When the carriage passed the Kaiserhof the War Lord could not resist the temptation to bend forward. "Udo," he said, "are you not ashamed of yourself, robbing these poor devils at the journalists' table? If they knew how I am suffering in your springless cab—oh, but it does hurt!—it would mean at least ten marks in their pocket."
"Confound their impudence," said Count von Wedell. "But Your Majesty's criticism of the coupé is most à propos—just in time to insert the item for a new one in the appropriation."
"The devil!" cried the War Lord. "I thought this ramshackle chariot your personal property."
Wilhelm likes to spend other people's money, but with State funds it is different, for every pfennig spent for administration reduces the total His Majesty "acquires."
True, Prussia spells despotism tempered by Parliament, but her kings can never forget the good old times when appropriations for the Court were only limited by the State's utmost resources.
"My own!" gasped Wedell. "Would I dare worry Your Majesty's sacred bones in an ark like this?"
The carriage entered the palace stableyard, the gates of which opened noiselessly in obedience to a significant crack of the whip.
Sentinels posted inside and out, civil service men in frock-coats and top-hats, who muttered numbers to their chief, replying in kind!
"Everything all right, Bülow upstairs," whispered Udo in Russian. He went ahead of the War Lord through lines of his men, posted at intervals of three paces in the courtyard and at the entrance. The vestibule was splendid with electric light for the first time in the history of the old palace.
As the suspicious War Lord observed, Marshal Augustus had been busy indeed. Heavy portières everywhere, over doors, windows, and oeils-de-boeuf; to passers-by the Leopold Palace was as dead and forlorn as during the past several years.