The King was, in spite of the fact that he has no pretensions to beauty, an extremely attractive personality, and he and the Princess were the best of friends, having a similarity of tastes in jokes and a mutual passion for horses. When the King shot his first stag in the Wildpark he gallantly presented her with his _Spruch_ or trophy of leaves, which remained as an ornament of her sitting-room until the announcement of his engagement to Princess Ena of Battenberg, when the _Spruch_, which had been disintegrating leaf by leaf, finally disappeared. Of all possible marriages, that which the Kaiser’s daughter eventually made was the last that any one would have dared to prophesy, so utterly improbable did it appear. The Duke of Cumberland, father of the bridegroom, had from childhood been the implacable enemy of the Prussian Royal House and Government. All attempts of the Emperor to bring about a reconciliation had failed. With almost monotonous regularity the newspapers would announce from time to time the approaching meeting of the Emperor with the Duke, and with equal certainty a paragraph would appear next day announcing the latter’s departure from the scene of the projected _rendezvous_ “a few hours before His Majesty’s arrival.” The name of “The Vanishing Duke” became peculiarly appropriate, and the feud appeared to have settled down into that hopeless state where every effort at reconciliation has been exhausted, and nothing remains to be done. Many brilliant statesmen and crowned heads had to retire baffled after frequent praiseworthy but ineffective efforts, until at last those two great factors in the affairs of the world, Death and Love, intervened. The Duke’s eldest son, travelling in his motor-car through Germany on his way to the funeral of his uncle the King of Denmark, met his death by an accident in a lonely part of the road, lay for a time unrecognized, and then, his identity becoming known, the Emperor sent off his son, Prince Eitel Fritz, with instructions to render all possible help in the distressing circumstances. The body of the young prince for two nights remained in the little village church near the place where the accident happened, guarded by Prussian soldiers and the two sons of the Kaiser--for the Crown Prince, whose wife’s brother is married to a daughter of the Duke, was also sent by the Emperor to do what he could to soften the sad tragedy. They watched all night by the coffin and escorted it on its way to burial.