If the word “disappointment” is used of the Crown Princess’s long-deferred hopes, it was in no sense the baulking of any commonplace ambition. The tragedy lay in the failure of the pure and single-hearted dedication of her husband and herself to bettering the lot of those vast, silent millions on whose pains and toil the pomp of thrones and empires, the exquisite refinements of civilisation, the discoveries of science, and the delights of art and literature, seemed to her to be all ultimately based.
The sympathies of one of the most warm-hearted women who ever lived were thus continually torn and divided, for, while it seemed to her loyal nature an act of treachery to look forward to the old Emperor’s death, she was continually being reminded, by the demeanour of those about her, that that event, which would so entirely transform her position, was expected almost daily.
In the midst of this subtle mental and spiritual conflict, the Crown Princess was struck by yet another arrow from the quiver of fate, inflicting an anguish of anxiety which even her bitterest enemies would surely have wished her to be spared.
In April, 1886, the Crown Prince suffered from a severe attack of measles, which probably left him in a weakened state, as this disease is apt to do when it attacks a man over fifty. However, he was thought to have recovered sufficiently to visit the King and Queen of Italy on the Riviera in the autumn, and it was there, while out driving, that the Prince caught a severe cold, which brought on an affection of the throat.
The Princess herself undertook, with great efficiency, the chief responsibility of nursing the patient. But the throat affection did not yield to treatment, and the terrible suspicion that it might never so yield must often have assailed the Princess, even in these early months of her husband’s illness. But she did not betray the anxiety gnawing at her heart; on the contrary, she showed throughout a gallant optimism which, as we now look back on it, seems intensely pathetic.
It was the more necessary that the Princess should never for a moment relax her cheerfulness, because the patient himself soon began to suffer from periods of deep depression. To one friend he even said that his time had already passed away, and the future belonged to his son; to another he declared that he had become an old man and stood with one foot in the grave.
On the Emperor William’s ninetieth birthday, March 22, 1887, the sailor son of the Crown Princess, Prince Henry of Prussia, was formally betrothed to his cousin, his mother’s favourite niece, Princess Irene of Hesse.
During the festivities given in honour of the event, it began to be whispered among the guests that the Crown Prince’s throat affection was more serious than had as yet been acknowledged. But it is said that the word “cancer” was only first mentioned in connection with the case when, in deference to the highest medical advice of Berlin, he was sent to Ems to be treated for “a bad cold with bronchial complications following on measles.”
The Crown Prince and Princess, with their family, went to Ems in the middle of April and spent a month there. Not only did this bring no improvement, but the patient became perceptibly worse. He was brought back to Berlin, and a consultation of the most eminent medical experts, including Bergmann, Gerhardt, and Wagener, was held, as the result of which a growth in the throat of a malignant character was diagnosed.
Bismarck in his Reminiscences contradicts two curious stories which are worth notice, if only for the reason that they have obtained a certain amount of currency, and one of them is even to be found in an English work on the Emperor William II.