The interview ended without incident; the Emperor preserved, as usual, a friendly demeanour, though my remarks must have affected him unpleasantly.  Some hours later we passed through a town where not only the station but all buildings were black with people, standing even on the roofs, waving handkerchiefs and loudly welcoming the Imperial train as it passed through.  The same scenes were repeated again and again at other stations that we passed.  The Emperor turned to me with a smile and a look that showed me he was firmly convinced everything I had told him as to his dwindling popularity was false, the living picture before our eyes proving the contrary.

When I was at Brest-Litovsk disturbances began in Vienna owing to the lack of food.  In view of the whole situation, we did not know what dimensions they would assume, and it was considered that they were of a threatening nature.  When discussing the situation with the Emperor, he remarked with a smile:  “The only person who has nothing to fear is myself.  If it happens again I will go out among the people and you will see the welcome they will give me.”  Some few months later this same Emperor disappeared silently and utterly out of the picture, and among all the thousands who had acclaimed him, and whose enthusiasm he had thought genuine, not one would have lifted a little finger on his behalf.  I have witnessed scenes of enthusiasm which would have deceived the boldest and most sceptical judge of the populace.  I saw the Emperor and the Empress surrounded by weeping women and men wellnigh smothered in a rain of flowers; I saw the people on their knees with uplifted hands, as though worshipping a Divinity; and I cannot wonder that the objects of such enthusiastic homage should have taken dross for pure gold in the firm belief that they personally were beloved of the people, even as children love their own parents.  It is easy to understand that after such scenes the Emperor and Empress looked upon all the criticism of themselves and the discontent among the people as idle talk, and held firmly to the belief that grave disturbances might occur elsewhere but not in their own country.  Any simple citizen who has held for a time a higher position experiences something of the kind, though in a lesser degree.  I could mention names of many men who could not bow low enough as long as I was in power, but after my resignation would cross the street to avoid a bow, fearing that Imperial disfavour might react on them.  But years before his rise the simple citizen has an opportunity of learning to know the world, and, if he be a man of normal temperament, will feel the same contempt for the servility shown during his time in office as for the behaviour he meets with afterwards.  Monarchs are without training in the school of life, and therefore usually make a false estimate of the psychology of humanity.  But in this tragi-comedy it is they who are led astray.