These had done there on the grand scale what all the German
princes and princelings had tried to do in imitation and emulation of
French splendor. In Potsdam the grandeur, was not a historical growth as
at Versailles, but was the effect of family genius, in which there was
often the curious fascination of insanity.
They felt this strongly again amidst the futile monuments of the
Hohenzollern Museum, in Berlin, where all the portraits, effigies,
personal belongings and memorials of that gifted, eccentric race are
gathered and historically disposed. The princes of the mighty line who
stand out from the rest are Frederick the Great and his infuriate.
father; and in the waxen likeness of the son, a small thin figure,
terribly spry, and a face pitilessly alert, appears something of the
madness which showed in the life of the sire.
They went through many rooms in which the memorials of the kings and
queens, the emperors and empresses were carefully ordered, and felt no
kindness except before the relics relating to the Emperor Frederick and
his mother. In the presence of the greatest of the dynasty they
experienced a kind of terror which March expressed, when they were safely
away, in the confession of his joy that those people were dead.
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