Yet in the spring of 1913 William II., although he had stood by his allies in the Scutari affair, did not seem to desire an immediate war. Military and family reasons combined to stay his hand. The new bill, with its financial cover, had not yet been passed in the Reichstag, and the Emperor wished to celebrate peacefully in his capital both the twenty-fifth year of his reign and his daughter’s wedding with Duke Ernest of Cumberland. Among those invited to the wedding ceremony, besides the families of the bride and bridegroom, were the sovereigns of Russia and Great Britain, owing to their ties of kinship. It was an occasion, chosen no doubt by design, for a final attempt to isolate Republican France from the monarchies of the Triple Entente. On the gala night at the opera, William II. beamed from the Imperial box, accompanied by the Empress and the bride, and with Tsar Nicholas, King George, and Queen Mary in his immediate neighbourhood. Following these came the young heir to the Guelph dynasty, whom adroit diplomacy, as well as certain leanings on his own part, had reconciled with the Hohenzollerns, although they had dethroned his grandfather. What a triumph for the German monarch, on whom Fortune seemed to have lavished all her smiles! The unforgettable picture of this almost insolent happiness brings back to our minds a close historical parallel—the famous command performances at Erfurt. There, too, a Cæsar, but a Cæsar with the conqueror’s laurels on his brow, had a throng of royalties behind him, and talked affably with an Emperor of Russia before a resplendent audience. But after Erfurt Napoleon waited four years before quarrelling with Alexander. Only a year elapsed before William II. changed the open-hearted friendliness of his guests into implacable enmity, through their resolve to champion the cause of two little peoples, the victims of a wanton aggression. VI.