In Berlin during the wet weather the Emperor with difficulty can get the exercise he needs. He has had a covered tennis-court built in the grounds of Mon-Bijou Schloss, a short five minutes’ walk from the palace on the Lust-Garten; and here, when the weather continued persistently rainy, His Majesty, in a frightfully overheated building, would play with any young officers who were fairly expert at the game. None of them appeared to enjoy the honour very much. The oppressive atmosphere, combined with the nervous apprehension natural to the occasion—the fear lest an unlucky ball, with the hideous perversity of inanimate dumb things, might perhaps rebound with force against the sacred person of His Majesty or, as sometimes happened, fall into the midst of the tea-table presided over by the Empress—paralyzed the hand of even the least imaginative lieutenant.
“I feel all unstrung and frightened,” confided one of these unfortunate youths to me. “Supposing I happened to give His Majesty a black eye?”
“But,” I objected, “nobody gets black eyes at tennis.”
“No, I know that, but still I’m always thinking it might happen; and you know Von Braun’s ball went bang into the Empress’s teacup and flung the tea all over her gown. His mother was in tears when she heard of it.”
As an alternative to indoor tennis, of which he speedily grows tired, the Emperor rides on rainy afternoons in the fine large Reit-Bahn or riding-school of the royal stables, where one of the regimental bands is stationed in the gallery, and plays the latest operatic music as His Majesty and the adjutants canter round.
To the despair of the Master of the Horse he insists on having the Reit-Bahn also artificially heated.
“The whole stable will be coughing to-morrow,” groan the unhappy officials as they ponder on the evil effects upon the horses of the warm atmosphere. But the Emperor likes to feel that he is “getting rid,” he says, “of a little bit of myself.”
Once, as the riders were trotting round the Bahn, smoke was observed to be issuing from the coat-tails of one of the adjutants, who was carrying a box of matches in his pocket. This small incident amused the Emperor and restored his good-humour, always a little affected by bad weather. At supper he told the tale with all the dramatic exaggerations in which his soul delights, describing the young officer’s plight as “painful in the extreme.”
Nothing pleases the Emperor more than to “chaff” his intimate friends about their private weaknesses. At Rominten he would tell interminable adventures of Admiral von Hollman—“Männchen,” as he used to call him—all hinging on this gallant old officer’s knack of losing his umbrella and his luggage.
“He usually arrives at a state reception without a helmet, or something of that kind. Left it on the steamer or in the train; took it off to have a nap, and then forgot all about it,—and as for umbrellas! He buys them now by the gross. Finds it cheaper!”