THE SECRET MEMOIRS OF BERTHA KRUPP (continued 3)

"Very well, recall the millionaire-on-good-behaviour," quoth the Majesty.

No. 103 proved the possession of a marvellously retentive memory. Quoting His Highness's confidences to the Cardinal, he repeated almost word for word the War Lord's conversation with Franz, both at the Schloss and at the General Staff office.

"Any memoranda used?" demanded Wilhelm abruptly.

"None, Your Majesty."

"Did the Cardinal take notes?"

"No, Your Majesty. When Herr von Este urged him to do so, he said it was unnecessary, since he never forgot matters of importance; in fact, could recite a text verbatim after tens of years."

"Curse their stenographic memories," said the War Lord. "I hope you were careful to note what Schlauch said," he added in a stern, almost threatening voice.

"I memorised his talk to the dotlets on the i's," replied the Secret Service man, bowing low. "Quite an easy matter, for His Eminence used words sparingly—

"To conceal his thoughts, of course." This from the War Lord.

Then No. 103 read the "notes" from his mental memorandum pad. The Cardinal, it appears, laid down three rules "for the guidance of his 'dear son' and all other Catholic princes:

"I. Agreements with heretic sovereigns do not count unless they serve the interests of the Church.

"II. If the proposed Slav Empire would bring about the submission of the orthodox heretics to the Church of Rome, no amount of blood and treasure spent in so laudable a cause may be called extravagant, the sacrifice being for God Almighty.

"III. But if there should be a by-product" (our own term, the Cardinal's being too circumstantial) "a by-product in the shape of a heretic pope—pardon the blasphemous word—then Franz's ambition would be a stench in the nostrils of the Almighty, excommunication would be his fate in this world, the deepest abyss of hell in the other."

Count von Wedell, misinterpreting his master, thought "it was to laugh," but a look upon the War Lord's face caused him to change his attitude.

"Pay No. 103 five thousand marks, half in cash, half in reserve," said Wilhelm, disregarding the one-third clause for a purpose, no doubt. "I have no further commands for him at present."

Count Wedell stepped forward from the inner room, and the portières automatically closed before No. 103 had finished his obeisance.

CHAPTER XIX

BERTHA AND FRANZ

On Forbidden Ground—A Talk on Brain-Curves—Bertha is Afraid—Shades of Krupp—"Charity Covers ——"—A Dramatic Exit

"Oh, Franz, tell me what it all means!"

If Bertha and the chief engineer had been real lovers, and had selected the moon for a place of rendezvous, they could not have been safer from intrusion than in the late Frederick Krupp's library with the door unlocked, for the "room sacred to His Majesty" was a sort of Bluebeard chamber into which no eye but the War Lord's and Bertha's must look.

Bertha had shown her mother a parcel of documents which Uncle Majesty had ordered her to read carefully. "I will go to the library, where I will be undisturbed," she said in her decisive tone, while the butler was serving early strawberries sent from Italy. Strawberries in January in a little Rhenish town! It reminds us that when Charles V., warrior and gourmet-gourmand, sucked an orange in winter-time, his Court was prostrate with astonishment and admiration.

And Alexis Orloff won Catherine the Great from his brother Gregory—temporarily, at least—by sending to the Semiramis of the North a plate of strawberries for the New Year. Yet nowadays any well-to-do person can indulge all the year round in the luxuries that made Charles and Catherine the envied of their Imperial class.

Bertha was in the War Lord's chair, for she felt very Olympian since she had returned from the Berlin Court, while Franz sat on the tabouret affected by the Krupp heiress during the interviews with her guardian.

"What did Zara really mean?" repeated Bertha.

"Are you prepared to hear the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth?" queried Franz.

Bertha Krupp moved uneasily in her high seat. Her mental stature had advanced rapidly under the War Lord's teachings, disguised as coaxings, and while the sound principles implanted in her bosom by a good mother were at bottom unimpaired, she was beginning to learn the subtle art of putting her conscience to sleep when occasion demanded—a touch of Machiavellism!

Just now she would have loved to shut up Franz, as she was wont to silence her mother by a word or look, though less rudely, perhaps, but her fondness for the man—though she was not at all in love with Franz—forced her to be frank with him.

"Speak as a friend to a friend," she said warmly.

"Well then——" began Franz.

Bertha covered his mouth with her hand. "A moment, please. May I tell Uncle Majesty?"

"What I have to say is no secret of mine and certainly it is not news to the War Lord. By all means tell him if you dare."

"If I dare?" echoed Bertha.

"My own words."

Franz spoke very earnestly, almost solemnly: "Will you hear me to the end, whether you like the tune or not?"

"If it relates to Zara's prophecies, I will," said Bertha. "But," she added falteringly, "you know I mustn't listen to criticism of my guardian."

Franz shrugged. "I quite understand. Forbidden ground even for your Mother."

Bertha felt the sting of reproval keenly, and did not like it. Indeed, at the moment she would have given up gladly a considerable portion of her wealth to be restored to Franz's unconditional and unrestricted good graces. So, humbling herself, she temporarily abandoned her high estate and again became the unsophisticated girl whom Franz used to call sister. "Do go on," she urged; "it was all so romantic, so strange, so mysterious, and you know I love to feel creepy."

Franz had risen and approached the great central window. "May I draw the curtains?" he asked, looking over his shoulder.

"They must not see you. I will."

Bertha tugged the golden cords. "Working overtime again?" she queried, as she observed the blazing smoke-stacks.

"More's the pity, for every pound of steam going up those chimneys means so many lives lost, and for all those lives, Bertha, you will have to account to God."

"Old wives' tales," commented the Krupp heiress, as if the War Lord in person played souffleur. "On the contrary, as you well know, war preparedness means peace, means preservation; and with us in particular it means happiness and prosperity to the ten thousands of families in this favoured valley. It spells education, arts, music, care of children and of the sick and disabled. It means cheerfulness, such as ample wage and a future secured confer; it means care-free old age." As she recounted these benefits her enterprises were actually dispensing Bertha looked at the chief engineer with a slightly supercilious air.

"Well rehearsed," remarked Franz dryly.

"Oh, if you want to be rude——"

"I do," said Franz, taking hold of her wrist; "I am sick of all this lying palaver about good coming out of evil, and I want you to be sick of it too, Bertha."

The Krupp heiress leaned back in her chair, crossing her arms. "At the American Embassy I heard rather a quaint saying day before yesterday: 'Go as far as you like.'

"A most apt saying," admitted Franz. "Thank you for the licence. As I was going to point out, you did attach too little significance to Zara's words, thought them mere piffle of the kind for sale in necromancers' tents. There is enough of that, God knows, but do not lose sight of the fact that at all times and in all walks of life there have existed persons having the gift of prophecy. Who knows but Zara has?"

Bertha was now rigid with attention. She had moved knee from knee; her feet were set firmly on the carpet, while the upper part of her body straightened out. "I don't follow," she said almost pleadingly.

"Let me explain," continued Franz. "You and I and the vast majority of people can look into the past—a certain curvature of our brain facilitating the privilege. Another similar or dissimilar set of brain-cells, or a single curvature, might lift for us the veil that now obscures the future."

"The future?" gasped Bertha.

"Indeed, the future; and, practically considered, there is nothing so very extraordinary about it, for what will happen to-morrow, or the day after to-morrow, is in the making now. If, for instance, the Krupp works were going into bankruptcy a year hence, the unfavourable conditions that constitute the menace to our prosperity would be at their destructive work now. Do you follow?" added Franz.

"I think I do," said Bertha.

"Hence I say the gift of prophecy presupposes a correct interpretation of the past and present as well as the peculiar gift of extraordinary brain development—a rare gift, so sparsely distributed that in olden times prophets were credited with interpreting the will of the Almighty."

"Franz," cried Bertha, her face pallid and drawn, her hands twitching. "Oh, my God!" she screamed, as if nerve-shattered by an awful thought suddenly burst upon her; "you don't believe—no, you can't——! Tell me that you do not think it was God's voice speaking through Zara?" And, as if to shut out some horrible vision, the Girl-Queen of Guns covered her face with both hands.

"It is not for me to pronounce on things I don't know," replied Franz. "Judged by what you have told me, Zara suited her prophecy for the most part to facts and to existing tendencies, conditions and ambitions on the part of political parties and high personages."

"She called me the coming arch-murderess of the age, insisted that the warrior-queens of past times, even the most heartless and most cruel, had been but amateurs compared with me in taking human lives—— Oh, Franz, tell me it is not true! She was romancing, was she not? She lied to frighten me and to get a big trinkgeld."

"I wish it were so," said Franz earnestly; "but, unfortunately, she had a clear insight into the future as it may develop, unless you call a halt to incessant, ever-increasing, ever-new war preparations."

Many years ago I read a manuscript play by a Dutch author, in the opening scenes of which a Jew tried to sell another Jew a bill of goods. Shylock number two wanted the stuff badly, but calculated that by a show of indifference he might obtain them for a halfpenny less. On his part, Isaac was as eager to sell as the other was to buy, but the threatened impairment of his fortune called for strategy. So he feigned that he did not care a rap whether the goods changed hands or not, and the two shysters remained together a whole long act engaging in a variety of business that had nought to do with the original proposition, each, however, watching for opportunity to re-introduce it, now as a threat, again as a bait, and the third and seventh and tenth time in jest. So Bertha, having once disposed of the war preparation bogey, according to Uncle Majesty's suggestion, now returned to it in slightly different form. She was determined to discount Zara's prophecies at any cost.

Getting ready to fight was tantamount to backing down; spending billions for guns and ammunition and chemicals and fortifications and espionage and war scares and whatnots was mere pretext for keeping the pot boiling in the workman's cottage, and the golden eagles rolling in the financier's cash drawer, and so on ad infinitum. When Bertha had finished she thought Zara's prophecies very poor stuff.

Franz came in for the full quota of that sort of argument out of a bad conscience so warped by hypocrisy. Our Lady of the Guns no doubt believed every word she said, or rather repeated—dear woman's way! She always firmly trusts in what suits her, logic, proof to the contrary, stubborn facts notwithstanding. Instinct or intuition, she calls it.

"That is no way to dispose of so grave a subject," said Franz.

"But what can I do?"

"Prevent more wholesale family disintegration, forestall future mass-murder, future dunging of the earth with blood and human bones."

Franz put both hands on the girl's shoulders. "Bertha," he said impressively, "make up your mind not to sign any more death-warrants, stop making merchandise intended to rob millions of life and limb and healthy minds, while those coming after them are destined physical or moral cripples that one man's ambition may thrive."

"Shut down the works, you mean?" cried Bertha; and, womanlike, indulged once more the soothing music of self-deception: "It would ruin the Ruhr Valley, throw a hundred thousand and more out of work; and what could they do, being skilled only in the industries created by my father and grandfather?

"Papa, Uncle Alfred, the first Krupp—God bless their souls!—were they founders of murder-factories, as you suggest? No, a thousand times no. Their skill, their genius, their enterprise has been the admiration of the world. Everybody admits that they were men animated by the highest motives and principles. They made Germany."

"I don't deny it; I underline every word you have said, Bertha. The foundations for Germany's greatness were laid within a stone's throw of this window; much of her supremacy in politics and economics was conceived between these four walls. But now that the goal is achieved, that the Fatherland enjoys unprecedented wealth and prosperity—let well enough alone."

"You talk as if I were the War Lord!" cried Bertha.

"You are his right hand: the War Lady."

"He is my guardian, my master."

"Only for a while. You don't have to submit to his dictation when of age."

Carried away by emotion, Franz had spoken harshly at times, but now his tone became coaxing.

"When you come into your own, promise me, Bertha, to accept no more orders for armament and arms of any kind. Dedicate the greatest steel plant of the world to enterprises connected with progress, with the advancement of the human race! Build railways, Eiffel towers for observation, machinery of all sorts, ploughs and other agricultural implements, but for God's sake taboo once and for all preparations for murder and destruction!"

Bertha covered her ears. "Don't use such words; they are uncalled for, inappropriate." Then, with a woman's ill-logic, she repeated the last. "'Destruction'—you don't take into consideration what your 'destructive' factors have done for my people, what they are doing for humanity right along. Auntie Majesty thinks our charities and social work superior to Rockefeller's, and God forbid that I ever stop or curtail them."

"Yes! Think of your charities," said Franz; "take the Hackenberg case. What is he—a soldier blasted and crippled in mind and body by the war of 1870. Essen's industry made a wreck of Heinrich, and he costs you one mark a day to keep for the rest of his life; three hundred and sixty-five marks per year, paid so many decades, what percentage of your father's profits in the war of 1870-71 does the sum total represent?"

"A fraction of a thousandth per cent., perhaps. Another fraction pays for the son Johann's keep, another for that of the two younger boys, another for Gretchen, etc., etc."

"But if there had been no war, Heinrich would not have been disabled, and consequently would not have burdened charity with human wreckage! Do you see my point?"

"Go on," said Bertha.

"Because you are used to it, maybe the Hackenberg case does not particularly impress you. You were not born when Heinrich sallied forth in the name of patriotism. But reflect: there are thousands of charitable institutions like yours, not so richly endowed, not so splendid to look upon, but charnel-houses for Essen war victims just the same. And all filled to overflowing—even as the Krupp treasury is. Yet that Franco-German war, that made the Krupps and necessitated the asylums and hospitals, was Lilliputian compared with the Goliath war now in the making—partly thanks to you, Bertha."

"But I have told you time and again there will be no war, that I have the highest authority for saying so!" cried Bertha angrily.

"Authority," mocked Franz. "The French of 1870 had the no-war 'authority' of Napoleon III., the Germans that of William I., before the edict went forth to kill, to maim, to destroy, to strew the earth with corpses and fill the air with lamentations! So it will be this month, this year, next year—for history ever repeats itself—until the hour for aggression, which will be miscalled a defence of our holiest principles and interests, has struck.

"The air pressure has increased," continued Franz, parting the window curtains; "see the lowering clouds! And watch the storm coming up, lashing them in all directions. West and east they are spreading, and, look, north too! They are falling on Northern France, on the Lowlands and Russia like a black pall."

"You prophesy a universal war?" shrieked Bertha.

"The answer is in your ledger. For thirty and more years your firm has been arming the universe. Since your father's death you have distributed armaments on a vaster scale than ever, and now, I understand, the pace that killeth is to be still more increased.

"When you have furnished Germany with all the guns, the ammunition, the chemicals, the flying machines, the cruisers, the submarines, the hand grenades—what then? Presto! a pretext of the 1870 pattern, or something similar, and Zara's prophecy will come true as sure as light will burst from this Welsbach now."

Franz touched a button.

"Voilà, Madame War Lady," he said, bowing himself out.

CHAPTER XX

"AUNTIE MAJESTY" AND HER FROCKS

Bertha on Her Dignity—On Thin Ice—Barbara Wants to Know—The Empress's Toilette

"And now for a good talk," said Barbara, with a look upon the tirewoman who had accompanied Bertha to Court. "Tell me all about Auntie Majesty's 'Martha.'"

"Oh, she's far more important than this one," Bertha replied, patting the "Frau's" cheek; "a Baroness like Mamma and in the Almanach de Gotha."

"Better looking too than our Martha, is she not?" mocked Barbara.

"I won't go as far as that. She is too tall and angular and spinster-like, and has a nose like Herr Krause—always red."

"Does she drink?" inquired Barbara.

"No," said Martha, thrusting out her formidable bosom; "she laces too tight, poor thing!"

It was after ten p.m., and Barbara ought to have been in one of two white-and-pink beds gracing the Young Misses' Chamber in Villa Huegel, but Frau Krupp was away in Cologne and Martha the most indulgent of governesses. Hence it had not been necessary for Bertha to exert her authority to gain an hour out of bed for sister.

Bertha, who was sitting on a low "pouf," was convulsed with laughter at Martha's pantomime. Shrieking, she knocked her forehead against her knees, Barbara joining.

"And Auntie Majesty's Martha—the Baroness, I mean—does she put out the linen and mend silk stockings and serve tea on the waitress's day out?" continued Barbara her inquiries.

"Why not ask whether she makes the help's beds?" demanded Martha; and then, in her drastic manner: "You are a baby, Fraulein Barbara."

But the Krupp heiress treated the question seriously. "No," she replied, assuming an air of superiority. "The Baroness tells the Empress what is fit to wear."

"Unfit, Fraulein means to say," whispered Martha.

"And besides——" continued Bertha.

"She tyrannises over the lower servants, such as Lenchen and me." Barbara laughed heartily at Martha's sallies, but Bertha "had an attack of dignity," as Barbara put it, and said to Martha: "Come now, who was in Auntie Majesty's confidence, you or I?"

"Fraulein certainly had the run of Her Majesty's rooms, and I do hope they were nicer and cleaner than Fraulein's," bristled up Martha.

"Don't quarrel," pleaded Barbara. "Soon it will be eleven, and then both of you will shout 'bed' until you are hoarse. Do go on, Bertha, and don't you dare interrupt her again, Martha."

"Well," said Bertha, "I promised——" She settled down in the big velvet fauteuil nearest the fire and assumed an oldish mien.

"I was sometimes present when the Baroness and Auntie Majesty discussed new frocks and hats," she continued, "and I think if Mamma was in Madame von H.'s place, Her Majesty would be—what shall I say?—more tastefully dressed.

"Once she persuaded Auntie Majesty to accept a hat that made her look seventy to a day: Gold lace and heliotrope velvet. I will buy Granny one like it next time I go to Düsseldorf. At first Auntie did not seem to care for it at all, but the Baroness made such a fuss. 'Majesty looks enchanting,' she kept saying."

Here Martha dropped the courtliest of curtsies, "flapping her arms like wings"—Barbara's description.

"'Charming,' 'ever youthful,' continued Bertha, imitating the Baroness.

"The right sort of talk too," said Martha. "Tell a woman of our age—mine and Auntie Majesty's—that we look like sweet sixteen, with a teapot for a bonnet, and we will wear it even at the opera."

"Well, did Auntie get Granny's hat?" asked Barbara.

"She did, and wore it when we went to the children's matinée at the theatre in the Neues Palais; and I heard her sister, Princess Frederick Leopold, tell her: 'Thank your stars that Will is not coming. He would certainly advise you to send your new chapeau to——'" Bertha stopped short.

"To?" asked Barbara, flipping a slipper in the air and catching it on her naked foot.

"I can't tell," said Bertha; "it was not intended for me anyhow."

Barbara looked at Martha. "You say it."

"It commences with an 'H.'"

"Hohenlohe—Grandma Hohenlohe," explained Bertha quickly.

Barbara was thinking hard. "No, she did not say Hohenlohe; and, besides, she is dead."

"Getting warm," murmured Martha.

"Now you stop." Bertha looked very serious. "The Princess Leopold referred to their grandmother, of course. What else should she have in mind?"

The tirewoman bent low over Barbara's ear. "Majesty's Jaeger told me that the War Lord is in the habit of consigning old lady relatives of his to a hot place, whether dead or alive."

Barbara clapped her hands. "I know," she laughed; "you need not try and keep things from this child, Bertha. I was not born yesterday."

"I shall tell Mamma, and you will get it too, Martha." The Krupp heiress was on her dignity once more.

"Why not put me across your knee and spank me?" said Barbara derisively. Then, coaxingly: "Do go on, Bertha; it is all so interesting; and if Martha does not behave (stamping her foot) she will leave the room this minute. Did you hear what I said, Martha?"

"Indeed, Your Majesty, and the other Majesty will now proceed," mocked the tirewoman, who was unimpressed, having known the girls "all their born days."

"Well," began Bertha anew, "there were a few days of Court mourning while I was in Berlin, and I had to wear all white, no jewellery, no flowers. All the gentlemen had mourning-bands around their left arm, and Uncle Majesty wore the uniform of Colonel of Artillery—black and velvet."

"Auntie was in black too—silk, of course, and heavy enough to stand by itself; but at her throat I saw a large diamond brooch."

"'That will get Mother into trouble if the old man peeps it,' observed the Crown Prince, who took me in to dinner, and who knows all the English and French slang."

"How perfectly delightful he must be!" cried Barbara.

Bertha continued: "'Why?' I asked."

"'Mourning and brilliants—absurd,' whispered Wilhelm Wiseacre. But Uncle Majesty either did not see, or knew less than his talented son, and Auntie escaped a scolding that time."

"Scolding a Queen. You are joking," cried Barbara.

Before the Krupp heiress could speak, Martha delivered herself of a few "Mein Gotts."

"Oh," she said, "royal ladies are just like other girls' mammas."

"Like Aunt Pauline and Rosa?"

"Well, yes. They have a husband, children and an allowance."

"An allowance? I thought they were wallowing in gold pieces like you, sister," said Barbara, loojving up admiringly at the older girl.

"I suppose Auntie Majesty has about a million per year to dress on," said Bertha loftily.

"A million," repeated Frau Martha contemptuously. "Fraulein ought to have heard some of the stories the maids told me about Auntie Majesty's lingerie. One of them used to be dresser to a French diva, whatever that is, and on the Q.T.——"

Bertha was anxious to change the subject, and remarked, with a hard look upon Martha: "And the troubles they have with servants! One afternoon on Bal-Paré night Auntie's coiffeur did not show up—sickness, or something of the kind—and the Baroness did her hair. 'How very frail,' I thought, particularly as Auntie was going to wear the grand tiara with the Regent diamond. However, the head-dress, being so very heavy, is put on only before she enters the royal box.

"Her Majesty was fully dressed when Uncle's Jaeger handed in a dispatch from Queen Victoria, asking about Prince Joachim. She immediately sat down to write an answer, and as she leaned over the paper—for she is rather short-sighted—the whole coiffure came down in a heap. I never saw her cross before, but I tell you——" Bertha checked herself.

"Now about the jewellery," cried Barbara. "She has wagon-loads of them, has she not?"

"Of her own, no more than Mamma, I guess, for those you read so much about on festive occasions belong to the State, and the Baroness is responsible for their safety. Once, I was told, she left a valise containing several Crown jewels and some of Auntie's own in the Imperial saloon carriage when they were going to Stuttgart. Through the stupidity of a guard the valise got misplaced, and was discovered only a month later in an out-of-the-way railway station. That time Uncle Majesty himself lectured the Baroness, ordering her at the same time to use her own baronial fingers to sew the diamond buttons on Her Majesty's dresses. Furthermore, to make sure that the fastenings of ear-rings, brooches, bracelets and chains, etc., were intact."

Barbara wanted to know whether the Berlin Crown jewels were as fine as Queen Victoria's in the Tower of London.

"Not quite," said Bertha thoughtfully.

The child nodded. "I know, for when I asked Miss Sprague whether the Regent was as beautiful as the Koh-i-noor, she said: 'You might as well liken your shabby German South-West Africa to the Indian Empire, Miss Barbara.'"

"Don't let the War Lord hear that!" Frau Martha raised a warning finger.

"Now about the dresses! She wears a new one every day, doesn't she?"

"At least she never wears the same twice unaltered."

"What jolly shopping!" cried Barbara. "Does she go round herself? I would."

"That's the ladies'—the Baroness and the Mistress of the Robes—business, of course. She sees the fashion through their eyes and, when Auntie is ill-dressed, the blame really attaches to her women. One morning Auntie called me in and said: 'Bertha, what do you think of my dinner toilet for to-night?'

"The gown on the mannequin was of light red silk with white flounces and blue train, set off by rosebuds."

"Kakadoo!" laughed Barbara.

"That's how it struck me," said Bertha. "But there stood the Baroness pleased as Punch about the new 'creation,' and certainly expected me to say something nice. I was in despair, but Auntie Majesty came to my rescue. 'It's quite impossible,' she said, 'isn't it? Tell Schwertfeger and Moeller——'

"She did not finish, but took up the Alnumach de Gotha lying on the dressing-table. 'I thought so—Wilhelmina's colours. If Wilhelm had seen me in this, he would have said: "You are rushing things, Dona. Wait till we annex Holland."' Then she turned to the Baroness: 'Have it unripped at once. The silks shall be used any way except in this absurd combination. I will wear white this evening.'"

"To bed at once; enough for to-night," ordered Frau Martha, turning back the clothes on Barbara's bed.

CHAPTER XXI

THROTTLING BAVARIA

The Etiquette of Dress—Bülow in a Fix—That "Place in the Sun"—"That Idiot Bismarck"—Prussianize the British Empire

In the grandchamber where Bismarck sat so long enthroned and Caprivi, the general "commanded to the office," as he might have been ordered to occupy a bastion, spent troublesome years; at the desk where Prince Hohenlohe's thoughtful face shone between colossal oil-lamps; in the very chair where the Iron One swore lustily at petty kings, sat Bernhard von Bülow, Chancellor and Major-General.

Don't forget the Major-General, for the War Lord had more trouble making him that than conferring the Imperial Chancellorship. Military titles are sadly embroidered with precedents and rules and things.

Frederick the Great used to own silk mills, therefore his ministers of State were compelled to wait upon him in satin breeches and long-tailed satin coats, and no man who loved his job would appear more than six times in the same garments before the Majesty, since the royal merchant would have considered himself cheated out of the sale of so many ells. Frederick's descendant, the War Lord, is interested in army cloth—hence his dislike for mufti.

Jovial, talkative, on good terms with himself, Bernhard felt quite guilty in his velvet jacket—a present from the Princess, his wife—when he heard a sharp voice call out his name. It came from the garden path adjoining the high French windows.

"Must be coming from the War Ministry. What's up?" thought the Chancellor, ringing frantically for a dress coat. If those sentinels would only challenge Majesty, there might be time to change.

In the summer of 1905 the proverbial Bülow luck was still in full swing. At the moment it sent Phili Eulenburg to the rescue, for the ex-ambassador, still undisgraced, was, as usual, in attendance upon the War Lord.

"Fine chap, that," said Phili, pointing to one of the sentinels who guarded the inner court of the Chancellor Palace; "may I put him through the paces just to show I did not get my epaulettes for form's sake?"

"Anything as long as you don't make me ridiculous, Phili." Maybe the War Lord was curious to see whether his friend had any military talents. Perhaps he remembered that Bismarck, talking to Maximilian Harden or Moritz Busch, let drop a remark to the effect that persons of the Eulenburg type made great generals—sometimes, vide Alcibiades, Cæsar, Peter the Great, Frederick, etc.—good diplomats never!

"Advance," "retreat," "right," "left," "charge," "about face," crowed Phili, repeating the last order several times.

"Pack ein" ("Cheese it!"), said the War Lord, "if these are the only commands you remember." However, when the pair entered through the glass doors, Bernhard, to his intense satisfaction, was resplendent in a frock-coat, with the ribbon of the Red Eagle in buttonhole, Majesty missing the chance to scold him for a sybarite. To Wilhelm's mind, male humanity is "nude" when unaccoutred with knapsack and bayonet, or else unshrouded in evening dress at nine a.m. Bülow had flatly refused to array himself en frac in daytime, and in his hussars' breeches he always fidgeted "in a nerve-racking way." So he must be allowed a Prince Albert coat—Chancellor's exclusive privilege, of course! Bismarck used to ride to the old Kaiser's palace in a fatigue cap, but at the door donned the steel helmet. But let none of lesser rank and importance imitate these worthies.

"Here's a pretty kettle of fish," said the War Lord, acknowledging Bülow's respectful greetings by a wave of the hand. "Phili tells me that Victor will require pretty strong proof it's defensive before he joins our war. And Udo has secured tell-tale correspondence to the same effect, which will be sent to you presently."

"Italy making demands before she has even lost a battle?" cried Phili, without indicating quotation marks.

Bülow knew of course that the bon mot was Bismarck's, but the War Lord thought it original. "Don't repeat that to the Princess, please," he said to Bülow, "lest she put our Phili on her index. As to Victor, what do you think of the ingrate?"

"With Your Majesty's permission, I rather think that the information" (Bülow looked straight at Eulenburg, then thought better of it) "of—Count Wedell is not well founded. Your Majesty knows how such rumours arise. Maybe King Victor has, at one time or another, expressed himself to the effect that he meant strictly to adhere to the stipulations of the Triple Alliance, whereupon some person in the secret found out that the Triple Alliance obliges Italy to take up arms only in case Germany or Austria are attacked. Presto, the mischief-maker concludes that King Victor is not in sympathy with Germany's world politics, etc. etc."

"Maybe, but Udo's and Phili's reports must be sifted to the bottom," commanded the War Lord. "I told Wedell to put a man of pronounced political instinct on the work—an Italian, of course; there shall be a wrestling match between Dago cunning and German political shrewdness."

Up to then the War Lord had spoken quite to the point. Now he indulged in one of those saltomortales of uncontrolled thought that tends to incoherency.

"We must get rid of Otto," he said abruptly, pounding his knee with his terrible right.

Prince Bismarck's Christian name had been Otto, and Wilhelm got rid of him. Count Bülow, perceiving no connection with matters discussed, wondered whether the War Lord had reference to the former occupant of the Chancellor Palace, or maybe to a dog or horse. So, to be on the safe side, he smiled broadly and asserted: "Precisely, Your Majesty."

"Of course, there is that Schweinhund (pig-dog) Ruprecht."

Bülow began to scent a connection; however, the War Lord saved him further cogitation by doing all the talking.

"A madman, this Ruprecht; thinks his petty State an Indian Empire. Period: Thirteenth century, or thereabout. Dwells longingly on such scenes as Mohammed Toghlak enacted, having hundreds of rebels tossed about by elephants on steel-capped ivories, and then trampled to death to the sound of trumpets and beating of drums. 'I would like to treat our Socialists that way,' he told me time and again."

"Using wild boars instead of elephants, I suppose," said Phili. The sally caused the War Lord much merriment.

"Egad," he laughed, "your mileage from Liebenberg is not thrown away; you liquidate the bill by bons mots every time."

"I dare you tell the Reichstag," cried Phili.

"Bülow shall," said the War Lord; "but"—facing the Chancellor once more—"those muttons! With Italy a possible quantité négligeable, we must make doubly sure of Bavaria's unquestioned and enthusiastic support of Berlin. Now, Phili, who has been living there many years, tells me that the Bavarian people as a whole——"

"The great unwashed," put in Phili, who will live up to his reputation as a wit or burst—in Germany one need not be a Mark Twain to succeed.

"The Bavarian unwashed," repeated the War-Lord, "do not like Prussia. The only means of gaining national support for our war in Bavaria, then, is by favour of the Crown. Otto's is a harlequin's cap, and you can't ask people to rally around a War Lord more beast than man, and certainly as crazy as a march-hare. It follows: we need a sane man in Munich, Bülow—nothing short of a sane man will serve our purpose. I understand that Maximilian Joseph, 'the creature of that upstart, Napoleon,' had a royal diadem built which has never been used. Pull it from the vaults of the Munich Hofburg, Bülow, and place it on Luitpold's head, and if he persists in his silly refusal, on Ludwig's."

"Majesty knows these gentlemen's objections: 'There can be no real king in Bavaria, they say, until the constitutional incumbent is dead,'" spoke the Chancellor gravely.

"Then kill Otto," cried the War Lord. "What, miss our place in the sun for a madman! Not if I know Wilhelm, Imperator Rex. Briefly, Bülow, as there is no king in Bavaria, we must make one—one who recognises that he is Rex Bavariæ par la grace de Roi de Prusse and, accordingly, is willing to do the King of Prussia's bidding."

"But the people, will they rally to a standard bearer of that kind?" asked the Chancellor.

"The mob," cried the War Lord. "What has the mob to do with it? We show him a puppet in ermine and purple with Maximilian Joseph's unused crown on his silly pate, and 'hurrah,' 'Heil Dir im Siegeskranz.'"

"With the aid of the loyal Press," suggested Phili.

"Of course, the Press bandits are part and parcel of the plebs; let Königgrätzerstrasse see to them at once. And, Bülow," continued the War Lord, "the Norddeutsche Allgemeine—not a word!"

"That's where Majesty shows his wisdom," said Phili, nearly doubling up in a profound bow. And as the War Lord seemed to enjoy the compliment, he added: "I am not the bird to befoul his own nest; but if it be true, as the London papers sometimes assert, that Germany produces no real diplomats, I point to Your Majesty and say: Here stands the greatest of them all, greater than Cavour and Bismarck, Talleyrand and Wotton."

"Talleyrand was a great liar," mused the War Lord.

"And preserved Prussia." This from the Chancellor.

"My motto," said Wilhelm, "is: 'Keep a silent tongue where one's own interests are concerned, lest the itch of controversy produce a scab that even the unknowing may perceive.' He was boldly plagiarising Wotton, but if his auditors noticed the theft they were wise enough to keep it to themselves.

"Your Majesty's idea is that, in case Italy prove disloyal, Bavaria must act the buffer, the people offering stubborn resistance."

"—— stubborn!" cried the War Lord, striding toward the great wall where a series of maps were displayed on rollers. Of course Phili got ahead and pushed the button. "—— stubborn!" repeated Wilhelm. "Look at the Bavarian frontier—as naked of fortresses as a new-born babe of a dinner dress—no defensive works to speak of. If the Italians make good their threats against Austria and reach Innsbruck, good-bye Munich! The whole of Bavaria would be at the mercy of the Dago dogs of war! Bülow," cried the War Lord, "Phili brought documents to show that the Italian General Staff is mapping out a road to Berlin via Munich, Leipzig, Potsdam. That idiot Bismarck," he added, with an oath, "the question of collars and epaulettes was not the only one he decided in favour of the Bavarians. Four years previously he failed to squeeze Bayreuth out of them—Bayreuth, one of the Hohenzollerns' earliest possessions. With small pressure he might have regained the principality in 1866 in place of the miserable few millions of thalers as war indemnity that the Bavarians had to pay. We could have made Bayreuth-land an armed camp, a second Heligoland, as it-is-to-be!"

The "collars and epaulettes affair," to which the War Lord referred, cropped up in November, 1870, during the pourparlers for the Bavarian-Prussian treaties. King Ludwig insisted that Bavarian army officers should continue to wear the badge of their rank on their collar, while King Wilhelm said their shoulder straps were the correct place. The Chancellor, Bismarck, saved the situation by arguing: "If in ten years' time, perhaps, the Bavarians are arrayed in battle against us, what will history say when it becomes known that the present negotiations miscarried owing to collars and epaulettes?"

No wonder Prince Pless (Hans Henry XI., late father-in-law of Princess Mary, née Cornwallis-West) said to the Iron Chancellor: "Really, if at the time we were discussing the criminal code we had known what sort of people these Sovereigns are, we should not have helped to make the provisions against lèse-majesté so severe."

"Now if Bayreuth were in our hands," continued the War Lord, "the Italians could whistle for the new road to Berlin, as the English can for the promenade to Hamburg, since Salisbury, good old man—God rest his soul—presented us with that little islet in the North Sea."

"Maybe Bavaria could be induced to fortify her frontiers on the Austrian border," suggested the Chancellor.

"And I postpone my war until half a dozen Liéges and Namurs and Metzs and Strassburgs are built—man alive," thundered the War Lord. "Life is short, and the longer England and France are left in possession of the best colonies, the harder it will be for us to Prussianise them when things are being adjusted to our liking."

"Prussianise England and France, excellent idea, très magnifique!" crowed Phili the irrepressible.

"Not quite so fast," said the War Lord. "I was thinking of India and Ceylon, of Cochin China and Tonking, of Algeria, Hongkong, the Straits Settlements and the French Congo, of Madagascar and Natal, of Rhodesia, Gibraltar, the Senegal and other dainties in the colonial line."

"Even so—a jolly mouthful for Prussianisation, Majesty."

"You don't suppose I would tolerate the loose discipline encouraged by Downing Street and Quai d'Orsay," cried the War Lord. "Subject peoples and tribes must have a taste of the whip and spur. Where would Poland be without them—yes, and Alsace-Lorraine! But those Bavarians, Bülow. I hope I made it perfectly clear that Otto must go and that severest pressure must be brought on Luitpold."

"Together with the Italian problem, the matter shall have my closest attention," said the Chancellor.

"And don't forget that they are a crazy lot at best, and hand and glove with Franz Ferdinand's black masters."

"Matters can't be hurried, though," ruminated Bülow, "and I am afraid there is little store to be set by Luitpold."

"His ambition is to go thundering down the ages as the man who refused a crown," sneered Phili.

"Thank Heaven he is eighty-four," said the War Lord piously.

"And Ludwig tickled to death with the idea of becoming king," added Eulenburg.

The War Lord was making his adieux, when he suddenly turned upon Bülow. "What are you going to do with Ruprecht?"

"Promise him a field marshal's baton in our war."

"The right bait," assented Wilhelm, "but I pity the country under his supreme command. Do you know," he added, "that the lowest of his subjects would not permit him to cross his threshold?"

CHAPTER XXII

PAYING THE PRICE

What Edward VII. Thought—No Room for Art—A Vision of Threadneedle Street

Bülow, who loved being Chancellor, hated Phili Eulenburg.

However, the Imperial ex-Ambassador at the Hofburg was then in the zenith of his ill-gotten empire over Majesty, and to incur his displeasure spelt disgrace or enforced resignation.

At the moment the grand old man's thunderbolts were under lock and key in Harden's Grunewald villa, and the exalted personages marked for lightning carried things with a high hand, using the German Empire like an entailed estate.

Pretty evenly parcelled out this fidei commissum favoured by the Prussian Constitution, which makes suffrage a mockery. Phili, of late enriched by Hertefeld, the Rhenish domain that guarantees him an independent income of £5,000 sterling a year and by a couple of millions cash, which Baron Nathan Rothschild, of Vienna, left him. Phili was practically the overseer of the Government personnel, and of the diplomatic corps in particular. His card index of prominent men and women, reinforced by reams and reams of correspondence, characterised each person—diplomats, deputies, ministers, councillors, governors, politicians, commanding generals and aspirants for high honours in the army or navy—according to his own viewpoint, the avowed object being to people the highest offices within the gift of the Crown with people like-minded with himself.

And it must be admitted that Phili pretty thoroughly succeeded, since the War Lord, seeing everybody through Eulenburg's eyes, selected in the main only persons of mediocre intellect, or plain bullies, as his representatives abroad and at home. The reference to Eulenburg's optics, by the way, recalls another Bismarck sally: "One look at Phili's eyes is enough to spoil the most elaborate dinner for me!"

Could gourmet-gourmand express himself more emphatically? What the Iron Chancellor thought of ambassadors appointed under that régime has already been quoted; it coincides with the reputation for clumsiness and inefficiency the War Lord's diplomatic servants have in all quarters of the world. In ante bellum days few of them were "honest men sent abroad to lie"; the great majority were liars intent upon bulldozing or deceiving the personages who mistook them for gentlemen. Of course, "like master, like servant." The late King Edward maintained that Wilhelm was vulgar and ungentlemanly; hence Baron H or Count Y might think it presumptuous to be otherwise. Besides, the Berlin Foreign Office will employ nobles only, and we have the authority of Gunther, Count von der Schulenburg, Lord of Castle Oest, Rhineland, for the illuminating fact that every tenth German aristocrat is unspeakable. So much for the German diplomatic service.

General Count Kuno von Moltke presided over another self-gratifying clique—that of the Army; and if Germany had invaded Belgium ten years previous to toying with the scrap of paper, she would probably have been overthrown in short order, for at that time the Commander of Imperial Headquarters held the same sinister sway over the military as Phili did over the civil branches of the Government.

"Lovey," "sweetheart," "my soul," "my all" (Kuno Moltke's epistolary titles for Majesty), "hears as much of affairs as I want him to know, no more," was Moltke's boast, according to the sworn evidence of Frau von Ende, Count Moltke's former wife, in the famous Harden slander case.

Yet though Moltke lost his case, the War Lord declared "there is nothing definite against Moltke, but he must remain on half-pay."

Can you imagine King George V. so flaunting the decisions of Old Bailey and thereafter saddling the British public with a life pension of about £500 per annum in favour of the guilty party?

Can you imagine why such "sweet affection for the All Highest" should make up for lack of military qualities in a general officer slated for supreme command in the field?

For his crusade Maximilian Harden won much praise from English writers, but if he had let it flourish in high places for a decade longer, Great Britain would be richer in blood and treasure.

Another of these coteries of men who dispensed high offices among themselves for their own ends existed in the Imperial Court—aye, it lodged there, not in the Schloss or Neues Palais exactly, but—oh, irony!—in the Princess's Palace, the hideous dependance of the Crown Prince Palais, Unter den Linden, the apartments granted for life to Royal Chamberlain Count von Wedell being its headquarters.

Oh, the jolly tea-parties they enjoyed in the great high-ceilinged rococo chambers, full of discarded furniture and appointments of the Frederick the Great and Watteau period; Louis Quatorze and Quinze, Boule and Chippendale, Empire, here and there—antique regularity and capricious bizarrerie, gems of Art some, also pieces chipped and disjointed.

Carlyle called Frederick "the last of the Kings"; he was certainly the last of Prussian kings possessed of an appreciation of the beautiful. The present War Lord kicked from his palaces—none were built since the eighteenth century—all objets d'art that would please the eye of anybody not a German boor, substituting unmentionables of the goose-step type, square-jointed, clumsy, coarse, and wholly mauvais goût.

What the "majestic" chambers lack, then, those of the Excellencies nolens volens boast. Wedell's rooms in particular contained a variety of eighteenth century chef d'oeuvres selected by the Count himself from heaps of "ancient rubbish" sent from the Neues Palais and Sans-Souci by order of Court Marshal von Liebenau, a corporal dignified by a gold stick.

No doubt the Knights of Wedell's Round Table enjoyed what was "caviare to the general." At any rate, their tea-parties seem to have been a delight to "high and low," for no one admitted to the charmed circle ever sent his regrets.

We find there General of Cavalry Count Wilhelm von Hohenau, son of the War Lord's uncle, the late Prince Albrecht of Prussia, and Sailor Trost, of His Majesty's yacht Hohenzollern; the gentleman already introduced, Count Kuno von Moltke, also Lord of the Cathedral and Private Riedel of the Uhlans; Count Lynar, brother-in-law of the Grand Duke of Hesse and Colonel of His Majesty's Horse Guards, and Gus Steinhauer, midshipman; Count Frederick von Hohenau, brother of Wilhelm, and Court Councillor Kestler, who rose from the ranks to gentlemanly estate and high honours in His Majesty's service; His Serene Highness Prince Philip of Eulenburg, Right Honourable Privy Councillor to the Prussian Crown, member of the House of Lords, etc., and Raymond Lecomte, French chargé d'affaires. These men were regular attendants, under the presidency of the noble-born host, of course, but there was a fair sprinkling of counts and barons and so on in this royal palace connected by a covered archway with the town residence of the Crown Prince and his family!

That was strange enough—audacity to the point of recklessness, one might call it—but stranger still is the fact that all these men were in the War Lord's good graces, if not on intimate terms with him like Eulenburg.

With the Hohenaus he was on "Willy" and "Freddy" footing; Count Johannes von Lynar he called "Jeanie"; and His Excellency Lieutenant-General Kuno von Moltke was his "Tütü"—with dots over both u's, if you please.

Nor were Wedell and Moltke the only tea-party members admitted to high positions at Court. Wilhelm Hohenau was governor to His Imperial Highness the Crown Prince, and, on Moltke's recommendation, Count Lynar was about to be gazetted personal adjutant to His Majesty—an office giving him apartments at the royal residence—when he was vulgarly "pinched" and lugged off to jail for the crime of—being found out.

Because he was the War Lord's "Jeanie," Lynar would not listen to "Tütü's" and "Willy's" and "Freddy's" hints about the Bank of England as a safe depository.

"Some day," he used to bluster, "a few weeks or a month after 'The Day,' I will ride up Threadneedle Street and straight into the vaults of that venerable pile, and leap my charger over mountains of gold—will be quite a change, don't you know, from jumping fences at Hoppegarten."

As to the others, Sailor Trost and ditto Gustav Steinhauer each enjoyed a meteoric career, rising in quick order to petty officership—impossible to advance them higher, because they were men without education; and whenever and wherever an excuse could be found for employing them in that extraordinary capacity, they were given charge of the Imperial person. Thus Gustav Steinhauer always acted as chief guardian of the War Lord's lodging in Castle Liebenberg when the Majesty visited his beloved Phili.

Kestler was a miserable subaltern, destined to starve on a daily wage of four marks, when Eulenburg discovered and introduced him to Majesty. Under the War Lord's favour, he was transferred to a more lucrative department in the service, and decorated!

Yet why the Pour le Merite for Kestler, and for Eulenburg, Wedell, etc.? What were their peculiar merits? Has anyone ever been able to discover?

To-day Eulenburg, twice tried, is a prisoner for life on his estate; the two Hohenaus are banished from Germany, and dare not come back on pain of arrest; Count Kuno von Moltke is a pensioner of the German people on foreign soil; Count Wedell forfeited the two gold buttons on the tails of his frac and his residence at the Princess's palace.

Why did they get off so easily in comparison when the crash came?

The answer is obvious enough. These persons had been careful to deposit in London, E.C., the letters they had received from a certain exalted party who shall be nameless, and Count Lynar, prisoner No. 5429 at Siegburg Jail, had neglected that simple precaution.

CHAPTER XXIII

HOW VON BOHLEN WAS CHOSEN

The First Step—Prussian Manners—The War Lord Finds His Man—Putting Bülow to the Test—Discussing the Husband to Be—von Bohlen is Chosen

On the morning after the Bavarian debate in the Chancellor's palace the War Lord and Prince Phili met early in Sans-Souci Park for an hour's horseback exercise and scandalmongering. Be sure that chronique scandaleuse was thoroughly discussed, as well as the personnel of Phili's favourites, and if there was anybody at Court and in Society, in high official places and in the royal theatres whose ears did not tingle with the calumnies or malicious tittle-tattle launched, the gossipers' memory was at fault, not their capacity for impertinent innuendo.

These personages were walking their horses in a secluded avenue of the woods beyond Klein Glienecke when they heard galloping behind. "My courier," said the War Lord; "we'll wait." They drew rein, and presently a red-coat shot by them in a parallel road. When some fifty paces ahead, the courier leaped his horse across the intervening ditch, then stopped short at the imminent risk of being thrown, and waited, hat in hand.

"Get the mail bag," commanded Wilhelm curtly, after the style of Napoleon, who thought nothing of ordering a king to see how dinner was progressing. Phili trotted off, and presently returned with a red morocco leather portfolio. A silver-gilt key dangling on the War Lord's bracelet gave access to the contents: two letters, both postmarked Essen.

"From Bertha," said the War Lord, glancing at the bigger envelope, and put it into his pocket. The other he tore open in great haste. "Wonder what the Baroness wants from me?" he muttered.

Phili having returned the portfolio, the courier was dismissed by a wave of the hand, and Wilhelm plunged into the epistle sans cérémonie.

"The devil!" he cried, before he had finished the first page, and drove his horse so hard against Eulenburg's side that Phili could not suppress an outcry.

"Listen to this: Bertha has fallen in love with Franz, sort of foster-brother, you know; they were children together."

"The electrical expert you told me about?"

"Precisely. But I won't allow it; she might as well aspire to be wife No. 777 to our friend Abdul. But here comes the Baroness and pleads that the dear child may have her way, Franz being such a good young man; marriages are arranged in heaven, and her blessed Frederick will be tickled to death, etc., and more tommy rot like that."

"You don't think Franz exactly the right person?"

"Phili," cried the War Lord, "if you were not such an old sinner and bald-headed and married and the father of children of marriageable age, I would order you to marry her."

"Another woman—are there none but women in the world?" groaned the ex-ambassador. "Besides, I have not the least talent for bigamy; try Kiderlen-Waechter."

"Would be the right sort, but he is nearly as old as you."

Once more Extase's flank squeezed Phili. "I've got it," Wilhelm exclaimed suddenly. "When you get back home, browse for an hour or two on your card index, picking out the most desirable and up-to-date Benedicts in the thirties or thereabout, preferably men in the diplomatic service. Got everybody's photo up there, haven't you?"

"At Your Majesty's service, the whole gallery."

"Pictures and personalia you'll bring to the Neues Palais this afternoon, and maybe I will run over to Essen in the night to show the crème de votre crème to the Baroness. This folly about Franz must be nipped in the bud, and with a girl the better and handsomer man does the trick every time."

The War Lord wheeled his horse around and trotted off in the direction of his residence. He never takes the trouble of telling his riding companions of his intentions. "Let them keep their eyes open and do as I do." The Queen herself fares no better when out riding with him. If her harness gets out of order or something of that sort, and she has to dismount, Wilhelm presses on unconcernedly. "Let the Master of Horse look after her."

Phili, arrived at his apartments, had no sooner got into his dressing-jacket of flowered silk, when the telephone rang furiously. "I command," admonished a hard voice.

"Here, Phili, at Your Majesty's service."

"Are you at work on the cards?"

"Head over heels," lied Phili.

"And in this connection—has nothing occurred to you?"

The obsequious courtier was in a quandary. Woe to him if he attempted to be wiser than his master!

"The old story; I have to think of everything," the War Lord thundered. "Can't you see you must take your selection of names to Bülow and pretend to get advice on the candidates from him? If you don't, he will be offended."

"Like the old woman he is," ventured Eulenburg.

"Don't you criticise my Chancellor." There was a brutal emphasis on the "my," and Phili stuttered a dozen excuses for his slip of the tongue.

"Never mind, to work, Prince! It was Louis XIV. who almost waited on one particular occasion. Remember, Phili, I don't want to repeat his experience."

Phili rang for Jaroljmek, his secretary.

"I do wish Majesty could get along without me for a day or two," he said. "More pressing business. All the young men in the diplomatic service to be inquired into, liver and kidneys. At once, of course! Beastly bore unless I may count on your assistance."

"Of course, Serene Highness."

"Have the maids bring in the card index, then."

"With Highness's permission, I will ask the butler to help me. It's too heavy for girls."

"Not at all. Women were put into the world to wait on such as you and I. The woods are full of girls, while nice boys are few and far between. And you vulgarise a high-stepping horse by hard work."

So two nine-stone girls were ordered to carry in from an upper storey the great wooden case weighing a hundredweight, while His Highness and secretary looked on and, moreover, increased their task by foolish directions.

"The smaller legations where I am sending the unlicked cubs—fellows without an inkling of Greek art and antique beauty—we'll go through those first," said the Prince.

"May I ask Highness the purpose of our research?"

"Majesty is trying to find a hubby for—Nomina sunt odiosa. However, you know the party."

"Rich?"

"Wealthiest girl in the world."

"Old Frederick's daughter! I heard some queer stories about Papa."

"Naughty boy!" with an indulgent smile from Phili. "Well, Majesty wants a Benedict for Bertha who will paddle the War Lord's canoe even more enthusiastically than his wife's baby-carriage."

"Why doesn't Majesty consult von Treskow and Kopp?" said the secretary.

"Don't mention those rude plebeians."

And so the pretty pair went on. They selected a round dozen should-be aspirants for Bertha's hand.

These the Emperor examined later.

"Receding chin," announced the War Lord disdainfully, reviewing the first few while the friends sipped their China tea.

"All the ear marks of the wife-beater," he commented on an attaché accredited to the Court of St. James's. "That fellow is sure to give trouble," he commented on photo No. 4. No. 5 was dismissed with a contemptuous: "Meddlesome snout." He continued to throw the photographs on the carpet, but suddenly sat up straight as a bolt.

"My man!" he cried. "Get Bülow on the 'phone. No; order Augustus to have an extra train ready for the Chancellor to leave Potsdamer Bahnhof in half an hour at the latest."

The Court Marshal 'phoned back that a regular train was leaving at the time prescribed, and that a saloon carriage might be attached for Count Bülow.

"Very well, but express—Neues Palais first stop. Now call up Bülow." The War Lord was continually filling his teacup and absorbing large quantities of cucumber sandwiches. He had his mouth full when the red disc annunciator reported Bülow at the other end, and emptied it with a gulp.

Yes—immediately. Most important. Would not he bring the Princess? His wife would be delighted.

In an hour's time a royal landau and four set Chancellor von Bülow and his Princess down in the Sandhof, the War Lord stepping from one of the tall door-windows of his study on to the terrace to welcome them, and Countess Brockdorff, Mistress of the Robes, receiving Her Serene Highness on Her Majesty's behalf.

Do these august ladies love each other? Assuredly—after the fashion of Empress Eugenie and Princess Pauline Metternich. The Princess thought herself as good as the Empress any day, and never hesitated to say so, and when on one occasion Eugenie's tantrums were excused on the plea that she had an uncle in the strait-jacket, Pauline quickly responded: "There are a few lunatics in my family too."

So the Princess Camporeale, whose husband was to be "princed" a few weeks hence, regarded herself as good as the née Schleswig-Holstein, arguing that the Beccadello were more ancient than Her Majesty's family. And her Margraviate of Altavilla was worth more in lires and centimes than Her Majesty's title of Margravine of Brandenburg.

So the Princess Maria told Countess Brockdorff she could not move until the ladies of her Court arrived from the station, and the House Marshal was warned that Her Highness's lackeys must not be allowed in the palace canteen. German beer and sausage always upset them.

Four exceedingly pretty Italian women came in the second carriage. "My governess, Marchesa ——." "My reader, the Countess ——." "My maids of honour, Contezzina —— and Baroness ——"—all members of former sovereign or semi-sovereign houses.

Bülow beamed in his animated fashion when he did not see Eulenburg, whom he rather expected to find, since he was always where least wanted.

"And what may be Your Majesty's pleasure?" he asked in his courtly way, when they were alone in the study.

"I want your opinion on the husband I've selected for a certain young lady." The War Lord had quite forgotten his own admonition to Phili. "Look!" He laid a hand partly over the photograph on the table, allowing only the forehead to be seen.

"Good, capable forehead," observed Bülow; "something behind that."

"No obstinacy, I hope," said the War Lord. Next he let the photograph's eyes be seen.

"Cold, steadfast, may be some disposition for cruelty," was Bülow's verdict.

"A good nose, mouth disdainful, somewhat high cheekbones—it's von Bohlen und Halbach!" cried the Chancellor.

"You know him?"

"To some extent, both officially and unofficially. Never had any chance to distinguish himself, but decidedly adaptable, yet not lacking executive ability, I believe."

The War Lord was delighted with the endorsement his own views received.

"Look at that chin," he said; "firm isn't the word for it—bulldog, regular bulldog. He will lead you the deuce of a dance, Bertha!"

At the mention of the name the Chancellor winced perceptibly. "I endorsed his capacity for business; I know nothing about his personal character," he ventured, adding: "He must be at least fifteen years older than Bertha."

The War Lord consulted Phili's notes. "Old enough to vote, as they say in the States—to vote for me, nota bene, at directors' meetings. Call up your office and find out what kind of subordinate he is."

"I looked at his papers only the other day. He seems to give his chief no trouble, carrying out orders punctually and painstakingly; never harasses the minister with original suggestions, but is quite content to do his duty and say naught about it."

"Is his family good enough?"

"Gentle born," explained the Chancellor; "father was Baden Minister, mother not of noble birth—Sophie Bohlen—but she had money, I believe. The present Councillor of Legation is university bred, of course, and belongs to the Guard Hussars, Landwehr, Chef d'escadron, says the army 'Who's Who.' Nevertheless," concluded the Chancellor in his most persuasive style, "I don't think him the right sort of husband for Bertha."

"Right sort for me," cried the War Lord.

Bülow, conscious that His Majesty at the time could not afford to quarrel with him, risked a none too gentle rebuke by disregarding the interruption.

"She is so young," he went on, "and, as I pointed out before, there is the making of a cruel master in his face. Think of the wealthiest girl in the world tied to a man who will not let her have her own way—a sort of drill-sergeant husband. Your Majesty is too whole-hearted, too generous, too gallant," he added with a smile, "to impose a husband of that kind upon your ward."

In response the War Lord dropped the high falsetto of command which had marked his interruptions, and said in a more conciliatory tone: "There is not a man alive against whose choice as a husband objections may not be marshalled à la advocatus diaboli. Now, for a change, listen to the advocatus Dei, please: It goes without saying that I have my ward's happiness very much at heart. Indeed, if she was of my own flesh and blood, I could not cherish more tender feelings for her. I love her like one of my own children, and haven't I accepted Cecile much as I loathe her mother? But with Bertha it's not a mere matter of getting married and preserving her unexampled wealth, if you will——" The War Lord stopped short, but after a moment's thought continued: "It will be more public spirited for Bertha to marry the man of my selection than to imperil the Fatherland's right arm. Where would we be if she chose for lord and master one of those fool-pacifists, some von Suttner milksop, seeing that without Krupp's loyal co-operation our great war would go to pot—that even a mere defensive war would better be avoided."

"If Fraulein Krupp or her husband went to extremes, the State could step in and take over the Krupp works," objected the Chancellor.

"And do you suppose that our agents in Brussels, Lisbon, Rome, the South Americas and so forth would be allowed to buy guns from the King of Prussia?" The War Lord answered his own question with an emphatic "No!" then suggested slyly:

"To sell the enemy war materials is part of our ante-war programme, is it not?"

After walking the length and breadth of the room, he planted himself firmly before Bülow, whom, by the way, he had not asked to be seated.

"I command," he said with an air of finality; "Bohlen is the man. Your own suggestion, you can't escape from it," he quickly added, when Bülow protested. "You said the fellow, though capable, is not self-opinionated—no swelled head—always obeys orders—in short: adaptable. That kind of man we need at the head of the Krupp establishment to do the Fatherland's work according to my directions—hence Bertha will marry him and no one else."

Then, to forestall further arguments: "Let's join the ladies now."

He rang for an orderly. "The Grand Master," he commanded.

Count Augustus zu Eulenburg had evidently anticipated that he would be wanted, as he stood waiting in the Shell Grotto, facing the park. The walls and ceiling of this gorgeous entrance hall are clad with semi-precious stones in their natural growth: mountain-crystal and malachite, coral trees and amethyst rocks, agate and garnets, gold and silver ore; presents from royal friends for the most part.

"I'll leave for Essen to-night. Wire Frau Krupp to expect me for breakfast. The small entourage, and warn messieurs my humble servants not to take too many lackeys. I am tired of carting their households around."

"At Your Majesty's orders." The Marshal bowed low. Then in a whisper: "Is Phili to be of the party?"

"Certainly not," replied the War Lord so Bülow might hear him. "Report to me later," he added in an undertone.

"Later" the following tripotage was overheard:

War Lord: "Phili hasn't left?"

"He is awaiting Your Majesty's further commands."

"Tell him to get ready for Essen."

"He begs to remind Your Majesty that he is not in the Baroness's good graces."

"Am I not painfully aware of that? She would prefer the measles to a morning call from Phili."

"Then he is to stay on the train while Your Majesty visits Villa Huegel?"

"Until I require him. He may be needed to quicken her ladyship's decision about matters in hand, as under pressure of his presence she will consent more readily, just to get your precious cousin out of the house."

CHAPTER XXIV

THE WAR LORD'S DAY IN ESSEN

The Krupp Free Hotel—The War Lord and the Cinder—Bertha's Little Surprise—The Blue Ribbon of the Son—A Mad Idea—The War Lord Apes the Expert—Enter the Pawn—A Wily Game—Disposing of Franz

"A wonderful country, the United States," said the War Lord to Chief-Engineer Franz; "it produced two Maxims. The British War Office captured Hiram, but there is another, Hudson, who seems to know as much about explosives and guns as his more celebrated namesake. I want you to take a year's leave and study him—him and Pittsburgh. Your salary goes on, of course, and there will be a suitable allowance for expense. I will arrange this with the Director-General."

Franz bowed his thanks, for Wilhelm, big with his subject, showed plainly that he meant to do all the talking.

"Hudson Maxim," he continued, "claims priority as inventor of half a hundred discoveries that would seem to spell success in war. He knows a lot about dynamite, torpedoes, and detonating fuses too, and is great in chemistry. Try and learn all he knows by fair means or—foul," he added. Then, musingly:

"I have lately looked into some recipes suggesting chemical preparations for means of attack. The War Office will furnish details. Consult Hudson Maxim and other American authorities on the subject, using the utmost discretion, of course, for I don't quite trust those Yankees. They manage to cover up their British sympathies, but I have had a peep or two beneath the surface. I know Armour." His mind took a sudden leap. "How soon will you start?" he demanded. "Do you want a week's time? Very well."

"May it please Your Majesty, Frau Krupp invited me to accompany herself and daughters on their jaunt—sort of maréchal de logis——" ventured Franz.

"Duty, sir! Fatherland first. Tuesday's French liner, then; and don't fail to investigate whether steamers of this class are liable to be of use as auxiliary vessels in case of war. Ballin and the Norddeutscher Lloyd people pronounce them veritable men-of-war. But, to my mind, Ballin and Company are after subsidies."

Thus was Franz politely requested and cruelly coerced to leave Villa Huegel. It was on the eve of the day after the interview between War Lord and Chancellor. Events had moved swiftly since then.

A comfortable night on Majesty's train de luxe, preceded by a variety performance by Phili Eulenburg, star impersonator.

Breakfast, 9 A.M., at the Krupp villa, better and more plentiful than at home.

A drive next? No; Uncle Majesty would not allow Bertha to handle the ribbons of the four-in-hand. Never doubted her ability, of course—yet that experience of his at Count Dohna's. No amateurs on the box for him. "His little girl was to sit by his side," and they were to discuss "grave business matters."

Wilhelm, who always looks for chances to combine business with pleasure, asked to be driven to the Essener Hof, a hotel in the city of Essen proper, where intending buyers of guns and ammunition are lodged, and, it may be added, wined and feasted at the War Lady's expense. Be sure that the Krupp hostelry is never lacking in guests pretending to be unsatisfied with the tests of war material conducted for their benefit as long as there is the slightest excuse for delay in going home, since, once satisfied, they must buy, and, the deal concluded, give up their comfortable apartments at the Hof.

Wilhelm left half a dozen of his large, ugly visiting-cards at the door of the hotel for the Jap, Chinese, Turkish and other representatives, bending down the lower right-hand corner of the pasteboards to indicate his regrets that he had failed to find the gentlemen in.

"If any of them attempt to pay me a return visit, I shall put them under 'old Fritz' and pulverise their yellow bones," he said to Bertha.

But before they had finished laughing at the piece of raillery the War Lord uttered a cry of anguish. An infinitesimal cinder or a bit of soot had got into his left ear, causing him the most excruciating pains.

"Home," he gasped piteously. "Let's pick up a physician on the way." (For some reason or other no doctor was included in the small Imperial party.)

Dr. Shrader was dumbfounded when the royal chasseur, in feather hat, broadsword at his side, summoned him. "My consulting hour; dozens of people waiting," he protested. The chasseur bent over the doctor's ear and whispered, whereupon Shrader ran into the street in his dressing-gown, apparently to interview the gutter, for, in his anxiety to pacify the War Lord with stammered excuses, his nose was close to the stream of mucky water running down the hill.

Naturally, the humour of the thing did not appeal to Wilhelm, racked with pain as he was. He rose from the seat, and, pushing the obsequious doctor aside, jumped up the steps, saying: "Attend me, I command." Of course, in the meanwhile the doctor's household had got wind of the royal radiance, and flocked from parlour, bedrooms and scullery, males and females and children, all eager to prostrate themselves in hall or on staircases, wherever they might be.

The War Lord turned to Shrader: "Send them upstairs; lock them in if necessary." And, with a look through the glass door of the waiting-room: "These people must leave instantly; I won't be their Grossebeest."

He let himself drop into the doctor's ample desk-chair.

"The ear-pump and antiseptics!" he commanded with a cry of pain. Then, as the doctor approached with the instruments: "Oh, take off that dirty dressing-gown first. Roll up your sleeves. Wash your hands."

More insulting orders were thundered at the man of science by a supposed gentleman, but their execution gave Shrader time to recover.

He handled the ear-pump with consummate ease, as he happened to be a specialist in the line, and soon had the satisfaction of showing the War Lord the annoying fragment of cinder which his skill had discovered and extracted.

"May it please Your Majesty, it would be well to clear all the passages by blowing air through them," he humbly suggested.

"Do all that's necessary, doctor."

Shrader produced another instrument fitted with a spiral trumpet and a long rubber tube, and went to work vigorously. By the time the War Lord was ready to leave the doctor laid down his microscope: "I congratulate Your Majesty; no evidence of putrefaction, hence no gangrenous inflammation."

"Who said there was?" demanded the War Lord severely.

"I meant to submit to Your Majesty that the ear will give no further trouble."

"That's better," said Wilhelm in a pleasant voice. He strode through the hall at such a pace that the chasseur had hardly time to open the door for him.

The street was black with people. "Hochs!" resounded from a thousand throats, basso, tenor, soprano, what not. A good many people had been talking to Bertha—all at once, of course. "Prating of their misfortunes—the usual racket," suggested the War Lord, with a look of contempt, as he sat down beside the heiress. And when the carriage was clear of the mob he added: "You ought to have walked the horses up and down in the neighbourhood while I was with the doctor."

"I thought of that, likewise that the carriage might not have been on hand when you wanted to start, Uncle Majesty. You told me the remark of the French king: 'I almost waited,'" replied Fraulein Krupp.

Dr. Shrader had indeed relieved the Majesty, who felt fresh and buoyant after the invigorating ride over the hills and along the shooting-ranges. The latter, while fully manned, were silent, for the chasseur had telephoned to Count Helmuth von Moltke, and the adjutant had countermanded all trial practice.

"Let's look at 'old Fritz' again," said the War Lord, after refreshments. Unlike Charles V., the War Lord is never awakened during the night to swallow some favourite dish, but five meals a day are his rule, and to revive his animal spirits he takes a number of raw eggs in a glass of cognac after the slightest exertion, when at home, i.e. at his own expense, while more substantial and elaborate provision is expected at friends' houses.

At Villa Huegel he is never disappointed. Even if he brought those "forty scientist friends" he once imposed upon Dom Carlos of Portugal, poor man!—indeed, even if he asked Frau Krupp to lodge and feed a whole regiment of gold-laced or fringe-trousered nobodies or impostors, there would be the most generous response on her part and no questions asked.

"When I heard you were coming, Uncle Majesty, I planned a little surprise," said Bertha, when showing the War Lord a short cut to "old Fritz's" habitat. She led the way to a section of the armour-plate department, whose employés burst into feverish activity at their approach. No doubt they were expected.

"Eighty tons," said Bertha, pointing towards the huge crucible steel block being placed under a giant hydraulic press.

"How will you move a cannon of that size?" queried the War Lord, who is liable to get his figures mixed.

"But it is not going to be a cannon, Uncle Majesty," explained the mistress of the works.

"You are going to roll it out into an armour-plate for Chimborazo, then?"

"Once more Uncle Majesty is pleased to be mistaken."

"Maybe it's a statue of England's lord high admiral you are making?"

"Burning," said the smiling Bertha; "it has something to do with the sea."

There was more guessing and repartee during the first half of the thirty minutes required to coax and squeeze and handle and form the block and drag its slow length along—150 feet of it. Seeing that, the War Lord no longer could master his curiosity.

"What is it to be, Bertha?" he asked in a tone that would not be denied, and the wonder is that he did not add the polite: "I command!" of average Prussian bully ship.

"The shaft of a big steamer, Uncle Majesty; the biggest——"

"I know, I know," shouted the War Lord above the din of machinery, "for Ballin. Wants to snatch the speed record from Bremen. Fetch the superintendent, Bertha."

To the official, who was undecided whether he ought to drop dead with devotion or burst with pride, he said in the tone of an ancient Father of the Church: "Work of the utmost importance is entrusted to you—in a measure you are the guardian of the Fatherland's supremacy at sea. England is building a giant steamship to steal our speed record. Her new ocean greyhound is to be ready for passenger service in 1907. Pray to God fervently, asking Him to grant you success that you may help to defeat the enemy of German commerce and our development as a sea power. To assist in taking the blue ribbon of sea power away from Great Britain should be the aim of all good Germans, even as it is your War Lord's duty to secure for the Fatherland the ocean coast-lines she needs." He dismissed the man with a wave of the hand.

It is interesting to note here that this speech was delivered a month before Wilhelm met King Edward at Wilhelmshohe to spout "his sincere wishes for a frank understanding with Great Britain" and for the "desirability of common action" where German or British interests were involved.

Meanwhile the shaft had been completed, a towering, solid mass, and the War Lord, walking round it, remarked admiringly: "Fine, looks as if come out of Vulcan's own smithy. What next?" he added, with his customary impatience.

The young girl was anxious to show her familiarity with the business. Had she not undergone much coaching by Franz for this very reason?

"Extracting the kernel," she answered, with an air of superiority.

"I should like to see the removal of the kernel," ordered the War Lord, as if the idea were original with him. Bertha pulled his sleeve and whispered again, after which Wilhelm admonished the superintendent: "Take care that it comes out in one piece."

No doubt the man would have died of mortification if the well-known "cussedness" of "inanimate objects" had played him a trick; but, luckily for him, it refrained, which encourages the thought that the supposed "inanimation" is not quite so hopeless after all. Maybe in this case the "inanimate object" was intent upon beating the War Lord out of a chance to scold and air his views on mechanics.

"Any more novelties?" asked Wilhelm, disappointed because the machinery worked to perfection.

"The hydraulic shears are busy in the next shop," said Bertha.

There the War Lord saw sections of armour-plates for one of his Dreadnoughts cut as if they were so many enormous Swiss cheeses.

"Some fine day," he commented, "we will mount one of these shears on the Calais coast, and next to it a giant magnet." He paused, contemplating the picture of his imagination.

"Yes, yes, Uncle Majesty!" cried the eager Bertha.

"The magnet," continued the War Lord, "will pull the English Dreadnought fleet out of the Channel, and toss ship after ship over into the jaws of the shears to be made mincemeat of. Fine heap of scrap-iron for you, Bertha."

"But the sailors!" cried the young girl.

"Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori," declared the War Lord, shrugging.

Next they looked at some enormous presses capable of bending armour-plates to any shape desired. This amused the Majesty hugely. He likes to bend men and things.

"Any shape desired?"

"Any Your Majesty will be pleased to command."

"Very well. Model one on the left half of my moustache."

The supervisor shouted orders and the machinery stopped for a little while, then turned out the desired shape with photographic accuracy. But the War Lord would not have it: "The point's missing," he declared.

"I leave it to Fraulein," murmured the superintendent, wincing under the rebuke. And with the vivacity and carelessness of youth Bertha divined the situation, and instantly came to her employé's rescue.

"Herr Grier is right; Your Majesty's moustaches are not trimmed alike. The left one is much shorter."

Wilhelm put his hand up to his cheek. "So it is," he admitted grudgingly. "I remember I set fire to it last night on the train lighting a cigarette." This was addressed to Bertha. He was too small a person to excuse his rudeness to the superintendent.

"There is a ninety-ton block of steel making. Would Uncle Majesty like to see how it's done?" said Bertha, on the way back to Villa Huegel.

"Ninety tons! What a cannon that would make! Of course I would like to see it."

Bertha led the way to the crucible works, where at that moment fifty pairs of workers were engaged in carrying about on long bars white-hot crucibles of metal. They were acting with the utmost precision, and one shudders to think of the wounds and mutilation that would have ensued had either one of them stumbled or been seized by sudden illness. As each couple of men advanced and tilted the glowing mass into the mould, the War Lord observed:

"Much too long-winded and laborious. I will talk to the Director-General about that, Bertha."

And, turning to the supervisor, he demanded curtly: "The composition of the mixture?"

The man bowed to the ground to hide his confusion, and once more Bertha jumped into the breach.

"He doesn't know—nor do I. Secret formula of Grandfather Frederick. Don't press him, Uncle Majesty, for even to speculate on these technicalities means dismissal and disgrace for an employé." Though she spoke in a pleading tone of voice, the War Lord continued to frown.

"Perhaps he is allowed to explain why no shorter process is used."

The supervisor fairly beamed with readiness and satisfaction. "May it please Your Majesty, our way—I beg Fraulein's pardon, the Krupp way—is the only absolutely sure method to forestall bubbles and flaws."

"And a flaw, is it a serious matter?" asked the War Lord, very much alert.

"Indeed, Your Majesty, for it may cause the shattering of a shaft, the breakdown of machinery, the bursting of cannon."

"And all cannon turned out by the works have the benefit of this process?"

"All without exception, Your Majesty."

A bystander says he heard the War Lord mutter under his breath: "What rot!" And there is a further report that he burst into the Director-General's room, and roared: "Fine kettle of fish I discovered. Guarding against flaws in cannon intended for enemy countries! Why not turn over to France and England and Russia all the secret plans of the German War Office?"

But no authoritative record of Wilhelm's sayings relating to this particular point has been obtainable. As a matter of fact, it isn't worth the pains of special research. It is to be noted, however, that after the Turkish defeat at Lule Burgas and Kirk Kilisse Bertha's husband was moved to say that the stories about the "inefficiency of Krupp guns and Krupp workmanship" were "fables," and that he was ready at any time "to take the field against all comers with Krupp guns and Krupp armour."

After tea the War Lord had a long, serious talk with Frau Krupp. Happily her ladyship had been mistaken. Bertha was not actually in love with Franz; just a sort of sisterly attachment, momentarily intensified by girlish longings. So much the better, since the right sort of husband for his ward had been found: Doctor von Bohlen und Halbach, the young diplomat, distinguished, well-bred, sound business head and ambitious. "Highest ambition to serve his king."

"Supposing Your Majesty understood Bertha correctly with respect to Franz, her change of heart does not mean that she will fall in love with Your Majesty's candidate for her hand," said Frau Krupp.

"Preparing to jump," thought Wilhelm; "I wish Phili were here." And as accident would have it, His Highness was announced that very moment. Eulenburg, or Hohenzollern luck?

The Baroness opened her mouth to deny herself to the visitor on the plea of unavoidable business, but Wilhelm got ahead of her. "The Prince is most welcome," he said to the major-domo.

There is no denying that His Highness, ten or more years ago, was a striking personality and had a peculiar charm. As Murat knew more about the art of dressing than Napoleon, so Eulenburg overshadowed Wilhelm as a glass of fashion, avoiding the latter's all-too-apparent striving for effect and pretence.

Despite their close relations, he greeted Wilhelm without a trace of familiarity and kissed Frau Krupp's hand.

"Just in time," cried the War Lord. "I was telling the Baroness about the Chancellor's young friend, von Bohlen. Bülow told me he would ask you to allow him sight of your records concerning the diplomat. Was he satisfied? Tell us all you know about Bohlen?"

That he was well aware of Frau Krupp's loathing for him need not be reiterated, and that in her ladyship's eyes praise from Sir Phili spelt the worst of condemnation for the party approved of he fully realised, and framed his answer accordingly:

"I am pained to acknowledge that I have no personal acquaintance with the young man who rejoices in the great Pontiff's love and friendship——"

"You have Pius's own opinion," cried the War Lord. His astonishment was equalled only by his appreciation of the lie told.

"At Your Majesty's service—through the kindness of the papal legate. When Majesty commissioned me to get reliable information about our foreign representatives, I went to headquarters—may it please Your Majesty."

"It pleases me immensely. What did the Pontiff say?"

"Exemplary habits, God-fearing, able and ambitious—these few words sum up the Holy Father's estimate of Bohlen."

"Did you hear that?" asked Wilhelm, addressing Frau Krupp. "We will get the details from Bülow." And turning to Phili, he said: "You wanted to meet my ward. I will summon her, and she shall show you over the house and grounds. Beats Liebenberg," he added in an undertone.

Phili beamed. "His Majesty is joking," he said to Frau Krupp. "To compare my poor Tusculum to Villa Huegel and surroundings is to put my Skalde songs next to the immortal ballads of Beranger."

Frau Krupp dared not object to Wilhelm's arrangements. She played into the War Lord's hands.

"I will meet you and His Highness at the fountain in five minutes," she told Bertha—a welcome cue to Uncle Majesty.

"Aside from the Pope's estimate, does the Chancellor himself approve of Herr von Bohlen?" asked Frau Krupp.

"Enthusiastically. Bohlen's record in Washington and in Peking equalled his success at the Holy See. Gnädige Frau," added Wilhelm in a tone of conviction, "let's hope that the estimable young man's heart is still free. I have no doubt that he would be a dieu-donné to Bertha, yourself and—Essen."

"And Your Majesty desires me to broach the matter to my daughter?"

"What is gnädige Frau thinking of? Do you suppose I would have wooed Augusta if I had known that Bismarck wanted me to marry her? No, no; matters of that kind must be left to accident, or apparent accident. This is the time for diplomatic furloughs. Tell me where you want to take the girls on their holiday, and I will have your son-in-law-to-be introduced quite casually. Bülow will manage."

"Bertha spoke of having another look into Rome before the hot season," said the Baroness.

"Fate," cried Wilhelm (if he was a Catholic he would have crossed himself). "God's will," he corrected his lapsus linguæ. "Herr von Bohlen und Halbach will be ordered not to leave his post until further notice. When you are in Rome he will present himself with Bülow's compliments, offering to act as my ward's cicerone. This will give you abundant opportunity for intimate observation and Bertha a chance to fall in love if she cares.

"All's arranged, then," he added in the finality vein peculiar to his nature, when he kissed Frau Krupp's hand at the door, which he had opened for her. In the Teuton Majesty's eye this was a great and almost overpowering act of condescension; the twentieth-century Prussian-en-chef rather prides himself on such mannerisms, fondly mistaking them for dignity.

Well satisfied with the success of his stratagem, Wilhelm rang for his adjutant and dictated to him a long dispatch to the Chancellor, giving a well-coloured version of the interview with Frau Krupp and instructing Count Bülow how to answer the lady's forthcoming inquiries.

"The holiest of the holies, of course," ordered Wilhelm, referring to the telegraphic code. "I don't trust these Essen fellows," he deigned to explain; "the Chasseur shall take the message to Düsseldorf and personally hand it to the President to be sent over the official wire."

Afterwards he joined the ladies and Phili, finishing up the day's strenuous work of intrigue and sight-seeing with the talk to Franz, recorded at the opening of this chapter.

Just before leaving Villa Huegel he had another tête-à-tête with Frau Krupp. "I have conferred signal honours on your protégé" (meaning the chief engineer), he said. "I am sending him to the States to study new inventions and investigate patents relating to war materials—greatest chance that ever came to a young man. If he does as well as I expect, I will make him special representative of my General Staff. Is your Ladyship satisfied now?"

Frau Krupp breathed her humblest thanks. What else could she do?

CHAPTER XXV

A ROYAL LIAR

High-Placed Plagiarists—Diplomatic Trickery—The Kaiser Whitewashes Himself—"What of the German Navy?"—Clumsy Espionage

October 10th, 1905, 6 p.m.

The red disc betraying the War Lord's presence at the other end of the wire thrust itself between the Chancellor's eyes and the copy of Echo de Paris he was reading.

"I command Bohlen," said Wilhelm's impatient voice.

"I am afraid he is not available just now, Your Majesty. Gone shopping with his fiancée the last I heard."

"Order Wedell to find him. He shall be at the Chancellery at nine sharp, when I expect to find you too, Prince."

"Gracing my wife's soirée?"

"Soirée to-night? Excellent! I will order all my boys to kiss Madame's hand. It will put her into good humour, and she will the more readily allow you to attend to business."

"And, Majesty," said Bülow, hopefully, "the Princess Maria is counting on having the honour of Your Majesty's presence."

"I will send the insignia of dell' Annunciata instead."

"I beg Your Majesty, don't. Maria might not remember that Charles XII. sent his boots to preside at the Swedish Council of State."

As before remarked, it is one of Bülow's tricks always to have on the tip of his tongue some historic bon mot suitable to the occasion.

There was an outburst of rough laughter. "He did, did he? And yet they called him the Madman of the North. Next time Herr Bebel has a congress, I will send the Reds a pair of my riding breeches, and no new ones either. But revenons à Bohlen. Devil of a chap! Made Bertha his goods, his chattel, his stuff, his field, his barn, his horse, his ox, his ass, his everything! That's the way! Make them eat out of your hand, Prince!"

Bülow was a Prince since the 6th of June, and the War Lord never tired of calling him by the title of his own creation. He had just borrowed boldly from the Bard, and the theft being apparently undiscovered by his literary Chancellor, Wilhelm felt justified in relaxing his imperious mien some more.

"Can't you prescribe a dose of sleeping sickness for that fool Liebert? His shouting about 'our war' to obtain supreme sea power is co-responsible for the Entente Cordiale. Of course I like to strike terror into the hearts of the enemy, but in his Navy League speech Liebert went too far. If he keeps it up, I shall put him on half-pay. Tell him so." (The War Lord referred to General von Liebert, ex-Governor of German East Africa, who had made a speech threatening Great Britain and France.)

And more talk of that kind. The more gossipy, the better for Bülow, as there had been no time to digest the Echo de Paris article and to enter into its discussion before he had fully made up his mind what to say about the reported Anglo-Franco-Russo-Japanese Alliance. His comments might lead to serious dissension with Majesty, for Wilhelm was sure to fasten on to some supposed negligible point in the Chancellor's argument to distort the whole tenor of his interpretation.

Tit for tat. Only when Bülow was the victim, there was no prearrangement like in the case of the repudiations of the Joseph Chamberlain and the London Daily Telegraph interviews.

When in England five years before, the War Lord had prompted Mr. Chamberlain to make his historic appeal in favour of co-operation between Great Britain, Germany and the United States, assuring him that Germany's future policy would rest on such an understanding as on a roche de bronze.

Mr. Chamberlain, being under the impression that only gentlemen were invited to Sandringham House, thought His Majesty sincere and gave public utterance to the message, promising peace and mutual understanding.

But the Roi de Prusse had no sooner shaken the dust of England from his boots than Bülow was ordered to repudiate the whole thing (without directly impugning his Sovereign's word, of course) and to ridicule Chamberlain's "Utopian schemes."

Notwithstanding, the then German Ambassador in London, Count Wolff-Metternich, later had the impudence to complain to Sir F. Lascelles, British representative in Berlin, that the state of English opinion toward Germany and the British Foreign Office's coldness toward the Wilhelmstrasse gave him considerable uneasiness; whereupon Sir Lascelles demanded to know whether Germany expected British Secretaries of State, having been struck in the face, were to turn the other cheek for further castigation and insult?

Three years after the birth of the Quadruple Alliance, at which we are now assisting, the War Lord and his Chancellor had another repudiation game between them. Mr. Harcourt having prepared the way in his amazing Lancashire speech,[#] Wilhelm strove to outdo the Father of Lies in the notorious Daily Telegraph interview, the general theme of which was: