rter staff to
the command of the army stationed in Altona. Moreover, she did not
hesitate to denounce the influence of the Waldersees as disastrous,
as illiberal, and in every sense of the word reactionary, and if her
husband, Emperor Frederick, was led to share her views concerning
them, it was because of his disapproval of the movement against the
Jews in which the countess had figured so conspicuously. It is a
peculiar fact that although Emperor William has always remained on
the most affectionate terms with the Waldersees, and never loses any
opportunity of manifesting the warmth of his affection for them,
he has never repealed the decree of banishment to which they were
virtually subjected during his father's reign. He has transferred the
field marshal from one post to another, but he has never appointed
him to one which would admit of his coming back to live in Berlin. I
cannot help thinking that the emperor resented the imputation that he
was subject to the sway of his wife's aunt, and was offended by the
articles which appeared at one moment both in the German and foreign
press intimating that she was the power behind the throne. He is
sufficiently jealous of his dignity to object to be considered as
subject to the influence of anyone, be it man or woman, and one of
the chief causes of the dismissal of old Prince Bismarck was precisely
because so long as he remained in office there was a disposition to
regard the kaiser as a mere puppet in the hands of the old statesman.

It is this aversion to being considered as swayed by any other
influence than his own that has led the emperor on so many occasions
to adopt a course diametrically opposed to that urged upon him by his
clever and masterful mother, a woman with the most powerful intellect
and the least tact to be found in all Old World royalties. It was
this, too, that led the emperor to banish, just a trifle unjustly,
the pretty and dashing Countess Hohenau from his court. She had been
guilty of no indiscretion with regard to him. She had done nothing
wrong, and she was not only a brilliant ornament of the imperial
_entourage_, but likewise a relative of the family. But he banished
both her husband and herself almost at a moment's notice, owing to
the fact that in the anonymous letters circulated at the time of the
so-called Kotze scandal, he was mentioned as altogether infatuated and
subjugated by her beauty.

Count Hohenau is the half-brother of that Prince