The Savannah morning news., 1901-12-08


crude productions are significant. The
other day all the world was laughing
at him over that historical picture
into which he had his own august self
painted in all the glory of his imperial
robes and imperial moustaches, though
he was a school boy when the picture
was first painted. Every one remembers
too, how, on his yacht in the Baltic,
he appeared one Sunday robed in fan
tastic. would be- ecclesiastic robes.
read prayers on deck to his astonlshed
officers and men and solemnly gave
them his blessing at the end of the
service. There is even told in Paris the
story that on another day, when a
storm arose he went upon the bridge,
yelled at the wind to cease blowing and
looked absolutely disguised and amaz-
ed when he discovered that his au-
thority did not reach so far. A few
days ago he is reported to have bought
on his own Judgment a set of six
costly Moorish" steeds brought by an
itinerant Arab for his inspection. which
turned out after the purchase to be
ordinary Skates" faxed by the sub
tie arts of the Son of the Dessert, and
worth In the market about $50 piece.
When the stable men pointed out the
flaw in the imperial omniscience, the
Kaiser'S fury was terrific, and the
frightened witnesses for a time medi-
tated binding the foamlng monarch
with vulgar stable ropes.
If Wilhelm suffers from megalomania
Nicholas of Russia, gentler soul, has
melancholia as the eternal companion
of his days and nights. He is a brood
ing mystic sadly bordering all the
time over insoluhle metaphysical prob
lens, a. fatalist of the dreary Oriental
type, "our pale brother of dreams,
as the Princess of Wales is said to
have called him. He dabbles in all kinds
of occult pursuits and surrounds him
self when dignity will permit, with
weird professors of dark art. "Wise
women from the roaming Tartar
tribes read the stars for him. Ameri-
can crystal gazers have watched their
globes for him in his study at Cat
china and communicated to the weary,
hopeless young man, with the sad
eyes, the wonderful versions they see
of the doings of the Astral Plane. 1t
is we'll known that the attack made
upon him in Japan, when Prince George
OF Crete came so manfully to the
rescue, was caused by Nicholass effort
to enter disguised into Shinto temple
and to penetrate the jealousy guarded
mysteries which no white man had
ever seen. Those who saw him in
France on his late visit were all struck
by a certain uncanny look always
lurking in his face, however he might
smile in obedience to the protocol; the
expression of the developing melan-
cholia- maniac. Nicholas believes that
he is doomed to be ssassinated. not
because 1t is the natural end for
Russian Emperor, but because astrolo
glstS and crystal gazers, who knew
nothing of his rank, have more than
once predicted for him a violent death.
1t is a. long step from Nicholas OF
Russia to the sad little King of Spain
whose appearance gives the impress
sien-~that he is travelling down the
same dark road of melancholy. Alfonso
the dark browed, heavy eyed slender
limbed little boy of fifteen. plays sadly
in reserved stretch of the sands OF
San Sebastian, his grave mother watch
ing him all the time, and his few
carefully picked playmates, chosen
from the sons of the grandees of Spain
scarcely daring to touch him. The
utter smash of Spain in the American
war came just as the boy was begin
ming to feel that he would be so train
ed as to play it nobly The practical
wiping out of Spain from any world
Importance has saddened both deeply,
incurably. Even without that crushing
blow Alfonso could never have been
gay, he is one of the victims of educa-
ton. His young life has been one long,
dreary grind at books. He has had
cran1med into his aching head FIVE or
six languages. and enough history and
political economy, not to mention all
the ordinary branches, to stock a col
lege professor for all his career. Pro-
badly very little of Alfonso's undigest-
ed learning will remain with him when.
next year, he filings away his books
and picks up the sceptre. But it looks
as if the melancholy of his school days
would hang over him all his life.
The old Emperor of Austria belong
ing to a generation when royal person
ages were not supposed to know any
more than other people or even as
much. He is believed to possess genial
contempt for all books and to ignore
that special form of nervous sensibili-
ty that often menaces the boakish tenn
permanent. But he has heavy troubles
of his own, and small insanities that
spring from them. Apart from some of
his own misdeeds there has been heavy
grief in his family, grief coming both
from madness and from crime. Apart
from the influence of the terrible stories
that cling around the. archdukes, and
OF the sad Empress, assassinated in
the midst of her half insane dream
companionship with the old Greek gods
the Austrian Kaiser is depressed by
the knowledge that his empire is
crumbling away beneath him He suf-
fers from a mixture of melancholia
and megolomania and jumps from
unhealthy and even unseemly gaiety
to brooding care. waking sometimes
from that condition to singular forms
of petty personal tyranny. One of his
small insanities is his jealous preserv-
ing of the famous wild boar shooting
of the imperial forests. His son-in-
law, Prince Leopold of Bavaria, is
passionately addicted to the pursuit o.
the wild boar, and is always trying TO
dodge his father-in-law's vigilance and
have at the tusked monster of the
woods. The old Emperor sometimes
dream o nights that this desperate
young prince is out by torchlight in
quest of the sacred animal. Trembling
with rage. the Kaiser will ring up his
major domo and will not be pacifed
till he has been assured a score of
times that the prince is innocently
asleep in the palace
It would no doubt be impossible TO
make out a presentable list of royal
persons as sane as sailors. The King
of England might go as an example
though, after all, "a theorist bent on
making his point at any cost might
observe that Edward seems to have
suffered from chronic debt mania"
which. in an exaggerated form, NAV
be sign of distorted mentality.
One of the last persons one would
thinks OF accusing of any mental twist
would be the jolly young Queen Of
Holland So nffaY