changed. When you are invited to tea, you find your place set at a table loaded with expensive flowers and accessories from the chic caterer. Footmen are in constant attendance and the charm of informality has entirely gone.

Friends of mine who used to be content to dine in some simple tea-gown now wear the latest Paris creations and their jewels—and this every evening. Although the Frenchwoman may still think that the Englishwoman’s taste in dress is far beneath her own standard, she would have to admit, if she were invited to some fashionable house-party, that the Englishwoman of means has far eclipsed her in the matter of frequent change. She would see the hostess and guests appear in tweed suits and stout boots for their morning constitutional and breakfast, then reappear in white flannels for their afternoon game of tennis or boating. She would wonder how, in the thick of sports and entertainment, these energetic women found time to put on some clinging creation for tea which would later be laid aside for the décolleté dinner-gown.

Of course, these departures from the simple tastes of twenty years ago seem harmless enough in themselves, but they are surely indications of a constantly growing love of lavishness in the whole social routine. I am sorry to say that the fine old-time courtesies of the English gentry seem to have suffered by these more luxurious habits of living. In many smart circles, polished manners seem to have become as super-annuated as crinolines and stage coaches.

Whatever may be the faults of the English land-lord-system—faults inherited from the centuries—the system used to work excellently whenever the lord of the castle or manor-house lived up to his responsibilities. In spite of its touch of paternalism, there was something impressive about the white-haired earl inspecting his broad acres, bowing tenants standing aside to let his carriage pass, and something altogether touching about his lady visiting the cottagers, her footman—far haughtier in mien than she—bearing gifts of food and warm clothing. As long as the villagers were well cared for, I suppose they never questioned whether it was right for their master to have a mansion while they had to toil so hard to keep their humble thatched roof over their heads. But when the young lord took to dissipating the family fortunes on the turf, when he married some footlight favourite—in other words, when he began to neglect the responsibilities of his race—that, probably, was the beginning of their doubt in the justice of the English social order. Then they forgot to curtsy whenever the young lord and his bride motored through the village, and they began to listen to the itinerant labour agitator at the tavern.

Of course, the democratic spirit that is spreading all over the world has been at work in England for years, undermining rigid caste distinctions and differences, but I feel that it could not have grown so quickly nor expressed itself in just such forms as it has, if the extravagance and irresponsibility of many of the rich and powerful had not paved the way for it. Destroy respect and you destroy docility. There is no doubt that the English lower classes, in their first efforts toward democracy and equality, have made some pretty ludicrous mistakes. Instead of copying the fine qualities of the aristocracy, they have, more frequently than not, managed to imitate their shortcomings and limitations. I remember hearing that the valet of some prince insisted on having a valet for himself! I know that French maids, whom I have taken to England, have had their heads turned by the amazing etiquette of the servants’ hall—all unquestionably due to the servants’ desire to pattern their masters.

The maid of the Infanta is a great person, and she soon found that she could take precedence over all the others. She had to be elegantly dressed. Indeed, whenever I go to England, I always remark that my maid has double the luggage she requires when I take her to other countries. Once I discovered that the English servants’ attitude toward their work had so affected one maid that she was almost completely spoilt. For instance, after a visit to England on which she had accompanied me, this maid broke down and sobbed when I told her to light a fire.

“I can’t, I can’t,” she said, piteously, with tears streaming down her face.

“But for years you have been accustomed to light fires for me,” I said. “What has happened to make it such a terrible thing to light one now?”

She explained that she had learnt in England that it was beneath the dignity of a lady’s-maid to do menial work.

A Spanish maid from Seville had more sense, and amused me immensely by telling me that the English servants had told her that it was exceedingly smart to walk out on Sunday afternoons with a soldier, and they had added that if she desired to show herself with a Guardsman, he would expect to be paid.

“Fancy my paying a soldier to walk out with me!” she said, laughing.

However, it is not unreasonable to hope that the war, which has already done so much toward rousing the rich from their lethargy of extravagance and neglect of responsibilities to the most praiseworthy usefulness, will help correct the lower class conception of equality. As I have already said, no character is so full of surprises as the English—so capable of appearing to be one thing while underneath it is the exact opposite. Can this be what people of other nationalities mean when they speak of English hypocrisy? It is rather an innate reserve which the foreigner finds great difficulty in penetrating. It comes, no doubt, from the Englishman’s veneration for tradition, and for centuries he has been schooled to show no emotion. That is often why he is supposed to be either stupid or inattentive. As a matter of fact, this very exterior gives him the great advantage of being able to size up a situation without betraying either the process or his conclusions.

The proof of what I say is the Englishman’s unquestioned superiority in diplomacy. People who have no experience of cosmopolitan society seem to think that the successful diplomat must be a detective of the popular novel type: an astute if somewhat unscrupulous politician and a polished lady’s man all rolled into one. To be sure, the representatives of certain countries often do their best to realise just such an ideal, but, although this type may succeed in carrying some of their machinations to a conclusion satisfactory to themselves, they almost never accomplish anything really worth while for their governments. Most of the English diplomats I have known on the Continent give the impression of being serenely indifferent to any intrigues that may be going on around them. It has often amused me to watch them at dinner-parties. Unlike certain representatives of other powers, they never go out of their way to make themselves agreeable to ladies. I have never seen them pay special attention to the wives of powerful statesmen for the purposes of their profession—indeed, they seem to scorn these backdoor methods. Perhaps, it is because they know very well that real diplomacy is built on more solid foundations than on the gleanings of drawing-room conversations or the chance confidences of indiscreet women.

And they are right in this, for the whole tradition of diplomacy in England is different from that of any great power. She has not changed her tactics for centuries.

England has established such a prestige among nations that she is able to transact her international affairs in London, and has at her disposal the brains of her best statesmen. King Edward, in bringing about the entente cordiale, thus probably initiated the French Government into this way of conducting its international affairs, for of late years French diplomacy has steadily improved.

King Edward himself possessed in a high degree those national qualities that make the English such good diplomats. Not only in the conduct of nations, but in society, his self-possession and tact were unfailing. They certainly did not fail him on one occasion when I saw him placed in a very comical and embarrassing situation. We were both at a dinner-party in a great London house, and among the guests was a lady who bore an historic Italian title. She was English by birth, and before her marriage had been famous in London society for her great beauty and her charm of manner. A wealthy Jew, who shall be disguised under the name of Abraham, was madly in love with her, and her friends, including King Edward, saw his growing infatuation with concern.

“Don’t you marry that man,” was the advice given her, peremptorily but good-naturedly, by King Edward.

But marry him she did; not, however, before he had been to Italy and bought the palace and the pompous title of an impoverished Florentine noble. Of this fact the king was unaware, and when the lady was presented to him at the dinner-table as the Marchesa di X., he smiled and said: “I am delighted to meet you again as the Marchesa di X., and so thankful you didn’t marry that awful Abraham.”

A few moments later, the king observed that the “awful Abraham” was standing close by and had heard the unfortunate remark. Without turning a hair, he smiled at him and congratulated him heartily upon his marriage.

King Edward was the first member of the English Royal Family that I met. My acquaintance with him started in Madrid when, as Prince of Wales, he came with his brother, the Duke of Connaught, one of the most charming princes in Europe, to be present at the festivities given in honour of the marriage of my brother.

Later I stayed with him and Queen Alexandra at Sandringham. One of the first things to impress me there was the king’s extreme punctuality. Somebody used always to come and warn me ten minutes before meal-times that I must not keep him waiting. For some unknown reason, he had all the clocks in the house set half-an-hour in advance of the right time, and one of the first things that guests at Sandringham learnt was the existence of this curious practice. The king liked to be amused, and, as he had a taste for the Gallic turn of wit that makes Latin races such good raconteurs, there were always one or two foreigners about who, although they did not wear the cap and bells which would have defined their functions in an earlier age, played the part of Court jester admirably, and enlivened conversation at the dinner-table with praiseworthy persistence.

The Princess Louise, now Duchess of Argyle, possesses a share of the talent which distinguished her brother and their sister, the Empress Frederick. I spent a very agreeable time with her in the Isle of Wight, when I went to England for the first time. We had many cosy times together, leaving our husbands to amuse each other, and our mutual interest in art and literature naturally drew us together.

Undoubtedly, one of the cleverest and most charming figures in the royal circle is the Duchess of Connaught. Her husband would, I am certain, be the first to admit that his success in creating for himself the special place he holds in English life and in the life of the British Empire is largely due to the Duchess’s loyal help and wise advice. In spite of her German upbringing, she has given herself wholeheartedly to the country of her adoption, and her daughters, the Crown Princess of Sweden and Princess Patricia, are delightful and typically English girls.

The Russian princess, known best in England as the Duchess of Edinburgh and now Duchess of Coburg, was unable to adapt herself to life in a strange country. It is a canon of Court etiquette that imperial personages take precedence of royal personages, and consequently it was held in Russia that the Duchess of Edinburgh, being the daughter of the Emperor of Russia, should take precedence of the Princess of Wales, who was merely the daughter of a king. Queen Alexandra is so amiable that I believe that she would have contentedly allowed the duchess and anybody else who wanted to do so to pass before her; but obviously the wife of the heir to the throne could not be permitted to take any place but the first after the Sovereign. What was to be done? Queen Victoria solved the difficulty very cleverly. She caused herself to be proclaimed Empress of India, and the claim put forward by the duchess immediately fell to the ground. The assumption of imperial rank by the Queen was undoubtedly dictated by political considerations, but the solution of the difficulty, created by the conservatism of Court etiquette, was an argument which weighed with her when she took the decisive step.

In no country is the veneration of royalty carried to greater lengths than in England. That is doubtless why King Edward’s many American and Jewish friends were so readily received by the smart set, although these new-comers brought with them a love of lavishness and display that went counter to the taste and tradition of the English noblesse. When society opened its doors to these people of vast wealth and luxurious habits, and accepted their prodigal entertainments, it is hardly surprising that their example became infectious. Let us hope that England’s ingrained respect for royalty will induce the aristocracy to copy the simplicity and dignity of King George’s and Queen Mary’s life, and that this influence will aid in completely reviving the old-time ideals of courtesy and good-breeding.

As I have already said, this revival has already begun. The war, which has had the effect of rousing the rich from their over-indulgence in luxury and sports, will no doubt do much toward leavening the attitude of the classes toward each other. Surely, since they have been drawn together in a spontaneous movement of patriotism in the face of the enemy, they will lose much of their common mistrust and misunderstanding and the real democracy of the spirit—not the sham equality of externals—will have freer leeway. More than that, I dare hope that the war, which has not only forced different classes but different nations to stand side by side, will break down their insular habit of thought which sees no good in foreign life and customs.

CHAPTER VII

THE KAISER AND HIS COURT

When I first visited at the Schloss, in Berlin, I was struck by the perfect household management. I was told that the Kaiser personally supervised all the details of the establishment. The next time I was there, I found on my arrival a little library of my favourite authors waiting in the apartment that had been prepared for me; and I discovered that the Kaiser had selected and provided the books. The charming thoughtfulness of the attention is as characteristic of him as the thoroughness of the superintendence. He seems to be as thorough in all he does. His activities are, of course, enormous. His mind appears untiring. He accomplishes an incredible amount of routine labour and comes to his recreation eager and not fagged.

The quality that makes him most misunderstood, both in Germany and abroad, is his religiosity. He has an intimate sense of the constant direction of a personal God—how intimate no one will believe who has not seen the expression of his face when he is silently praying. Since he believes that God directs every incident of the life of the world, he believes that he has been divinely appointed to rule over Germany, as every one else has been divinely appointed to the station he occupies and the work he has to do. He rules, therefore, under God, responsible only to God, and going chiefly to prayer for direction. This conviction is so profound and moving in him that I believe if he had not been born a king, he would have become a religious leader whose energy would have made him as compelling as one of the old prophets. And it is a conviction that governs him in the most unexpected ways. For example, he has often spoken publicly of the responsibility of the ruler who involves his people in a war in which so many men may be killed, when he cannot be sure that their consciences will be in a state to meet death.

Hitherto the intelligence of his rule in many directions has been beyond all question. The immense industrial expansion of the country has not been made at the expense of the lower classes. During the Boer War a shameful percentage of the recruits in England had to be rejected as physically unfit for service; the recruits for the German army have always been healthy. The foundations of the nation have not been rotted away by poverty and exploitation. It has not been wealth that has ruled here.

The German royal family is of the blood of the nation; it always had the picturesque qualities of military leadership; and it represented, even more than in England, the magnificence of national success and the new unity of German patriotism. Although the growth of the Socialist party has gone on surely, inside these very evident aspects of loyalty, it would seem that so long as Germany had to be organised on a war basis it would accept a dictatorship that is intelligent. Only when the Throne became stupid, the trouble would begin.

Meanwhile, the German Emperor was the boast and the model of certain sections of modern royalty. Many of the young kings who should be attending to the arts of peace were imagining themselves little “War Lords” and strutting about in uniforms that made them ridiculous. The lesser royalties saw themselves as divinely ordained to their conspicuous idleness as he to his work. Those qualities in the Kaiser which King Edward quarrelled with—because they appeared mediæval to a man of his type of mind—were parodied in imitation by princelings who had not the Kaiser’s brains and force of personality. I once had such a sovereign send an aide to order me to put down my parasol in a royal procession, for no reason except to exercise a petty authority; and I started a warm enmity by sending back word, through the aide, that the control of my parasol was not within the power of the Crown.

I think it was these imitations of the Kaiser that exasperated King Edward more than their original. The Kaiser’s antipathy to King Edward was another matter. As the father of his people, the German Emperor sets an example of personal virtue and austerity such as a parent might set his sons; and King Edward enjoyed his life to the full. The King practised all the diplomacies of silence; the Kaiser always had an impulsiveness in private and public utterance that was the despair of his ministers. The two men were personally antipathetical. They misunderstood each other and underrated each other. But, as I have said before, they did each other a lot of good.

When to-day I think of William II., I always recall a scene which seemed symbolical of the German Sovereign and his people.

A great crowd filled an immense hall of the grey castle which the past has left in the heart of modern Berlin. People of every rank stood shoulder to shoulder, for it was the one day of the year when the Imperial Court sets courage and faithful service before birth and noble ancestry, the day of the Ordensfest.

I was quite young and I felt joyous and happy as

I passed up the hall in the Imperial procession, with a page bearing my long manteau de cour. And each time that I turned from side to side to bow to the people, I caught a glimpse of the Kaiser at the head of the procession, a silver figure, like Lohengrin, on whose cuirass and helmet the light flashed. Before him walked four heralds in mediæval dress, sounding silver trumpets, and when he reached the dais and stood before the throne, looking down the castle hall, I saw in his steel-blue eyes that look of exaltation which his profound and unshakable belief in the divinity of kings gives him.

Was I a princess born in a democratic age? Or was I living in the age of chivalry, or at the vanished Court of Versailles? Before me, as I went to the dais, stood an Emperor as unshaken in the belief that he possessed godlike qualities as Charlemagne when a Pope set the unexpected crown upon his brow, or, as the Roi Soleil, unflattered by worship he believed to be his due. It seemed that I should have been one of those Infantas of Velasquez in a brocade dress and fluttering a little fan.

The impression the Kaiser made on me that morning of the Ordensfest was not new, though it came with fresh, almost startling, force. I had known him years before as Prince Wilhelm—a simple and unaffected youth. Then he became Crown Prince, and I noted a change. His manner became more imperious, less spontaneous. I felt that he was schooling himself, holding himself in check, conscious of the burden of coming responsibilities, fearing, yet longing for, the golden irksomeness of the Imperial crown. Since he has ascended the throne, I have never met him without realising that he is dominated by the belief that he is an instrument in the hands of the Almighty, divinely appointed to reign.

As he conferred orders and decorations on the stream of men who humbly approached his throne at the Ordensfest, I could see from their reverence and from the look of awe on their faces that his manner, his regal pose, his glance, had forced them to accept his own belief in the majesty and righteousness of kingship. But when we had passed to the great banqueting-hall he forgot for a moment to be godlike, and became the unpretentious Prince Wilhelm of the past.

We sat at a table on a dais, looking down on the great company invited to enjoy the Emperor’s hospitality, and we were served by young nobles. The page who had carried my train—a handsome boy who looked about twenty—stood behind my chair and handed dishes or filled my glass with the skill of a practised footman. It was the first time that a foreign princess had been present at the Ordensfest, and I had received a hint that it was customary to send the page who served one a present the following day, and I had learnt that there was an unwritten law that the present should be a watch. I was sitting next the Emperor and suddenly he turned to my page with an almost roguish smile.

“You are a happy boy,” he said, “to have the privilege to serve the beautiful Infanta.” Sovereigns always know how to flatter. “What present would you like her to give you?”

“Sire,” answered the page, “there is nothing I should like Her Royal Highness to give me so much as the flower that caresses her neck.”

It was a courtly and charming reply.

“You must give it him,” said the Emperor gaily, and of course I did.

And the page kept the flower.

“The deity has come down from its pedestal,” I said to the Emperor, when I had given the boy the flower, and we both laughed.

That was a little incident that relieved the tedium of a visit to the Schloss at Berlin; for, in spite of the courtesies of host and hostess, I felt then, as I do in all palaces, that I was in a prison. Indeed, to me the palace life is so irksome that when I hear the sentry pacing up and down outside my windows, I always feel that he is there to prevent me from going out more than to prevent other people from coming in. Whenever I have stayed with the Kaiser and Kaiserin I have been given a beautiful suite of rooms; but a prison is still a prison, however thick the gilding on the bars. Everything one does or says is noticed and talked about, and criticised and spread abroad. All day long my Spanish lady-in-waiting sat in an ante-chamber with the German lady-in-waiting and the German chamberlain appointed to attend me. It was intolerable to think that these three persons were sitting there with nothing whatever to do but to speculate on what I should take it into my head to do next and to exchange Court gossip. In an outer chamber was another group of idlers, servants whose chief duty was to conduct me processionally from one part of the castle to another.

Madame la Princesse appears in the antechamber, and the ladies make profound curtsies and the gentlemen profound bows. She smiles—princesses must always appear to be radiantly happy—and she tries to find something agreeable to say to each, and not to make bad blood by being more agreeable to one than to another. She announces her desire to go to the Kaiserin’s apartments. The chamberlain passes on that interesting information to the footman in the outer ante-chamber. A procession is formed, and Madame la Princesse is conducted, with the pomp of a bishop entering a cathedral to say Mass, to the other side of the castle. The procession passes through the Kaiserin’s ante-chamber, where another army of servants is idling, and the ladies-in-waiting who make profound curtsies and the gentlemen-in-waiting who make profound bows expect Madame la Princesse to smile and to repeat the gracious remarks about the state of the weather she has already made to the members of her own suite. The doors of the Kaiserin’s apartments are thrown open with becoming reverence, and Madame la Princesse disappears, leaving her suite to gossip with the Kaiserin’s, and probably to speculate on the nature of the royal conversation across the sacred threshold they may not pass unless bidden. A quarter of an hour elapses, and Madame la Princesse emerges, smiles at the bowing courtiers and curtsying ladies, and, feeling more like an idol than a human being, is solemnly conducted back and enshrined in her own apartments.

The etiquette of Versailles in the time of Louis XVI. could hardly be more exasperating to a modern woman than that of Berlin in the twentieth century. Before luncheon and dinner processions converge from all parts of the castle, conducting members of the Imperial family and royal guests to the drawing-room.

“The Kaiser will be in the drawing-room in ten minutes,” was the regular warning I used to receive from a lady-in-waiting, fearful that I should be late, and knowing the value the Kaiser sets on punctuality. In point of fact, I never was late, and, indeed, punctuality almost ceases to be a virtue at the Schloss, where one lives under a hard-and-fast code of rules.

On the way from the drawing-room to the dining-room the Kaiser and Kaiserin and their guests pass through the apartment in which the ladies and gentlemen in attendance have been discarded. They stand in a great circle, and it is the invariable custom to make the tour of the circle with the usual smile and the usual banal remarks. That duty performed, the royal personages go into the dining-room, and the suites retire to eat in another room. In Madrid the persons in attendance on the royal family dine with them. When I first went to Berlin the Kaiser’s children were young, and, although they lunched with us, they were not permitted to speak unless first spoken to. After the meal the royal party returns to the drawing-room, but it must not be thought that when alone royal persons unbend and behave naturally. The daily discipline of relentless etiquette has its effect on them; they cannot forget that they are royal, and therefore obliged to mask their feelings more rigorously than is necessary for ordinary people; indeed, most princesses I know are reduced by this inexorable discipline to nonentities whose mouths are twisted in an eternal smile. At Berlin we conversed politely for the regulation time, and, after making the circle of the suites again, were conducted back to our apartments in half a dozen processions.

Back in one’s rooms, it is impossible to emerge without a repetition of wearisome ceremonies. To go out for half an hour’s walk by oneself is a relaxation the poorest can enjoy; it is forbidden to a palace prisoner. The etiquette of Berlin requires a princess to be accompanied by a lady-in-waiting. And usually the lady-in-waiting cannot walk fast, so that the enjoyment of a little vigorous exercise in the open air is impossible. Moreover, people about courts are usually uninteresting companions. Obviously, intelligent persons would not consent to lead such aimless lives and to conform to such an inexorable code. How inexorable is that code may be judged from the fact that one of the Court ladies in Berlin was confined to her room for three days as a punishment for walking across the courtyard in an indecorous manner, that is to say with one hand ungloved.

The Emperor William’s insistence on law and order even extends to details of house-keeping. For instance, he knows that I like to begin the day with something more substantial than the coffee and rolls most Continentals take in the morning. Accordingly, whenever I have stayed at the Schloss he has himself given orders that an English breakfast should be served in my apartments, and I have always been indulged with the eggs and bacon and marmalade I am accustomed to. At first sight it may seem a little odd that an Emperor should be at the pains to arrange the menu of a guest’s breakfast. The Kaiser evidently knows as well as I do that a princess in a palace is less happily situated than a visitor in an English country-house, who gives his orders and gets what he likes served in his room. It would never occur to me to ask for a boiled egg at breakfast in a palace where people are not accustomed to have boiled eggs for breakfast, because the order would pass through so many persons before it reached the kitchen that my egg would probably be an omelette au surprise or a terrine of foie-gras before it arrived in my dining-room.

Above and beyond the Kaiser’s love of seeing that things work smoothly in his home is his love of his capital. To him Berlin is a daughter, whom he likes to see beautiful and well turned-out, just as he likes to see the Kaiserin and the Duchess of Brunswick charmingly dressed.

“It has been raining hard,” he said, coming into my room one morning, “and it has just stopped. I want you to come out with me, because I have something interesting to show you.”

I put on my hat at once and we went down to a carriage which was waiting and drove away. I was wondering what interesting sight I was going to see and what surprise the Kaiser had in store for me.

“Look!” he cried suddenly, “look at the streets! There have been torrents of rain and the weather only cleared up a few minutes ago, but do you see that there is not a speck of mud on the road?”

It was true. The streets were surprisingly and absolutely clean.

“You appear to dry as well as to sweep them,” I said.

“I have an army of road-sweepers,” he said. “Here they are,” and he pointed to a group of men energetically plying their brooms. “I wanted you to see how clean I keep Berlin.”

“And is that all you have brought me out to see?” I said teasingly.

“Yes, all,” he said, and we both laughed.

The Kaiser knows that I am passionately fond of dancing, and he used to make a point of arranging small dances when I was at the castle, so that I could enjoy myself without the restraint imposed on Royal personages at the formal Court balls. They used to call these small dances: Les Bals de l’Infanta. At Court balls we walked round the circle of guests—at all Courts people seem eternally standing in smiling circles—and the foreign ladies, penned behind their ambassadors, used to afford me considerable amusement, especially the Americans, who used to appear in larger numbers than they have done recently. There they stood in the glory of expensive court trains, which could be no possible use to them afterwards, and curtsied to the ground when the ambassadors had recited their names to each of us. I often wondered why they came and what pleasure they could possibly derive from seeing us smile and from curtsying to us. Obviously sensible and representative women would not be among them, unless, indeed, their husbands held official positions which necessitated their presence.

After circling the circle, we went to the dais and sat for a few moments in gilt armchairs, facing the general company, before descending to dance the quadrille d’honneur. When that ceremony was ended, one’s partner, a prince or an ambassador, handed one back to the dais, made a low bow and retired. At Courts etiquette does not allow a princess to choose a partner because he happens to waltz well or to be amusing. At Berlin chamberlains had lists of partners for princesses, and one of them would bring me the card on which their names were inscribed, just as a waiter brings one a bill-of-fare in a restaurant, and I gave my orders. Each partner came to the dais, made a very low bow, and, when the dance was over, consigned me to my golden arm-chair with another low bow. The Kaiser has caused the minuet to be revived at his Court, and, when I watched that stately dance from the dais, I used to feel certain that I was at the Court of the Roi Soleil. But the Bals de l’Infanta were far more charming, for then I could dance with whom I liked and waltz to my heart’s content.

These informal dances are just an instance of the personal consideration which the Kaiser has always shown me. “Madame, vos desirs sont les ordres pour Guillaume,” he telegraphed to me once, and that was in answer to a letter I had sent, begging him to ask the Sultan Abdul Hamid not to chop off the head of Izzet Pasha, who was lying in prison under sentence of death. A Turkish lady, whom I knew in Paris, had been to see me and had begged me to ask the Kaiser, who was about to visit Constantinople, to intercede with the Sultan for the unfortunate man. I knew nothing about Izzet Pasha, but my friend was so distressed and so confident that I would help her, that I was very much touched, and immediately wrote to the Kaiser. The lady was overjoyed when I showed her the courtly reply I had received, and the Sultan, of course, granted the Kaiser’s request.

The matter did not end there. Two years later, when I had entirely forgotten it, I arrived one day in Madrid, and the instant I had got out of the train, the Queen Mother and my sister, the Infanta Isabella, who were waiting on the platform to receive me, began to question me about some mysterious Turk in whom they evidently supposed I was deeply interested.

“Who is this Turk you have sent us, Eulalia?” asked the Queen.

“But I do not know a single Turk,” I said.

“But this Turk who has arrived in Madrid, because you want to have him near you,” said my sister.

“What crazy nonsense!” I cried. “Are you both out of your minds?”

“Certainly not,” said the Queen, “seeing that I have a letter from the Sultan, saying that he has sent the man here as Turkish Minister entirely to please you.”

Then the truth dawned on me. Abdul Hamid must have asked the German Emperor why he desired the prisoner he had pleaded for to be pardoned, and the Kaiser must have told him that it was the wish of the Infanta Eulalia. Mohammedan ideas of feminine psychology made the Sultan see a tale of the Arabian Nights, and, determining to humour me to the top of my bent, he sent the hero of the imaginary romance to Madrid where, as he expressly stated in the letter the Queen Mother showed me at the palace, he hoped he would remain as permanent Minister, to be for long years an ornament of the Court of the Infanta Eulalia.

French people, who think of the Kaiser as a Teuton to the backbone caring only for German ideals and achievements, would be surprised at the genuine taste he has for French literature, which he has cultivated by an exhaustive reading of French classics. Realising that I am au fond of French in spite of my Spanish name and title, the Emperor often showed me that side of his character which makes him an admirer of French literature, French art and French drama. One day he took me to the old palace of Sans-Souci at Potsdam to show me the apartments of Frederick the Great and the relics of the King’s friend, Voltaire, which are preserved there. We went into Frederick’s library, and when the door was closed, I found myself in a circle of book-shelves from which there seemed no exit. All the books were French.

The Kaiser smiled.

“Here you are again in your dear France,” he said.

“Yes,” I answered; “I am very proud of my French ancestry, and you yourself are very proud to let me see that Frederick lived in a French atmosphere, and to show me all these French books with which he surrounded himself.”

Of course, as may be imagined, the Kaiser’s interest in French culture is more in the way of relaxation than anything else. As I have intimated, his dominant characteristic is his deep-rooted belief in the divinity of his office. Why the ruler of a modern state, which has been so progressive in its scientific and commercial achievements, should be so imbued with mediæval ideas of kingship is a problem to puzzle psychologists; but it is a factor that cannot be neglected, if one is to form any proper appreciation of governmental conditions in Germany.

The origin of the Kaiser’s belief in the divinity of kings is one thing; but the acceptance of this belief by the whole nation is quite another. Probably the only explanation lies in the docility of the Teutonic temperament. An average citizen who does not revolt at a system of police control so irksome as to be unbearable to the Anglo-Saxon, who does not balk at addressing even minor officials with high-sounding titles, is certainly more ready to believe that absolute power is vested in his Emperor than a man of more independent habits of thought and action.

No matter how distasteful such a form of government may be to citizens of a freer state, or how unsound in theory, it has had its good points. Because the Emperor William has believed in law and order, and has had power to enforce his conceptions on his people, German cities are clean, well cared for, and are freer from the curse of corruption in local governments than in some more democratic countries.

But because the Kaiser’s ideas of proper government included mighty armaments, the military party, always the dominant class, was encouraged to grow stronger and more powerful each year. His very enthusiasm over his efficient army and navy no doubt had a very great influence on the nation at large. Trained to venerate their ruler, naturally they were willing to uphold what he upheld. He had always fostered the growth of trade, and his people had seen how this policy had benefited them. The Kaiser believed in increasing his army and navy, and the people, never questioning his judgment, did not rebel when the tax-collector took a little more of their earnings each year.

Whether the Kaiser ever realised that his encouragement of the military caste had loosed a force that might sweep everything before it is hard to say. If it ever occurred to him that the party was growing too strong, surely his mystic belief in his own divinely derived power reassured him with the argument that his personal authority could always hold these turbulent elements in check. Accustomed to rule as absolutely as any mediæval potentate, the Kaiser had unconsciously called into being vast forces which in turn were to dominate him, to engulf him, and to make him the foremost figure in the most gigantic cataclysm of human history.

CHAPTER VIII

THE TSAR AND HIS PEOPLE

In the present Tsar, Nicholas II., one finds a type of sovereign not only different from either King Edward or the Kaiser, but, in my experience, unique. Sovereigns may have moments of an affectionate emotion; they rarely have consistent tenderness. In their most intimate relations of family life they are apt to resume suddenly the frigid tones of royalty; and I have seen a king, talking even with his mother, get himself unexpectedly into his royal manner and speak as stiffly as if he were giving his mind to some lower breed of human being. Many a person, chatting tête-à-tête with a sovereign alone, has been charmed by the simple naturalness of his manner, and meeting him an hour later, before others, has wondered if it could be the same man. Not so the Tsar. He has more human tenderness than I ever saw in any other man. He enters a crowded audience-room with the same charming kindliness and unconsciousness of self that he has in the privacy of family life. His eyes have always the one clear gaze of a clean soul.

He is not at first impressive, simply because he is incapable of playing a part, even a royal one. But the more you see of him the more he grows on you. He has no love of display, of uniforms, of the parade of royal power. He is wise with the wisdom of sympathy, and eager to help his people, and benevolent in his thought of them to a degree for which I know no parallel. I think it must be due to the unmistakable irradiations of this kindliness of heart that no attempts have been made upon his life, even during the bitterest frenzies of revolutionary hate.

In the menace with which the existence of royalty is surrounded, one would expect to find the Imperial family living amid all the oppressions of constant fear. On the contrary, I thought them the happiest royal family I have seen. They were so naturally affectionate and happy that it was even possible to forget that they were royal. They had apparently accepted the dangers of their life as soldiers do—as we all accept the lesser dangers of our ordinary day—and were unaffected by them.

What they thought of the problems of their rule I do not know; and I do not know enough of their people to understand what those problems really are. But surely no power could be more beneficently exercised than this man’s must be; and if his spirit could only animate the instruments of his authority and the innumerable officials who are necessary to administer it, the mad asperities of recrimination in Russia would be as impossible to the administration and its opponents as they are to the Tsar himself.

He is a Dane, through his mother, and his qualities are those that make the Royal Families of Denmark and Sweden so charming. But these are the constitutional monarchies of a kindly and contented people, who have no cause to rebel against a government that is their own creation, and who show no awe of a ruling family as unassuming as themselves. I think, if one must be born Royal, it would be wise to be born to a Scandinavian Crown.

I have rarely felt happier than I did when I heard that Nicholas II. had called on his subjects to take a share in the government of the vast Russian Empire. The publication of the Imperial Manifesto of October, 1905, in which the Emperor announced the creation of the Imperial Duma, was an event of first-class importance, and I admired the spirit of the nation which had shown its determination to limit the power of the Crown and the wisdom of the Emperor in yielding to the desires of his subjects.

“This is the first step,” I said, “on the path which must ultimately lead to the substitution of democratic for autocratic government in Russia.”

My affection for the Emperor and Empress, my enthusiasm for the advancement of democratic ideas, my recollections of a long visit to Russia, all combined to intensify my interest in the dawn of freedom in a land which I felt, when I visited it, was part of Asia included in Europe by some strange mistake of the geographers.

It was mid-winter when I arrived for the first time in Petersburg, magical beneath its snow mantle, and I came as a simple tourist to see the country and to study the conditions of Russian life. I established myself in a hotel as a Spanish countess, feeling delighted that nobody knew who I actually was, and revelling in the freedom of strict incognito. But I had not been in the hotel five hours before a Grand Master of Ceremonies arrived and betrayed my secret. From that minute everybody knew that the countess was an Infanta of Spain, and my liberty was gone. It is my usual experience. I arrive somewhere, believing that not a soul knows where I am, and, almost before I have taken possession of my rooms, there is a whirr of the telephone bell and somebody at the other end saying: “Eulalia, how did you get here? You must come and see us at once.”

The Grand Master of Ceremonies brought me a message from the Emperor and Empress, telling me how delighted they were to know that they were going to see me soon, and suggesting that I should come to the Winter Palace the next morning for the Twelfth Day ceremony of the Blessing of the Waters.

“But I have nothing to wear!” I cried.

It was absolutely true. I had never expected to figure at a Court ceremony, and it had not occurred to me to bring a manteau de cour. Etiquette, however, is less severe in Russia than in Spain or in Prussia, as I soon discovered, and the next morning I put on my smartest frock and drove to the Winter Palace, a gigantic building, painted dull red, with rows of gods and goddesses standing on the cornice of its stupendous façade, looking cold and unhappy in the nipping air.

I had not seen the Empress since we were girls, staying with Queen Victoria at Windsor or in the beautiful Isle of Wight. And what a charming girl she was! A simple English girl in appearance, in a skirt and blouse, utterly unaffected, warm-hearted, and fresh as a rosebud touched with dew. I was thinking of the happy, careless days when we were in England together, as I drove to the palace, forgetting the change that the passage of the years makes in the friends of one’s youth, and when I went into the room where the Empress was waiting to watch the Blessing of the Waters from the window, I felt startled to find, instead of the girl I used to know, a surpassingly beautiful and stately woman. The petals of the rosebud had unfolded. She was the centre of a brilliant group of Grand Duchesses and ladies, all wearing the strange but beautiful dress of the Russian Court, with long hanging sleeves. On her head was a kokoshnik, a crescent-shaped diadem, flaming with diamonds, from which fell a long white veil, and her stateliness and beauty distinguished her from all the other sumptuous figures surrounding her. A stranger who had never seen her before would have been certain that it was she, and not one of the others, who was Empress.

“How good to see you again, Eulalia, after all these years,” she said, coming towards me; and she put her arms round me and kissed me.

And in that greeting I realised that the Tsaritsa had not changed. She was still the affectionate and unaffected friend I had known years before. We had a hundred questions to ask each other, but almost before we had had time to begin, we had to stop talking to attend to the imposing ceremony which was beginning on the frozen Neva.

From the window I saw that a pavilion, like an exceedingly decorative bandstand, had been erected on the ice, just in front of the palace, and I watched a procession of ecclesiastics in stiff Byzantine robes and glittering mitres move slowly across the road separating it from the palace, followed by the Grand Dukes and the Emperor. The singing of the choir floated to us through the frosty air and the Empress crossed herself devoutly. She is a sincerely religious woman.

I watched the Emperor standing motionless beneath the fretted and gilded canopy of the pavilion, and the thought suddenly flashed into my mind that the Russian Emperors alone claim the right to govern the souls as well as the bodies of their subjects. The Autocrat is a great ecclesiastical personage as well as a secular ruler, and the Russian Church depends upon him and can do nothing without his consent. I remembered that banishment to Siberia was the punishment for those who deserted the Orthodox Church and refused to believe as the Tsar believes and to pray as the Tsar prays. The Kings of Spain and the Emperors of Austria are sons, not rulers, of the Church, and I had been taught that the Pope was king of kings. It seemed to me that no worse form of despotism could be conceived than the concentration in the hands of an autocratic ruler of the spiritual and temporal power and, as these thoughts crowded into my mind, there seemed to me something sinister and terrible in the ceremony I was watching, and I realised, as I had never done before, the immensity and the awfulness of the power