When the Empress suggested that it was getting late, and that the crowd of Princes and Princesses who had assisted at the ceremony were very tired and hungry, she only turned with renewed zest to an adjoining gallery. “Oh, here are a quantity of beautiful things! We _must_ look at these before we go! See how interesting!” Everybody else was bored to extinction and fainting for lack of sustenance, the time for luncheon being long passed; but the old lady continually made new discoveries, and was with the greatest difficulty at last induced by the Emperor to return to the Schloss. On the Confirmation-Day of the Princess the Grand-Duchess appeared in the _Friedens-Kirche_--the Church of Peace, built in the lovely gardens of Sans Souci, where the Emperor and Empress Frederick lie buried--leaning on the arm of her nephew the Emperor William, who treats her always with the greatest devotion and respect. She had laid aside the black dress she usually wears, and appeared clothed completely in creamy white, a long white veil falling behind almost to the hem of her dress. All the old teachers and servants who had ever been connected in the slightest degree with the Princess were invited to the church. The old _Sattel-Meister_--long retired from service--who first placed her on her pony, her former tutors and governesses, as well as the _Stifts-Kinder_, grown up now and done with black uniforms and tight hair for ever--all were there. The Lutheran service is extremely simple, and the Chaplain’s address and the reading of the “Confession” occupied the chief part of the time. In an hour it was over. The Emperor was extremely pleased with the way in which his daughter acquitted herself. “She is a chip of the old block, isn’t she?” he said proudly, talking about the way in which she read her _Glaubens-Bekenntniss_. “It was like a _Kavallerie-Attacke_"--the military comparison did not appear to [Illustration: THE EMPEROR’S DAUGHTER. TAKEN ON THE DAY WHEN SHE WAS MADE COLONEL OF THE DEATH’S HEAD HUSSARS.] strike him as out of place--“so direct and forcible; couldn’t have been better.” Perhaps the Emperor’s martial comment was caused by his knowledge that in four days’ time he proposed to make his daughter Colonel of the Second Hussars, stationed at Danzig, the regiment of which his mother, the Empress Frederick, had also been colonel. On the birthday of the Empress, October 22, the news was announced. A rumour of the event had taken wind, but the strictest secrecy was enjoined, and the necessary saddlery and, still more important, the necessary feminine uniform had been all prepared, the latter without any “trying on.” It took three maids, several ladies, and at the last moment the patient ministrations and advice of the Emperor’s _Leib-Jäger_, to get the Princess satisfactorily into that uniform.