kind of astonishment.
He believes that he has not fulfilled his part, until he has made a
number of people lift their arms to heaven at least once a day and
exclaim: "William is marvellous!" He wants to hear this cry arise from
the humblest and the highest, from the miner's gallery and the palace
of his "august confederates," from the workman's cottage and the homes
of the middle-class, from the officers' club, from church and chapel,
from the Parliament of the Empire and the House of Peers.

Being _blase_ himself, it pleases him to tickle public opinion with
spicy fare; his lack of mental balance compels him to these endless and
senseless choppings and changes, to all these schemes projected,
proclaimed and cast aside.

The former Court of his grandfather is already in ruins, the work of
Bismarck crumbling in the dust; in less than no time he has reduced the
old aristocratic and feudal Prussian monarchy to the purest kind of
democratic Caesarism.

Perched above every political party in Germany, William the Young wants
to be the one and only ruler and judge of all. Among themselves let
them differ as and when they will, it being always understood that all
these separate opinions must equally be sacrificed to the Emperor.

Before long the King of Prussia will endeavour to be at one and the
same time the spiritual head of the Lutheran Church and the temporal
Pope of the Catholic Church, the leader of economists, the cleverest of
stategists, the one and only socialist, the most marvellous incarnation
of the warrior of German legends, the greatest pacifist of modern
times, explorer in his day and soothsayer whenever he likes. In his
own eyes, William is all these.

Have not the delegates of the old House of Peers ingenuously complained
during these last few days that they no longer possess any initiative
of legislation? But they have just as much or as little as the
honourable members of the Prussian Diet.

All schemes of reform emanate from the Emperor. The people have no
right to be Emperor. Surely that is simple enough?

To bulk larger in the public eye, William dwells apart; he can no
longer endure that any one should presume to think himself useful or
agreeable to him or to give him advice. He is fulfilling the
prediction that he made of himself when he was twenty-one: "When I come
to reign I shall have no friends; I shall only have dupes."

More infatuated with himself than ever, the Emperor wears his