"Why! I thought you had gone North!" I exclaimed.
"No, Heltzendorff. Cæsar went alone," he replied, somewhat confounded at our unexpected meeting. "He wanted to be alone, I think."
"Where has he gone?" I inquired. "He left me no address."
"No. And I have none either," the Count replied.
This set me thinking. The situation was even worse with the Crown-Prince wandering in Scotland alone. His indiscretions were such that his identity might very easily leak out, and the truth concerning his absence would quickly reach the Emperor's ears.
As I stood chatting with His Highness's gay companion I confess that I felt annoyed at the manner in which I had been tricked. He was often afraid of my caustic tongue when I spoke of his indiscretions, and it was further quite plain to me that Von Hochberg had simply pretended that he was accompanying his friend North.
That evening Knof arrived from Potsdam with a satchelful of correspondence, and until a late hour I was kept busy inventing replies which would eventually be taken to Holzemme, in the Harz Mountains, and posted from there. We always made arrangements for such things when His Highness was secretly out of Germany.
I snatched a meal at Jules', close by, and resumed my work till long after midnight, inventing some picturesque fictions in reply to many official documents.
One letter was from Her Imperial Highness. At her husband's order I opened it, read it, and sealed it up again. It contained reproaches, but nothing of extreme urgency. There had been occasions when I had read "Cilli's" letters in the absence of her erratic husband, and sent to her little untruths by wire, signed "Wilhelm, Kronprinz."
Truly my position was one of curious intimacy. Sometimes His Highness trusted me with his innermost secrets, while at others he regarded me with distinct suspicion. That the elegant Von Hochberg knew of "Willie's" whereabouts I felt convinced, but apparently His Highness had given him orders not to divulge it to me.