The _Muschel-Saal_ occupies the centre of the Palace. On its walls are every variety of shell, arranged in fantastic patterns--roses, stars, and spirals of every kind--while the middle pillars are decorated with specimens of various beautiful stone or marble in a kind of irregular rockwork. Here are to be found large lumps of amber from the shores of the Baltic Sea (one with a fly distinctly visible far below the surface), pieces of blue lapis lazuli, green malachite, red jasper and ringed onyx, alabaster, porphyry, quartz of every shape and colour, irregular pieces all highly polished and set in cement on the massive square pillars that uphold the roof. They sparkle in a thousand colours under the wax lights of the candelabra and the twinkling tapers of the trees. These last are decorated almost entirely by the young princes and their sister. Besides the candles they are hung with _Konfekt_, most delicious chocolate rings covered with “hundreds and thousands.” Sometimes the decorators take slight nibbles at broken pieces, and are sternly checked for it by the others. Then plenty of silver “lametta” and “angels’-hair,” filmy silvery threads giving an impression of hoar-frost, are added, and a _Christbaum-Engel_ with wide-open wings or a large silver star is put at the apex of each tree, which is then firmly fixed in a large green-painted stand, specially made for its reception. The real business of _Bescherung_ begins already upon the day before Christmas Eve, or even sooner. The Empress rushes from one _Kinder-heim_ to another, to hospitals and schools, putting in a few minutes here and there, always with the same ready smile for every one, the same fresh look of interest in the oft-repeated ceremony, the oft-sung carol. She never tires of giving pleasure to others, and has little time to rest. It is a very busy day, too, for the Princess, for all the morning she is busy decorating a small tree for two needy [Illustration: THE KAISER AND HIS TWO ELDEST GRANDSON’S, PRINCES WILHELM AND LOUIS FERDINAND OF PRUSSIA] children--little girls who are chosen by the _Hof-Prediger_ with the help of a deaconess who visits the poorer quarters of the town. These two children with their mother or an elder sister are invited to come to the Palace in the afternoon, where they are given coffee and cake in the little kitchen of the _Prinzen-Wohnung_. Their ages are usually between seven and nine, and they are often painfully shy, though there are brilliant exceptions whose naturalness breaks through the artificial barrier of onerous and excessive _Manieren_ imposed on them by anxious relations imperfectly instructed in such things.