e alluded very cautiously to the 'Song to
Aegir' this morning, and delicately remarked that you had heard it once
and I twice. How can you care what his opinion of this opera is?"

Falbe shook his handsome head, and gesticulated with his fine hands.

"You don't understand," he said. "You have just been talking to him
himself. I long to hear his every word and intonation. There is the
personality, which to us means so much, in which is summed up all
Germany. It is as if I had spoken to Rule Britannia herself. Would you
not be interested? There is no one in the world who is to his country
what the Kaiser is to us. When you told me he had stayed at Ashbridge I
was thrilled, but I was ashamed lest you should think me snobbish, which
indeed I am not. But now I am past being ashamed."

He poured out a glass of wine and drank it with a "Hoch!"

"In his hand lies peace and war," he said. "It is as he pleases. The
Emperor and his Chancellor can make Germany do exactly what they choose,
and if the Chancellor does not agree with the Emperor, the Emperor can
appoint one who does. That is what it comes to; that is why he is as
vast as Germany itself. The Reichstag but advises where he is concerned.
Have you no imagination, Michael? Europe lies in the hand that shook
yours."

Michael laughed.

"I suppose I must have no imagination," he said. "I don't picture it
even now when you point it out."

Falbe pointed an impressive forefinger.

"But for him," he said, "England and Germany would have been at each
other's throats over the business at Agadir. He held the warhounds in
leash--he, their master, who made them."

"Oh, he made them, anyhow," said Michael.

"Naturally. It is his business to be ready for any attack on the part of
those who are jealous at our power. The whole Fatherland is a sword
in his hand, which he sheathes. It would long ago have leaped from the
scabbard but for him."

"Against whom?" asked Michael. "Who is the enemy?"

Falbe hesitated.

"There is no enemy at present," he said, "but the enemy potentially is
any who tries to thwart our peaceful expansion."

Suddenly the whole subject tasted bitter to Michael. He recalled,
instinctively, the Emperor's great curiosity to be informed on English
topics by the ordinary Englishman with whom he had acquaintance.

"Oh, let's drop it," he said. "I really didn't come to Munich to talk
politics, of which I know nothing whatever."

Falbe nodded.

"That is wh