This was the trick of it: Bismarck, in all his extended series of conquests over previous attacks by the women of the Court, had had the King at his back. He was supported by old William in his long campaign against the old Empress and the English Crown Princess. He had had the sanction of young William in his warfare upon the Empress Frederic. It had been with royal consent that he bore himself like the foremost man in Prussia, and he had allowed himself to forget the importance of this fact. The tables were completely turned upon him the instant these adroit and sagacious women whispered in young William’s ear, “Why not be foremost man in Prussia yourself?” The young Kaiser’s thirtieth birthday came on January 27, 1889. We can put down to about that date his advance to an independent position in front of everybody else in his kingdom--including the Bismarcks. No single striking event marked the change; but the feeling that the change had come spread with strange swiftness throughout the length and breadth of Germany. The half-intuitive sense that Bismarck was done for ran like wildfire over the country. The Iron Chancellor for thirty years had done his best to reduce German manhood to the serf-like condition of the courtier, and it is proverbial that there is no other keenness of scent like that of courtiers for the fall of a favourite. The open reconciliation between William and his mother belongs to a somewhat later period, but the spirit of it was already in the air. The terrible news of the death of Crown Prince Rudolph of Austria, which came on January 30th, is also to be taken into account as bearing upon this change at Berlin. The Austrian heir-apparent was only six months older than William, and of late years they had not been friends. Rudolph had been peculiarly intimate with the Prince of Wales and with the late Emperor Frederic, and had not concealed his sympathy with the English view of William’s behaviour. His tragic ending now produced the most painful and softening effect upon the emotional young Kaiser. He could only be restrained from going _incognito_ to the funeral at Vienna by the urgent pleas of the stricken Austrian Emperor, and he made obviously sincere expressions of grief to the friends of the Prince of Wales, which went far toward removing the ill-feelings between them. As it became apparent that the young Kaiser had thrown off his Bismarckian leading-strings, and, after a miserable interlude of small personal persecutions and revenges, was at last coming to comprehend the vastness of his duties and responsibilities, the world began watching him with an interest of another sort.