ut aloud "His Majesty the Emperor!" All is silent as
the grave. Followed by the Empress, the princes and princesses, William
II. passes through the room and greets his guests with a manly
handshake. He begins with the ladies and then passes on to the gentlemen
and speaks to every one. The Swedish Minister presents me, and the
Emperor begins immediately to ask about Asia. He speaks of Alexander's
great campaign through the whole of western Asia, and expresses his
astonishment that a man's name can live with undiminished renown through
two thousand years. He points to the eagles on the ceiling, and asks if
I do not see a resemblance to the Chinese dragon. He talks of Tibet and
the Dalai Lama, and of the great stillness in the heart of the desert.

Soon the orchestra strikes up and the guests begin to dance. The only
one who seems unconcerned is the Emperor himself. An expression of deep
seriousness lies like a mask on his powerful face. Is it not enough to
be the Emperor of the German federation, with its four kingdoms,
Prussia, Bavaria, Saxony, and Wuertemberg, its six grand duchies, its
many duchies and electorates, its imperial territory, Alsace-Lorraine,
and its three free towns, Hamburg, Luebeck, and Bremen? Does he not rule
over sixty-five million people, over 207 towns of more than 25,000
inhabitants, and seven of more than half a million, namely Berlin,
Hamburg, Munich, Dresden, Leipzig, Breslau, and Cologne? Has he not by
the force of his own will created a fleet so powerful as to arouse
uneasiness in England, the country which has the sole command of the
sea? And is he not the commander-in-chief of an army which, on a war
footing, is as large as the whole population of Scotland? All this
might well make him serious.

BERLIN TO CONSTANTINOPLE

The next stage of our journey is from Berlin to Vienna, the capital of
Austria. The express train carries us rapidly southward through
Brandenburg. To the west we have the Elbe, which flows into the North
Sea at Hamburg; while to the east streams the Oder, which enters the
Baltic Sea at Stettin. But we make closer acquaintance only with the
Elbe, first when we pass Dresden, the capital of Saxony, and again when
we have crossed the Austrian frontier into Bohemia, where in a beautiful
and densely-peopled valley clothed with trees the railway follows the
windings of the stream. When the guard calls out at a large and busy
station "Prague," we are sorry that we have no time