Seldom is the kaiser found in the schloss after daybreak. The entire morning is spent by him in the woods, which are so vast that one can wander about them for days without meeting a soul. Luncheon is usually partaken of at some point in the forest, and frequently during this repast a concert takes place, the performers consisting of a quartette of foresters, their instruments being mere hunting horns, and their melodies those of old hunting-songs. Within the limits of the imperial preserves is the celebrated Schorfhaide, which each year, towards the month of November, becomes the meeting place of thousands of stags. They come from all parts of Germany and Austria, this being rendered possible by the proximity to one another of the great estates of the territorial nobility, so that it would be feasible to march almost from the Adriatic to the Baltic without leaving forest glades. This annual assemblage of stags on the Schorfhaide has been taking place every autumn for untold centuries. In fact, mention thereof has been found in documents more than a thousand years old. The meetings afford an extraordinary sight, and are the scenes of numerous single combats to death between "Royals," the other stags and the deer standing round, as if to form a huge amphitheatre, and gravely watching the duel without making any attempt to interfere. All sorts of theories have been put forward with regard to this annual concourse of stags on the Schorfhaide. Foresters, however, insist that it is nothing more nor less than a species of great animal congress, at which the various antlered tribes meet for a big "palaver" to decide matters affecting the policy and the leadership of their various clans! Far-fetched as this theory may seem at first sight, it is evident that there is something of the kind which brings stags and their mates from the remote forests of Galicia on the Russian border, from the vast Liechtenstein game preserves to the South of Vienna, and from the still larger sporting property of Belyer, in Hungary, belonging to Archduke Frederick, all the way to the Schorfhaide on the reedy banks of the Werbellin Lake, in order to flock together by thousands. It is a matter of forest ethics, and of the law of the chase, to abstain from disturbing this annual _convivium_ of the stags, as it is called, and while it lasts, not a single shot is to be heard in the forests around Hubertusstock. In fact, November has on this account become a species of close season there, no one interested in sport wishing to do anything that could in the least degree interfere with this, so far as I know, altogether unique custom in the animal world. The meetings, however, have been witnessed by the emperor and a few chosen companions who concealed themselves in the branches of trees, bordering on the Schorfhaide, and William is never tired of expatiating on the magnificence of the spectacle presented.