Certain friends of His Majesty came every year with him to Rominten. First and foremost among them all was that Prince Philip Eulenburg before mentioned, a pale, grey-haired, somewhat weary-looking man with a pallid, fleeting smile, something of a visionary, with a nature attracted to music and art, as well as towards all that is strange or abnormal in life. He was a born raconteur, like the Emperor, but told his tales in a quiet, soft, subtle voice, with a grave face and a certain fascinating charm of manner. One could easily understand how the robust personality of the Emperor, so frank, so generous, so open-hearted, was attracted to the somewhat reserved, mysterious, gentle nature of this brilliant man, who yearly entertained His Majesty at his own home, Schloss Liebenberg, and was the repository of his thoughts and aspirations.
He, however, disappeared. Rominten knew him no more. Yet probably no one was more missed than he whose name was never afterwards mentioned there. I can still see his pale face emerge from behind the red curtains of the gallery when he came to the tea-table of the Empress and sat down to entertain us with his store of literary and artistic reminiscences. He had the look even then of an ill man, whose nerves are not in the best condition, who is pursued by some haunting spectre, some fear from which he cannot escape.
Another man of a different type who came yearly was Prince Dohna of Schlobitten, a tall elderly gentleman who was a mighty hunter, and knew all about deer and their habits. We ladies were much indebted to him for instruction in the proper terms of venery—for, as the Princess forcibly impressed on us, it was quite impossible when at Rominten to speak of any part of an animal by its usual name, everything having a special and peculiar designation. “Nose, eyes, ears and tail” were shocking to the ear, and no longer to be tolerated, suffering a change into something technical and sporting. The “ears” of the hare, for example, had to be called its “spoons,” and the feet of the deer became “runners"—I think—but it may have been something else.
One notable visitor came once to Rominten for a short stay of an hour or two on his way back to Russia from America—a rather stern, silent, harassed-looking man with peasant-features, who moved wearily and with an air of abstraction beside the Emperor as they walked up and down on the gravelled space before the Jagd-Haus. It was Herr Witte, the Russian statesman, soon to become Count Witte, on his way home after negotiating terms of peace between his country and Japan. At table he sat eating soup somewhat nervously, with the air of a man in a dream, listening politely to the Emperor’s talk, replying in monosyllables, but conversing with no one else. He was obviously tired and apprehensive.
Soon after dinner we saw his carriage departing for the station. He would be in Russia before nightfall.
Every morning in the early darkness somewhere between five and six, or it may have been even earlier, the panting of a motor-car could be heard outside, and presently it departed, bearing away the Emperor and his loader to some remote corner of the forest where a lordly stag had been marked as coming in the early mornings to browse.
At eight the Princess and I breakfasted alone in the little corridor outside Her Majesty’s sitting-room upstairs. Often we made for ourselves beautiful buttered toast at the big fire which blazed on the hearth; and once the Princess, who always had a fine feminine instinct for that sort of thing, took a large succulent plateful of this delicacy downstairs to His Majesty, who happened for a wonder to be at home for breakfast at the appointed hour. This was a thing which very seldom happened—for, as a rule, we from our window could see the hungry courtiers waiting about the courtyard for the Emperor’s return, which was naturally apt to be rather uncertain as to time, sometimes being postponed till eleven.
Rominten was the only place where Their Majesties breakfasted with the suite. Usually it was a meal taken strictly en famille and at a very rapid pace.
The Emperor appreciated the Princess’s buttered toast so much that the Empress directed that some should be sent up every morning. Now buttered toast is quite unknown in the Fatherland excepting perhaps in large and fashionable hotels where international customs prevail. Rather leathery dry toast is served at tea; but when the royal command for buttered toast reached the kitchen through the medium of the footman it created nothing short of consternation. A flurried lackey came hastening up to me begging for some slight hints as to how it should be made. I foresaw that any instructions I might give when they reached the cook distilled through the footman’s mind would be vague and unsatisfactory. Nevertheless I did my best; but the Empress told me afterwards that the toast was quite uneatable—a result which rather gratified the Princess, who liked to believe that she was the only person capable of making toast for “Papa.”
The lessons with the tutor lasted from half-past eight until twelve o’clock, when a short walk with the Empress was taken, weather permitting. After luncheon, if the stag or stags slain by the Emperor had arrived, we all assembled under the dining-room window for the ceremony of “the Strecke.” The stags were laid on the small lawn beneath the windows, and three of the Jägers of His Majesty blew on hunting-horns the old hunting-call of the “Ha-la-li,” denoting to all who hear the success of the sportsman.