On the wall of my sitting-room at the New Palace was a strange-looking memorial made in chocolate-painted wood, commemorating the death of her little son Prince Sigismund, who died at two years of age. There was the date of his birth and death, and a sort of bracket which held two ugly flower vases. The whole erection was in the worst possible artistic taste, a blot on the room and an eyesore. It also served to perpetuate the name of _Sterbe-Zimmer_ or Death-room, always used by the housemaids in reference to this apartment, which was otherwise as gay and sunny as any in the Palace. The Emperor is not unfailingly humorous and good-tempered, but has his human moments of irritability, and if he is angry or dissatisfied with anybody they are not long kept in doubt on the subject. Occasionally, like other people, he is unreasonable and expects impossibilities, but on the other hand, when his anger has passed, he is always willing to modify a hasty decision. Once he went from New Palace to Berlin for one night, and the stable authorities did not think it necessary to take over the saddle-horses for that short period, so that when the next morning the Emperor gave orders for his horses to be ready in an hour’s time the adjutants felt uncomfortably anxious. They gave the order, and prayed Providence to interpose with a thunderstorm, but the weather remained unusually calm and beautiful. By great good luck, a horse-box was standing at the Wildpark station, close to the New Palace, and the horses and grooms were crammed into it and taken by special train to Berlin, the journey occupying half an hour. The Emperor had to complain that morning of the unusual slowness of his Jägers in helping him to dress, of their inability to find his favourite riding-whip, of the deliberation with which they brought him what he needed. “Are you all asleep this morning?” he demanded, unconscious of the deep-laid motive pervading this sluggishness. One of the adjutants, of a resourceful turn of mind, bethought him of some plans for new barracks which His Majesty had not yet examined, and he managed to interpose these plans at the moment when the Emperor was about to descend the staircase to the courtyard, in which as yet no welcome clatter of hoofs was to be heard. But at last the horses arrived, not conspicuously unpunctual. They had trotted rather more quickly than usual from the station along the Linden, but the Master of the Horse had saved his reputation for being “always on the spot when wanted.”