Torn between these conflicting views, it is not strange that William welcomed a middle course, suggested, I am authoritatively informed, by Frederic himself.
The Crown Prince returned to Berlin from Ems thoroughly frightened. He had no doubt whatever that he was suffering from cancer and expected to die within the year. Like all men of an expansive and impressionable temperament, he was subject to fits of profound melancholia--as Freytag puts it, “fond of indulging in gloomy thoughts and pessimistic humours;” so much so that he “sometimes cherished the idea of renouncing the throne, in case of its being vacant, and leaving the government to his son.” * He had grown lethargic and dispirited through years of inaction and systematic exclusion from governmental labours and interests. He returned from Ems now, in this April of 1887, in a state of complete depression.
The evident affection and sympathy with which both his father and son received him, gave an added impulse to the despairing ideas which had conquered his mind since his sentence of death by cancer had been uttered.
In the course of a touching interview between the three Hohenzollerns, Frederic with tears in his eyes declared that he did not desire to reign, and that if by chance he survived his father he would waive his rights of succession in favour of his elder son. This declaration was within a brief space of time repeated in the presence of Prince Bismarck, and was by him reduced to writing. The paper was deposited among the official private archives of the Crown at Berlin, and presumably is still in existence there.
CHAPTER V.--THROUGH THE SHADOWS TO THE THRONE
The fact that the Crown Prince Frederic, despondent and unnerved in the presence of a mortal disease, had voluntarily pledged himself to renounce his rights of succession, was naturally not published to the world. Although it is beyond doubt that such a pledge was given, nothing more definite than a roundabout hint has to this day been printed in Germany upon the subject. There are no means of ascertaining the exact number of personages in high position to whom this intelligence was imparted at the time. As has been said, the Emperor, the Chancellor, and the young heir were parties to Frederic’s original action. Certain indications exist that for a time the secret was kept locked in the breasts of these four men. Then Frederic confessed to his wife what he had done.