to settle, in the minds of all, the innocence of Baron Kotze, for after spending the customary few months in nominal imprisonment for infraction of the civil laws, which prohibit the fighting of those very duels which are prescribed by the military code, he was invited to resume his service as master of the ceremonies at court, was treated once more with the utmost distinction by the emperor, while his wife spent several weeks in the autumn of that year as the guest of Princess Charlotte of Saxe-Meiningen, at the latter’s country seat.

But who was the author of the anonymous letters?

That is a question with which I propose to deal in the following chapter, at the same time showing how this most sensational court scandal of the latter half of the nineteenth century led to the exodus from Berlin, and the desertion of its court by numerous royal personages and great nobles.

CHAPTER IV

To this day the identity of the writer of the anonymous letters remains a secret to the general public in Germany, as well as abroad, but it is pretty generally known in court circles at Berlin and at Vienna; and if steps have been taken by the authorities to prevent the true facts from getting into print, and the writer was merely expelled from Germany, instead of being brought to justice and sentenced to a long term of imprisonment, it is only because the culprit could not have been tried and convicted without the name of one of the greatest personages in Germany being dragged into the case.

Needless to add that the anonymous letter writer was a woman—­a foreign lady of title—­who for a time was one of the most admired beauties at the Court of Berlin, where, thanks to her inimitable chic, elegance and brilliancy of wit, everybody, men and women alike, were charmed.  Old Emperor William, who was always very attentive to the fair sex, up to the very last, and easily smitten by a pretty face, had introduced the lady to his court without taking much trouble to investigate her antecedents or character, and of course, with such a sponsor, everyone took it for granted that she was above reproach, socially, as well as morally.  She became very intimate with many of the court people, notably with the Hohenaus, the Kotzes, etc., and was even admitted to the intimacy of Princess Charlotte of Saxe-Meiningen, the emperor’s eldest sister.  She possibly might have, in spite of all, retained her social eminence, had she not allowed herself to be compromised, first, in the eyes of a few, and subsequently, in a more general fashion, by the only brother of the empress, Duke Ernest-Gunther of Schleswig-Holstein-Augustenburg.  The association of their names ultimately became such that the great ladies of the Berlin Court, commenced to cut adrift from the fair foreigner, whose resentment at this treatment naturally became particularly bitter against precisely those with whom she had been most intimate.