Yet a further game was being played--one that, in addition to the Imperial Chancellor, I alone knew--namely, that while the Kaiser was making pretence of being the best friend of the Sultan Abdul Hamid, visiting Constantinople and Palestine, building fountains, endowing institutes, and bestowing his Imperial grace in so many ways, yet he was also secretly supporting the Young Turk party so as to effect the Sultan's downfall as part of his sly, Machiavellian policy--a plot which, as you know, ultimately succeeded, for poor old Abdul the Damned and his harem were eventually packed off, bag and baggage, to Salonika, notwithstanding His Majesty's wild entreaty to Berlin for protection. I happened to be with the Emperor on the Imperial yacht at Tromsö when he received by telegram the personal appeal addressed to him from his miserable dupe, and I well recollect how grimly he smiled as he remarked to me that it needed no response. Well, at the period of which I am making the present disclosure, Herr Anton had been paying a number of flying visits to Berlin, and had had many private audiences of both Kaiser and Sultan, and had on several occasions been invited informally to the Imperial luncheon table, a mark of esteem bestowed by the Kaiser upon those who may at the moment be serving his interests particularly well. Suddenly all of us were surprised by the announcement that the Kaiser's favoured civilian in Turkey had married Mademoiselle Julie de Lagarenne, daughter of Paul de Lagarenne, son of the great French sugar refiner, and secretary of the French Embassy at Rome. We heard also that, having married in Italy, he was bringing his wife to Berlin. Indeed, a week after that news was spread I met them both in Kranzler's in Unter den Linden, and there he introduced me to a pretty, dark-haired, vivacious young Frenchwoman, who spoke German well, and who told me that her husband had already given in her name for presentation at the next Court. That was about a month prior to Orville Wright's flight and the midnight visit of Frau Kleist to the Emperor. Truth to tell, the old woman's mention of Herr Reitschel's name caused me considerable misgivings, because three weeks before I had gathered certain strange facts from a secret report of a spy who in Constantinople had been set to watch Herr Reitschel's doings. That spy was Frau Kleist's son.