The Emperor's staff of adjutants are exceptionally useful and important people. At their head is the chief of the Emperor's Military Cabinet. Not less important are the members of the Emperor's Marine Cabinet, consisting of admirals, vice-admirals, and wing-admirals. The personal adjutants divide the day and night service between them, so that there may always be three adjutants at the Emperor's immediate disposal. The adjutant announces Ministers or other visitors to the Emperor, telegraphs to say that His Majesty has an hour or an hour and a half at his disposal at such-and-such a time, or intimates that an audience of half an hour can be given in the train between two given points. They act as living memorandum books, knock at the Emperor's door to announce that it is time for him to go to this or that appointment, remind him that a congratulatory telegram on some one's seventieth birthday or other jubilee has to be sent, or perhaps whispers that Her Majesty the Empress wishes to see him. All the Emperor's correspondence passes through their hands. They accompany the Emperor on his journeys and voyages, and when thus employed are usually invited to his table. The Emperor reads of some new book and tells an adjutant to order it, and the latter does so by communicating with the Civil Cabinet. Court society in Berlin includes the German "higher" and "lower" nobility, with the exception of the so-called Fronde, who proudly absent themselves from it; the Ministers; the diplomatic corps; Court officials; and such members of the burghertum, or middle class, as hold offices which entitle them to attend court. The wives, however, of those in the last category are not "court-capable" on this account, nor is the middle class generally, nor even members of the Imperial or Prussian Parliaments as such. Members of Parliament are invited to the Court's seasonal festivities, but as a rule only members of the Conservative parties or other supporters of the Government. The nobility, as in England, is hereditary or only nominated for life, and the hereditary nobility is divided into an upper and lower class. To the former belongs members of houses that were ruling when the modern Empire was established, and, while excluding the Emperor, who stands above them, includes sovereign houses and mediatized houses. Some of the ancient privileges of the nobility, such as exemption from taxation, and the right to certain high offices, have been abolished, but in practice the nobility still occupy the most important charges in the administration and in the army. The privileges of the mediatized princes consist of exemption from conscription, the enjoyment of the Principle called "equality of birth," which prevents the burgher wife of a noble acquiring her husband's rank, and the right to have their own "house law" for the regulation of family disputes and family affairs generally. No increase to the high