to him for final approval, substituted,
in lieu of the name of Professor Wallot, that of his favorite
portrait painter, Madame Palma Parlaghy, whose work is, in the eyes of
Germany's leading artists, so execrable that the hanging committee of
the Berlin Academy have repeatedly refused to accord places to any of
her pictures on its walls.

Madame Parlaghy is a pupil of Makart and of Lenbach, and a native of
Hadji-Dorog, in Hungary. She is between thirty and forty, possessed
of glittering, enigmatic eyes, highly-colored cheeks and lips, and the
almost too profuse head of hair that one sees so often on the shores
of the Danube. Her beauty may, nevertheless, be described as majestic,
and she conveys the idea of being a woman possessed of considerable
strength of mind, as well as much diplomacy. She was first recommended
to the emperor by the present Czarina of Russia, to whom she gave
drawing lessons, prior to the marriage of the empress, and after
William had obtained an idea of her skill by a very pleasing portrait
which she painted of Field Marshal von Moltke, which was, however,
rejected by the hanging committee of an art exhibition at Berlin, he
purchased the picture in question for a large sum, and likewise gave
her an order to paint several portraits of himself, declaring openly
that if the judgment of the leading Berlin artists were to be final in
the matter of admitting paintings to public galleries and exhibitions,
there would never be a single work of art worthy of the name on view.
Madame Parlaghy's portraits of the emperor, though questionable as
works of art, are, it must be confessed, very flattering likenesses of
his majesty.

It was shortly after this slight inflicted by the emperor on Professor
Wallot, and the honor conferred upon Madame Parlaghy, that the
National Society of Architects and the National Association
of Artists, the two principal organizations of the kind in
Germany--composed of all that is most eminent in the realms of
architecture and art--jointly invited Professor Wallot to a great
banquet in Berlin, at which over six hundred guests were present, in
the course of which William was guyed in a most merciless manner! The
chief ornament on the principal table was a model of the Reichshaus in
"Schwarzbrod," cheese and confectionery. The dome consisted of a Dutch
cheese, the "Germania" on the top was represented by a smartly aproned
chambermaid on horseback, the horse being led by a footman i