. It was against all rules to _ask_ for a vacation--quite against all
etiquette; the shock of it would paralyze the Chancellery; stem
etiquette and usage required another form: the applicant was not
privileged to ask for a vacation, he must send in his _resignation_. The
chancellor would know that the applicant was not really trying to
resign, and didn't want to resign, but was merely trying in this
left-handed way to get a vacation.

The night before the Emperor's dinner I helped Smith take his exercise,
after midnight, and he was full of his project. He had sent in his
resignation that day, and was trembling for the result; and naturally,
because it might possibly be that the chancellor would be happy to fill
his place with somebody else, in which case he could accept the
resignation without comment and without offence. Smith was in a very
anxious frame of mind; not that he feared that Caprivi was dissatisfied
with him, for he had no such fear; it was the Emperor that he was afraid
of; he did not know how he stood with the Emperor. He said that while
apparently it was Caprivi who would decide his case, it was in reality
the Emperor who would perform that service; that the Emperor kept
personal watch upon everything, and that no official sparrow could fall
to the ground without his privity and consent; that the resignation
would be laid before his Majesty, who would accept it or decline to
accept it, according to his pleasure, and that then his pleasure in the
matter would be communicated by Caprivi. Smith said he would know his
fate the next evening, after the imperial dinner; that when I should
escort his Majesty into the large salon contiguous to the dining-room, I
would find there about thirty men--Cabinet ministers, admirals, generals
and other great officials of the Empire--and that these men would be
standing talking together in little separate groups of two or three
persons; that the Emperor would move from group to group and say a word
to each, sometimes two words, sometimes ten words; and that the length
of his speech, whether brief or not so brief, would indicate the exact
standing in the Emperor's regard, of the man accosted; and that by
observing this thermometer an expert could tell, to half a degree, the
state of the imperial weather in each case; that in Berlin, as in the
imperial days of Rome, the Emperor was the sun, and that his smile or
his frown meant good fortune or disaster to the man upon whom it