I was at work in the Chancery one day when I heard a stupendous din arising from the Austrian Chancery. "The Imperial Chancellor told me," thundered this megaphone voice in stentorian German tones, every word of which must have been distinctly heard in the street, "that under no circumstances whatever would Germany consent to this arrangement. If the proposal is pressed, Germany will resist it to the utmost, if necessary by force of arms. The Chancellor, in giving me this information," went on the strident voice, "impressed upon me how absolutely secret the matter must be kept. I need hardly inform your Excellency that this telegram is confidential to the highest degree."
"What is that appalling noise in the Austrian Chancery?" I asked our white-headed old Chancery servant.
"That is Count W—— dictating a cypher telegram to Vienna," answered the old man with a twinkle in his shrewd eyes.
This little episode has always seemed to me curiously typical of Austro-Hungarian methods.
The central figure of Berlin was of course the old Emperor William. This splendid-looking old man may not have been an intellectual giant, but he certainly looked an Emperor, every inch of him. There was something, too, very taking in his kindly old face and genial manner. The Crown Princess, afterwards the Empress Frederick, being a British Princess, we were what is known in diplomatic parlance as "une ambassade de famille." The entire staff of the Embassy was asked to dine at the Palace on the birthdays both of Queen Victoria and of the Crown Princess. These dinners took place at the unholy hour of 5 p.m., in full uniform, at the Emperor's ugly palace on the Linden, the Old Schloss being only used for more formal entertainments. On these occasions the sole table decoration consisted, quaintly enough, of rows of gigantic silver dish-covers, each surmounted by the Prussian eagle, with nothing under them, running down the middle of the table. The old Emperor had been but indifferently handled by his dentist. It had become necessary to supplement Nature's handiwork by art, but so unskilfully had these, what are euphemistically termed, additions to the Emperor's mouth been contrived, that his articulation was very defective. It was almost impossible to hear what he said, or indeed to make out in what language he was addressing you. When the Emperor "made the circle," one strained one's ears to the utmost to obtain a glimmering of what he was saying. If one detected an unmistakably Teutonic guttural, one drew a bow at a venture, and murmured "Zu Befehl Majestät," trusting that it might fit in. Should one catch, on the other hand, a slight suspicion of a nasal "n," one imagined that the language must be French, and interpolated a tentative "Parfaitement, Sire," trusting blindly to a kind Providence. Still the impression remains of a kindly and very dignified old gentleman, filling his part admirably. The Empress Augusta, who had been beautiful in her youth, could not resign herself to growing old gracefully. She would have made a most charming old lady, but though well over seventy then, she was ill-advised enough to attempt to rejuvenate herself with a chestnut wig and an elaborate make-up, with deplorable results. The Empress, in addition, was afflicted with a slight palsy of the head.
The really magnificent figure was the Crown Prince, afterwards the Emperor Frederick. Immensely tall, with a full golden beard, he looked in his white Cuirassier uniform the living embodiment of a German legendary hero; a Lohengrin in real life.
Princess Frederick Charles of Prussia was a strikingly handsome woman too, though unfortunately nearly stone deaf.
Though the palace on the Linden may have been commonplace and ugly, the Old Schloss has to my mind the finest interior in Europe. It may lack the endless, bare, gigantic halls of the Winter Palace in Petrograd, and it may contain fewer rooms than the great rambling Hofburg in Vienna, but I maintain that, with the possible exception of the Palace in Madrid, no building in Europe can compare internally with the Old Schloss in Berlin. I think the effect the Berlin palace produces on the stranger is due to the series of rooms which must be traversed before the State apartments proper are reached. These rooms, of moderate dimensions, are very richly decorated. Their painted ceilings, encased in richly-gilt "coffered" work in high relief, have a Venetian effect, recalling some of the rooms in the Doge's Palace in the sea-girt city of the Adriatic. Their silk-hung walls, their pictures, and the splendid pieces of old furniture they contain, redeem these rooms from the soulless, impersonal look most palaces wear. They recall the rooms in some of the finer English or French country-houses, although no private house would have them in the same number. The rooms that dwell in my memory out of the dozen or so that formed the enfilade are, first, the "Drap d'Or Kammer," with its droll hybrid appellation, the walls of which were hung, as its name implies, with cloth of gold; then the "Red Eagle Room," with its furniture and mirrors of carved wood, covered with thin plates of beaten silver, producing an indescribably rich effect, and the "Red Velvet" room. This latter had its walls hung with red velvet bordered by broad bands of silver lace, and contained some splendid old gilt furniture.
The Throne room was one of the most sumptuous in the world. It had an arched painted ceiling, from which depended some beautiful old chandeliers of cut rock crystal, and the walls, which framed great panels of Gobelin tapestry of the best period, were highly decorated, in florid rococo style, with pilasters and carved groups representing the four quarters of the world. The whole of the wall surface was gilded; carvings, mouldings, and pilasters forming one unbroken sheet of gold. We were always told that the musicians' gallery was of solid silver, and that it formed part of Frederick the Great's war-chest. As a matter of fact, Frederick had himself melted the original gallery down and converted it into cash for one of his campaigns. By his orders, a facsimile gallery was carved of wood heavily silvered over. The effect produced, however, was the same, as we were hardly in a position to scrutinise the hall-mark. The room contained four semi-circular buffets, rising in diminishing tiers, loaded with the finest specimens the Prussian Crown possessed of old German silver-gilt drinking-cups of Nuremberg and Augsburg workmanship of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
When the Throne room was lighted up at night the glowing colours of the Gobelin tapestry and the sheen of the great expanses of gold and silver produced an effect of immense splendour. With the possible exception of the Salle des Fêtes in the Luxembourg Palace in Paris, it was certainly the finest Throne room in Europe.