ional question. While
stationed as a young sub-lieutenant of cavalry at Bonn, he was one day
inadvertently jostled in the street by a gray-haired and rather portly
stranger, whom he at once addressed in the most insulting manner. Upon
the stranger responding in kind, the count drew his sabre and cut the
man down, inflicting upon him such a wound that he expired a short
time afterwards at the hospital. There it was discovered that he
was one Ott, a Frenchman, and one of the chefs of Queen Victoria,
momentarily detached from his duties at Windsor Castle, in order
to attend her majesty's second son, the Duke of Edinburgh,--now the
reigning sovereign of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha,--during his stay on the
continent. Both the queen and Prince Alfred were indignant at the
outrage, which was made the subject of an acrimonious correspondence
between the English, French and Prussian Governments, the result being
that Count Philip was sentenced to pay heavy damages to the widow
and to the orphaned children of his victim, and to undergo a year's
imprisonment in a fortress.

He only joined the diplomatic profession in 1881, when he was
appointed as third secretary to the German embassy at Paris, and he
occupied very inferior roles in the diplomatic service of his country
until the accession to the throne of his friend and patron, Emperor
William, who promoted him a few weeks later, at one bound, from the
post of second secretary of the legation at Munich to the rank
of Prussian minister-plenipotentiary at Aldenberg, whence he was
transferred a year later to Stuttgart, then, to The Hague, and then
back to Munich, as chief of the legation, which post he retained until
his nomination in 1892 to the German ambassadorship at Vienna, that is
to say, to the blue ribbon of the diplomatic service of the kaiser.

He is generally regarded as destined in course of time to become
chancellor of the empire, in spite of the human blood with which his
hands are stained.

Both the court and the public object far less to the intimacy that
exists between Count Augustus Eulenburg and his imperial friend, for
Augustus, who is the grand master of the imperial household and the
chief executive dignitary of the court, has been the closest associate
of William since the latter's earliest boyhood. He was one of those
officials whom Prince Bismarck forced upon the then crown prince
and crown princess, in order to keep watch over their actions and
to counteract thei