Shortly after our return to the Neues Palais a small niece of the Empress, the child of her sister the Duchess of Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glucksburg, came to spend a week or two with her cousin. Her visit marked the last expiring effort of the Princess to take an interest in her dolls, of which she possessed many very beautiful specimens. But though she was an amused spectator of the unflinching realism with which Princess May--an inventive child whose doll-children suffered many and varied experiences--shaped the fragments of her dream of human life, the stormy cross-channel journeys, the illnesses and cheerful funerals of her large family, it was plain to see that she was not in any sense a real partaker in the small comedies and dramas. Live animals had always from babyhood been her great passion. On dogs and horses she lavished all the superfluous affection of her heart. Dolls had never been to her more than a transitory amusement, thrust on her by other people rather than chosen by herself. She was exceedingly hurt at receiving one the following Christmas, sent by an affectionate but injudicious aunt. It nerved her to make a clean sweep of the whole lot, and they were divided among various children’s hospitals. The Empress sighed over this further emancipation of her small daughter, but saw its inevitability. About this time the Emperor, who was staying a few days at Cadinen, his country house in East Prussia, where he carries out farming operations on a large scale, sent the Princess a present after her own heart--a tiny dimpled pigling of tender years. From my bedroom window I suddenly caught sight of this infant swine as, looking newly scrubbed and washed, with a bit of blue ribbon tied round the tender curve of his tail, he sprinted across the Hof pursued by several footmen and the two Princesses, who had decreed that exercise must be necessary for him after his cramping railway journey in a tiny crate. Viewing his innocent infantine chubbiness as he darted between the legs of the pursuing lackeys, even the sentries on duty were forced to relax their military sternness and smile at his baby antics as he rushed about, evading capture for a time.