“He wore the cuirassier uniform of the great Frederick’s period, a highly ornamented dress that suited the War Lord, who was painted and powdered to perfection, extremely well, especially as Wellington boots, a very becoming wig and his strange head-gear really and seemingly added to his figure, while his usually stern face beamed pleasantly under the powder and rouge laid on by expert hands.”

The arrival of Menzel is then narrated and the reception by the Emperor, who took the part of an adjutant of Frederick the Great’s, and in that character “bombarded the helpless master,” as the chronicler says,

“with forty stanzas of alleged verse, in which the deeds of Prussia’s kings and the masterpieces that commemorate them were extolled with a prosiness that sounded like an afterclap of William’s Reichstag and monument orations.”

A real concert followed, and supper was taken in the Marble Hall adjoining.  The authoress concludes as follows:—­

     “I was contemplating these reminiscences (the pictures of La
     Barberini) in silent reverie when the door opened and the
     Kaiser came in with little Menzel.

     “’I have a mind to engage Angeli to paint her Majesty’s
     picture in the costume of Princess Amalia,’ said the Emperor
     ‘What do you think of it?’

“‘Angeli is painter to many emperors and kings,’ replied the Professor, and I saw him smile diplomatically as he moved his spectacles to get a better view of the allegorical canvas on the left wall that exhibits the nude figure of the famous mistress in its entirety.

     “‘I am glad you agree with me on that point,’ said the
     Emperor, impatient to execute the idea that had crossed his
     mind.  ‘I will telegraph to him to-night.’

“And when, five minutes later, Menzel bent over my hand to take formal leave, I heard him murmur in his dry, absent-minded manner—­’Pesne ...  Angeli ...  Frederick the Great ...  William II!”

We have spoken of the Court atmosphere of this time.  The following extracts from the Memoirs of ex-Chancellor Prince Hohenlohe will assist the reader, perhaps even better than a connected account, to enter, in imagination at all events, into it.  The conversations cited between the Emperor and the Prince turn on all sorts of topics—­the pass question in Alsace (where Hohenlohe was then Statthalter), the possibility of war with Russia, pheasant shooting, projected monuments, the breach with Bismarck, the Triple Alliance, and a hundred more of the most different kinds.  Once talking domestic politics, the Emperor said: