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

as soon as he married, he turned over a new leaf, and
became the very model of husbands.
It has always been my conviction that this was due in part to the
influence of the Countess Waldersee, and largely also to the unkindly
treatment which his consort received during the early years of her
marriage at the hands 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