"Judgment was not her strong point, nor was tact; if I am to say what was her strong point, I suppose it would be sincerity. Her gifts of mind were dazzling rather than sound; impulse was not always under control. Her animosities once roused never slept, as Prince Bismarck well knew." Seldom has a more prejudiced view of the Empress been given to the world, but it is interesting as showing how she sometimes impressed those who had been fascinated by the Bismarck legend when they were brought into passing contact with her eager, enthusiastic mind. To a fall from her horse at Cronberg in the autumn of 1898 may be traced the beginning of that merciless disease which ultimately killed her. It was a bad accident. The horse reared and the Empress fell on the wrong side on her head with her feet under the horse and her habit still clinging to the saddle. Her head was much bruised, and her right hand was injured and trodden on by the horse. She was not at all frightened, indeed she took it very calmly, observing: "I have ridden for fifty years, and it is natural that an accident must come sooner or later. But I shall ride to-morrow. I'm going to try and paint and write some letters in spite of my hand." But her injuries did not yield to treatment, and very soon began the long martyrdom of pain which she bore for more than two years with the same stoic fortitude which the Emperor Frederick had shown. The disease was undoubtedly cancer, and it is suggested that it had been gathering force for quite a number of years. However that may be, it was certainly known in 1900 that a cure was impossible. The most terrible feature of these last months was the severe pain which seized her at intervals. It was characteristic, both of her courage and of her kindly nature, that during these attacks she would not see even the members of her family, to whom the sight of her sufferings would have been so distressing. But in the intervals she occupied herself with conversation, or one of her ladies would read aloud to her, and she even painted a little. Her son, the Emperor, was constant in his attentions, coming over almost daily from Homburg, but even he was only allowed to remain with her a few minutes at a time. Physically the patient had suffered a great change. Her cheeks, which had been round and apparently in the bloom of health, gradually became thin and sunken, and her face assumed that curious transparent paleness which is the unmistakable sign of approaching death.