old Emperor William, to paint a picture of his coronation as King of Prussia, he reproduced with too much exactitude, and too little flattery, the features of the emperor’s exceedingly vain and by no means youthful consort, Empress Augusta.  Her majesty insisted that he should alter his portrait of her, and render it more attractive, but this Menzel absolutely refused to do, and the consequence was that the empress on numerous occasions made him feel the weight of her displeasure.

The old painter bided his time, and eventually got even with her in a very characteristic fashion.  Being entrusted with the task of reproducing on canvas the scene of the emperor’s departure for the seat of war in 1870, he portrayed the Empress Augusta with her face entirely concealed in her handkerchief, as if weeping, although she prided herself on not having shed a single tear on that occasion.

Another time during the life of old Field Marshal Wrangel, a lady of the court, more famous for her vanity than her beauty, complained to him that Menzel had done her scant justice in a large picture representing some important event of contemporary court history.  Wrangel, who was famous as a brow-beating bully of the good old Prussian type,—­people trembling at the mere sight of him,—­promised to see Menzel, and to make him change the portrait of the lady to a more flattering likeness.  Greatly to his surprise, however, when he broached the subject to Menzel, he discovered that the latter greatly resented such meddlesomeness.  Indeed, Menzel even had the temerity to suggest that field marshals would do far better to attend to subjects that they knew something about than to the art of painting, of which they knew nothing.  Wrangel flared up, so did Menzel, and soon the air was blue with finely characterized and bona-fide Prussian oaths, punctuated with the angry sarcasms of the enraged painter.  The upshot of the interview was that Wrangel, who had never before turned his back on an enemy, was compelled to beat an ignominious retreat without having accomplished his object; but before disappearing through the door of the studio, he turned and positively yelled at the painter: 

“You are a disgusting little toad, and your picture is vile.”

While most of the members of the House of Hapsburg paint and sketch with a good deal of cleverness and skill, there is only one, namely, the now widowed Archduchess Maria-Theresa, who can be regarded as an artist in every sense of the word.  She excels alike with the chisel and the brush, while during the lifetime of her husband, her salon became, in spite of the strictness of Austrian court etiquette, the one place where eminent artists were certain to find a cordial welcome, irrespective of birth or social status.