lines. He assumes that
the public taste can be elevated from without, from above, when it can
only be elevated proportionately with its progress in general
education and its purification from within. Consequently he is for the
"classical," as in the other arts. But apart from its aims and uses,
the theatre has always appealed to him. His fondness for it is a
Hohenzollern characteristic, which has shown itself, with more or less
emphasis, in monarch after monarch of the line. Nor is it surprising
that monarchs should take pleasure in the stage, since the theatre is
one of the places which brings them and their subjects together in the
enjoyment of common emotions, and shows them, if only at second hand,
the domestic lives of millions, from personal acquaintance with which
their royal birth and surroundings exclude them.

The Emperor treats all artists, male and female, in the same friendly
and unaffected manner. There is never the least soupcon of
condescension in the one case or flirtation in the other, but in both
a lively and often unexpectedly well-informed interest in the play or
other artistic performance of the occasion, and in the actors' or
actresses' personal records. The nationality of the artist has
apparently nothing to do with this interest. The Emperor invites
French, Italian, English, American or Scandinavian artists to the
royal box after a performance as often as he invites the artists of
his own country, and, once launched on a conversation, nothing gives
him more pleasure than to expound his views on music, painting, or the
drama, as the case may be. "Tempo--rhythm--colour," he has been heard
to insist on to a conductor whom in the heat of his conviction he had
gradually edged into a corner and before whom he stood with
gesticulating arms--"All the rest is _Schwindel_." At an entertainment
given by Ambassador Jules Cambon at the French Embassy after the
Morocco difficulty had been finally adjusted, he became so interested
while talking to a group of French actors that high dignatories of the
Empire, including Princes, the Imperial Chancellor and Ministers,
standing in another part of the _salon_, grew impatient and had to
detach one of their number to call the Emperor's attention to their
presence. Since then, it is whispered, it has become the special
function of an adjutant, when the occasion demands it, diplomatically
and gently to withdraw the imperial _causeur_ from too absorbing
conversation.