The precipitate haste with which the young Kaiser had rushed off to visit St. Petersburg, almost before the public signs of mourning for his father had been removed in Berlin and Potsdam, had impressed everybody as curious. Nearly a year had now elapsed, and the failure of the Czar to say anything about returning the visit was growing to seem odder still. It was, of course no secret that the Czar did not like William. No two men could present greater points of difference, physically and mentally. The autocrat of all the Russias is a huge, lumbering, slow, and tenacious man, growing somewhat fat with increasing years, hating all forms of regular exercise, and cherishing a veritable horror of noisy, overzealous, and bustling people. Every smart public servant in Russia is governed by the knowledge that his imperial master has a peculiar aversion to all forms of bother, and values his officials precisely in proportion as they make short and infrequent reports, free from all accounts of unpleasant things, and, still more important, from all meddlesome suggestions of reform. When a Russian diplomat was asked, a year ago, what the Czar’s personal attitude toward William was, he answered expressively by shrugging his shoulders and putting his fingers in his ears. But now the Czar, from passively affronting William by not returning his visit, summoned the energy for a direct provocation. A palace luncheon was given in St. Petersburg, celebrating the betrothal of a Montenegrin Princess to a Russian Grand Duke, and the Czar, standing and in a loud, clear voice, drank to Prince Nikolo of Montenegro as “the only sincere and faithful friend Russia had” among European sovereigns. That there might be no doubt about this, the Czar had the words printed next day in the _Official Messenger_. Germany was not slow to comprehend the meaning of this remarkable speech. But to make it still clearer the Czarowitch, three weeks later, paid a formal visit to Stuttgart to attend some Court festivities, and passed through Berlin both going and coming--though the Breslau-Dresden route would have been more direct--apparently for no other purpose than to insult the Kaiser by stopping for an hour each time inside the railway station, as if there were no such people as the Hohenzollerns to so much as leave a card upon. As a capstone to this insolence, the Russian officers of his suite refused to drink the toast to the German Empire at the Stuttgart banquet, and, when a dispute arose, left the room in a body. The immediate effect of this was to remove the last vestige of reserve existing between William and his English relatives. He at once sent word that, if convenient, he would visit his grandmother, the Queen, at the beginning of August. An assurance of hearty welcome was as promptly returned.