At the shipyards of Elbing, William II narrowly escaped being wounded by
the fall of the large mast of the ship _Kohlberg_, which had been sawn
through in several places. He has just had his coachman, Menzel,
arrested, who very nearly brought him to his death by driving him into a
lime tree in a _troika_ presented to him by the Tzar.

At present it is his wish that Holland and Belgium should receive him.
The Queen Regent and Leopold II (in spite of the latter's violent love
for Germany) are hesitating, by no means certain as to the welcome which
their peoples would extend to him. William II proposes to strike the
imagination of the Dutch, as he did that of the Belgians, and to make his
appearance before them, aboard his yacht, the _Hohenzollern_, which Dutch
vessels are to go to meet and escort. To make the thing complete (and it
may well be that the idea is germinating in his mind) it would only
require him to visit the fortifications on the Meuse. The _Berliner
Tageblatt_ in a long article informs us that the Emperor declares them to
be _perfect_. 'Tis a good word. . . .

When the Imperial traveller shall have exhausted all pretexts for rushing
about on this Continent, he will go to Africa. There is a _but_ about
this; it arises from the question whether he will be able to obtain from
his Ministers that they should ask the Reichstag or the Landtag for the
800,000 francs that he needs for the voyage, the Constitution forbidding
the King of Prussia to leave Europe. But what does the Constitution
matter to William II? He, the master, will put an end to it!



August 1, 1891. [10]