[Illustration:  THE CROWN PRINCESS AND PROFESSOR VON BERGMANN After a drawing by Oreste Cortazzo]

The crown princess thereupon summoned to her assistance Sir Morel MacKenzie, the greatest throat specialist in England, who throughout his long career was consulted by all the leading singers and orators of his day.  MacKenzie came to Berlin, examined the crown prince, and utterly rejected the diagnosis of Professor Bergmann, and of the German physicians.  He declared that the affection of the larynx, while cancerous, would not be bettered by using the knife, at any rate at that time, and that he believed the malady to be curable by treatment.  Needless to add that his opinion was reviled in Germany as that of a charlatan, and that the Teuton specialists declared that the crown prince was doomed to certain death within six months, unless the operation was performed.

Fearing that some further attempt might be made at Berlin to operate upon her husband without her knowledge, or in spite of her opposition, the crown princess took him off to England, and from thence to the Tyrol, from which place they eventually migrated to San Remo.  Meanwhile, the German newspapers, that is to say, those which were believed to be receiving their inspiration from Bismarckian sources, were filled with abuse of the crown princess, who was charged openly with being willing to sacrifice the life of her husband rather than her chances of becoming German Empress.

Meanwhile the crown prince became worse and worse, and while at San Remo had several fits of agonizing suffocation, to which he almost succumbed, and from the worst of which he was virtually saved by the late Dr. Thomas Evans, of Philadelphia, who displayed the utmost devotion and intelligence of treatment in the case of the imperial sufferer.

It was at this juncture that one of the most dramatic scenes which can be imagined took place in the antechamber of the illustrious patient.  The crown princess received letters which informed her that Prince Bismarck had submitted to the old emperor, then himself near death, a decree for signature, transferring the succession of the throne from Crown Prince Frederick to the latter’s son, Prince William, a decree which, by the by, the old emperor could not bring himself to sign.  Furthermore, she learnt through the same sources that one of the principal members of her household at San Remo, in fact, one of the chamberlains in attendance, was sending daily reports of the most venomous character to Berlin, and to Prince Bismarck particularly, about everything that went on around the unhappy crown prince.  Not a thing was said, not a thing done, not a change for the worse or the better in the condition of the hapless crown prince, that was not instantly reported to the chancellor, in a sense most detrimental and inimical to the imperial couple at San Remo.  This traitor in the camp owed his appointment to the imperial household to Prince Bismarck, but by his charming manners, his professions of loyalty and of devotion, and his denunciations of Prince Bismarck, and of the latter’s policy and ways, had completely captured the confidence of both the crown prince and crown princess.