But the despotism of the monarchs of the Old World is by no means restricted to this question of the control and custody of the junior members of their respective families. Every prince and princess of the latter, no matter what his or her age, or superiority in point of years to the sovereign may be, is subjected to the will of the head of the house. For instance, no Russian grand duke or grand d.u.c.h.ess can leave the Muscovite empire without previously asking and obtaining the permission of the czar, and in the same way, the Austrian archdukes and archd.u.c.h.esses have to crave the sanction of Emperor Francis-Joseph, and the Prussian princes and princesses, that of the kaiser, before they can leave their respective countries for a foreign trip. Even Empress Frederick is compelled to obtain the permission of her son, the emperor, before taking her departure from Germany for England or Italy, and a few years ago when quietly enjoying herself in Paris, she was forced by a peremptory command from her son to suddenly cut short her stay in the French capital, and to betake herself to England.

To such an extent is this despotism carried that when Prince Henry of Prussia was stationed at Kiel, he had to ask his elder brother's permission before he could run up to Berlin, although Kiel is only a few hours' trip from the capital; and, as stated in the previous chapter, Princess Charlotte of Saxe-Meiningen and her husband, are kept at Breslau, except when their brother William graciously condescends to permit them to leave their home. Two years ago the emperor, for reasons which can only be surmised, and which were of a personal rather than of a political character--of which more anon--suddenly ordered his only brother Henry off to China, and a little later, possibly with the object of showing to the world that his authority extended to the ladies of his house, as well as to the men, he directed Princess Henry to join her husband at Hong Kong. As the two little boys of the princess are exceedingly delicate, owing possibly to the fact that their parents are first cousins, the poor mother was very reluctant to undertake the trip, but she was forced by the emperor to go, and had scarcely reached Hong Kong before she learnt by cable that both her little ones were prostrated by a terrible attack of diphtheria. She was not, however, permitted to return, but was kept out in China away from her children until late in the spring, and reached home well on towards autumn, to find her little ones--the youngest was but two years old--more delicate than ever, but fortunately alive.

In the memoirs of Bismarck published by Dr. Busch, there is reproduced one of Emperor William's letters, written prior to his accession to the throne, in the course of which he asks the great chancellor whether he approves of his "commanding" (the German word is "_befehlen_") his brother Prince Henry to make certain inquiries of the late Prince Alexander of Battenberg. William in this letter does not talk of "requesting" his brother, but of ordering him to do this.

If then William, as crown prince, already took upon himself the right of ordering his brother and his sisters to do this and to do that, it may be readily imagined that he is not less peremptory in his dealings with them now that he is their emperor and king.

If they disobey him, he has various means of punishment at his command. He can banish them from court for a long term; he can deprive them temporarily, or for all time, of the prerogatives, the privileges, and the honors due to their rank; he can suspend their allowances from the national treasury, or from the family property, or can stop it altogether; he can take from them the control of any estates which they may have inherited, and confide the administration thereof to curators appointed for the purpose; finally, he can subject them to various forms of arrest, as he once did in the case of his brother-in-law, Prince Frederick-Leopold; while in very extreme cases he can place the offending relative under restraint in an asylum for the insane on the pretext of dementia, as has been done in the case of Princess Louise of Coburg, daughter of King Leopold of Belgium, and mother of Princess "Dolly" of Coburg, who is now the wife of Duke Ernest-Gunther of Schleswig-Holstein.

"_Aux arrets_," or confinement to one's quarters, is the most common form of punishment inflicted by Old World monarchs upon those of their kith and kin who have failed to comply with their behests, and there is scarcely a single sovereign or prince of the blood, who has not been subjected to this species of discipline at one time or another of his career. Thus the late Emperor Frederick, prior to his accession to the throne, but long after his marriage, was sentenced to several weeks' detention in his palace under strict arrest, as a punishment for a little joke which he had played during the course of a military inspection.

He had been protesting for a long time against the tightness of the uniforms, and of the belts of the rank and file of the infantry, declaring that it impeded the movements and play of the muscles of the men, to such an extent as to deprive them of more than fifty per cent, of their usefulness. One day, during an inspection of the division of guards at Potsdam, while the troops happened to be standing at ease, he walked along the front rank of the first regiment, accompanied by a number of officers, with whom he had just been discussing this very question of equipment; suddenly, he stopped short in his walk, and extracting a piece of gold from his pocket, dropped it on the ground, and told the men nearest him to pick it up, adding that whoever got hold of it first, might keep it! Several of them made frantic attempts to bend down in order to get the money, but so tight were their uniforms and belts that they found it absolutely impossible to reach, the coin, which Emperor Frederick ultimately picked up himself, and handed to them.

"And how do you expect to win battles with soldiers hampered to such an extent as that in their movements?" he exclaimed contemptuously to the officers around him. "What greater demonstration than this is needed to prove the justice of my argument?"

The incident was reported to the then Minister of War, who immediately lodged a complaint with Frederick's father, the result being that "Unser Fritz," at that time Crown Prince of Prussia, was placed by old Emperor William for several weeks under arrest in his palace!

Prince Rupert of Bavaria, the heir apparent to the ancient throne of the Wittelsbachs, was sentenced by his grandfather, the prince regent, to no less than three months' close arrest in his quarters at Munich, for having left the kingdom without permission, in order to spend three days at Paris, in fair but frail company; while the widowed d.u.c.h.ess of Aosta on one occasion was placed under arrest in her palace of Turin by her brother-in-law, King Humbert, because she had ventured to appear in public on her wheel wearing a pair of bloomers!

Prince and Princess Frederick-Leopold, the latter a younger sister of the Empress of Germany, have both been condemned on several occasions by the kaiser to close confinement in their palace under the most stringent kind of arrest, for having disobeyed his majesty's commands with regard to the management of their household. Duke Ernest-Gunther of Schleswig-Holstein, the brother of the empress, has been subjected to more numerous orders of arrest by his imperial kinsman than any prince of the blood now living.

Severe as are European monarchs nowadays in punishing the disobedience of the members of their families, they do not, however, venture any longer to proceed to such extremities as the father of Frederick the Great, who when the latter was still crown prince, cast his son into prison, and ordered him to be shot, merely because he discovered that he was about to leave the kingdom without his permission for the purpose of undertaking a trip to England; and there is no doubt that the crown prince would have been put to death, and thus shared the fate of his two aids-de-camp, who were beheaded before his very eyes, in the fortress prison of Kustrin, had it not been for the intervention of the amba.s.sadors of Austria, Great Britain, Russia and France in behalf of his royal highness.

Yet another phase of this despotism, which the two kaisers,--namely their majesties of Germany and of Austria,--exercise over the members of their respective families, is the right which they claim to select and appoint the officers and ladies-in-waiting of every prince and princess of the blood. In order to appreciate what this means it must be explained that it is not merely contrary to etiquette, but absolutely forbidden by the rules and regulations inst.i.tuted by Emperor William and his brother sovereigns, that any such princes or princesses should venture to appear anywhere in public without being escorted either by a gentleman or a lady-in-waiting. These attendants, who are, it is needless to state, of n.o.ble birth, may be said to const.i.tute the very shadow of the personage to whose household they are attached. In fact a royal or imperial prince or princess cannot even cross the street, far less leave home for a ride, a drive, a walk, or for the purpose of paying a visit, or of doing some shopping without being escorted, if a prince, by a gentleman-in-waiting, and if a princess, by a lady-in-waiting, and possibly by a chamberlain as well.

Nor are the duties of the ladies and gentlemen-in-waiting confined to attendance upon their royal charges in public, for they form part and parcel of the royal or imperial household to which they are attached, and if they do not occupy quarters in the palace, at any rate they take all their meals there, since their duties commence in the early morning, and only cease late at night.

Now, human shadows of this kind are all very well when one is at liberty to choose them one's self; but it is very different when one has no voice whatsoever in the matter, and when one is forced to submit to close and intimate attendance of this kind by ladies and gentlemen whom one neither likes nor trusts. In such cases as these, the gentlemen or ladies-in-waiting are apt to be regarded in the light of spies by their royal charges, and as people appointed by the sovereign to keep watch upon their actions. It is probable that no one has suffered so cruelly in this connection as the widowed Empress Frederick of Germany. Possessed of extremely liberal views in political matters--ideas which she imparted to her consort, she found herself, within a few years after her marriage, in complete opposition to Prince Bismarck. The latter regarded her as a very dangerous opponent, and responded to her openly avowed disapproval of his political methods by using his influence with her father-in-law, old Emperor William, urging him to interfere with her management of her children; and above all, to appoint as members of her household personages with whom she could have no possible sympathy, political or otherwise, and who were, in every sense of the word, devoted to the Iron Chancellor. In fact, Prince Bismarck acknowledges in his reminiscences, as published by his Boswell, Dr. Busch, that he caused the crown princess--as Empress Frederick was then--to shed many a bitter tear, by his interference, through her father-in-law, in her domestic affairs.

Bismarck made no secret of his enmity towards Empress Frederick and her husband before the latter ascended the throne, and it is on record that he even officially insisted that secrets of state should not be confided to "Unser Fritz," for fear that the latter's consort might communicate them to her English relatives. He even went so far as to accuse her of having, during the war of 1870, betrayed to non-German relatives Prussian military secrets, which were used by the French against her adopted country, and served to prolong the conflict. These odious charges, "_which have been abundantly disproved_" and for which "_there was not even the shadow of a foundation_," are merely referred to here in order to show the intense bitterness of the personal animosity entertained by the chancellor towards Empress Frederick. Yet it was he, Bismarck, who, through the old emperor, had the right of selecting and nominating, not merely the instructors and attendants of her boys, but her own gentlemen and ladies-in-waiting--nay, even the physicians and surgeons to be called in cases of illness.

CHAPTER VI

It is to the part played by Prince Bismarck in selecting the attendants and tutors of the present emperor that must be ascribed the strained relations that notoriously existed between the kaiser and his mother during the few years immediately preceding and following his accession to the throne; while there is no doubt whatsoever that the last eighteen months of Emperor Frederick's so prematurely-ended life, were saddened and embittered by the feeling that a conspiracy was on foot to prevent his succession to the throne on the ground of the incurable malady from which he was suffering--a conspiracy in which some of the princ.i.p.al partic.i.p.ants were members of his household and physicians who had been forced upon him by his father at instigation of Prince Bismarck.

If I mention this, it is not so much with the idea of evoking a very painful chapter of the history of the Court Berlin, as it is for the purpose of explaining, and in a measure of excusing, the charges of unfilial conduct brought against the present emperor, and which contributed so much to his unpopularity both at home and abroad during the early years of his reign.

I have related in a previous chapter how William, while a boy, was snubbed by his parents, and treated with considerable strictness.

His father, like so many good-looking giants, utterly free from affectation and pose, believed that he saw in his eldest boy a tendency to posture, a forwardness of manner, and a disposition towards pride of rank, amounting to arrogance, which it was necessary, at all costs, to repress. Prince William, therefore, was constantly receiving setbacks, often of a most humiliating character, from his parents, and I am sorry to say that this practice of regarding him as a presumptuous youth whom it was necessary to check, extended to other European courts, so that poor William can not be said to have had an altogether enjoyable time; and in this connection it is just as well to state that the Prince of Wales and his other English relatives, took their cue from his mother in their treatment of him, a circ.u.mstance which he has neither forgiven nor forgotten. Indeed the notorious absence of cordiality between the Prince of Wales and his imperial nephew of Berlin originates with the snubs which the British heir apparent, in his capacity of uncle, felt it necessary to administer to William, when the latter was a lad, and even when he had reached manhood.

Yet it would be unfair to ascribe any undue blame in the matter to the parents of Emperor William. The responsibility must rest rather with those people with whom Prince Bismarck, acting through the old emperor, surrounded the young prince. The mission of these nominees of the chancellor was to counteract the influence of the then crown prince and crown princess over their eldest son, and this was achieved by setting the boy against his parents. Every direction or command given by Frederick or by his consort to their son was made the subject of critical discussion by the personages with whom Bismarck had surrounded him, until the latter became convinced that the judgment of his parents was at fault in almost everything that could be imagined, and that all their views, political as well as social, were thoroughly out of keeping with Prussian traditions and German patriotism.

This in itself was bad enough: but what made matters infinitely worse, was that whenever William was subjected to any reproof or discipline by either his father or mother, those composing his immediate _entourage_ at once impressed upon the royal youth that he was the victim of the most gross and unpardonable injustice, that both his father and mother were inordinately jealous of his striking individuality, that the unmerited severity to which he was subjected was brought about by their consciousness that his intellect was superior to theirs, and that his ideas were too thoroughly Prussian to const.i.tute anything but a serious danger to their English liberalism.

The effect of influences such as these upon a high-spirited and impulsive youth, at the time entirely devoid of experience or of knowledge of the world, may readily be conceived. It naturally led to an increase of what his parents regarded as his presumptuousness and forwardness of manner, and consequently to a growth of their severity towards him. He, on the other hand, became more and more embittered by the unduly harsh and rather unjust treatment to which he was being subjected by both his father and his mother.

The persons in attendance on the imperial family, with the conspicuous exceptions of Count Seckendorff and Countess Hedwig Bruhl, were careful to fan the embers of bitterness rankling in the bosom of young William whenever any opportunity offered, and thus it happened that when Emperor Frederick, while still crown prince, was discovered to be suffering from that cancer of the larynx which ultimately carried him off, the relations between parents and son were so strained as to give rise to the very widespread belief that William was the ally of his father's enemies, and a partic.i.p.ator in the disgraceful conspiracy which ensued for the purpose of barring him from succession to the throne on the ground of his fearful malady.

As soon as the nature of the disease from which Frederick was suffering had been ascertained, his opponents, Prince Bismarck first and foremost, dug out from the most remote recesses of the family archives of the house of Hohenzollern an obsolete and forgotten law barring from the succession to the throne of Prussia any prince of the blood who was afflicted with an incurable malady. Of course, the original object of the statute in question was to enable the elimination from the line of succession of princes afflicted with hopeless insanity, or some such disease as would prevent them from administering the government, thus rendering the inst.i.tution of a regency necessary. In one word, the purpose of the measure was to prevent such a situation from arising in Prussia as prevails now in Bavaria, where, since 1886 the throne has been occupied by a lunatic prince, who was incurably insane for many years before his accession to the crown, and whose dementia takes that peculiar form, which is described in the Bible as having overtaken Nebuchadnezzar. King Otto of Bavaria imagines himself to be alternately a quadruped or a bird, and when he is not browsing on leaves and gra.s.s in the gardens of his prison palace at Furstenried, under the impression that he is a sheep or goat, he will stand on one leg in the centre of a shallow pond, firmly convinced that he is a stork, occasionally flapping his long coat-tails in lieu of wings, and greedily attempting to devour any frogs or tadpoles that may come within his reach, unless prevented by his attendants from doing so.

There have been, alas! numerous cases of insanity in the reigning house of Prussia. Old Emperor William's elder brother and predecessor, King Frederick-William IV., spent the last few years of his life under restraint, hopelessly insane, his brother and ultimate successor administering the government as regent. The late Princess Frederick of Prussia was afflicted like her brother, the last Duke of Anhalt-Bernburg, with a peculiar kind of lunacy which took the form of an invincible objection to clothing of any kind whatsoever; while one of her two sons, Prince Alexander, who died only a few months ago, suffered from a species of good-natured imbecility, which led him to offer his heart and his hand to every woman or young girl that he encountered, no matter what her age, or looks, or rank, sometimes making as many as thirty or forty offers of marriage in the same day!

The above-mentioned law was created for the purpose of preventing a prince thus situated from ascending the throne of Prussia, but the family statutes evoked by Prince Bismarck and his followers certainly never contemplated the deprival of a prince of his hereditary rights of succession to the throne because of some physical ailment or infirmity. This would have been entirely contrary to the spirit and ethics of the monarchical system of the Old World; as will be readily seen when attention is called to the fact that both the late King of Hanover, and the present reigning Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, were absolutely and totally blind at the time they succeeded to their present thrones.

Prince Bismarck took the view, however, that the statute in question was sufficient to bar "Unser Fritz" from succeeding to his father, if it were once medically admitted that his malady was incurable, or if curable, that it was liable to permanently destroy the vocal chords, thus abolishing forever the power of speech.

Prince Bismarck declared that in a matter of such extreme importance, where the succession to the throne, and the life of the heir apparent were at stake, the surgeons and physicians should be selected by the State--that is, by himself--and that their verdict should be final.

Chief among the medical experts whom he nominated for the purpose, was the celebrated German surgeon, Professor von Bergmann, who is as famed for his skill in the use of the knife as for his fondness in applying it in cases where it might possibly be dispensed with. Having convinced himself that the malady from which Crown Prince Frederick suffered was a cancer, he decreed that the only manner of saving the life of the ill.u.s.trious patient was the extremely dangerous and almost certainly fatal operation of removing the entire portion of the larynx that was affected. This, as stated above, would have left the crown prince dumb for the remainder of his days, and according to the views of Prince Bismarck would have barred him from succession to the throne.

It is related in court circles at Berlin, that Professor Bergmann was on the point of operating upon the crown prince unknown to the crown princess, and under the pretext of making a very radical examination, for which anaesthetics were necessary, when, he was prevented at the very last moment by her imperial highness. It is even stated that she tore the instruments from his hands, and turned him out of the room with the most bitter and cutting reproaches. Whatever may be true in this bit of court gossip, it is certain that a fierce quarrel did take place between the crown princess and the great surgeon, and that the cause of this quarrel was the decision taken by the latter to operate upon the crown prince as the only means of saving his life.

[Ill.u.s.tration: _THE CROWN PRINCESS AND PROFESSOR VON BERGMANN_ _After a drawing by Oreste Cortazzo_]

The crown princess thereupon summoned to her a.s.sistance Sir Morel MacKenzie, the greatest throat specialist in England, who throughout his long career was consulted by all the leading singers and orators of his day. MacKenzie came to Berlin, examined the crown prince, and utterly rejected the diagnosis of Professor Bergmann, and of the German physicians. He declared that the affection of the larynx, while cancerous, would not be bettered by using the knife, at any rate at that time, and that he believed the malady to be curable by treatment.

Needless to add that his opinion was reviled in Germany as that of a charlatan, and that the Teuton specialists declared that the crown prince was doomed to certain death within six months, unless the operation was performed.

Fearing that some further attempt might be made at Berlin to operate upon her husband without her knowledge, or in spite of her opposition, the crown princess took him off to England, and from thence to the Tyrol, from which place they eventually migrated to San Remo.

Meanwhile, the German newspapers, that is to say, those which were believed to be receiving their inspiration from Bismarckian sources, were filled with abuse of the crown princess, who was charged openly with being willing to sacrifice the life of her husband rather than her chances of becoming German Empress.

Meanwhile the crown prince became worse and worse, and while at San Remo had several fits of agonizing suffocation, to which he almost succ.u.mbed, and from the worst of which he was virtually saved by the late Dr. Thomas Evans, of Philadelphia, who displayed the utmost devotion and intelligence of treatment in the case of the imperial sufferer.

It was at this juncture that one of the most dramatic scenes which can be imagined took place in the antechamber of the ill.u.s.trious patient.

The crown princess received letters which informed her that Prince Bismarck had submitted to the old emperor, then himself near death, a decree for signature, transferring the succession of the throne from Crown Prince Frederick to the latter's son, Prince William, a decree which, by the by, the old emperor could not bring himself to sign.

Furthermore, she learnt through the same sources that one of the princ.i.p.al members of her household at San Remo, in fact, one of the chamberlains in attendance, was sending daily reports of the most venomous character to Berlin, and to Prince Bismarck particularly, about everything that went on around the unhappy crown prince. Not a thing was said, not a thing done, not a change for the worse or the better in the condition of the hapless crown prince, that was not instantly reported to the chancellor, in a sense most detrimental and inimical to the imperial couple at San Remo. This traitor in the camp owed his appointment to the imperial household to Prince Bismarck, but by his charming manners, his professions of loyalty and of devotion, and his denunciations of Prince Bismarck, and of the latter's policy and ways, had completely captured the confidence of both the crown prince and crown princess.

Empress Frederick has inherited from her mother, Queen Victoria, a singularly fiery temper. Her pa.s.sionate anger when she realized the base treachery to which her sick husband and herself had been subjected in their time of cruel tribulation and trouble can only be imagined by those who have the privilege of knowing her, and the scene that took place between herself and the offending chamberlain was not merely dramatical, but tragical in its fierce intensity.

It was very shortly after this that the old emperor died. If Prince Bismarck entertained any further hopes of preventing the accession of Crown Prince Frederick to the throne, they were frustrated by Prince William, who declined to be a party to any such conspiracy. Indeed, in spite of all that has been said to the contrary, I am firmly convinced that William at no time took any part, either directly or indirectly, in the Bismarckian plot to oust his so sadly afflicted father from his rights to the crown. But, on the other hand, it is certain that he was suspected by his parents and relatives of being privy to the scheme, and that he was treated with still greater hostility and lack of affection by them than previously, which naturally served to embitter him more than ever before.

Emperor Frederick's reign lasted not quite one hundred days, and throughout that period a conflict may be said to have raged around the bedside of the dying man. Both he and his wife, aware how brief his tenure of the throne was destined to be, were bent on inaugurating some of those liberal reforms and popular measures which had been the dream of their entire married life, and which they wished to see put in force, as a lasting memorial of that monarch who figures in German history to-day as "Frederick the n.o.ble."

Prince Bismarck, and all the leading statesmen of Prussia, it must be admitted, ranged themselves against the imperial couple in the matter.

They expressed profound pity for the dying emperor, but they denounced the empress with the utmost virulence for taking advantage, as they described it, of his condition to endow Germany with some of the most pernicious features of English political life, which, while all very well for Britons, were destined to prove disastrous in the extreme if applied to Prussia. The fiercer the opposition, the more resolute did both the emperor and empress become in their determination to attain their aim, before death once more rendered the throne vacant; and the position of William, who was now crown prince, became even more difficult than it had hitherto been. His political sympathies were, it is impossible to deny, with Prince Bismarck and his followers, and he could not with his training and with the influences by which he had been surrounded, ever since he had left school, but disapprove of the measures which his father and mother wished to adopt. This very naturally added to their distrust of him, and while they lavished every token of affection upon their other children, he was treated by them more as a political adversary and a personal foe than as a friend or a son.

At length the end came. The pitiful sufferings of "Unser Fritz,"

uncomplainingly and patiently borne, were brought to a close by a death which in his case must have been a longed-for release; and within an hour afterwards, William, the present emperor, had startled his subjects and the entire civilized world, by taking an extraordinary step, which for a long time afterwards served as a theme for the denunciation of unfilial character hurled against him both in Germany and abroad; this step being the giving of an order to the effect that the guards placed at all the entrances of the Palace of Potsdam, in which his father had breathed his last, should be doubled, that a cordon of troops should be drawn around the park walls, and that no one should be allowed to enter or leave the palace without his permission.

While there is every reason to believe that this measure was suggested to him by Prince Bismarck, yet it must be admitted that it was to a certain extent justified by the circ.u.mstances. Emperor Frederick was known to have kept a most exhaustive diary throughout his entire married life, dealing day by day with all the political questions of the hour, the secrets of the Prussian State, the incidents of court life, etc., just as they occurred. From a German point of view it was a matter of the most extreme importance that this collection of diaries should not be permitted to leave Prussia, or to reach a foreign country, for it would practically have meant the placing at the mercy of a foreign land all the state secrets of Prussia during the previous thirty years. Emperor William and Prince Bismarck had both been led to believe that Empress Frederick had made arrangements to have these books conveyed to England by Sir Morel MacKenzie, whom they both disliked as much as they distrusted him. The idea that these volumes should be in the care of MacKenzie, even during the twenty-four hours journey separating Berlin from London, was to them quite intolerable.

Before many hours had elapsed, however, the measures were relaxed. It was discovered that the diaries were no longer in the palace, and that they had been taken over to England either knowingly or unknowingly by Queen Victoria on the occasion of her visit to Potsdam, when she came to bid adieu to her dying son-in-law.

Let me add that some time later, after a considerable amount of explanation and negotiation, Queen Victoria, of her own accord, returned the cases containing Emperor Frederick's diaries to her grandson at Berlin, with the seals unbroken, taking the very sensible ground that inasmuch as there were many Prussian state secrets therein contained, their place was in the archives of the House of Hohenzollern, rather than in England.

Emperor William has never forgotten the course adopted by his grandmother in the matter, and by his manner towards her has repeatedly shown since then that he feels how greatly he can rely upon having his actions appreciated with perfect impartiality and all absence of prejudice at Windsor.

Empress Frederick was naturally deeply offended by the precautionary measures adopted by the emperor on his father's death, and saw therein a new and most insulting indication of his unfilial conduct towards herself. Nor were the relations between the mother and the son improved, but on the contrary rather aggravated by the presence of the Prince of Wales at Berlin. The latter remained in the Prussian capital for a number of weeks after the funeral of Emperor Frederick, and the English newspapers, which had been most outspoken in their criticisms of the young emperor's att.i.tude towards his parents, did not hesitate to declare openly that if the prince was continuing his stay in Berlin, it was for the purpose of championing the interests of his favorite sister, and of protecting her from the insults of her son, and of the latter's mentor and chief counsellor, Prince Bismarck.