The Kaiser trusts nobody. Even his favourites and most intimate cronies are spied upon, and reports upon those familiar blue papers are furnished regularly. In view of what I had read in that report from Karl Kleist, I stood amazed when, at the grand Court a week later, I had witnessed Herr Reitschel's French wife bow before the Emperor and Empress and noticed how graciously the Kaiser had smiled upon her. Truly the Emperor is sphinx-like and imperturbable. Outside the privacy of his own room, that chamber of cunning plots and fierce revenge, he never allows his sardonic countenance to betray his inner thoughts, and will grasp the hand of his most hated enemy with the hearty warmth of friendship, a Satanic _volte-face_ in which danger and evil lurk always, a trait inherited to its full degree by the Crown-Prince. The days that followed Frau Kleist's midnight visit were indeed busy, eventful days. Certain diplomatic negotiations with Washington had been unsuccessful; Von Holleben, the Ambassador, had been recalled, and given an extremely bad half-hour by both Kaiser and Chancellor. In addition, some wily American journalist had fathomed the amazing duplicity of Prince Henry's visit to the States and Germany's Press Bureau in America, while the Yellow Press of New York had published a ghastly array of facts and figures concerning the latter, together with facsimile documents, all of which had sent His Majesty half-crazy with anger. Nearly three months passed. Herr Reitschel often came from Constantinople, and frequently brought his handsome young wife with him, for he was _persona grata_ at Court. To me this was indeed strange in view of the reports of the ex-opera dancer's son--who, by the way, lived in Constantinople in the unsuspicious guise of a carpet-dealer, and unknown to the bank director. The latter had, assisted by his wife's fortune, inherited from her grandmother, purchased the Schloss Langenberg, the splendid ancestral castle and estates of the Princes of Langenberg, situate on a rock between Ilmenau and Zella, in the beautiful Thuringian Forest, and acknowledged to be one of the most famous shooting estates in the Empire. It was not, therefore, surprising that the Emperor, to mark his favour, should express a desire to shoot capercailzie there--a desire which, of course, delighted Herr Reitschel, who had only a few days before been decorated with the Order of the Black Eagle.