THE time came very soon when Prince Joachim was sent away, the victim of acute home-sickness, to join his brothers in Ploen; and it was then resolved that the Princess, who felt his absence keenly, should be also provided with the necessary stimulus and society of children of her own age.

From the Augusta-Stift, an aristocratic ladies’ school in Potsdam in which the Empress was much interested, three suitable young maidens of good family were chosen.

Every morning they were fetched at half-past seven by a royal carriage and brought to the New Palace, where they shared the lessons and games of the Princess until half-past twelve, when they were reconducted to their Stift. It was fondly hoped by the ladies of the Court that this arrangement would put a stop to the constant interruption of lessons—a hope which was scarcely realized, for it made not the slightest difference.

Girls in high-class German schools lead a very different life to those in similar institutions in England. They must all wear uniform, ugly for choice; they must have their hair plaited in the tightest, most uncompromising of plaits, which is not allowed to hang down, but is pinned by multitudinous hairpins into a hard knob. Their whole existence is absorbed in the acquisition of knowledge, and the exercise they take is a matter not of pleasure but of health. If they do anything naughty, or are untidy, they wear ribbon rosettes whose colours show nicely-graduated degrees of infamy, and they must weep bitterly when they don’t know their lessons, and ask forgiveness for a failure to indicate the exact position of Kamschatka. They are usually nice, happy, pleasant-mannered girls, expert at making Knixes, those quaint little German curtsies which seem to carry one back into Jane Austen’s books. They kiss the hands of their elders, and as soon as they are confirmiert and leave school, blossom out into very fashionably-dressed, handsome young women, with hair done in the latest fashion, and a decided penchant for young lieutenants. Their highest ambition is to be verlobt as soon as possible, and they never turn their thoughts again in the direction of Kamschatka or any other part of the globe existing beyond their immediate sphere of observation. They make excellently self-sacrificing wives and mothers, and help to preserve in their husbands that attitude of infallibility which is the peculiar prerogative of German mankind. They invariably converse fairly well in English and French, and are able to quote Goethe, Schiller and Shakespeare in a manner which, if a little mechanical, still gives an agreeable impression of culture and is some relief from the domestic pursuits which, after marriage, they fulfil with praiseworthy ardour. They are as opposed to the self-possessed, slangy, sporting English schoolgirl with her multifarious ambitions as can well be imagined. They never desire to go on the stage, never want a vote, and are perfectly content with the limited prospect which life offers to their sex. So in their ill-fitting black frocks, in hard, round, black straw sailor hats, with their luxuriant hair strained brutally off their foreheads into the tightest, hardest of coils, every morning came three little girls to share the studies and recreations of the Princess. There had been some heart-burning among the parents of the young ladies of the Stift, as each one considered that her child had peculiar qualifications as a possible companion to royalty; but the final decision lay in the hands of the head-mistress and the tutor of the Princess, and the choice ultimately made was undoubtedly a wise one, though sometimes the more unregenerate officers of His Majesty’s suite ventured the opinion that the girls in question were “zu gut erzogen"—too well brought up—from which it may be gathered that they desired to see a little more natural, healthy naughtiness exhibited. It is, however, unreasonable to expect a child, even if endowed with gifts in this direction, not to put a good many curbs on her inclination when she is chosen to share the comparatively pleasant life at Court in exchange for that of the Stift; and as they were expressly encouraged to assert their own rights and not to let the Princess always win at the games they played—a deplorable tendency which had its root as much in the Princess’s superiority at games as in the ill-advised instructions of foolish parents—they soon discovered, as children will, a democratic level of existence which was invaluable as an educational factor. Each child, including the Princess, was called by her Christian name, and it was a matter for congratulation when one of the “Stifts-Kinder,” as they were called, was found to have an immense superiority over the Princess in the matter of evolutions on the parallel bars. This quartette of young people worked and played together amicably for some years—until, in fact, the time approached for the confirmation of the Princess, that great event in the life of a German girl which seems to make a sharp, decided finish to her childhood and flings her full-fledged into a new existence.

When the Court was staying in Berlin, the Stifts-Kinder came under a lady’s escort by train every morning from Potsdam to Berlin, where they were driven straight to Belle Vue. They had four little desks side by side in one of the big empty salons there, and their cheerful faces and gay shrieks of laughter as they jumped over the flower-beds in the intervals of lessons, or in wet weather chased each other through the stately rooms with their decorous suites of brocaded furniture, added a pleasant element of youth and freshness to the old palace.

The Princess told many interesting facts about Belle Vue. Among other things, when I was admiring the blue satin curtains in one room and remarking on their newness, she said, “Yes, of course; that was because of the Shah of Persia.”

“Why?” I inquired, wondering what the Shah had to do with curtains in Belle Vue.

“Oh, don’t you know? He and his suite stayed here once, and they used to kill sheep in this room, and wiped their hands on the blue satin curtains; and they had to be replaced, of course!”

She said further that the old “Shah,” the one who threw chicken-bones and asparagus-ends over his shoulder to the servants standing behind, tried to imitate European manners and eat with a fork instead of his fingers, but being unaccustomed to the implement, compromised on Persian and European methods by picking up the meat with his fingers, sticking it on the fork, and thus conveying it to his mouth.

“When Great-Grandmamma Augusta once offered him a dish of strawberries, instead of taking a few on to his plate, he just ate them from the dish while she held it. Fancy! Great-Grandmamma Augusta—who was so particular! Everybody nearly had a fit!”

An intense interest in human nature was one of the traits which the Princess shared with her father, the Emperor. She liked, if possible, to merge herself in the crowd, to watch people going about their daily affairs, to see young people making love, old people cooking or reading the papers. She had a healthy, vital curiosity; knew all about the brothers of the Stifts-Kinder, and to whom they were, or were likely to be, engaged. One particular friend among the boarders at the Stift—not one of those who came daily, but another who was frequently invited to the Palace, a very nice American girl called Yvette Borup—had a brother who accompanied Peary on his expedition to the North Pole. After coming safely through all the dangers and hardships of the Polar expedition, this brother a year or two later was unfortunately drowned in America while boating; but at the time of which I write he was absent with Peary, and there were few days when the Princess did not wonder “where Yvette’s brother had got to now.”

In the daily afternoon walks in the neighbourhood of Potsdam, after Prince Joachim had gone to Ploen and there was consequently no governor or tutor to accompany the Princess and her lady, a private detective was detailed to dog her footsteps, for there were many undesirable characters about and Her Majesty insisted that we should have some kind of escort.

These men deserved the greatest sympathy, for the Princess found it most irksome to be followed, and would take the greatest pains to “throw them off the scent.” When they began to realize their obnoxiousness to this tempestuous daughter of the Hohenzollerns it was amusing to see them unobtrusively materialize from behind a tree after she had passed by, skulking from bush to bush, withdrawing into the shadows of the houses, or pretending to be mere harmless passers-by absorbed in the study of shop-windows.

The Princess, whose sharp eye instantly detected their manoeuvres, once observed: “If we had not known they were detectives we might have thought them murderers lying in wait.”

Men new to their duties would begin by showing too much zeal, and invariably found that all their instructions from head-quarters, whatever they might be, were immediately negatived and rendered of no effect, for if they approached within not merely speaking, but shouting distance, they were treated with withering scorn, and the Princess would fly through the bushes on rapid, indignant feet, while the unfortunate man puffed gallantly but hopelessly in the rear.

Finally the footman was told to instruct the detectives as to the probable direction of her walks, so that they could make occasional cross-country cuts; and they quickly learned the necessity of “taking cover” and becoming merged in the surrounding landscape as soon as the keen-eyed Princess appeared in sight. They were not only absolved but strictly prohibited from bowing or saluting, and were urged to be “unmannerly rather than troublesome”; and they soon learned to carry out their duties so unobtrusively that when, as often happened, they were requisitioned for the service of the Emperor, the suite remarked on the excellent training and wonderful tact of the Geheim-Polizisten, quite unaware how much of their education had been due to a young “Backfisch” in a blue serge suit.

Royalties, especially German Royalties, spend a large portion of their existence in travelling; and it may here be noted how much the advent of the automobile has tended to simplify life at court, and to abolish those manifold small ceremonies, red carpets and constantly-bowing officials, which were formerly attendant on the shortest royal journeys. It has relieved the royalties themselves, as well as the functionaries of the Court, of an infinite multitude of tedious, tiresome, small formalities and duties, and the motor-car is now invariably used excepting for very long journeys.

Donau-Eschingen is the name of the residence of Prince Max Egon, FÜrst zu FÜrstenburg, with whom His Majesty stays every year for a few days to shoot capercailzie, which abound in the woods of the region bordering on the Schwarzwald. On one occasion the Empress and her daughter accompanied the Emperor, who had just returned from Norway.

The train of the Empress left Berlin at eleven o’clock on Friday night, and before that the Princess had retired to bed, though it is not easy to sleep in a station among the hootings and trumpetings that accompany the comings and goings of trains. All through the night the train travelled slowly, with many jerks and stops, for it was not due to arrive until ten o’clock next morning at the place where the Emperor would join it. The route lay through the most beautiful forest scenery of the ThÜringer-Wald.

At nine o’clock we breakfasted in the train with the Empress, and shortly afterwards stopped at a station surrounded by an enormous crowd. There were the usual tiers of faces pressed to the railings row above row. No ceremony was observed on this occasion. The Emperor could be seen in his green hunting-uniform crossing the line with his adjutants, and the Empress and the Princess descended to the platform to welcome him. He looked very brown and well from his long sea-voyage, and was obviously in very good spirits. After a few minutes the train started again, no luggage having been transferred, as the train that brought His Majesty had been coupled on to that of the Empress.

At one o’clock we all dined together in the restaurant car, where the ladies wore hats and simple walking-dresses, without jackets. A long table ran down the centre of the saloon, and one of the gentlemen, whose duty it was, showed us our places. The Emperor and Empress sat facing each other at the middle of each side.

There was very little room for the footmen to pass round behind the chairs, especially for those unfortunate men who, in the course of their service at court, had acquired a certain rotundity of figure; and as the train jerked and swayed along it was all that some of them could do to avoid being flung, soup and all, over the people they were serving. The consommÉ was handed round in little bowls with curved-in rims, but at the best it was a very elusive liquid, and most of it evaded pursuit and was taken back to the kitchen.

After the soup came mutton cutlets with purÉe of potatoes, and this dish the Emperor ordered to be set in front of him, for he obviously objected to the possibility of having an avalanche of chops on his head. At German meals every dish, even a joint, is always offered to the guests to help themselves; there is no carving at the sideboard. The meat is previously cut up in the kitchen, and then the slices laid together again to look as though the joint were whole, so that only a fork is needed to serve oneself; but it always impressed me, especially after once seeing a servant, owing to a sudden paroxysm of the train, fling a whole leg of mutton over a lady’s shoulder into her lap, as a custom which places too much responsibility on the waiter. So the gentleman and the Empress held the plates while the Emperor slapped chops into them as fast as possible, so that they had, as he observed, “no time to grow cold,” and the dish was soon empty.

He was laughing and chatting all the time, evidently in most exuberant spirits, and introduced one gentleman to me, who had newly arrived at court, giving a short biography of his life—as for instance, “He’s been to America and got scalped there by Indians.” The gentleman in question, raising his hat, ran his hand over his smooth and hairless cranium as though in corroboration of His Majesty’s statement.

“Speaks wonderful English,” went on the Emperor—“wonderful English, all learnt in America. You can talk to him as much as you like.”

As my energies were at that time concentrated on keeping my knife and fork out of my features, I did not talk very much to the gentleman from America, though I afterwards found that he did speak very good English indeed.

The train began slowly to ascend the beautiful mountains of the Black Forest. It was the month of May, and against the dark background of pine-forest ran the vivid green of the larches breaking into leaf. Little streams and waterfalls continually came into view as we rose higher and higher, and often a sudden shower fell and a rainbow spanned the valley below us. The train passed through more than thirty tunnels.

When luncheon was finished we still stayed some time at the table, and one of the generals in the Emperor’s suite who had recently begun to study the English language took the opportunity to practise what he knew of it upon me. He was a very delightful, handsome old gentleman, and had fought in the Franco-Prussian War. He told me all the books he was reading in English, and quoted sentimentally, apropos of nothing, “Let me Dream again.” I wondered where he had learned that Early-Victorian melody.

“That is all Lowther Castle,” laughed the Emperor: “started them all learning English; they’ve been taking lessons ever since.”

When they accompanied the Emperor to stay with Lord Lonsdale, all the German gentlemen found themselves so dreadfully “out of it” for want of English, that as soon as they returned to their native land they one and all, regardless of age or possible ridicule, immediately sought out a teacher and studied hard, with, at least in the case of the old general, most satisfactory results, for he was able to talk quite fluently with me. I recommended him to read “The Visits of Elizabeth,” which had just appeared in Tauchnitz, and the Emperor remarked that he had read it, and was sure it was all true, especially the part about France. He was very kind in pointing out pretty bits of scenery, and kept the table in a perpetual roar with his jokes, which he always laughed at most heartily himself.

When the train arrived at Donau-Eschingen a large party, composed of the Prince and Princess FÜrstenburg with their eldest daughter, a girl about the same age as the Princess, and sundry head-foresters, Land-Rats, and other officials in black coats and white ties, was on the platform to receive the Emperor and Empress.

There were five children at the Schloss, two girls and three boys, and the Princess was delighted to have so many children to talk and play with. She was always interested in new people, and never shy. She took all her meals with them and their governess and tutor, and played furious games of hide-and-seek all over the garden. Nor did she neglect to visit the stables, and tried to ride a donkey bare-backed without a bridle—a very difficult feat, as she found to her cost, for being uplifted with pride at being able to stick on for a few minutes, she rode into the front of the Schloss, where the donkey tipped her ignominiously on to the gravel before the assembled ladies and gentlemen and then raced back to the stables. Beyond a few scratches she was not much hurt.

In the district of Baden, where Donau-Eschingen is situated, and in the various valleys of the Black Forest, the peasant costumes are extremely quaint and varied, each valley being distinguished by its own particular Tracht. At the invitation of the Prince of FÜrstenburg all the inhabitants of the surrounding district came to greet the Emperor and Empress. It was a most beautiful and picturesque sight, these masses of people in their many-coloured head-dresses and wonderfully embroidered bodices. Some of them had huge erections made of brilliantly coloured beads on their heads, in shape like a wedding cake, and often weighing close on twenty pounds; others wore straw hats covered with bright red or black silk pompons; while another characteristic head-dress was a sort of pointed, stiff black silk cap, from which hung long streamers of black ribbon. They had wonderfully embroidered bodices worked in silver lace, and short pleated skirts of a portentous width all round.

The Emperor and Empress and all the guests stood on the balcony after they returned from church—it was of course Sunday when the fÊte took place—and watched the procession go by. The inhabitants of each valley walked together and carried a flag bearing the name of their particular district. The cheerful, sunburnt peasants moved slowly through the beautiful gardens, men and women, marching past in their quaint picturesque dress, which, though so crude in colour, yet blended together in a riot of delightful beauty, threading in and out in a long-drawn-out line of marvellous effect. The sun glinted from the masses of opalescent beads carried on the heads of three or four hundred sturdy maidens, or lit up the wide stretch of red pompons which cut across the procession like a field of poppies, then wandered to the bright red waistcoats worn by the men, shone on the green silk aprons or the broad cerise ribbons and the wonderfully starched and plaited white cambric sleeves.

Three of the women, each wearing a different costume, came up to the balcony and presented an address to the Empress, who talked with them in her usual kindly manner. The peasants were three women of great dignity and a certain nobility of manner, self-possessed and apparently not in the least intimidated. Probably in ordinary costume they might have created a different impression, and would have appeared commonplace and ordinary in type and feature; but the marvel of these peasant dresses is that the plain woman looks in them almost as well as the handsomest; they bestow a piquancy, an alluring attractiveness on the least prepossessing of womankind. In detail they exploit the bizarre, the unexpected, often the ludicrous, yet subtly blend into a complete and satisfactory whole, as incomprehensible as it is fascinating.

For the rest of the day the Schloss garden was crowded with groups of peasants, some of them tiny boys and girls, all anxious to see the Kaiserin, and above all “die kleine Prinzessin,” who has always kept a very special place in the hearts of the German people.

A curious rumour, one of those inexplicable tales which, though totally devoid of foundation, are yet firmly accepted and become one more of those popular errors so tenaciously held, a whispered story with regard to the Princess, with which she herself is much amused, has always been current in Germany—even in the remotest corners of the Empire—to the effect that she is deaf and dumb. How this extraordinary idea arose can never be known, for at every stage of her existence the Princess has lagged noways behind other children in volubility of expression and quickness of hearing.

Once at the seaside a faithful forester, a true and loyal German subject, approached the Court physician, who was in attendance on the royal children, paddling in the “briny” a short distance away, and expressed his unmitigated sorrow at the misfortune suffered by the Imperial Family, in that their only daughter should be so deeply afflicted.

At the moment one of those healthy spells of zanking happened to take place between the Princess and her brother.

“Do you hear that?” said the genial doctor. “Can you hear your deaf-and-dumb Princess talking?” She was indeed talking in tones that carried to quite a distance. “Go a little nearer and listen.”

The man stopped a short distance away, and drank in the sounds as though they were heavenly music. The poor afflicted child of his imagination fled for ever. He turned with his face radiating joy.

“Gott sei dank!” he ejaculated. “Now I know it’s not true, but I was always afraid. People always said she was taub-stumm. Now I can tell them what fools they are. I’ve heard Her Royal Highness with my own ears.” He departed joyously to spread the glad tidings.

But many people are hard to convince. One dear old lady in Berlin whom I knew was always making doubtful inquiries of me on this subject, and, like Thomas, refused to believe.

“Ach, yes!” she would say, “of course you dare not tell me the truth. You have to say that she is all right.”

“Of course,” I mocked, “it is essential for a deaf-and-dumb person to have an English teacher, isn’t it—and another one for French? She is deaf-and-dumb in three languages.”

The lady was still doubtful, and I left her deeply pondering.

After three days we left Donau-Eschingen for Strasburg, a very beautiful town, disfigured by a terribly ugly modern palace, which the Emperor calls the “Railway-palace,” as he considers it to be of that hideously harsh, painful form of architecture we have been accustomed to bear with, for purely utilitarian purposes. “They built it before my time,” he hastens to tell every one. “Makes me feel ill every time I see it.”

It was a huge, square gaunt building, surrounded by a palisaded garden, which contained not a solitary spot where any one could be free from the attentions of the crowd.

Whenever the Princess walked in it for a few minutes, or wanted to sit and work under a tree, the whole length of palisade, only a few yards away, became a mass of human bodies: the butcher-boy with his basket, the maidservant on her way to market, the workman with his pipe, rows upon rows of schoolboys and girls with their teachers, clerks and washerwomen, all welded themselves into a solid mass and concentrated their gaze upon one poor unfortunate child. She fled into the house for the time, and then the crowd melted away, only to re-form the moment any one reappeared. The Emperor gave orders that the palisades should be boarded up inside, but of course it was impossible to do it at once, so that all that week of lovely weather the Princess had to stay indoors or content herself with drives round the town, followed by a clattering contingent of schoolboys. The people seemed to be delighted to see the Princess, and were continually waving pocket-handkerchiefs as soon as she appeared. They also greeted the Emperor and Empress with great enthusiasm when they arrived; but whether this was just the German portion of the population, who tried to cover up by their exuberant loyalty any deficiencies on the part of the French, it is hard to say.

The Princess went with her mother to visit the lovely old Cathedral of Strasburg, and saw the wonderful clock and its flapping cock and moving figures, and then drove through the old, picturesque part of the town, among queer old wooden houses with carved beams.

The Empress visited hospitals and orphanages all day, and in the evenings big, tiresome official dinners took place, at which every one looked bored. The Princess was not there, but peeped at them between the big red-velvet curtains which shut off a portion of the dining-hall.

The last day of the journey was spent at Metz, where the Emperor reviewed an army corps. Their entry into this town must have seemed strange indeed to their Majesties, accustomed as they are to smiling, shouting crowds. Here there was no welcome, no smile, not a single flag. The people who stood in the streets looked on idly, like spectators of a curious show, as the long procession of carriages with their outriders moved on, to the sound only of the rumble of their own wheels. Sometimes a lady remarked resentfully on the strange absence of enthusiasm. The names over the doors were French, the faces were French, there was an atmosphere of French hostility.

Under a little awning, in the burning sunshine, the Empress stood for two hours, smiling and bowing while the troops marched past. The Emperor was on his horse a little distance away, amidst a group of officers. On the roof of a neighbouring building were gathered together the only Germans in the town. Here was a flutter of white, a shouting of Hurrah! a movement of welcome and delight, a little lonely outpost of loyalty and patriotism. The people on the roof and one or two rather dirty little boys were the only spectators present. The beautiful town went on with its own affairs while the German soldiers marched and rode past.

It seemed something of an anomaly and a mistake that these stalwart brown young men, good-tempered and patient as all German soldiers appear to be, should be living in a kind of exile within their own Empire, cordially disliked by the people among whom their lot is cast, not for any personal reason, but solely as a heritage left to them by a dead-and-gone generation. None of them were born at the time of the Franco-Prussian war, but they have their share of its aftermath. The Prussian spirit is not conciliatory. It has a knack of letting the conquered drink to the dregs the cup of humiliation; its press is bombastic, and has none of the large-minded tolerance which would enable it to appreciate the acute sufferings of a proud, humiliated people.

About five years after the end of the Boer war, a German lady who was dining at court drew me aside after dinner.

“To-day,” she said, “I have been talking to a German gentleman who has been living in your Orange River Free State, or whatever you call it; and he tells me that the Boers are quite content now to be under your Government—they do not want to change back again.”

“Are they?” I said. “Is he quite sure?”

“Oh, quite, quite certain. He knows. He is a German. They know he is a German. They tell him the truth. He says they are absolutely satisfied. Now tell me: how do you manage it? And with so few soldiers, I am told—hardly any at all. How do you do it? In five years! And look at us in Elsass-Lothringen. We don’t know how to satisfy them. They will never be satisfied. We are always in fear of war. Tell us your secret.” She laid her hand on my arm and looked at me intently, as though she could surprise the secret out of me.

“Oh, I don’t know,” I said lamely. “You see we’ve had a lot of practice at governing, and made an awful lot of mistakes, and we’ve learned a little by our past mistakes; I suppose that is one reason. So we know what are the kind of things that people won’t stand. And we let them a good deal alone afterwards, and play cricket and football with them and things of that kind; and we let them vote the same as the rest of us, and—er—well, we don’t treat them any differently from the rest, as far as I can make out—just let them alone to conspire or do as they like—and then if they know they can, they don’t want to. See? And then our Tommies—our soldiers—are very good too; they’re not brought up to be so patriotic as yours—so, of course, it’s less galling: they’d just as soon chum up with the enemy afterwards as not. Yours are brought up to look on him rather as a criminal, aren’t they? Not the officers, of course, but the others. They are patronizingly kind and pitying, and no one likes that, do they? You don’t want conquered people to lose their self-respect. Well, I don’t know, I’m sure——”

“Cricket and football,” the lady murmured, “and not too patriotic, and a vote, and let them conspire if they want to, and the soldiers are ‘chummy.’ Ach! We cannot do that. It is a matter of national temperament, I suppose, but it is sad, very sad. Here in five years you pacify your enemy, and in forty years we have not begun to pacify ours: it is a constant fear—a constant terror—one expects every day to hear that war has broken out. And you will not tell us your secret. How do you learn to govern like this? No, it is impossible! It must be, as I said, national temperament.”

She sighed and cast her eyes upward and walked away looking troubled.