A few weeks afterwards, Ernest Augustus, the second son of the Duke, by his brother’s death become heir to the family feud, came on his father’s behalf to thank the Emperor for his sympathy and aid in their sorrow. For the first time in their lives he and the Kaiser’s daughter met, spent an hour or so in each other’s company, and then, his mission fulfilled, he departed again. But a new element had been introduced into the quarrel: so strong was the mutual attraction felt by the two young people for each other that, in spite of the short time of their meeting, in spite of the tremendous prejudices and difficulties in the way, they at last wore down the opposition and conquered the accumulated hate of years. What the most practised diplomats failed to achieve, this boy and girl accomplished, and at last, through many troubles, delays, and vexations, won their way to their hearts’ desire. On the evening of the wedding of the Princess with Prince Ernest of Cumberland, now Duke of Brunswick, at the beginning of the historic Torch Dance which concludes the ceremonies, the radiant bride, taking her father by one hand and the Duke of Cumberland by the other, walked between them round the hall to the sound of the stately bridal music. It was a happy symbol, the erstwhile enemies linked together by the Kaiser’s daughter, a visible sign of the alleviation, if not quite the ending, of a situation which had for long years galled and irritated the German people. Now, with the departure of his youngest child, the last one left at home, the private life of the Kaiser’s Court has grown in these later days somewhat still and a trifle lonely. There is as yet no little girl among the children of the Crown Prince to take even partially the place of the one who has gone away, the one who was her father’s particular companion and pride. The _Bauern Haus_ is closed, the _Prinzen Wohnung_ shut up. “It is really quite sad,” wrote recently a lady of the Court, “to see all those apartments deserted and locked up, the curtains drawn across the windows, no movement or life where formerly there was so much. Christmas was strange indeed without our Princess. We all felt it like a shadow over the festivities. We seemed to feel that we were getting old.” And the Emperor, who in his private friendships has undergone many disappointments and disillusions, becomes increasingly conscious of the soul solitude brought by advancing years. Yet, though suffering from occasional moods of depression, he faces the future with confidence in the destiny of his house. Among his later literary admirations Kipling’s poem [Illustration: THE DUKE AND DUCHESS OF BRUNSWICK] “If” holds first place. A copy hangs above his writing-table; he quotes it frequently to his sons, and translates it into terse and expressive German for the benefit of his adjutants. It embodies his own experience of Life, crystallizes his own aspirations. He too has always been anxious