At the time of the visit of the Emperor and Empress of Germany to Rome, during the silver-wedding festivities of King Humbert and Queen Marguerite of Italy, Prince Bernhardt and Princess Charlotte were in the Eternal City, entirely ignored by the Italian court, as well as by all the foreign royalties present. Indeed, while the emperor, and even the pettiest foreign princelets invited for the occasion, were driving about the streets and parks in royal equipages, the kaiser's sister and brother-in-law had to content themselves with the dingiest of hack cabs, and also with the rôle of ordinary sight-seers. Those who imagine that Princess Charlotte prefers an incognito rôle to that of a royal princess are singularly mistaken. No one is fonder than she is of the prerogatives of rank, and like all clever and pretty women, she is ever eager to be the centre of attraction, and the object of much homage. She cannot, therefore, be said to relish the treatment and neglect to which she is subjected through her brother's displeasure. In the Berlin great world the princess has always been popular, not merely by reason of her devotion to society, but because a certain amount of sympathy was felt for her in connection with the treatment which she had received at the hands of her mother. For some strange reason or other, Princess Charlotte was never appreciated by her mother, who showed her preference for her younger daughters in a very marked manner. Charlotte was always treated with a far greater degree of strictness than any of the other girls, in spite of her being vastly superior to them in intellect and in looks. Princess Charlotte is still a very charming woman, and was in her younger days a singularly attractive girl, one of the fairest indeed of all Queen Victoria's numerous descendants, but her sisters are inclined to be homely, absolutely deficient in feminine elegance or chic, and, while accomplished, are extremely dull, and not a bit sparkling or witty. Empress Frederick always declared that her daughter Charlotte was frivolous, and as much inclined to be forward and rebellious to discipline and control as her eldest son, the present emperor. Therefore, as I have already stated, Charlotte and William were treated by their mother with exceptional severity, were snubbed on every occasion, often in the most humiliating manner, and were made to feel that Prince Henry and their younger sisters held a higher place in the maternal heart than they.