The most pompous of _nouveaux riches_ could not have shown more evidence of self-worship in their decorations. Immense paintings of themselves and of their ancestors covered half the Hohenzollern walls, showing them in heroic attitudes and gigantic size, alone with the world at their feet, or in the very thick of battles, looking calm, collected, and unafraid amid generals and followers who, from Bismarck down, had an air of fear which the royal central figure discountenanced by contrast. Huge portraits of princes, _Kurfürsten_, emperors, a goodly percentage of them looking not quite intelligent enough to make efficient night-watchmen, stared haughtily from all sides. A picture of the old Hohenzollern castle, from which the family—and many of the world’s woes—originally sprang, occupied a prominent place, as an American “Napoleon of finance” might hang in his Riverside drawing-room a painting of the old farm from which he set out to conquer the earth. Much alleged art by members of the royal family, as fondly preserved as Lizzy’s first—and last—school drawing, stood on easels or tables in prominent, insistent positions. Presents from the Sultan were particularly numerous, among them massive metal tablets with bits in Arabic from the Koran. One of these read, according to the caretaker, “He who talks least says most.” Unfortunately, the Kaiser could not read Arabic, hence the particularly pertinent remark was lost upon him. In an obscure corner hung one of the inevitable German cuckoo clocks, placed there, if my guide was not mistaken, by a former empress in memory of the spot where she plighted her troth. Poor, petty little romances of royalty! Probably it was not so much coquetry as an effort to escape the pseudo-magnificence of those appalling rooms that drove her into the corner. How could any one be comfortable, either in mind or in body, with such junk about them, much less pass the romantic hours of life in their midst? I should much have preferred to have my _Verlobungskuss_ in a railway station. Only the library of the ex-empress, with its German, French, and English novels and its works of piety, showed any sign of real human individuality. Her favorite picture hung there—a painting showing a half-starved woman weeping and praying over an emaciated child, called “The Efficacy of Prayer.” No doubt the dear empress got much sentimental solace out of it—just before the royal dinner was announced. The Kaiser’s private sleeping-room, on the other hand, was simplicity itself—far less sumptuous than my own a few blocks away. He had last slept there, said the caretaker, in the autumn of 1914, while moving toward the western front with his staff. “And all this belongs to the state now, since Germany has become a republic?” I remarked. “Only a part of it,” replied my guide. “We are making up lists of the private and crown property, and his own possessions will be returned to the Kaiser.”