At the time of her arrival the Emperor had left suddenly and gone away to Hubertusstock. When anything unusual upset him he always went there. I overheard him the day before his departure shouting to Löhlein as I passed along one of the corridors. The Judicial Councillor seemed to be trying to pacify him, but apparently entirely without avail, for the Emperor is a man not easily convinced. "You are as sly as all the rest!" I heard the Emperor declare in that shrill, high-pitched tone which always denotes his anger. "I'll hear none of it--no excuses. I want no fawning, no Jew-juggling." Then, fearing to be discovered, I slipped on past the door. The next I heard was that the Kaiser had left for that lonely retreat to which he went when he wished to be alone in those periods of crazy impetuosity which periodically seized the Mad Dog of Europe; and, further, that he had taken with him his crafty crony, Löhlein. During that mysterious absence--when the tinselled world of Potsdam seemed at peace--the good-looking Saxon Crown-Princess arrived. I was on duty on the railway platform to bow over her hand and to welcome her. "Ah! Count von Heltzendorff! Well, did I not say that I should not be very long before I returned to Potsdam, eh?" she exclaimed. Then, in a whisper, she said with a merry laugh: "Do you remember those clattering hoofs and my broken rope of pearls? Nothing has happened yet." "And nothing will," I assured her as, with a courtier's obeisance, I conducted Her Imperial Highness to the Royal carriage, where the Crown-Prince "Willie" was awaiting her, chatting with two officers of the Guard to while away the time. Three days later an incident occurred which caused me a good deal of thought, and, truth to tell, mystified me considerably. That somewhat indiscreet journal, the _Militär Wochenblatt_, had published a statement to the effect that Friedrich-August of Saxony and the handsome Luisa had had a violent quarrel, a fact which caused a great deal of gossip throughout Court circles. Old Von Donaustauf, who at that time was master of the ceremonies at the Emperor's Court, busied himself by spreading strange scandals regarding the Crown-Princess Luisa. Therefore, in the circumstances, it struck me as strange that Her Highness should have been invited to the puritanical and hypocritical circle at Potsdam. That afternoon, soon after the guard had been changed, I chanced to be writing in my room, which overlooked the big central courtyard, when I heard the guard suddenly turn out in great commotion, by which I knew that His Majesty had suddenly returned from Hubertusstock. Ten minutes later my telephone rang, and, passing the sentries, I went by order to His Majesty's study, that chamber of plots and secrets, hung with its faded pale green silk damask, its furniture covered with the same material, and its net curtains at the windows threaded with ribbons of the same shade.