Emperor William, on the other hand, whose married life has been, from a domestic point of view, singularly blameless, and who has been an exceptionally faithful husband, has, in at least two instances, permitted himself to be swayed in his rôle of sovereign by ladies, who for a time figured as his "Egerias." One of them was a woman of extraordinary cleverness, and an American by birth, who while she has long since ceased to exercise any influence upon him, has retained the affection and the regard of both his consort and himself. She is the Countess Waldersee, daughter of the late David Lee, a wholesale grocer of New York, and who at the time that she became the wife of Field-marshal Count Waldersee, was the widow of the present German empress's uncle, Prince Frederick of Schleswig-Holstein. The latter abandoned his royal rank and titles, and assumed the merely nobiliary status of a Prince of Noer, in order to make her his consort. The countess is treated as an aunt by both William and the kaiserin, and she may be said to have swayed her imperial nephew by her cleverness and intellectual brilliancy, rather than by her looks, for she is a woman already well-advanced in years. Different in this respect was the influence of the emperor's other Egeria, namely, the Polish baroness, Jenny Koscielska, a woman of rare elegance and beauty, whose political importance during the time she reigned supreme at the Court of Berlin, was attributable to her personal fascination rather than to her sagacity or statecraft. She is the wife of that Baron Kosciol-Koscielski, who was one of the most celebrated leaders of the Polish party in the Russian House of Lords, and perhaps, also, the most popular of all modern Polish poets and playwrights.