"Majesty" was too "lenient." It was "truly heartrending" to hear music so "butchered," etc.
"_En famille_," they called it, and Bertha sat at the end of the table between two cadets, younger sons of a principality not much larger than Richmond Park.
"Fraulein," whispered one, forgetting, under the impetus of youthful confidences, to speak through his nose; "Fraulein has dined beforehand, of course?"
"Why, no," she replied innocently, "and I am powerfully hungry."
"Then you will stay so"—this from the loquacious petty prince.
At that moment the soup was put before the War Lord, and he fell to demolishing it at starving bricklayer’s rate. When he had about half finished, the family and guests were served, and when he was through, his plate was removed and so were the rest. Bertha had had two spoonfuls, and the petty prince, who had gulped down four or five, grinned broadly.
Fish, entrée and fowl were offered, and ruthlessly yanked away in the same rapid gunfire fashion. To an empty stomach this teasing with coveted food was uncanny!
"I hope you have dined well," said the Empress, after the party adjourned to the "Cup Room" for coffee. "Was the service satisfactory?"
The coffee had an abominable oily taste. "From my colonies," explained the War Lord. "Mighty good, when one gets used to it."
But Bertha noticed that while his guests were served _en bloc_, he brewed coffee for himself and wife in a silver Vienna machine.
Desultory conversation: church building, social reform, Bismarck, orphans, knitting socks for soldiers’ children. Ill-concealed yawns. The War-Lord would have a game of billiards, and then off to the park on Extase (his favourite saddle-horse).
"Ride or drive, which do you prefer, Bertha?" he said to the Krupp heiress, going out.
"As Uncle Majesty commands," lisped the young girl, very much embarrassed.
"I promised Louise a sleigh ride. Perhaps she would like to go with her," suggested the Empress.
An outrider—something, to be sure, but going to the park "with that kid."
Princess Victoria Louise was eleven then, and intellectually no more advanced than a child of four. Poor child! her father’s ear trouble seemed only one of the dreadful inheritances that stamped her a sufferer from Hohenzollern disease. And Bertha had fondly imagined that she was to be classed with grown-ups!