The German Emperor returned to Berlin from Kiel on Monday, the 30th of June. Ties of deep affection united him to his aged Austrian ally. It was universally assumed that the Kaiser, with characteristic impetuosity, would rush to Vienna to comfort Francis Joseph and attend the Archduke’s funeral. So, as events developed, he ardently desired to do; but intimations speedily arrived from the _Hofburg_ that "Kaiser Franz" had chosen to carry his newest cross unmolested by the flummery and circumstance of State obsequies, and William II remained in Berlin for honorary funeral services in his own cathedral in memory of the august departed. Some day a historian, who will have great things to tell, may relate the real reason for the baffling of the Kaiser’s desire to play the rôle of chief mourner at spectacular death-rites in the other German capital. He had telegraphed the orphans of the murdered Archduke and Duchess that his "heart was bleeding for them." Men who have an X-ray knowledge of Imperial William’s psychology were unkind enough to suggest that he longed to parade himself before the mourning populace of the Austrian metropolis as Lohengrin in the hour of its woe, an Emperor on whom it were safer to lean than on the decrepit figurehead now bowed in impotent grief, with a beardless grand-nephew of an heir apparent as the sole hope of the trembling future. Until the late Archduke Francis Ferdinand began to assert himself, William II’s influence at Vienna had been profound. Francis Joseph liked and trusted him. Austria was frequently governed from Potsdam. With the great bar to his ascendency removed from the scene, the German Emperor may well have thought the hour at length arrived for the virile Hohenzollerns to save the crumbling Hapsburgs from themselves, and invertebrate Austria-Hungary from the Hapsburgs. But Vienna decided it was better the Kaiser should stay at home. His political physicians, on the evening of July 1, suddenly discovered that His Majesty was suffering from that famous German malady known as "diplomatic illness," whereupon the court M.D. dutifully announced, through the obliging official news-agency, that "owing to a slight attack of lumbago" the Kaiser would not attend the funeral of the murdered Archduke, "as had been arranged." Forty-eight hours later other "face-saving" procedure was carried out--the Viennese court proclaimed that by the express wish of the Emperor Francis Joseph, no foreign guests of any nationality were expected to attend the Royal obsequies.