delivered by the old ex-chancellor at Friedrichsrueh, and reproduced in extenso in the press, he declared among other things that:  “The Polish influence in political affairs increases always in the measure that some Polish family obtains of more or less influence at Court.  I need not allude here to the role formerly played by the princely house of Radziwill.  To-day we have exactly the same state of affairs, which is to be deplored!” Bismarck’s allusion to the Radziwills was an ungenerous reference to the romantic attachment of old Emperor William for that Princess Elize Radziwill, whom he was so determined to marry that he offered his father to abandon his rights of succession to the throne on her account.  This King Frederick-William would not permit, and William was compelled to wed Goethe’s pupil, Princess Augusta of Saxe-Weimar.  A loveless match in every sense of the word, for he remained until the day of Princess Elize’s death her most devoted friend and admirer, seeking her advice in many a difficulty, to the great annoyance of Prince Bismarck, who detested her, and after her death the old emperor continued to show the utmost favor and good-will to the members of her family in honor of her memory.  Of course this speech of Prince Bismarck created no end of a sensation throughout the empire, as well as abroad, the press being encouraged thereby to print in cold type what had until that time been merely whispered in official and court circles.  It is possible that the young emperor might have remained indifferent to popular clamor about the matter, had not two other incidents occurred about the same time to cool his liking for the fair Jenny.

In the first place, she felt herself so much encouraged by the influence which she believed that she exercised over the emperor, that when during the annual army manoeuvres Field Marshal Prince George of Saxony, and other Prussian and foreign royalties were quartered under her roof, she absolutely declined to hoist either the German flag, or the Royal Saxon standard, but insisted upon flying the national colors of Poland from the flag staff that surmounted the turret of her chateau.  Naturally, Prince George and his fellow royal guests complained of this breach of etiquette to the kaiser, and protested strongly against it.

Almost at the same time, her husband, the baron, having been invited to attend the opening of a provincial exhibition in the neighboring Empire of Austria, was so carried away by enthusiasm, due to the kindness with which the Poles present were treated by Emperor Francis-Joseph, that forgetting all he owed to Emperor William, he publicly hailed Francis-Joseph as “sole sovereign of all Polish hearts,” and as “Poland’s future king!” About this time too, the empress paid a couple of rather mysterious visits to her mother-in-law at Friedrichkron.  Court gossip ascribed these hurried trips to the fact that the empress had been prompted by her jealousy of the baroness to invoke the intervention of the strong-minded widow of Frederick the Noble.  But it is far more likely that the empress visited the Dowager Kaiserin in order that she should call the attention of her son to the harm which the association of the name of the baroness with his own was doing him in a political sense both at home and abroad.