There are, indeed, different versions of what took place in the now famous interview between Bismarck and the Empress Frederick. It is quite possible that she regarded the Minister's dismissal from office as an imprudent and even dangerous step. However that may be, Prince Hohenlohe declares that Bismarck did not entreat the Empress to intercede for him with the Emperor; he merely said, when the Empress asked if she could do anything for him, "I ask only for sympathy." But he certainly did ask to be received by her in audience, although he must have vividly remembered the insolent message which he had sent her immediately after the Emperor Frederick's death, when she had requested him to come to her. A year later, at Homburg, Prince Hohenlohe and the Empress Frederick had a long conversation over the Bismarck affair. She said she was not at all surprised at his dismissal, that "Bismarck was of a combative nature and would never cease to fight. He could do nothing else." She talked of previous incidents, of Bismarck's groundless distrust of her, and of the Empress Augusta, and expressed the opinion "that we had only to thank the old Emperor's quiet gentleness for any success of Bismarck's. He was a very dangerous opponent, but not a Republican. He was too Prussian for that. But the Brandenburg-Prussian noble was determined to rule, though it were with the King." CHAPTER XIX THE PLANNING OF FRIEDRICHSHOF: VISIT TO PARIS The Empress's relations with her son improved after the fall of Bismarck. She was particularly touched by the many tributes which he paid to his father's memory, and she now felt encouraged to try and build up again the fragments of her tragically broken life. The Emperor William had placed at his mother's disposal the palace in Unter den Linden in Berlin where the Emperor and Empress Frederick lived while they were Crown Prince and Princess, as well as the Charlottenhof at Potsdam, and the Schloss at Homburg. Charlottenhof is in the Royal grounds at Potsdam, at some distance from the New Palace. It was built by Frederick William IV in 1826, in imitation of a Pompeian villa, and in the grounds are fountains, statues, and bronzes which were brought from Herculaneum and Pompeii. As to Homburg, the Empress had always been very fond of the place; she had often spent part of the summer at the old Schloss, and she valued its associations with the daughter of another British Sovereign, for the delightful gardens to which Thackeray refers in _The Four Georges_ were laid out by the Landgravine Elizabeth, daughter of George III. When the Empress Frederick decided to build a house after her own heart, it was to the neighbourhood of Homburg that her thoughts naturally turned. Perhaps another reason which governed the choice of that neighbourhood was the fact that the widowed Empress's beloved brother, King Edward, was so fond of the place, and for many years went there each year.