Kissing, it may be added, forms a great feature of court etiquette in Germany and Austria.  It is, for instance, de rigueur that two sovereigns of equal rank visiting each other, should embrace at least thrice, no matter how deeply they may detest each other privately!  A petty sovereign will have to content himself with being embraced merely twice by a monarch such as Francis-Joseph or Emperor William, while a crown prince or heir apparent will receive only one hug.  Mere princes of the blood receive no kisses at all, but only a hearty hand-shake, with which they have to be satisfied, and which is, after all, perhaps the most sensible fashion of greeting.

CHAPTER XV

All royal and imperial people are more or less superstitious, and neither Emperor William nor his brother monarch at Vienna are exceptions to the rule.  Striking evidence thereof is furnished by the presence of a large horseshoe cemented into the wall just outside the fourth window of the first story of Empress Frederick’s palace at Berlin.  One day, some time before his accession to the throne, and before his father was seized with that terrible malady to which he eventually succumbed, William was invited to dine with his parents.  Finding that he was very late, and knowing the strictness of his father and mother on the score of punctuality, William directed his coachman to drive as fast as he could, and the carriage positively raced up the incline to the portal.

Suddenly one of the big Mecklenburg horses lost his shoe, which in some extraordinary manner, flew up into the air, dashed through the first-story window and fell upon the dinner table, right in front of Frederick and the then crown princess, who, declining to wait any longer, had just sat down to table.  The shoe is reported to have grazed the nose of the late emperor.  At any rate, the fact that it should have failed to seriously injure anyone is a miracle.  It was so regarded by Frederick, his wife and his children, who deemed the queer advent of the shoe, and the escape of everybody from injury, as an indication of good luck.  At the suggestion of the present kaiser, it was thereupon cemented into the wall just outside the window through which it had come, and was fastened upside down, in order to prevent the luck from dropping out.

It is not altogether astonishing that royal personages should be prone to superstition, for in almost every case they are compelled to make their homes in palaces and castles that have been stained with the blood of one or more of their ancestors.  Ordinary people experience an uncanny feeling when forced by circumstances to live in houses which have been the scene of suicide or murder, even when the victims of the tragedy, or the perpetrators thereof are in no way, even the most remotely, connected with them.  What wonder, then, that royal and imperial personages should entertain the same kind of superstition and sentiments with regard to their palaces, when it is borne in mind that the participants in the drama have been members of their own families!