The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary Part 10

Of all the prerogatives enjoyed by Queen Victoria, the one, however, of which the kaiser is the most envious is her supremacy of the state Church of England. His ambition is to acquire the same position with regard to the whole Lutheran Church as she enjoys over the Anglican denomination. This dream, difficult of execution for reasons which I will proceed to explain, originated with his great-grandfather, King Frederick-William III., who first conceived the idea of a species of Lutheran Kaliphate, with its headquarters at Berlin, and its Mecca at Jerusalem.

His successor, King Frederick-William IV., took up the notion with all the enthusiasm natural to his mystic character, and kept one of his most trusted statesmen and confidants busily employed for years in endeavoring to federate all the Reformed Churches, with the exception of that of England, under the protectorate and supremacy of the Hohenzollerns. Emperor William goes still further. He aspires to become, not merely the temporal head of the Lutheran Church throughout the world, but likewise its spiritual chief, its pontiff, in fact, in the same manner that the czar is the chief ecclesiastical dignitary and the duly consecrated spiritual head of the national Church of Russia. William bases his claims to the dignity of a _summus-episcopus_ on the fact that he is a t.i.tular bishop and archbishop, some nineteen times over, for his ancestors, when annexing the various petty states and sovereignties in bygone times, always made a point of getting the mitre with the crown, and the crozier with the purple and ermine. Many of the petty states of Germany in mediaeval days were ruled, not by temporal rulers, but by archbishops possessing the rank of sovereign and the t.i.tle of prince.

The ecclesiastical dignity was, in fact, inherent, and part and parcel of the sovereignty. Consequently, when Emperor William's ancestors acquired the one, they likewise secured possession of the other, and thus among his many ecclesiastical t.i.tles is that of Prince Archbishop of Silesia, and it is in his ecclesiastical capacity that he has conferred canonries and deaneries upon the military and civil members of his household.

Of course, the difficulty in the way of the emperor's recognition as the supreme head of the Lutheran Church is the fact that the Lutheran faith is by no means confined to his dominions. Lutherans const.i.tute the major part of the population in Wurtemberg, Saxony and Baden, as well as in all the other non-Prussian states of the Confederation, save Bavaria. Besides this, there are millions of Lutherans in Austro-Hungary, the Netherlands, Russia and Scandinavia, who could not recognize his supremacy without disloyalty to their own rulers, all of whom, with the exception of the king of Saxony, the Czar and the Austrian emperor, are, like himself, members of the Reformed Church.

His celebrated pilgrimage to Jerusalem a year ago, the first pilgrimage of a German emperor to the Holy Land since the days of the Crusades, clearly showed the trend of the kaiser's aspirations. He had invited all his fellow-Protestant monarchs to accompany him to Jerusalem, either in person or to send one of the princes of their houses as their representatives, and to ride in his train when he made his entry into the Holy City of Christendom. But not one of the sovereigns thus invited responded to the invitation tendered, and William had no German or foreign prince with him during this memorable pilgrimage.

It was the most extraordinary thing of the kind that has ever been seen, the strangeness of the affair being intensified by that same mixture of the mediaeval with the intensely modern and up-to-date ways which const.i.tutes so peculiar a phase of William's character. The emperor rode into Jerusalem by the same route as that followed by the Founder of Christianity on the first Palm Sunday, wearing a flowing white mantle, and mounted on a milk-white steed. He prayed at dusk with the members of his suite in the Garden of Gethsemane, piously kneeling on the ground, p.r.o.nounced a religious discourse on the Mount of Olives, received the Holy Communion in the Coenaculum, that is to say, the house in which, according to tradition, Christ celebrated the Last Supper,--nay, he even preached a full-fledged sermon on the occasion of the dedication of the Church of the Saviour at Jerusalem, and traveled by road from Jerusalem to Damascus! And yet, destroying all the romance and old-time glamor that might otherwise have surrounded this imperial crusade, was the fact that he was a "_personally conducted" Cook's tourist_, that his meals were prepared by French chefs, that champagne was the ordinary beverage at his table, and that, while tramcars were used to go about Damascus, the railroad was selected by him to get back from Jerusalem to Jaffa!

Emperor William has a weakness for preaching, and it must be confessed that he does it well. He possesses a very ready gift of speech, and his fervent religious belief seems to serve as a species of inspiration to his eloquence. Thus on board the Hohenzollern, during his annual yachting cruise along the coast of Norway, he invariably conducts divine service on Sunday morning, taking his place in front of an altar erected on deck, upon which the German war-flag is spread, in lieu of an altar-cloth. Luther's hymns, accompanied by the trombones of the band, are sung. Then the emperor reads the epistle and the gospel with great feeling, and recites the liturgical prayers with considerable fervor. Next he preaches a sermon, which, as a rule, is of his own composition, and extemporary, though occasionally he will read the sermon of some well-known pulpit orator.

It has been observed that he is always much more indulgent in cases of inattention on the part of the congregation when he reads a sermon than when he preaches one of his own. Any sailor who has the misfortune to fall asleep during the discourse is disciplined, and his name figures, of course, on the punishment roll on the following morning, when the day's report is presented to the emperor as the commanding officer of the s.h.i.+p. If the sermon has been one of his majesty's own composition, as a rule he allows the punishment to stand. But if the discourse happens to have been of less ill.u.s.trious origin, he will almost invariably order the penalty to be remitted, adding, with a smile of indulgence, that "the sermon was rather dreary, wasn't it?"

At Berlin and at Potsdam the kaiser keeps his court chaplains under very strict discipline, and they expose themselves to a stern reprimand if they presume to extend their pulpit orations beyond the term of ten or, at the most, fifteen minutes. Emperor William very justly takes the ground that if they are sufficiently concise in their remarks, they can say all that they have to say within that s.p.a.ce of time, and if their discourse is prolonged beyond the stipulated period it loses its force and its power of retaining the interest and the attention of the congregation.

The emperor does not hesitate to call the divines to account when they enunciate doctrines of which he does not approve, and whereas in former reigns a court chaplaincy was regarded in the light of an office for life, it is now considered as a merely temporary appointment, so frequent are the dismissals.

At the Dome at Berlin, and at the Garrison Church at Potsdam, the emperor follows the service with an air of mingled devotion and authority that is rather amusing. While most devout and fervent in his prayers, and joining in the hymns in such a manner that his ringing baritone voice is easily discernible above the rest, his eyes wander in a stern fas.h.i.+on around the church, quick to note any member of the congregation who is not behaving with proper decorum and reverence. He conveys the impression that he considers it to be his duty to keep the congregation in proper order, and if he finds that either he, or the imperial party is being stared at with any degree of persistency or curiosity, he at once sends off one of his officers to sharply warn the offenders. Indeed, he has more than once caused it to be made known through official communications to the press that he thoroughly disapproves of being stared at when attending church, and engaged in his devotions.

Like William, Francis-Joseph has made a pilgrimage to Jerusalem and the Holy Land, but it was without any fuss or pomp. In fact, there are few persons, save those connected with the Court of Austria, who are aware that Austria's ruler ever visited the Holy Land. He went there in 1869, traveling in the strictest incognito, and attended only by two of his gentlemen-in-waiting and two servants, after the inauguration of the Suez Ca.n.a.l, at which he had been present. There was no solemn entry on horseback into the city that witnessed the foundation of Christianity, and while he prayed at the Holy Places like Emperor William, he did so quietly and un.o.btrusively, without attracting any attention. His pilgrimage was characterized by the same unaffected humility that distinguishes his religion from that of his brother monarch at Berlin.

William's faith still retains the enthusiasm and, if I may use the word, the exuberance of youth, whereas that of Francis-Joseph, though even more fervent, is chastened, humbled and mellowed by the experience of many a cruel sorrow and many a hard blow. To some of these he would have succ.u.mbed had it not been for his religious belief. There have been at least three different occasions during his fifty years' reign when he would have abandoned his throne, and abdicated his crown had it not been pointed out to him by his spiritual adviser that it was his duty--his religious duty--to remain at his post, and to bear with bravery the trials with which he was overwhelmed.

The first of these occasions was at the close of the disastrous wars of 1866, when the march of the Prussians on Vienna was only stayed within a few hours' distance of the capital by the ignominious peace of Nicolsburg. The second time was when he lost his only son by the frightful tragedy of Mayerling, and he saw his boy's body refused even Christian rites of burial by the church, until he had been able to convince the kindly old pontiff at Rome that the poor lad's mind was unbalanced at the time that he took his life. The third occasion was when his lovely consort, to whom, in spite of all that is said to the contrary, he was so deeply devoted, was taken from him by the hand of an a.s.sa.s.sin in a foreign land, and under peculiarly heartrending circ.u.mstances.

Moreover, he saw the body of his brother Maximilian brought home from the Mexican plain of Queretaro, where he had been shot down by a file of soldiers as if a vulgar criminal; he stood by the deathbed of a favorite niece, burnt to death before his eyes in the palace of Schoenbrunn, when her dress had caught fire from a lighted cigarette which she was endeavoring to conceal from him and from her father; he followed to the grave another favorite of his, a nephew, accidentally killed while out shooting. Indeed, there is no end to the tragedies which have gone to sadden the life of this now septuagenarian monarch, and while on ordinary occasions, especially when engaged in military inspections or in great court functions, he appears to retain the elasticity, vigor and temperament of a man still in his prime, yet when in church or chapel, attending divine service, and so wrapped up in his devotions that he becomes oblivious to his surroundings, the restraint which he puts upon his feelings at other times disappears, and one is able to realize the extent of his sufferings, and how supreme is the consolation that he finds in his religion.

Vienna is the only capital in the world where one can see a full-fledged monarch kneeling bareheaded in the streets, and offering up prayers in the most fervent manner, the spectacle exciting not ridicule, but sentiments of profound reverence and sympathy on the part of the people--Christians, Jews, and Mohammedans from Herzegovina and Bosnia--who throng the thoroughfares of the beautiful city on the Danube. The sight is witnessed each year, on the occasion of the _Corpus Christi_ procession. This glorious procession starts out from the Cathedral of St. Stephen at an early hour in the morning, and the entire route through the various streets which it traverses Is kid with boards, over which gra.s.s is strewn. At various points along the way there are altars, or so-called _reposoirs_, where the Sacred Host is placed for a few moments, the emperor and the great personages with him kneeling piously on the ground and offering up prayers.

The procession is opened by choristers, then come priests and monks with hands crossed upon their b.r.e.a.s.t.s, next the rectors of the various metropolitan parishes, displaying their distinctive banners like the knights of old. The munic.i.p.al authorities, the officers of the imperial household, the Knights Grand Cross of the various orders, the cabinet ministers, and the princ.i.p.al dignitaries of the army, of the navy, and of the crown. Finally, comes a magnificent canopy borne by generals, under which walks the tall and stately Cardinal Archbishop of Vienna, carrying the Host, to which the troops lining the route bend the knee while presenting arms, the civilians behind them baring their heads, while the women cross themselves. Immediately behind the Host, bareheaded and alone, with a lighted candle in his hand, and wearing the full uniform of an Austrian field marshal,--a snow-white cloth tunic with scarlet and gold facings,--strides the aged emperor, still erect as a dart, with all the slender, shapely elegance of a man of thirty, in spite of his three-score years and ten. He is followed by the archdukes, conspicuous among them the gigantic Archduke Eugene, grand master of the Teutonic Order, in the semi-ecclesiastical habits of his rank, while the procession is brought to a close by escorts of the superbly arrayed Archer and Hungarian Body Guards.

The spectacle is impressive, and the silence along the route, save for the chanting of the choristers, and the recitation of prayers in an undertone by the clergy, adds to the solemnity of the occasion. In days gone by, the murdered empress used to figure in the procession in full court dress and followed by her ladies, but now women take no part therein.

Another remarkable religious ceremony in which the emperor plays the leading part, and which is only to be witnessed nowadays at the Court of Vienna, is the was.h.i.+ng of the feet of twelve aged men on the Thursday of Holy Week, in memory of the was.h.i.+ng of the feet of the twelve apostles on the first Holy Thursday by the Founder of Christianity. The ceremony takes place at the imperial palace, in the presence of the entire court. The twelve old men, each carefully dressed for the occasion, who have been brought from their homes to the palace in imperial carriages, are seated in a row, and, after a brief religious service celebrated by the cardinal archbishop, the emperor kneels in front of each, and washes his feet in a golden basin filled with rose water, the ewer being carried by the heir to the throne, while the prelate who holds the office of court chaplain hands to his majesty the gold-embroidered towel with which the feet are dried after having been washed. When the emperor has reached the end of the line there are more prayers, and the blessing; then a banquet is served to the old men, at which they are waited on in person by the emperor, the various dishes being handed to him by the archdukes and princes of the blood. The old people are finally sent home, each with a purse containing gold pieces, and a large hamper, wherein are placed several bottles of fine wine and the remains of the various dishes and gastronomical masterpieces which have figured on the table during the banquet. As a rule, the old men dispose of these for considerable sums of money to wealthy Viennese, who are only too delighted to purchase them, and thus to be able to boast of having partaken of the emperor's hospitality!

Brought up by parents who axe renowned for their religious bigotry, in the absolutist school of the great Prince Metternich, Emperor Francis-Joseph has experienced the utmost difficulty in reconciling his religions belief with his obligations as a const.i.tutional monarch, for he has been repeatedly obliged to give his sanction as a sovereign to reforms enacted by the legislature of Austria, and particularly of Hungary, which were strongly opposed by the Roman Catholic Church, fiercely denounced by the clergy, and condemned by the Vatican. That he should in matters such as these have sacrificed his religious prejudices and conscientious scruples to what he conceived to be his duty as a const.i.tutional monarch, speaks volumes for his strength of character, and for his uprightness as a ruler. There is only one thing that he has declined to do, in spite of all the pressure brought to bear upon him by his ministers and by his allies: he has absolutely declined to visit Rome so long as the Pope remains deprived of his temporal sovereignty. Ordinarily the most chivalrous and courteous of monarchs, and extremely punctilious in the fulfilment of all the obligations imposed by etiquette, he has up to the present moment refrained from returning the visit paid to his court at Vienna by King Humbert and Queen Marguerite nearly twenty years ago. Leo XIII., like his predecessor, has intimated that he would regard any visit paid to the King of Italy in the former Papal Palace of the Quirinal at Rome, by a Catholic sovereign, as a cruel affront to the occupant of the chair of St. Peter. The only Catholic ruler who has visited King Humbert at the Quirinal, in spite of this papal protest, is Prince Ferdinand of Bulgaria, who was at the time subject to the ban of the church, in consequence of the conversion of his little son from Catholicism to the Greek orthodox rite, in order to insure his own (Ferdinand's) recognition by Russia as ruler of Bulgaria. But Francis-Joseph has never consented to set his foot in Rome, although it has been pointed out to him that the existence of the triple alliance was imperilled by this slight placed upon King Humbert and Queen Marguerite. He did not hesitate to declare that he would rather forego the alliance than affront the Pope by visiting Rome under the present circ.u.mstances.

One little scene, in conclusion, which I witnessed at Vienna, has always remained impressed upon my mind, ill.u.s.trating as it does the democracy of the Catholic Church, if I may use that expression, and demonstrating the good old emperor's belief,--so different from that of Emperor William,--that in the eyes of the Almighty all men are equal.

It transpired at the funeral of Cardinal Gangelbauer, the popular and universally venerated Archbishop of Vienna. The obsequies took place in the ancient Cathedral of St. Stephen. Military and ecclesiastical pomp were combined with the magnificent ceremonial of the Austrian court for the purpose of rendering the last honors to the dead prelate. The entire metropolitan garrison was under arms, and lined the streets through which the funeral procession pa.s.sed. The bells of all the churches in the metropolis were tolling throughout the ceremony, and added to the solemnity of the occasion. The stately Papal Nuncio performed the funeral service in the most impressive manner, and when he stood on the step of the high altar, and raised his hands aloft to p.r.o.nounce the absolution, the whole of the vast a.s.semblage bowed down, the wintry sunlight streaming through the rich stained gla.s.s windows, falling alike upon the reverently bent head of the monarch, and those of the peasant mourners who stood by his side at the head of the bier. For the dead cardinal was the son of an old farmer, and his brothers, his sisters, and his nephews, all of them plain, humble peasants of Upper Austria, were kneeling there in their peasant garb with the emperor in their midst, and surrounded by the glittering uniforms of the archdukes, the princes, the generals, cabinet ministers and amba.s.sadors a.s.sembled around the coffin. There was no undue exaltation or timidity on the part of the peasants, no undue condescension or contempt on the part either of emperor or dignitaries for the lowly rank of their fellow mourners. All seemed thoroughly to realize that they were equal in the face of death, and in the presence of their Creator.

It is only in a metaphorical sense that William can be described as an Anointed of the Lord. For whereas Francis-Joseph was both anointed and crowned as King of Hungary in 1867, Emperor William has never been the object of either of these ceremonies. The fact of the matter is that there is a good deal of difference of opinion concerning the dignity of a German emperor; for while William claims that it is identical with the status of the emperors of Austria and Russia, the non-Prussian states of Germany insist that it is merely t.i.tular, inasmuch as he has no control or jurisdiction in the various federal states which const.i.tute the empire, such as Bavaria, Saxony and Wurtemberg, each of which has an independent king in nowise subject, but merely allied to the Prussian monarch.

It is only in time of war, and for the sake of successful co-operation that the supreme command of the united German military forces is by special agreement vested in the hands of the German emperor--a tribute to the superiority and pre-eminence of the Prussian military reorganizations. It is true that Prussia has since then, by degrees, endeavored to encroach upon the independence of the federal states.

But this is strongly resented, to-day more than ever, and William is constantly being reminded by the non-Prussian press, by the non-Prussian governments, and even by the non-Prussian reigning dynasties that they are not va.s.sals, but allies of Prussia.

The German emperor has no crown as such, nor any civil list, and with the solitary exception of his eldest son, all the members of his family figure merely as royal Prussian, not imperial German princes.

Thus, for instance, Prince Henry, the brother of the emperor, is addressed not as imperial highness, but only as royal highness.

Had William attempted to have himself crowned as German emperor, it would merely have had the effect of attracting public attention to the difference existing between his own status as emperor and that of his fellow-sovereigns of Austria and Russia, besides which it would have raised all sorts of troublesome questions with the non-Prussian courts, and intensified their sensibilities and prejudices. If, on the other hand, he had caused himself to be crowned king of Prussia in the ancient city of Konigsberg, where all Prussian kings have been crowned, the ceremony would have had the effect of impressing upon the world at large the fact that the only real crown to which William can lay claim, and which he is ent.i.tled to wear, is the crown of the kings of Prussia.

That is why he has never been either crowned or anointed, differing in this respect from Francis-Joseph, Emperor Nicholas and Queen Victoria, all of whom have experienced both ceremonies, which by the ma.s.ses of Europe, especially among the uneducated and ignorant, are considered indispensable to endow the majesty of the sovereign with a sacred character. The Hungarians did not consider Francis-Joseph as ent.i.tled to their allegiance and loyalty until he had been crowned at Pesth with the crown of St. Stephen, and anointed with the sacred oil, and there is no doubt that the Bohemians would be transformed from the most turbulent, malcontent, and troublesome of his subjects into his most devoted lieges, were he to comply with their demands, and have himself anointed and crowned as King of Bohemia, with the crown of Saint Wenceslaus.

Nor was Emperor Nicholas of Russia considered a full-fledged Czar of Russia, nor his consort a czarina, until he had been anointed and crowned at Moscow, nearly two years after his accession to the throne.

In fact, until the time of his coronation, his mother, the dowager empress, enjoyed precedence of his wife on all official occasions, on the ground that she was the widow of a crowned czar, and had herself been solemnly crowned as the consort of Alexander III., by her imperial husband, whereas her daughter-in-law, the younger empress, had enjoyed no such advantage up to that time.

Only those who know William well can realize how deeply he feels this difference which exists between himself and the rulers of more ancient dynasties, or how glad he would be to find some means of being crowned and anointed, not as a mere t.i.tular German emperor, but as Emperor of Germany. It is difficult to see how this ambition of his could be fulfilled so long as the Austrian empire remains in existence. The dignity of Emperor of Germany belonged for centuries to the house of Hapsburg, in relation to the head of which the chief of the Hohenzollern family ranked merely as a cup-bearer, being compelled to stand behind the chair of the Hapsburg monarch at all state banquets, and to keep his cup supplied with wine. The whole of the ancient insignia of the former Emperors of Germany, including the sceptre, the orb, and the sword of state, are in the possession of Emperor Francis-Joseph at Vienna, and are comprised in the imperial Austrian regalia. Indeed, at the time when King William of Prussia was proclaimed German Emperor at the palace of Versailles, in 1871, the Emperor of Austria wrote to the then widowed Queen Marie of Bavaria, that he protested, "from the very bottom of his heart, against the dignity and crown of his father being vested in persons without a shadow of right thereto, and that he had placed his rights in the hands of Providence." Although he entertains the friendliest sentiments towards Emperor William, there is no reason to believe that either he or the members of his house have modified their resentment in connection with this quasi-usurpation of the dignity of Emperor of Germany by the Prussian family of Hohenzollern.

CHAPTER XIII

There is no more restless man in all Europe than the kaiser. It is related of him at the Court of Berlin that when on one occasion he inquired of his brother, Prince Henry, if he could suggest to him anything new wherewith to startle both his own subjects and the world in general, the sailor prince, with a merry laugh, proposed that his majesty should remain perfectly quiet, without saying or doing anything, for an entire week! That, he a.s.sured his imperial brother, would amaze and dumbfound the entire universe more than anything else that could possibly be conceived.

While this lack of repose on the part of William is the source of a good deal of fun both at home and abroad, there is no doubt that it has had the effect of strengthening the monarchial system in Prussia to a far greater degree than in any previous reign. It is not that the kaiser is more popular than his predecessors on the throne. On the contrary, it may be doubted whether he holds the same place in the affections of the German people as did his father and grandfather. But while it is possible to imagine a Prussia without either of them, it is difficult to picture to oneself a Germany without William! It seems as if he were indispensable to the existence of the nation, and that if anything untoward were to happen to him, everything in Germany would suddenly stop working, precisely as if the mainspring of a watch were to break. He conveys the impression of being the source from which proceeds every action, every phase of activity and every enterprise, no matter what its character. To such an extent is this the case, that practically nothing seems to be done throughout the length and breadth of his dominions without his influence in the matter being both felt and apparent. There is nothing so trivial that it does not interest him. He will turn from the greatest and most important matters of state to the most petty question concerning court etiquette or domestic mismanagement, and will not hesitate to interrupt an interview with the chancellor of the empire, or with some foreign amba.s.sador, to spank one of his youngsters if he happens to have been misbehaving himself!

He keeps absolute personal control over the army, the navy, the state administration, and his court, and yet finds time to supervise his children's lessons and amus.e.m.e.nts. He attends even to the pulling out of the milk teeth of his little ones and permits no one else to do it, as the following little anecdote, concerning Prince Oscar, his fifth son, will ill.u.s.trate.

The boys had, and I believe still have, an English governess, who is very strict and independent with them, and who just on that account, probably, is highly esteemed and liked by her young pupils, as well as by their parents. On the occasion of her last anniversary, the empress with her usual kindness prepared a pretty birthday table for her, decked out with all kinds of presents from the imperial couple, and from each of the children. Prince Oscar's gift, which he had carefully done up himself in ribbons and tinted paper, and inscribed with his name, turned out to be a small and empty cardboard box. On being taken to task by his mother as to what he meant by this, he informed her that the box was destined to hold the first tooth, which he was about to lose, and which his father, the emperor, was to pull for him with a string that very afternoon, at the conclusion of a "Kronrath," or council of the crown, at which his majesty was to preside. The little prince regarding that tooth as the greatest treasure at his disposal, was convinced that he could bestow upon his governess no more acceptable gift. She now wears it in a gold bangle presented to her by the empress.

Among other domestic affairs which have occupied the kaiser's attention, has been the tendency of his boys to dyspepsia and digestive troubles, owing to their habit of eating too rapidly, a fault which they have certainly inherited from their father, for he has subjected them to the same process that was adopted in his case when a child, to make him eat slowly; to wit, whenever apples or pears are given to the boys they are not permitted to get them whole, and to munch them, like any ordinary boy, but only to receive them cut into quarters, each bit being wrapped in a number of pieces of tissue paper, the unfolding of which requires time, thus preventing the young princes from eating too fast! The kaiser often alludes to the fact that he was subjected to the same formalities and will add:

"You see nothing was made easy for me in my youth. Even the matter of eating an apple was rendered as difficult for me as possible!"

The kaiser is followed wherever he goes by an extremely clever stenographer, Dr. Weiss, who was formerly official shorthand writer to the imperial parliament. He now forms part of the emperor's household, and accompanies his majesty on all his numerous travels. It is the doctor's duty to place on record and preserve all the pearls that drop from the imperial lips, or perhaps, to put it more correctly, to give the emperor and his advisers an opportunity of editing and revising his public utterances before they find their way into print. Dr.

Weiss has several a.s.sistants who help him in the transcription of his shorthand notes, and none of the emperor's public speeches or casual remarks find their way into print nowadays except through Dr. Weiss.

Thanks to the tact of this precious secretary, there exists, very often, a considerable diversity between what the emperor says, and what he is represented as having said, and it is in consequence of this wise provision that the imperial speeches appear to have become so much more discreet, and at the same time less sensational, than was the case during the early part of his reign.

Quick-tempered, pa.s.sionate, generous-hearted, and extremely impulsive, the emperor, often speaking on the spur of the moment, frequently said more than he intended to say, and thus laid himself open to both domestic and foreign criticism and abuse. He has not yet outgrown this fault, although he has become much more cautious than formerly, and moreover, with Dr. Weiss at his elbow, and with the care that is observed by the authorities to let none of the imperial utterances reach the public in print, save through Dr. Weiss, after being duly edited by him, most of the former perils have been averted. The emperor is very particular, indeed, about having Dr. Weiss by his side, and frequently at public functions himself directs the doctor where to stand and where to sit, so that he may not lose a word of what his imperial master says.

Like the aged pontiff at Rome, William manifests a great predilection for the telephone. There are telephonic instruments in his library, in his workroom, and even in his bed-chamber, and quite a considerable portion of the day is spent talking over the wires to his ministers, government officials, relatives, courtiers or mere friends. He seems to find the same pleasure in calling up the various government departments that he does in alarming the various garrisons at night time, being evidently under the impression that by so doing he keeps the officials strictly attentive to their duties, and convinced that if not the eye, at any rate the ear of the emperor is on the _qui vive!_ Nor are the government offices safe from being rung up by his majesty over the wires even at night time. For the past two or three years he has insisted that at the ministry of foreign affairs, at the ministry of the interior, and at the war and naval departments, at least one of the divisional chiefs and half a dozen clerks should be kept on duty all night long, in order to attend to any business or to communicate to him without delay anything that they may regard as needing his immediate attention.

Berlin is the only capital where the princ.i.p.al government offices are thus kept open for official business all night long, and the circ.u.mstance serves to furnish another ill.u.s.tration of the extraordinary activity, energy, and impatience of delay that distinguish the emperor, who wants everything done right away, without a moment's waiting!

Emperor William gives the telephone companies at Berlin and at Potsdam far more trouble than any other of their subscribers, for when he telephones to any of the government departments, or to dignitaries or officials of high rank, the operators at the central office are under the strictest orders to abstain from listening to the conversation, and are forced to rise from their seats and remove to a distance from the wires. Anyone caught disobeying in this particular is subject not only to dismissal, but to serious unpleasantness on the part of the police.

When the emperor rings up anybody, he does not announce his ident.i.ty, taking it for granted that the tones of his voice are sufficiently well known to reveal it. It has been noted, moreover, that he commences all his conversations over the wire with the p.r.o.noun "I,"

while the verb "command," either in the past or in the present tense, almost invariably follows. This is quite sufficient to show who is talking.

William is the first sovereign of his line to accept the hospitality of his subjects. Prior to his advent to the throne, such a thing as the monarch attending any private entertainment or dinner given by one of his lieges was altogether unknown. Neither King Frederick-William III., King Frederick-William IV., nor old Emperor William, whose reigns extended over nearly ninety years of the nineteenth century, ever once honored any member of the n.o.bility, no matter how high in rank, with their presence for a single evening or night, except during the course of the annual manoeuvres, when the monarch, as commander-in-chief of the army, was quartered in some chateau, much in the same manner as the officers of minor rank and the soldiers.

Emperor William, however, following the example of his British relatives, and greatly to the dismay of all the old-fas.h.i.+oned authorities on the etiquette of the Court of Berlin, has adopted the practice of inviting himself out to dinner in town, and to shooting-parties in the country, in a manner that is absolutely startling, even to his English relatives; for whereas the latter never dine out anywhere, unless the list of guests invited to meet them is previously submitted to them for consideration and revision, in order to avoid being brought into contact with people that are not congenial, the kaiser, on the other hand, when he hears that a dinner is about to be given by one of his friends or followers, frequently invites himself either at the last moment, an hour or two before the time fixed for the meal, or else arrives unannounced and uninvited, knowing full well that he will always be welcome, since his coming can only be regarded as a particular mark of imperial regard and favor toward the giver of the entertainment.

Thus, while Count Shuvaloff was still Russian amba.s.sador at Berlin, the emperor was in the habit of dropping in unannounced about luncheon time, and of sitting down with the count and countess, the latter being as often as not in the negligee of a mere tea-gown, and more than once when he had sat with them longer than he intended, and found that there was no time left to return to the palace before proceeding to the railroad station to take his departure for Potsdam or some other place, he would ask leave of the count to use his telephone, ring up the empress, and not only bid her adieu, but also dispatch her a kiss over the wires, in the most charmingly domestic fas.h.i.+on.

William prides himself in no small degree on his descent through Queen Victoria in an unbroken line from the Biblical King David, and claims that he, therefore, belongs to the same family as the founder of Christianity. Hanging in a conspicuous position in his workroom in the "Neues-Palais" at Potsdam, is a copy of the royal family tree, showing the name of King David engrossed at the root of it, with that of Emperor William at the top. According to this tree, the reigning house of England is descended from King David through the eldest daughter of Zedekiah, who, with her sister, fled to Ireland in charge of the prophet Jeremiah,--then an old man,--to be married to Heremon, the king of Ulster of the period.