A few rooms near the Gallery had been once occupied by Frederick the Great. One of them still contained his harpsichord, and in another, row upon row, were left the books he loved--all in French, not a single German one amongst them. Sometimes the children would storm violently through these older rooms, where all was left as much as possible undisturbed, just as they had been when used by Frederick. They wakened up for a few moments the sleepy, stifled atmosphere of the shut-up apartments, the faded green silk curtains waved and trembled as they passed boisterously onward; once I saw the yellow parchment label bearing the old King’s handwriting drop from the back of a book in the glass case, shaken from its timid, precarious hold by the rush of active young feet. They were eerie places, where one did not care to linger long alone when the shadows of night were falling. It was so easy to imagine a bent old figure, in a crushed-looking cocked hat, in rusty knee-boots, in a blue-lapelled riding-coat, peering round the corner to see who was disturbing the silences, watching the flight of that impetuous child of his house as her laugh echoed back towards the deserted rooms where the air had for a moment been startled into movement by the tones of her gay voice and the sound of her footsteps on the polished floor. CHAPTER XI WILHELMSHÖHE The most agreeably situated of all the various dwelling-places occupied in the course of the year by the Emperor William and his family is without doubt the splendid palace of Wilhelmshöhe, standing on the hillside amid beautifully wooded scenery within two miles of the town of Cassel, which can be seen from its upper windows, sheltered snugly in a long depression of hills, its red roofs lying warm across the soft blueness of the distant mountains behind. The Court stays here every year during August, when the damp heat of the New Palace, which lies so low, becomes too suffocatingly unbearable. The Emperor in Wilhelmshöhe changes his uniform every afternoon for an ordinary flannel or tweed suit, and wearing a Panama hat, tramps energetically among the woods and hills, working off a little of the adipose tissue which, in spite of his activities, has in the last year or two made some slight encroachment on his straight, lithe figure. He has a horror of growing stout, and keeps the enemy at bay with characteristic pertinacity. Once at a fancy-dress ball given by Prince Adalbert, his sailor-son at Kiel, the Emperor came to it, unknown to the guests, wearing the dress of his own ancestor the Great Elector, a full-bottomed flowing wig and the long coat and breeches appropriate to the period. During the first part of the ball the dancers were masked, and the Emperor was talking with a lady who, believing him to be the Crown Prince, whom she knew very well, said to him archly: