Round the Saal, tables are arranged as at a bazaar, and each lady has one to herself loaded with presents. The Emperor sometimes walks round and shows his own gift, usually a very beautiful fur, where it lies on each person’s table; but one of the great charms of His Majesty is that he has no stereotyped line of conduct--if he doesn’t feel like walking round and making himself agreeable he doesn’t do it. He is no slave to precedent. So then we find his present on our tables by ourselves, and go up and curtsey and thank him as opportunity offers. The Empress has always given one principal present, the nature of which each recipient has herself chosen; and in addition scatters with liberal hand small additional trifles such as work-bags, pincushions, books, small articles of jewellery. All the adjutants and generals receive something handsome and substantial: one has a Turkey rug, another a bronze bust of the Emperor, a third a pair of silver candelabra. But whatever else they get, a large plate of nuts, cakes and chocolates accompanies each table--and those gentlemen who have to return to Berlin early may presently be seen, aided by footmen, pouring their nuts and gingerbread into large brown-paper bags, which they carry away under one arm, for all the world like children from a Sunday-school treat. This procession of grey-haired generals and officers in uniform going off like schoolboys with their booty seems to afford the Emperor much pleasure. The tables of the Empress and Emperor are covered with offerings from their relatives in England and elsewhere; but the chief interest is in the presents to the Princess. When she reached her twelfth year, on her Christmas table appeared the plans of a tiny _Bauern-Haus_, the gift of her father. It was built the following spring in the children’s garden--a real peasant’s wooden kitchen, with a real stove and saucepans where cooking and washing may be done. It had bottle-glass windows and half-doors with bottle-glass in the upper portions. There was a larder with a buttery-hatch, and it speedily became the scene of fearsome cookery experiments involving lavish outlay in eggs and milk. Here was dispensed much hospitality to all classes of visitors.