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 what I have said to you before,” he remarked.  “You are the most happy-go-lucky of the nations.  Did he speak of England?”

“Yes, of his beloved England,” said Michael.  “He was extremely cordial about our relations.”

“Good.  I like that,” said Falbe briskly.

“And he recommended me to spend two months in Berlin in the winter,” added Michael, sliding off on to other topics.

Falbe smiled.

“I like that less,” he said, “since that will mean you will not be in London.”

“But I didn’t commit myself,” said Michael, smiling back; “though I can say ‘beloved Germany’ with equal sincerity.”