He saw her very often during his stay in Berlin, and she was unfailingly
kind to him--and to me also when I knew her later in Rome and London.
She always lives in my memory as one of the most charming women I have
ever met. Her face often comes back to me with her beautiful bright
smile and the saddest eyes I have ever seen. I have known very few like
her. W. also had a talk with Prince Frederick-Charles, father of the
Duchess of Connaught, whom he found rather a rough-looking soldier with
a short, abrupt manner. He left bitter memories in France during the
Franco-German War, was called the "Red Prince," he was so hard and
cruel, always ready to shoot somebody and burn down villages on the
slightest provocation--so different from the Prince Imperial, the "unser
Fritz" of the Germans, who always had a kind word for the fallen foe.
[Illustration: Prince Bismarck. From a sketch by Anton von Werner,
1880.]
W.'s days were very full, and when the important sittings began it was
sometimes hard work. The Congress room was very hot (all the colleagues
seemed to have a holy horror of open windows)--and some of the men very
long and tedious in stating their cases.
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