Thus, while Count Shuvaloff was still Russian ambassador at Berlin, the emperor was in the habit of dropping in unannounced about luncheon time, and of sitting down with the count and countess, the latter being as often as not in the negligee of a mere tea-gown, and more than once when he had sat with them longer than he intended, and found that there was no time left to return to the palace before proceeding to the railroad station to take his departure for Potsdam or some other place, he would ask leave of the count to use his telephone, ring up the empress, and not only bid her adieu, but also dispatch her a kiss over the wires, in the most charmingly domestic fashion.

William prides himself in no small degree on his descent through Queen Victoria in an unbroken line from the Biblical King David, and claims that he, therefore, belongs to the same family as the founder of Christianity.  Hanging in a conspicuous position in his workroom in the “Neues-Palais” at Potsdam, is a copy of the royal family tree, showing the name of King David engrossed at the root of it, with that of Emperor William at the top.  According to this tree, the reigning house of England is descended from King David through the eldest daughter of Zedekiah, who, with her sister, fled to Ireland in charge of the prophet Jeremiah,—­then an old man,—­to be married to Heremon, the king of Ulster of the period.

Curiously enough, a Mr. Glover, a clergyman of the Church of England, who had devoted the greater portion of his life to the study of genealogy, wrote to Queen Victoria a letter in 1869, informing her that he had discovered her to be descended in an unbroken line from King David.  Her majesty sent for him to come to Windsor, and to his astonishment informed him that what he thought he had been the first to discover had been known to herself and to the prince consort for many years.

Naturally, William, with his religious ideas, has always been deeply interested in this family tree, and soon after his accession to the throne requested his grandmother to let him have a copy thereof, which was sent to him most handsomely engrossed and magnificently framed.  Its contemplation has, of course, tended to increase his belief in the divine origin of his authority, since, if he does not, like the old kings of France, describe himself as “first cousin of the Almighty,” he can at any rate claim to be a near kinsman of the founder of Christianity.

Notwithstanding all the emperor’s manifest desire to render himself agreeable to the French, and his evident eagerness to assuage by gracious and chivalrous courtesy the bitterness resulting from the war of 1870 and the annexation of Alsace-Lorraine, he has absolutely declined since he ascended the throne to permit France’s national hymn, “The Marseillaise,” to be played at his court, at any of the imperial and royal theatres, or by any German military or naval band.  When he entertains the French ambassador at dinner or receives him in state and wishes to pay him musical honors, he causes the old “March of St. Denis,” in use at Versailles prior to the great revolution, which is in every sense of the word a Bourbon hymn, to be played.