The palace world at every European Court is a narrow little world of its own, unknown and unsuspected by the man in the street. There one sees the worst side of human nature without any leaven of the best or even nobler side. The salary-grabber, the military adventurer, the pinchbeck diplomat, the commercial parvenu, and the scientist, together with their heavy-jowled, jewel-bedecked women-folk, elbow each other in order to secure the notice of the All-Highest One, who, in that green-upholstered private room wherein I worked with him, often smiled at the unseemly bustle while he calmly discriminated among men and women according to their merits. It is in that calm discretion that the Emperor excels, possessing almost uncanny foresight, combined with a most unscrupulous conscience. "I know! Frau Kleist has told me!" were the words His Majesty used on many occasions when I had ventured perhaps to express doubt regarding some scandalous story or serious allegation. Therefore I was confident, even though a large section of the entourage doubted it, that the seventy-year-old dancing-mistress, whose past was a complete mystery, was an important secret agent of the Emperor's. And what more likely? The Kaiser, as ruler of that complex empire, would naturally seek to know the truth concerning those who sought his favour before they were permitted to click their heels or wag their fans and bow the knee in his Imperial presence. And he had, no doubt, with that innate cunning, appointed his creature to the position of Court dancing-mistress. The most elegant, corsetted Prussian officer, even though he could dance divinely, was good-looking and perfectly-groomed, would never be permitted to enter the Court circle unless a substantial number of marks were placed within the old woman's palm. It was her perquisite, and many in that ill-paid entourage envied her her means of increasing her income. In no Court in Europe are the purse-strings held so tightly as in that of Potsdam. The Emperor and Empress, though immensely wealthy, practise the economy of London suburbia. But at every Court bribery is rife in order to obtain Royal warrants and dozens of other small favours of that kind, just as open payment is necessary to-day to obtain titles of nobility. The colour of gold has a fascination which few can resist. If it were not so there would be no war in progress to-day. On October 17th, 1908, I had returned with the Emperor and his suite from Hamburg, where His Majesty had been present at the launching of one of Herr Ballin's monster American liners, and at three o'clock, after the Kaiser had eaten a hurried luncheon, I was seated at the side table in his private room in the Berlin Schloss, taking down certain confidential instructions which he wished to be sent at once by one of the Imperial couriers to the commandant of Posen.