The letters imputed to the countess almost every crime under the sun. Inasmuch as her husband's principal friend was Baron Schrader, who was of course frequently seen in her company at the races and at the opera, it naturally followed that she was charged with an altogether questionable intimacy with him. In fact, she was accused of sharing her favors between him and the emperor, and in the letters that reached both the kaiser and his consort, it was asserted that she was, moreover, in the habit of constantly boasting among her friends about the influence which as "_Sultana"_ she was able to exercise over the ruler of the German Empire. It was on the receipt of one of these letters that the emperor without a moment's warning abruptly ordered Count and Countess Fritz Hohenau to leave Berlin and to transfer their residence to Hanover. The count and countess were not long in discovering the cause of their disgrace, and bitterly incensed, at once resolved to leave no stone unturned in their efforts to discover the culprit. In this determination they were supported by the "Willy" von Hohenaus, by the various members of the Hohenlohe family, by Baron Schrader, Baron Hugo Reischach, chamberlain to the Empress Frederick, Prince and Princess Aribert of Anhalt, the latter being a granddaughter of Queen Victoria, Prince and Princess Albert of Saxe-Altenburg, and last, but not least, Baron von Tausch, the chief of the secret police attached to the particular service of the emperor. I have already mentioned that suspicions had at first been directed against the empress's only brother, Duke Ernest-Gunther of Schleswig-Holstein. Somehow or other, probably through reading the detective novels of Gaboriau, Baron Schrader became imbued with the idea that the most successful manner of discovering the identity of the suspected writer of the anonymous letters would be to carefully examine the blotting-pads which either he or she were in the habit of using. Accordingly, Countess Fritz von Hohenau took advantage of the admiration and devotion entertained for her by Count Augustus Bismarck to induce him to bring to her the blotting-pad habitually used by the duke, to whose household he belonged, as chief aid-de-camp. The count, very reluctantly, it is true, brought to Madame von Hohenau, the said blotting-pad, and it was immediately submitted to a most careful and even microscopical examination by her husband, herself, and their friends. But in spite of every effort it was impossible to discover the slightest analogy between the writing of the anonymous letters and the impressions left on the blotting-pad of the duke. The countess and her assistants in this queer task, therefore, came to the conclusion that they would have to search in a different direction.