After the Emperor’s birthday the Season is in full swing. There are four State Balls and various “Cours” and “Levées”; but the Balls are the chief events of the season. With that thoroughness which distinguishes all he does, the Emperor does not permit any dancing at his Court which fails to come up to a certain standard of excellence. Every young _débutante_, every young officer anxious to dance before royalty, must first satisfy the fastidious judgment of the Court Dancing-Mistress, who holds several _Tanz-Proben_ or trial dances in the _Weisser Saal_. A few years ago the Court Dancing-Mistress, Frau Wolden, now dead, was only less of a personality than His Majesty. Once indeed, in an agitated and forgetful moment, it is whispered that she sank on to the throne itself. She upheld with a stern hand the dignity of the Court, and her scathing remarks on the attitudes and steps of certain young provincials of both sexes who thought to introduce fashionable irregularities into the lancers, at once made them realize their error. What her real age was cannot with certainty be told. She owned with pride to seventy, and would lift her silk skirts and show her wonderfully fine ankles in a graceful tip-toe turn as if in derision of awkward flat-footed youth. To the day of her death she retained all her marvellous grace of movement. Twice a week she came to the Castle to give dancing lessons to Prince Joachim and the Princess. Other little boys and girls of the same age were invited to complete the class, and were drilled by the old lady in the intricacies of the minuet and gavotte, which quaint old-world dances are invariably danced at the Berlin Court Balls, and are from a spectacular point of view the most beautiful of any. Excepting in severe winters it is rare that any sleighing is possible in Berlin, but once there came a short frost accompanied by a good deal of snow, and immediately the aspect of the streets changed. All the cabs were replaced by wooden sleighs; the rather depressed-looking cabmen (it was before automobiles had taken possession of Berlin) became cheerful and picturesque in fur caps and sheepskin coats. Two light sleighs, each drawn by a couple of horses, appeared every afternoon in the courtyard of the Schloss with a musical clash and tingle of bells, and away the Princess would drive over the hard-trampled snow of the streets till the Grünewald, the beautiful forest skirting Berlin, was reached.