He added those incomprehensible words which he always used when he asked me to play the march from Aida in the darkened salon at midnight.
That evening I felt something dangerous was in store for me. It was so; from that moment Ferdinand of Coburg joined his brother in his enmity towards me. And his enmity was no small matter.
I am quite aware that these facts will appear incredible to most people. They seem more like an old romance by Anne Radcliffe! But everything, both in the public and private life of Ferdinand of Coburg, was incredible. I do not wish to refer to the judgment already meted out to him by history. My desire is not to gloat over his downfall, but to show in what inconceivable surroundings I lived. I was a member of a family where everything was perfect and at the same time execrable. Unfortunately I was not then in a position to love good and shun evil. It took me twenty years to escape.
Ferdinand of Coburg has commenced his punishment on earth. Knowing him as I do, I am certain that he suffers intensely, even though he may sometimes receive consolation from the Devil!
I think he believes himself a superman. That fool Nietzsche—in reviving a theory as old as the hills, when supermen called themselves cavaliers, warriors, heroes and demi-gods—has turned a considerable number of heads in German countries. He did them the more harm in that their superhumanity, infested by the morbid materialism of the century, became separated from the ideal which once animated these mighty persons, and elevated them to honour instead of luring them to crime. It is certain that despicable motives and methods can only end in a terrible material and moral defeat. Ferdinand of Coburg, who has been ambitious from his youth upwards, was a student of Nietzsche at the time when his theories achieved notoriety. So Nietzsche obtained as his disciple a being who is now one of the most notable victims of Zarathustra.
CHAPTER XI
William II and the Court of Berlin—The Emperor of Illusion
I wish to speak of William II as of one dead. He does not belong to this world; he belongs to another.
I must be excused if I am sparing of anecdotes. It would be painful to me to recall to life and movement one who has passed. My desire is to limit myself to explaining effects of which I know the cause.
It was puerile to wish under high-sounding vain words such a petty thing as the arrest and trial of a Government sunk in shame.
Society cannot recognize any Divine law in crimes against civilization, since they place man below the level of the beast.