Nobody, even the best-intentioned, can deny that Emperor William has
many faults; those are, however, either ignored altogether, or else
exaggerated to an extent that eclipses all his good qualities, by his
various biographers. Very few pen-portraits of royal personages that
pass through the hands of the publishers can be said to present a true
picture of their subject. Either the writer holds up the object of his
literary effort as a person so blameless as to suggest the idea that
he is an impossible prig, or else every piece of malevolent gossip is
construed into a positive fact, his shortcomings magnified until they
lose all touch of resemblance, while every word and action capable of
misrepresentation is construed in the manner most detrimental to his
reputation. In one word, he is either glorified as a preposterous
saint, or else held up to public execration as an equally impossible
villain. Now, in pictorial art, a portrait, in order to present a
satisfactory and successful resemblance to its subject, must contain
lights and shadows. You cannot have all light, or all shadow, but it
is necessary to have a judicious mixture of both. So it is with the
art of biography. If one wishes to give in print a true, and above
all, a human picture of one's subject, it is necessary to mingle the
shadows with the lights. In fact, the former may be said to set off
the latter, and there are many shortcomings, especially those
which the French, so graphically describe as _petits vices_,--small
vices--which, resulting from a generous and impulsive temperament,
serve, like the Rembrandt shadow of a portrait, to render the subject
more attractive to the eye.

It is my object, not to give a definitive biography of either of the
two kaisers, or even a mere record of their _vie intime_, but rather
to present to my readers a series of incidents, full of lights and
full of shadows, showing their surroundings, describing as far as
possible the atmosphere in which they move, the conditions of life
which they are obliged to consider, the temptations to which they
are exposed--and to which they sometimes succumb--and when I have
completed my task I venture to believe that the readers of these
volumes, while they may find the two emperors neither quite so
blameless, nor yet quite so bad as they expected, may nevertheless
experience a greater degree of sympathy and regard for them as being
after all so extremely human.

CHAPTER II

W