Amazement must have shown on my face. A blow
with a feather would have knocked me down. So wonder Wilhelm II was
staring blankly, no wonder this message had to be delivered verbally.
Hurriedly I began to memorize it. Presently, I saw Count Wedel come
in and he and the Kaiser began to talk in whispers. Then Wilhelm
looked up and said:
"Have you memorized it?"
"Yes, sir!" Taking the note from me, he at once struck a match and
held it under the paper until it was reduced to ashes. Then making a
curt gesture of dismissal, Wedel gave me a signal to retire and we
backed toward the door. I was in possession of a secret known only to
the Emperor himself and which at that moment the cabinets of France
and England and the financiers of the world would have given hundreds
of thousands of dollars to possess. Out into the hall we backed,
always being careful never to commit the discourtesy of turning our
faces away from the Emperor, and the last I saw of him, was that
lonely figure seated at his desk, the greenish light playing over him,
around and beyond him darkness and his face illuminated against that
background, grayish, old. There he was, at his desk at midnight, in
an underground chamber of the Foreign Office, the Emperor of Germany,
working in solitude, while most of his subjects slept, tirelessly
mapping out a policy the trend of which he dared discuss with no man
save Wedel and possibly his oldest son.
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