Explore "A Crown of Straw" by Allen Upward on Textopian. Read with annotations and highlights.
AND now for a time all other matters at Court fell into the background, and every mind was taken up with the preparations for the coming visit of the Kaiser.
The character of the young man who at this time had only recently succeeded to the Imperial throne of Germany was still to some extent a matter of conjecture. It was known that Providence had endowed him with a very ample share of confidence in his own abilities, and belief in his own prerogatives. It was very quickly discovered that these qualities in the young ruler were not tempered by any great measure of consideration for either the rights or the abilities of others. In his domestic relations he would have deserved great praise if he had been able occasionally to forget the character of the sovereign in that of the brother or son. As a Crown Prince he had suffered under the suspicion of having lent himself to an intrigue for the exclusion of his father from the throne; and such rumours obtained more credence from a certain vein of extravagance which marked all his public actions, and had led the irrepressible Von Stahlen to invent for him the name of "The Barn-door Emperor."