It is significant to note how all those who knew the Empress even slightly welcomed the fact of the Emperor’s accession. Thus Mrs. Augustus Craven: “Somehow I hope the present Emperor will live. Anyhow I am thankful that he is still alive, and that she is Empress of Germany, also that perhaps after all the very great deal there is in her is not to be lost for Germany and for Europe.”
The feeling in the Court and political world is clearly shown in the memoirs of Prince Hohenlohe. He was received by the Empress a week after her return to Berlin, and he says that he found her unchanged; “her frank and cheerful manner filled me with astonishment.”
Three days later Prince Hohenlohe noted in his diary that already officials were complaining of the interference of the Empress in public business.
Bötticher told him that she had induced the Emperor to refuse his signature to the Anti-Socialist Bill, and that he had only given way after Bismarck had explained the matter to the Empress. The Minister added that the Emperor had little power of resistance to the influence of the Empress, and that she, again, was under the influence of “certain advanced ladies.” If the Emperor’s illness, he went on, was of long duration, all kinds of things might happen, but if the Emperor were well, or should become so, the influence of the Empress would diminish.
A few days later Prince Hohenlohe was himself able to judge how far this was true about the Empress, for he went out to call on his Sovereign at Charlottenburg, and found him with his wife. The Empress excused her presence by pleading the necessity of supporting the Emperor during the audience. The whole of the conversation had to be carried on, so far as the Emperor was concerned, by means of writing-tablets. Hohenlohe observed that the Emperor would benefit by the amount of work he had to do, at which the Sovereign nodded approvingly. At the end of the interview:
“The Emperor placed his hand on my shoulder and smiled sadly, so that I could hardly restrain my tears. He gave me the impression of a martyr; and, indeed, no martyrdom in the world is comparable with this slow death. Everyone who comes near him is full of admiration for his courageous and quiet resignation to a fate which is inevitable, and which he fully realises.”
But it is plain that the Empress had not yet resigned herself to consider his death as in any way imminent. Later in the same month, Hohenlohe had an audience of the Empress, and during their conversation she said something which made it clear to her old friend that she still entertained illusions as to her husband’s real condition—indeed, he was himself so shaken by what she said that he wrote in his diary: “It is perhaps possible that the illness will be of long duration. The expectation of a speedy end has not yet been confirmed.”