The Emperor appreciated the Princess’s buttered toast so much that the Empress directed that some should be sent up every morning. Now buttered toast is quite unknown in the Fatherland excepting perhaps in large and fashionable hotels where international customs prevail. Rather leathery dry toast is served at tea; but when the royal command for buttered toast reached the kitchen through the medium of the footman it created nothing short of consternation. A flurried lackey came hastening up to me begging for some slight hints as to how it should be made. I foresaw that any instructions I might give when they reached the cook distilled through the footman’s mind would be vague and unsatisfactory. Nevertheless I did my best; but the Empress told me afterwards that the toast was quite uneatable--a result which rather gratified the Princess, who liked to believe that she was the only person capable of making toast for “Papa.” The lessons with the tutor lasted from half-past eight until twelve o’clock, when a short walk with the Empress was taken, weather permitting. After luncheon, if the stag or stags slain by the Emperor had arrived, we all assembled under the dining-room window for the ceremony of “the Strecke.” The stags were laid on the small lawn beneath the windows, and three of the Jägers of His Majesty blew on hunting-horns the old hunting-call of the “Ha-la-li,” denoting to all who hear the success of the sportsman. Somewhere between three and four the Emperor in his hunting cart would start off again to shoot, the Empress and suite waiting for his departure and shouting “_Waidmann’s Heil_” as he drove away. Then Her Majesty, with the Princess and the rest of us, would also climb into other yellow-varnished hunting-carts and drive in another direction, to try and get a glimpse of the stags browsing. Our conversation had to be rather suppressed, for fear of alarming the deer in their “sylvan solitudes,” and we usually descended from the carts to walk to one of the numerous “pulpits” as they were called--small raised platforms screened by a frame of pine twigs, from which the Emperor sometimes shot--although, as a rule, they were used for purposes of observation only, and the shooting was done from behind another screen down below.