"'I would not like to libel a dead man,' answered Begas, 'but appearances are certainly against the Count. I have it from Menzel's own lips that the Court marshal refused him all and every assistance when he was painting the scenes of life in Sans Souci. The rooms of the chateau were accessible to him only to the same extent as to any other paying visitor or the hordes of foreign tourists, and he had to make his sketches piece-meal, gathering corroborative and additional material in museums and picture-galleries.'
"Quick as a flash the Kaiser turned to Count Eulenburg. 'I shall repay the debt Prussia owes to Menzel,' he spoke, not without declamatory effect. 'We will have the representation of the Sans Souci flute concert three days hence. Your programme is to be ready tomorrow morning at ten. Menzel, mind you, must know nothing of this: merely command him to attend us at the Schloss at supper and for a musical evening.' And, turning round, he said to her Majesty: 'You will impersonate Princess Amalia, and you, Kessel' (Adjutant von Kessel, then Commander of the First Life Guards), 'engage all your tallest and best-looking officers to enact the great King's military household.'
"Again the Kaiser addressed Count Eulenberg: 'Be sure to have the best artists of the Royal Orchestra perform Frederick the Great's compositions, and let Joachim be engaged for the occasion.' Saying this, he took her Majesty's arm, and bidding his guests and the Court a hasty good-night, strode out of the apartment."
A description of the Empress's costume for the concert follows.
"Her Majesty's dress consisted of a petticoat of sea-green satin, richly ornamented with silver lace of antique pattern and an overdress of dark velvet, embroidered with gold and set with precious stones. On her powdered hair, amplified by one of Herr Adeljana, the Viennese coiffeur's, most successful creations, sat a jaunty three-cornered hat having a blazing aigrette of large diamonds in front, the identical cluster of white stones which figured at the great Napoleon's coronation, and which he lost, together with his entire equipage, in the battle of Waterloo. In her ears her Majesty wore pearl ornaments representing a small bunch of cherries. Like the aigrette, they are Crown property, and that Auguste Victoria thought well enough of the jewels to rescue them from oblivion for this occasion was certainly most appropriate."
The Emperor's costume is also described.
"He wore the cuirassier uniform of the great Frederick's period, a highly ornamented dress that suited the War Lord, who was painted and powdered to perfection, extremely well, especially as Wellington boots, a very becoming wig and his strange head-gear really and seemingly added to his figure, while his usually stern face beamed pleasantly under the powder and rouge laid on by expert hands."
The arrival of Menzel is then narrated and the reception by the Emperor, who took the part of an adjutant of Frederick the Great's, and in that character "bombarded the helpless master," as the chronicler says,
"with forty stanzas of alleged verse, in which the deeds of Prussia's kings and the masterpieces that commemorate them were extolled with a prosiness that sounded like an afterclap of William's Reichstag and monument orations."
A real concert followed, and supper was taken in the Marble Hall adjoining. The authoress concludes as follows:—