ceive either the one or the other. He had apparently come to the
conclusion that the game was not worth the candle, and that in view
of the fact that his intimacy with the baroness had never gone beyond
platonic friendship and mild flirtation, it was ridiculous to incur
the ill-will of his subjects and expose himself to slanderous stories
concocted by his enemies on her account.

The influence of the American born Countess Waldersee was of a far
more lasting character, and may be said to have been inaugurated
very shortly after his marriage. Prior to becoming a benedict, Prince
William was as gay as his very limited financial means would permit.
In fact, he was charged with playing the role of Don Juan to at least
half a dozen beauties of the Prussian Court, while at Vienna he became
involved in a scandal of a feminine character, from which he was only
extricated with the utmost difficulty by the then German Ambassador to
the Austrian Court, namely, Prince Reuss. The presumption is that he
had allowed himself to become the prey of an adventuress, and with the
object of avoiding publicity he was practically compelled to provide
for the welfare and future of a child which may or may not have been
his offspring. But as soon as he married, he turned over a new leaf,
and became the very model of husbands.

It has always been my conviction that this was due in part to the
influence of the Countess Waldersee, and largely also to the unkindly
treatment which his consort received during the early years of
her marriage at the hands of his family. Although a nice and
gentle-looking girl, Augusta-Victoria was far from shining either by
her beauty or her elegance at a court which is one of the most cruelly
critical and satirical in all Europe. Moreover, she labored under the
disadvantage of being the daughter of the Duchess of Augustenburg, who
is not credited with a robust intellect, and, in fact has passed
the greater part of her life in retirement, and of the Duke of
Augustenburg, who was famed thirty years ago for the dullness of his
mind. In fact, after Prussia had undertaken in his behalf the conquest
of the Duchy of Schleswig-Holstein, to which he was entitled by right
of inheritance, and which had been unlawfully seized by Denmark,
Prince Bismarck refused to permit the duke to assume the sovereignty
thereof, on the publicly expressed ground that it would be an act of
the most outrageous tyranny to subject any state to the r