The persons in attendance on the imperial family, with the conspicuous exceptions of Count Seckendorff and Countess Hedwig Brühl, were careful to fan the embers of bitterness rankling in the bosom of young William whenever any opportunity offered, and thus it happened that when Emperor Frederick, while still crown prince, was discovered to be suffering from that cancer of the larynx which ultimately carried him off, the relations between parents and son were so strained as to give rise to the very widespread belief that William was the ally of his father's enemies, and a participator in the disgraceful conspiracy which ensued for the purpose of barring him from succession to the throne on the ground of his fearful malady.
As soon as the nature of the disease from which Frederick was suffering had been ascertained, his opponents, Prince Bismarck first and foremost, dug out from the most remote recesses of the family archives of the house of Hohenzollern an obsolete and forgotten law barring from the succession to the throne of Prussia any prince of the blood who was afflicted with an incurable malady. Of course, the original object of the statute in question was to enable the elimination from the line of succession of princes afflicted with hopeless insanity, or some such disease as would prevent them from administering the government, thus rendering the institution of a regency necessary. In one word, the purpose of the measure was to prevent such a situation from arising in Prussia as prevails now in Bavaria, where, since 1886 the throne has been occupied by a lunatic prince, who was incurably insane for many years before his accession to the crown, and whose dementia takes that peculiar form, which is described in the Bible as having overtaken Nebuchadnezzar. King Otto of Bavaria imagines himself to be alternately a quadruped or a bird, and when he is not browsing on leaves and grass in the gardens of his prison palace at Fürstenried, under the impression that he is a sheep or goat, he will stand on one leg in the centre of a shallow pond, firmly convinced that he is a stork, occasionally flapping his long coat-tails in lieu of wings, and greedily attempting to devour any frogs or tadpoles that may come within his reach, unless prevented by his attendants from doing so.
There have been, alas! numerous cases of insanity in the reigning house of Prussia. Old Emperor William's elder brother and predecessor, King Frederick-William IV., spent the last few years of his life under restraint, hopelessly insane, his brother and ultimate successor administering the government as regent. The late Princess Frederick of Prussia was afflicted like her brother, the last Duke of Anhalt-Bernburg, with a peculiar kind of lunacy which took the form of an invincible objection to clothing of any kind whatsoever; while one of her two sons, Prince Alexander, who died only a few months ago, suffered from a species of good-natured imbecility, which led him to offer his heart and his hand to every woman or young girl that he encountered, no matter what her age, or looks, or rank, sometimes making as many as thirty or forty offers of marriage in the same day! The above-mentioned law was created for the purpose of preventing a prince thus situated from ascending the throne of Prussia, but the family statutes evoked by Prince Bismarck and his followers certainly never contemplated the deprival of a prince of his hereditary rights of succession to the throne because of some physical ailment or infirmity. This would have been entirely contrary to the spirit and ethics of the monarchical system of the Old World; as will be readily seen when attention is called to the fact that both the late King of Hanover, and the present reigning Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, were absolutely and totally blind at the time they succeeded to their present thrones.
Prince Bismarck took the view, however, that the statute in question was sufficient to bar "Unser Fritz" from succeeding to his father, if it were once medically admitted that his malady was incurable, or if curable, that it was liable to permanently destroy the vocal chords, thus abolishing forever the power of speech.
Prince Bismarck declared that in a matter of such extreme importance, where the succession to the throne, and the life of the heir apparent were at stake, the surgeons and physicians should be selected by the State—that is, by himself—and that their verdict should be final. Chief among the medical experts whom he nominated for the purpose, was the celebrated German surgeon, Professor von Bergmann, who is as famed for his skill in the use of the knife as for his fondness in applying it in cases where it might possibly be dispensed with. Having convinced himself that the malady from which Crown Prince Frederick suffered was a cancer, he decreed that the only manner of saving the life of the illustrious patient was the extremely dangerous and almost certainly fatal operation of removing the entire portion of the larynx that was affected. This, as stated above, would have left the crown prince dumb for the remainder of his days, and according to the views of Prince Bismarck would have barred him from succession to the throne.
It is related in court circles at Berlin, that Professor Bergmann was on the point of operating upon the crown prince unknown to the crown princess, and under the pretext of making a very radical examination, for which anaesthetics were necessary, when, he was prevented at the very last moment by her imperial highness. It is even stated that she tore the instruments from his hands, and turned him out of the room with the most bitter and cutting reproaches. Whatever may be true in this bit of court gossip, it is certain that a fierce quarrel did take place between the crown princess and the great surgeon, and that the cause of this quarrel was the decision taken by the latter to operate upon the crown prince as the only means of saving his life.
[Illustration: THE CROWN PRINCESS AND PROFESSOR VON BERGMANN After a drawing by Oreste Cortazzo]
The crown princess thereupon summoned to her assistance Sir Morel MacKenzie, the greatest throat specialist in England, who throughout his long career was consulted by all the leading singers and orators of his day. MacKenzie came to Berlin, examined the crown prince, and utterly rejected the diagnosis of Professor Bergmann, and of the German physicians. He declared that the affection of the larynx, while cancerous, would not be bettered by using the knife, at any rate at that time, and that he believed the malady to be curable by treatment. Needless to add that his opinion was reviled in Germany as that of a charlatan, and that the Teuton specialists declared that the crown prince was doomed to certain death within six months, unless the operation was performed.
Fearing that some further attempt might be made at Berlin to operate upon her husband without her knowledge, or in spite of her opposition, the crown princess took him off to England, and from thence to the Tyrol, from which place they eventually migrated to San Remo. Meanwhile, the German newspapers, that is to say, those which were believed to be receiving their inspiration from Bismarckian sources, were filled with abuse of the crown princess, who was charged openly with being willing to sacrifice the life of her husband rather than her chances of becoming German Empress.
Meanwhile the crown prince became worse and worse, and while at San Remo had several fits of agonizing suffocation, to which he almost succumbed, and from the worst of which he was virtually saved by the late Dr. Thomas Evans, of Philadelphia, who displayed the utmost devotion and intelligence of treatment in the case of the imperial sufferer.