love my Emperor," said "our little Fräulein," laying her hand on her heart, one day when we were talking of him.
It was on our first day in Germany that we, returning from church a little after noon, were kindly greeted by an American lady who saw that we were strangers. "The Emperor lives on this street," she said; "and if we hasten, we may see him when he comes to the window to review his Guards." Soon we were before the palace on Unter den Linden, a substantial-looking building facing the north, with an eastern exposure. The Imperial standard was floating over the palace, denoting the presence of his Majesty. The room on the ground floor, northeast corner, of the palace is the one used by Emperor William I. as his study; and one back of this was his bedroom, containing the simple iron cot which was the companion of his soldier days, and which remained the couch of his choice to the end of life. At "the historic window" we often saw him. Every day at noon, and sometimes long before, the crowd began to gather in the street opposite this window, for a sight of his Majesty when he came for a moment to review his Guards at a quarter to one. It was touching to see the devotion of the people, standing patiently in all weathers; mothers and fathers holding up their children that they might catch a sight of the idolized Kaiser. Rarely did he disappoint them. As the military music of the guard drew near, and the tramp of the soldiers fell on the pavement before the palace, the aged man would appear at the window in full uniform of dark blue with scarlet trimmings and silver epaulettes, returning the salutations of the guard, and bowing and waving his white-gloved hand to the people, then retiring within the shadow of the lace curtains. Sometimes the cheering broke forth anew as he was lost to sight, and the welkin was made to ring with the Kaiser-song, or some hymn of Fatherland, until he indulgently appeared again, bowing his bald head, his kindly face lighted up with a smile. In full-front view he did not look like a man in his ninetieth year. Many a man of sixty-five or seventy looks older. When he turned, the side view revealed that his form was not erect; but only when he walked with a slow movement could one realize that this soldier of perfect drill—this courtly gentleman—was one who had seen almost a century of life. His earliest memories were of privation and hardship. In his young boyhood the First Napoleon held Berlin in his grasp, and the family of the King, Frederick William III., fled to Königsberg. The beautiful and noble Queen Louise and her two little boys, afterwards Frederick William IV. and William I., wandered at one time in the forests, and made their food of wild berries. They amused themselves by making wreaths of cornblumen,—blue flowers answering closely to our "bachelors' buttons,"—which grow wild everywhere in Germany. Thenceforward the cornblumen were dear to the young princes, and they were "the Emperor's flowers" to the end of his Imperial life. So devoted was he to the memory of his mother, that when in his later years he saw a young girl whose striking beauty of face and form reminded him of Queen Louise, he persuaded her to allow her portrait to be taken, that it might remind him of the mother whom he remembered in her youth. This beautiful portrait is bought, by many Germans even, as that of Queen Louise, and may be known by a star over the forehead. The finest actual portrait of this Queen which we saw was, at the time of our visit, in the Old Schloss at Berlin, and showed a mature and lovely woman, every inch a queen. The exquisite reposing statue, by Rauch, in the Mausoleum at Charlottenburg, over her grave, is well known by copies.
The life led by the aged Emperor was simple and methodical to the last. Rising at half-past seven, he breakfasted, looked over his letters and papers, and was ready by nine or half-past nine to begin his reception of officials or other callers, which lasted till after midday. After lunch, he usually drove for an hour or so in the afternoon, often accompanied by a single aid, bowing right and left to the populace, who thronged for a look and a smile. His plain military cloak enveloped him in cold or rainy weather, and his was often one of the plainest equipages on the brilliant street. "I do not think," said General Grant, after having visited the Emperor, "that I ever saw a more perfect type of a soldier and a man. His Majesty went off into military affairs. I was anxious to change the subject, as I had no interest in the technical matters of war. But the Emperor held me to the one theme, and we spoke of nothing else. I fancied Bismarck sympathized with me, and would have gladly gone off on other subjects, but it was of no use. The manner of Bismarck toward the Emperor was beautiful,—absolute devotion and respect. This was my one long talk with the Emperor. I should call him the embodiment of courage, candor, dignity, and simplicity; a strikingly handsome man."
Sometimes the Kaiser would hold up to the palace window his eldest great-grandson, now Crown Prince, then a beautiful child of four or five years; and the little fellow would go through his military salute of the passing guard with great gravity and propriety, while the huzzas of the crowd burst forth with renewed zeal. This child was the favorite of the aged Emperor, and sometimes took liberties with his great-grandsire which would hardly have been tolerated from any one else. If it was touching to see the devotion of the people to their Emperor, it was no less so to see how he trusted himself with them. He could remember when, with the revolutionary spirit of 1848, the mob in the streets of Berlin had so insulted him, a prince, that he had fled for a time from his country. But that he had forgiven and they had forgotten long ago. The times had "changed all that." Now he lived daily in sight of the people, with only a pane of glass for a shield. He loved his people, and they worshipped him with no temporary oblations. One of the last occasions in which we saw him in public was that of the spring manœuvres in the last May-time of his long life.
Some distance south of the Halle gate, the large and finely situated "Tempelhofer Feld" extends to the suburban village of Tempelhof, which was once the property of the Knights of Malta, and which still bears their cross and inscription on its church bells. The intervening ground has been devoted to the annual parades of the Berlin garrison for more than a hundred years. It has ample room for evolutions of infantry, artillery, and cavalry, but a comparatively small space is devoted to the accommodation of spectators. Only about three hundred carriages can be admitted, and these are distributed among royal personages, officials, and a limited number of distinguished or fortunate visitors. Our application for a carriage place was duly filed with the chief of the Berlin police a month or six weeks in advance of the parade, but, after long waiting, word came that there was no room. By the courtesy and special thoughtfulness of Secretary Crosby, of the United States Legation, a carriage ticket was placed at our disposal, after all hope of obtaining the coveted privilege had been abandoned.
The German Emperor can place, if need be, nearly three million trained soldiers in the field. All able-bodied Germans are liable to service, with few exceptions, from the age of twenty to that of thirty-two, and can in exceptional circumstances be called out up to the age of forty-two. But the German youth spends only the first three years, of his twelve of liability, with the colors, the remaining nine being spent in different branches of the reserve forces. The effective force in time of peace is about half a million, which is distributed through the Empire in seventeen army corps, of which the Third has its headquarters at Berlin. The ordinary strength of an army corps is about thirty thousand, including infantry, cavalry, and artillery; but the garrison of Berlin and various extra and unattached troops bring the number up to fifty thousand or more, stationed mostly in Berlin and Potsdam. These have their spring manœuvres at Berlin; and the special parade, for which every day for two months beforehand seemed parade-day in the streets of Berlin, was that for which we were so fortunate as to receive tickets. Nearly every day for a week previous, his Majesty was to be seen, in his low two-horse carriage, passing through the Unter den Linden and south through Friedrich Strasse, to the parade-ground. On this grand and final parade-day the three hundred carriages of the privileged spectators were in good time on the ground assigned them, prepared to welcome the Emperor and the Imperial party as loyally as the soldiers themselves. A deafening hurrah burst from the throats of all, as his Majesty appeared in a carriage and drove to his post of observation. Many of his princely retinue, both ladies and gentlemen, were on horseback; and it was formerly his custom to review the troops, mounted on his black war-horse. In spite of a piercing wind which swept over the wide Brandenburg plains, we hugged our warm wraps, and stood in our carriages, like all the rest, in eager watchfulness and admiration, as the evolutions of the most perfectly drilled troops in the world went forward. The infantry marched and countermarched; plumes of all colors waved in the sunlight and kept time to the music; uniforms and men seemed but part of one grand incomprehensible automatic movement; battle-flags scarred with the history of all the wars fluttered their tattered shreds in the wind, waking memories of irrepressible pathos and joy; the artillery rumbled and thundered; the evolutions of the cavalry were like systematic whirlwinds; and the scarlet Zouaves, the blue Dragoons, the white-uniformed and gilt-helmeted Cuirassiers, and the dark Uhlands with lances ten feet long poised in air above their prancing horses, commingled the "pomp and circumstance of war" without its pain. Now the infantry come on at double quick, in the step with which they entered Paris; now the artillery is lumbered across a vast stretch of the field with a rapidity and precision which almost take away one's breath; and anon the cavalry seem to burst in orderly confusion upon the scene, flying in competition, across, around, athwart, until the cheers and huzzas burst forth anew with, "Hail to the Kaiser!" "Long live the Fatherland!" It was with joy that the soldiers received the commendations of their Imperial chieftain on that field-day, and it was to us a fitting place and moment of farewell to the great military Emperor.
"King, the Saxon Konnig," says Carlyle,—"the man who CAN." And Emperor William I. was the man who could.
"Fritz, dear Fritz," were the last words of the aged Emperor. "Unser Fritz" was the well-beloved elder brother of the German people. If any doubt as to the real feeling among the South-Germans toward the Imperial house had existed in our minds, it was removed as we journeyed through Saxony, Bavaria, Würtemberg, Darmstadt, Thuringia. Everywhere, in humble homes, in shops, hotels, and market-places, were the likenesses of the handsome Kaiser and the open, sincere, manly countenance of the Crown Prince to be seen. In Berlin the Crown Prince occupied the palace directly east of that of the Kaiser, separated from it only by the Operahaus Platz. We had heard him called "the handsomest man in Europe." Our study of his kindly face from photographs had revealed manliness enough, but nothing more to justify this epithet. But as one came to be familiar with his look, his figure, his bearing, there was full assent to his being called, in appearance, "the finest gentleman in Europe." The titles and tokens of honor that had been showered upon him, and which he wore so gracefully, were his least claims to distinction. He was as great in true nobility of soul as he was exalted in station, as symmetrical in character as he was regal in bearing. When he mated with the Princess Royal of England, he was not even Crown Prince of Prussia, and some of the English papers asserted that the eldest daughter of Queen Victoria had married beneath her. But this opinion was easily dissipated, as the years brought, with increasing honors, development of manly virtues and graces. A hero in the wars in which his country had engaged before he reached middle life, and with all the courage of his Hohenzollern blood, he yet delighted in peace, and was a most humane and liberal statesman. That thirst for liberty which is quenchless in the human breast, and which has had as yet small satisfaction in Teutonic lands, seemed to find sympathy in this enlightened Prince. At the age of thirty he became the heir apparent to the Prussian Crown, when the new king, his father, had reached the age of sixty-four. When he was forty, and his father was proclaimed Emperor of Germany at the age of seventy-four, Frederick became heir to the Imperial throne. A most careful and liberal education, grafted on a genial and wise character, had fitted him to watch the course of events in which, according to the course of nature, he might be expected so soon to take chief part. But the years which made his sire venerable passed, and still he had no opportunity to shape public affairs. Absolutism feared his influence and that of his liberal and strong-minded English wife. The prime of life was his; but his best years were behind and not before him as at the age of fifty-five he filially and devotedly filled his own place, the loved and loving son of his Imperial father, whose trusted representative he was on all courtly occasions, the model husband and father, the accomplished and interested patron of art and letters, the polished gentleman, the benevolent and devout Christian. During his last winter of health (1886-1887) he was often to be seen among the people. Accompanied by the Crown Princess and their three unmarried daughters, he walked out and in, along the Unter den Linden, an interested participator, like any other father of a family, in the Christmas shopping. On one of the culminating days of the great Reichstag debate, it was Prince William who was seen in the Imperial box in the Parliament House, while "Unser Fritz" with wife and daughters were skaters among the crowds on the ice-ponds of the Thiergarten. This by no means indicated indifference to great questions of public concern. None knew better the issue, the times, and the need. But, standing all his mature life with his foot on the threshold of a throne, with talents and training fitting him to do honor to his royal line, to his Fatherland, and to the brotherhood of kings in all lands and ages, he yet knew that while the father reigned, it was not for the son to reign. He was to bide his time. Alas! an inscrutable Providence made that time to be crowned only with the halo of a dawning immortality, a time in which strength and peace were to be radiated from one anointed by the chrism of pain, and whose diadem was to shine, not among the treasures of earth, but as the stars for ever and ever. When the messenger of the fallen Napoleon III. had brought his unexpected surrender after Sedan, and the flush of startling victory had mantled even the cheek of the pale and reticent Von Moltke, had shaken the leonine composure of Bismarck, and affected the heroic William I. almost to tears, the courtly Frederick forgot himself and the victory of the cause he had helped to win, in sympathy for the vanquished foe. The embarrassed general who brought the surrender of the French had Frederick's instant devotion, and those first moments of deep humiliation were soothed by the conversation of the Crown Prince and by kind attentions which all others forgot to render. With a truth and devotion to his country which could never be doubted or questioned, he yet had a heart "so much at leisure from itself" that in the supremest moments of life he sympathized with friend and foe, as only regal souls can do.
I saw this foremost prince of Europe in the nineteenth century always and increasingly to admire him, whether in the largest or the smallest relations of life; whether as royal host entertaining the sovereigns of Europe and their representatives when that magnificent assemblage came to greet the ninetieth birthday of his father; dashing on horseback through the streets of the capital and the riding-paths of the park; saluting with stately grace his Imperial sire, as he alone entered the place where the Emperor sat; handing the Crown Princess to her seat, or going down on his knees to find her Imperial Highness's misplaced footstool in her pew at church; accompanying his daughters to places of public amusement and looking upon them with manly tenderness; or standing with military helmet before his face in silent prayer, as he entered the house of God to worship before the King of kings.