verdict, but a week later took the occasion of the Easter festivities
to send to his former favorite Kotze, a huge floral piece in the shape
of an Easter egg, bound with ribbons in the national colors.

William, however, refrained from intimating to Kotze his desire that
he should resume his service at court as master of ceremonies, and
this taken in conjunction with the fact that the procedure of the
court-martial remained a secret, left a painful degree of suspicion
resting upon the character of the unfortunate Baron Kotze. It is
perfectly true that many of those members of the court, and of
society, who had been most bitter in their denunciation of him,
left cards at his residence, but the Hohenau clique still remained
obdurate, and in spite of every possible intervention, persisted
in regarding Baron Kotze as having been unable to clear himself
completely. His most obdurate detractor remained Baron Schrader.

Kotze learning the part which Schrader had played in the entire
affair, after having consulted with his friends, came to the
conclusion that the injury done to him by his fellow master of
ceremonies, was far too great to admit of its being expiated, or
atoned for by a mere exchange of bullets on the duelling field, and
he accordingly instituted criminal proceedings against him. The
preliminaries to this sort of thing are exceedingly intricate and
tedious in Germany, and the legal authorities having received the
impression in one way or another that the public trial in connection
with the scandal would be viewed with displeasure in high quarters,
naturally placed every obstacle in Baron Kotze's way. Of course,
having instituted legal proceedings against Schrader, he was
debarred by the so-called code of honor from challenging Schrader, a
circumstance of which the latter took advantage to insinuate that if