The Prince, though knowing me to be English (which Bernhardi, to do him justice, did not), backed the General up, explaining for my benefit as well as the children's that England might once have been nominally the most powerful nation, owing to her talent for grabbing possessions all over the world, and the cleverness of her diplomacy. But, he said, that was different now, under the Liberal Government. England was going down exactly as Rome had gone down, and the knell of her greatness was sounding already. Not one of her colonies would stand by her when her day of trouble should come, and most of them would go against her. "You have only to read their own newspapers," said General Bernhardi, "to see that the English know they are degenerating fast. But the hand of Fate is on them. They are asleep, and they will wake up with a rude shock only when it is too late." III--STORY OF THE CROWN PRINCE AND THE CROWN PRINCESS Some quite innocent tales were told by the tattlers, of the Crown Princess. One was, that she had determined from the moment of her engagement to his Imperial Highness, to be the most beautiful and best dressed royal lady in Europe, as he strongly desired her to be, and that it almost broke her heart when she began to realize that being the mother of one baby after another was enlarging her slender waist. She was supposed to have had a wax model of herself made, soon after the birth of her first boy: face, hair, and figure all resembling her own as faithfully as possible. According to the story, she had every new fashion of hairdressing tried on this model, before deciding to use it herself, and would have milliners fit it with hats, rather than choose one to suit her own style merely from seeing it in the mirror. Gowns were shown to her in the same way when they arrived from Paris or Vienna, said the gossip who told me the tale, and the first time the measurements which fitted the figurine proved too small for the Princess's waist, there were tears.[2]