There is a sudden opening of carriage-doors and activity of footmen and “Jägers.” The Emperor, enveloped in a long grey cavalry cloak, strides across the platform with the Empress and his children, salutes the waiting officers, pauses for a word with each, and then drives away. A long row of carriages is in waiting. Everything seems admirably organized; no confusion, no waiting. My turn comes, and I am whirled away out of the station yard across a road where people are standing kept in order by a green-clad _Gendarm_, along a pleasant tree-shaded avenue, past some sentries who guard a small iron gate, over the Mopke, a big open gravelled space bordered by fine buildings on each side, and past the front of the huge Palace, which reminds one a little of Versailles and is built in French Rococo style. I descend at a broad flight of stone steps, and am ushered by a pleasant-faced footman through what looks like a window, but is really a door, into a corridor, up a wooden staircase, painted white, to the apartment which is to be my future home for the next few years. It is a lofty, pleasant room, and in spite of its bare, uninhabited look, has an air of brightness and repose. The sunshine floods it with gleams of welcome; outside are trees in which the birds are singing; a little dog in the courtyard below, a quaint little beast of the dachshund breed, looks up at me as I stand at the open French windows and gives his tail a deprecatory wag. He is obviously determined to be friendly. The New Palace has an alluring aspect. It is very palatial of course, looked at as a whole; but there is something very home-like, gracious, and friendly in this particular corner of it, in the smiling flowers which grow on each balcony, in the canary whose notes can be heard trilling from the dining-room of the Princess close at hand, in the pleasant face of a white-capped elderly housemaid, who enters with a bow and a _Guten-Tag_, and an expression of delight at my arrival. She comes and shakes hands, and says something congratulatory and welcoming. It is very German, and strikes one as intensely pleasant and human, this obvious kindness and goodwill. From this hour Frau Pusch--the housemaid--is the cushion and buffer of my existence, intervening between me and a harsh world. She teaches me German, mends and irons my clothes, packs and unpacks, fetches and carries, is always cheerful and smiling. CHAPTER III THE NEW PALACE Although making personal acquaintance with thirty of the numerous palaces and country-houses belonging to the Emperor, I only resided in nine, and of these the Neues Palais, or New Palace, near Potsdam easily held the first place in my affections. For one thing it bore the aspect of a permanent home, while other perhaps more beautiful royal residences partook of the nature of an hotel, in which one never quite settled down, but remained with boxes only partially unpacked, waiting for the notice of departure.