After presenting my embassy secretaries and attaches, military and naval, I was conducted with them into the presence of the Empress, who won all our hearts by her kindly, unaffected greeting. On my recalling her entrance into Berlin as a bride, in her great glass coach, seventeen years before, on one of the coldest days I ever knew, she gave amusing details of her stately progress down the Linden on that occasion; and in response to my congratulations upon her six fine boys and her really charming little daughter, it was pleasant to see how "One touch of nature makes the whole world kin," her eyes lighting up with pride and joy, and her conversation gladly turning to the children. It may be added here that the present Empress seems to have broken the unfortunate spell which for about half a century hung over the queens and empresses of the house of Hohenzollern. I remember well that, among the Germans whom I knew in my Berlin-University days, all the sins of the period, political and religious, seemed to be traced to the influence of Queen Elizabeth, the consort of the reigning King Frederick William IV; and that, during my first official stay in the same capital as minister, a similar feeling was shown toward the Empress Augusta, in spite of her most kindly qualities and her devotion to every sort of charitable work; and that the crown princess, afterward the Empress Frederick, in spite of all her endowments of head and heart, was apparently more unpopular than either of her two predecessors. But the present Empress seems to have changed all this, and, doubtless, mainly by her devotion to her husband and her children, which apparently excludes from her mind all care for the great problems of the universe outside her family. So strong is this feeling of kindness toward her that it was comical to see, at one period during my stay, when she had been brought perilously near a most unpopular course of action, that everybody turned at once upon her agent in the matter, saying nothing about her, but belaboring him unmercifully, though he was one of the most attractive of men. These presentations being finished, our return to the Kaiserhof Hotel was made with the same ceremony as that with which we had come to the palace, and happy was I when all was over.