The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe, Volume I. | Page 5

a
portrait, to render the subject more attractive to the eye.
It is my object, not to give a definitive biography of either of the two
kaisers, or even a mere record of their vie intime, but rather to present
to my readers a series of incidents, full of lights and full of shadows,
showing their surroundings, describing as far as possible the
atmosphere in which they move, the conditions of life which they are
obliged to consider, the temptations to which they are exposed--and to
which they sometimes succumb--and when I have completed my task I
venture to believe that the readers of these volumes, while they may
find the two emperors neither quite so blameless, nor yet quite so bad
as they expected, may nevertheless experience a greater degree of
sympathy and regard for them as being after all so extremely human.

CHAPTER II
While Emperor Francis-Joseph is justly reputed to have played sad
havoc with the hearts of the fair sex in his dominions, especially in his
younger days, having inherited that frivolity with regard to women
which is a traditional characteristic of the illustrious House of
Hapsburg, he has never at any moment during his long reign permitted
his susceptibility to feminine charms to go to the length of influencing
his political conduct, or the action of his government.
Emperor William, on the other hand, whose married life has been, from
a domestic point of view, singularly blameless, and who has been an
exceptionally faithful husband, has, in at least two instances, permitted
himself to be swayed in his rôle of sovereign by ladies, who for a time
figured as his "Egerias." One of them was a woman of extraordinary
cleverness, and an American by birth, who while she has long since
ceased to exercise any influence upon him, has retained the affection

and the regard of both his consort and himself. She is the Countess
Waldersee, daughter of the late David Lee, a wholesale grocer of New
York, and who at the time that she became the wife of Field-marshal
Count Waldersee, was the widow of the present German empress's
uncle, Prince Frederick of Schleswig-Holstein. The latter abandoned
his royal rank and titles, and assumed the merely nobiliary status of a
Prince of Noer, in order to make her his consort.
The countess is treated as an aunt by both William and the kaiserin, and
she may be said to have swayed her imperial nephew by her cleverness
and intellectual brilliancy, rather than by her looks, for she is a woman
already well-advanced in years.
Different in this respect was the influence of the emperor's other Egeria,
namely, the Polish baroness, Jenny Koscielska, a woman of rare
elegance and beauty, whose political importance during the time she
reigned supreme at the Court of Berlin, was attributable to her personal
fascination rather than to her sagacity or statecraft. She is the wife of
that Baron Kosciol-Koscielski, who was one of the most celebrated
leaders of the Polish party in the Russian House of Lords, and perhaps,
also, the most popular of all modern Polish poets and playwrights.
It would be going too far to assert that William was infatuated by her
loveliness. Yet there Is no doubt that as long as she figured at the Court
of Berlin, he not only paid her the most marked attention, but likewise
allowed himself to be advised by her in political matters. It was during
the so-called "reign of the baroness" that the kaiser showed such an
extraordinary degree of favor to his Polish subjects as to excite the
jealousy and ill-will of the people in many other parts of his dominions.
He reestablished the Polish language in the schools and churches of
Posen, that is of Prussian-Poland, nominated a Polish ecclesiastic to the
archbishopric of that province, and conferred so many court dignities,
government offices, and decorations upon the compatriots of the fair
Jenny, as to give rise to the remark that the best road to imperial
preferment at Berlin was to add the Polish and feminine termination of
"ska" to one's name. Old Prince Bismarck, who was at the time at
daggers-drawn with his young sovereign, at length gave public

utterance to the popular ill-will, excited by the rôle of Egeria, which the
baroness was accused of playing to the "Numa Pompilius" of Emperor
William. For, in the course of an address delivered by the old
ex-chancellor at Friedrichsrüh, and reproduced in extenso in the press,
he declared among other things that: "The Polish influence in political
affairs increases always in the measure that some Polish family obtains
of more or less influence at Court. I need not allude here to the rôle
formerly played by the princely house of Radziwill. To-day we have
exactly the same state