There was an occasion, however, at this time when the young Prince attracted general attention, if only for a few days.  It was when as colonel of the Body Guard Hussars, he ordered his officers to withdraw from a Berlin club in which hazard and high play had ruined some of the younger and less wealthy members.  The committee of the club used their influence to cause Emperor William to make the new commander cancel his order.  The Emperor sent for his grandson and requested its withdrawal.

“Majesty,” said the young commander, “permit me a question—­am I still commander of the regiment?”

“Of course—­”

“Well, then, will your Majesty allow me to maintain the order—­or else accept my resignation?”

“Oh,” said the Emperor, who was in reality pleased with the young disciplinarian, “there can be no talk of such a thing.  I could not find so good a commanding officer again in a hurry.”

When the club committee’s ambassadors came to the Emperor to learn the result of his intervention, his answer was, “Very sorry, gentlemen; I did my best, but the colonel refuses.”

The political situation as regards France was just now highly precarious.  General Boulanger, whom Gambetta once described as “one of the four best officers in France,” had become Minister of War in the de Freycinet Cabinet of 1886.  Relying on a supposed superiority of the French army, he prepared for a war of revenge against Germany and aimed, with the help of Deroulede and Rochfort, at suppressing the parliamentary regime and establishing himself as dictator.  His plans were answered in Germany by the acceptance of Bismarck’s Septennat proposals for increasing the army and fixing its budget for seven years in advance.  The war feeling in France diminished, and though it revived for a time owing to the arrest of the French frontier police commissary Schnaebele, it finally died out on that officer’s release at the particular request of the Czar to Emperor William.  Boulanger’s subsequent history only concerns France.  He was sent to a provincial command, but returned to Paris, where he was joyously received and elected to Parliament by a large majority.  He might, it is believed, a year or two later, on being elected by the department of the Seine, with Paris at his back, have made a successful coup d’etat on the night of his triumphant election, but his courage at the last moment failed, and on learning that he was about to be arrested he fled to Brussels, where he committed suicide on the grave of his mistress.

The time, however, was approaching, the most interesting, and as the succession of events have shown, the most momentous for the Empire since 1870, when Prince William’s accession was obviously at hand.  During the year 1887 and the early part of 1888 the attention of the world was fixed, first curiously, then anxiously, then sympathetically on the situation in Berlin.  Emperor William was an old man just turned ninety; he was fast breaking up and any week his death might be announced.  Hereditarily the Crown Prince Frederick, now fifty-six, should succeed, and a new reign would open which might introduce political changes of moment to other countries as well as Germany.  The new reign was indeed to open, but only to prove one of the shortest in history.