hile Emperor Francis-Joseph is justly reputed to have played sad
havoc with the hearts of the fair sex in his dominions, especially in
his younger days, having inherited that frivolity with regard to women
which is a traditional characteristic of the illustrious House of
Hapsburg, he has never at any moment during his long reign permitted
his susceptibility to feminine charms to go to the length of
influencing his political conduct, or the action of his government.

Emperor William, on the other hand, whose married life has been, from
a domestic point of view, singularly blameless, and who has been
an exceptionally faithful husband, has, in at least two instances,
permitted himself to be swayed in his role of sovereign by ladies,
who for a time figured as his "Egerias." One of them was a woman of
extraordinary cleverness, and an American by birth, who while she has
long since ceased to exercise any influence upon him, has retained the
affection and the regard of both his consort and himself. She is the
Countess Waldersee, daughter of the late David Lee, a wholesale
grocer of New York, and who at the time that she became the wife of
Field-marshal Count Waldersee, was the widow of the present German
empress's uncle, Prince Frederick of Schleswig-Holstein. The latter
abandoned his royal rank and titles, and assumed the merely nobiliary
status of a Prince of Noer, in order to make her his consort.

The countess is treated as an aunt by both William and the kaiserin,
and she may be said to have swayed her imperial nephew by her
cleverness and intellectual brilliancy, rather than by her looks, for
she is a woman already well-advanced in years.

Different in this respect was the influence of the emperor's other
Egeria, namely, the Polish baroness, Jenny Koscielska, a woman of rare
elegance and beauty, whose political importance during the time
she reigned supreme at the Court of Berlin, was attributable to her
personal fascination rather than to her sagacity or statecraft. She
is the wife of that Baron Kosciol-Koscielski, who was one of the most
celebrated leaders of the Polish party in the Russian House of Lords,
and perhaps, also, the most popular of all modern Polish poets and
playwrights.

It would be going too far to assert that William was infatuated by her
loveliness. Yet there Is no doubt that as long as she figured at the
Court of Berlin, he not only paid her the most marked attention, but
likewise allowed himself