birch trees, under the sparse shadow of
which nestled a few cottages painted in blue, pink, or yellow, in true
Polish fashion. Suddenly our progress was arrested by terrifying
screams proceeding from one of these hovels. Several of us were out of
our saddles in an instant and rushed in at the low door.
Before the hearth, where a huge peat-fire was burning, stood a young
peasant woman, her face distorted with agonized grief, and holding in
her arms a bundle of blackened rags. We found that her baby had fallen
into the glowing embers, while she herself was occupied out of doors,
and the poor mite was so badly burned that there seemed but little hope
of its ever reviving from its state of almost complete coma. We were all

busying ourselves eagerly about the child and its distraught mother,
when raising my eyes from the palpitating form of the child, I caught
sight of "Prince William," as the kaiser was then called, standing near
the door, apparently quite undisturbed and unmoved by this tragedy in
lowly life. It even seemed to me in the dim light as if he were smiling
derisively at our efforts to relieve the sufferings of the little one, and to
soothe the grief of its mother. But my indignation vanished quickly
when a slanting ray of the setting sun, piercing through the grime of the
little window, revealed the presence on his cheek of two very large and
_bona-fide_ tears, which had welled up in his eyes, to which the lad
was endeavoring to impart an expression of callous indifference; and
when at last we left the hut to seek a doctor for the tiny sufferer it was
Prince William's own military coat, none too new, and even, to say the
truth, much worn, that remained as an additional coverlet upon the
roughly-hewn wooden cot, over which the sobbing mother was
bending.
"Nobody," I added, "will, therefore, make me believe that Emperor
William has not got a very soft spot in his heart, and that beneath the
mannerisms which he considers it necessary to affect in order to
maintain the dignity of his position as emperor,--those mannerisms
which have given rise to so much misapprehension about his
character,--there is not concealed a very kindly spirit, literally
brimming over with generous impulses, which, if more widely known,
would serve to render the kaiser the most popular, as he is the most
interesting figure of Old World royalty."
It is because Emperor Francis-Joseph and the veteran King of Saxony
are so thoroughly acquainted with his real nature, that they are truly and
honestly fond of him. Both of them old men, with no sons in whom to
seek support for the eventide of lives that have been saddened by many
a public and private sorrow, they entertain a fatherly affection for
William, who as emperor treats them in public as brother sovereigns,
and as equals, but accords to them in private the most touching filial
deference and regard, remembering full well the kindness which both
of them showed to him when he was still the much-snubbed, and not
altogether justly-treated "Prince William." They on their side are led by

his behavior towards them to regard him in the light of a son. Of course
they cannot be blind to his faults, but they are disposed to treat them
with an indulgence that is even more than paternal, and to see in them
relatively trivial defects, due to