The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 294 pages of information about The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe.

The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) eBook

This eBook from the Gutenberg Project consists of approximately 294 pages of information about The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe.

After a twenty-four hours’ detention, she was conducted to the frontier by the police, and warned against returning to Germany.  If no severer measures were taken against her, it is because it would have resulted in a more or less public disclosure of the indiscreet role played by the duke in the matter, and likewise because she really knew too much!  In fact, there is scarcely a secret pertaining to the reigning family, or to the Court of Prussia, with which she is not acquainted, and the fact that she should have refrained from making any attempt to publish them to the world, gives rise to the presumption that means of a financial character, or else some threats of terrorism, have been used to insure her silence.

At the time of the descent of the police upon her house, Duke Ernest-Gunther was staying at Lowther Castle, in Westmoreland, England, as the guest of Lord Lonsdale, and was to have gone on at the end of the week to Sandringham, to stay with the Prince and Princess of Wales.  On receiving telegrams, however, from his beautiful friend, notifying him of her expulsion from Germany, he left Lowther Castle, literally at an hour’s notice, and without taking leave of his host, proceeded immediately to Paris for the purpose of meeting her, in order to find out to what extent the situation was compromised.  There is every reason to believe that it was not until then that he realized that the writer of the long series of anonymous letters was no other than the lady by whose fascinations he had been so completely captivated.  A considerable time elapsed before he returned to Berlin.  In fact, a very serious estrangement between himself and the emperor ensued, William declining to hold any intercourse with a relative whose susceptibility to feminine charms, and whose extraordinary absence of even the most elementary discretion, had contributed to one of the most painful scandals that have overtaken the Prussian Court since the close of the last century.

Not even the Kaiser’s fondness for his wife, nor his anxiety to please her, could soften the anger which he felt against his brother-in-law, and when after a prolonged voyage to India and elsewhere, the duke on landing at Trieste, ran over from there to the neighboring seaside resort of Abbazia, for the purpose of visiting the German imperial couple, who were spending the early spring there with their children, the kaiser declined to receive his brother-in-law and went out shooting, so as to avoid an interview with him, the princely prodigal meeting with no one except his sister, the empress, with whom he had an interview of a couple of hours.

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The Secret Memoirs of the Courts of Europe: William II, Germany; Francis Joseph, Austria-Hungary, Volume I. (of 2) from Project Gutenberg. Public domain.