PASSING AWAY.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9030, 17 April 1888, Page 6

PASSING AWAY.

LAST HOURS OF THE EMPEROR WILLIAM. AFFECTING SCENES AT THE PALACE. PUBLIC SORROW IN BERLIN. [FROM OUR OWN CORRESPONDENTS.] London, March 9. The greab and all-pervading topic of the hour is the demise of the Emperor. His fatal illness commenced on Sunday with a chill, but ifc was not until Wednesday that a recurrence of the old malady, renal calculus, threatened to bring his career to a close. Tho symptoms became more alarming as the week advanced, until between five and six o'clock yesterday afternoon, when Berlin, Paris, London, and Europe in general received the startling tidings that he breathed his last soon after midday. Two news agencies in Berlin were responsible for the report. It was received with general credence at the time, and was transmitted by telegraph to England, France, Austria, America, and Australia. However, all doubts were set at rest at halfpast nine this morning, when it became authoritatively known that the message of the previous evening only anticipated the dissolution of the Emperor by a few hours, and that the venerable monarch had really expired at half-past eight this morning. The Berlin correspondent of the Daily Telegraph thus describes the closing hours of the Emperor. Writing on the evening preceding his death the correspondent says : —I have just come from the Palace, where divine service is being performed in the Kaiser's bedroom. His Majesty is receiving the Sacrament with all the members of the Royal family now present in Berlin. The Emperor is perfectly conscious, but the end, it is believed, is very near. A most impressive and touching sight it was in the interior of the palace. Every face wore an expression of silent solemnity—from the highest Minister of the Crown to the simplest attendant. Ever and anon tears were seen falling down the cheeks of brave men who have served and followed his Majesty through weal and woe on many a hard-fought battle-field, and have equally for a long course of years stood by him in the servioe of the State, and been familiar with the details of his everyday life. Outside the Palace, and braving a heavy downpour of rain, thousands of people are standing, trying to catch the slightest item of news. At two o'clock His Majesty received Prince Von Bismarck, and conversed with him for ten minutes. What minutes must those have been ! The Chancellor felt that his Sovereign was about to be taken from him; that the master for whom he had worked so many years would in a few hours be no more ! Only a fortnight ago His Majesty saw his youthful and promising grandson taken from him in the bloom of life. He was his favourite grandchild, and he anticipated a brilliant future for him. This loss, and the anxious new? from San Remo about the state of his only son, weighed heavily on his aped heart, but he bore his trials with manly courage. As late as Friday last His Majesty's intellect was as bright as ever. To-day, with only a few intervals of consciousness, he has been wandering in mind : unable to recognise people ; lying in a somicomatose state on his simple soldier's couch— the camp-bedstead that has for years accompanied him wherever he went. The haste with which all his relatives were summoned to Berlin warned the public only too truly that it could hardly be hoped the Kaiser would overcome this sudden and sharp seizure, which was all the more dangerous because of its complications ; and, indeed, ho never rallied after the illness really took hold of him. It was always expected that the Kaiser's last illness would be a sudden and a rapidly-ending one; but people had become so accustomed to temporary ailments from which the Kaiser showed a really wonderful power of recovery, that no special attention was paid on Sunday when the well-known and honoured face did not appear at the Palace window. The crowd in the thoroughfares in the neighbourhood of the Palace is enormous, and it appears to be continually augmenting. Everywhere the demeanour of the populace is orderly and sympathetic. You see them moving backwards and forwards, but scarcely hear a sound spoken above a whisper, and this notwithstanding the disquieting fact that false rumours nave been current ever since five o'clock. Fripm that time the telegraph office has been besieged by troops of foreign correspondents, native journalists, and others making fruitless efforts to get telefraras accepted, which actually named the our when the Emperor's demise was stated to have taken place. The truth ie, that before seven o'clock a change for the better oacurred, and several of the Imperial aides-de-camp have since left the Palace for a while. Within the chamber of sickness the Empress, Prince and Princess William, the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess of Baden, and other members of the Imperial family and household are watching. The adjoining apartments are filled with Ministers and important officials, civil and military, among whom are Prince von Bismarck and Count von Moltke, and othor distinguished personages having , a place at Court. During this afternoon, while Prince William was with his grandfather, and Princess William endeavouring to console the aged empress, who is, of course, deeply agitated by the loss which seeme to be impending, a carriage conveying four little boys, all dressed in white, drove past. They proved to be the children of Prince and Princess William, and their wistful looks towards the Palace, all unconscious of what was passing within, naturally evoked many expressions of popular sympathy. The eldest of these great-grandchildren of the vetoran monarch is Prince Friederich Wilhelm, who will be six years old in two months' time ; the youngest, Prince August Wilhelm, was born on January 29, 1887. From .the street it is possible to see through the Palace windows the crowd of generals in full uniform, and from time to time the public recognise Prince William, the Grand Duke of Baden, the Crown Prince of Sweden, the Imperial Chancellor, and Count von Moltke.

It is impossible to describe the effect of the anxiety which has pervaded tHis capital during the last twenty-four hours otherwise than as stupendous! Needlees to say, all the theatres t&e closed ; the streets, notwithstanding bleak and most unpleasant weather, are animated with the throng of human beings, the most marked, and, indeed, impressive featur&of whose behaviour, as I have already noticed, is their quietude. The multitude is there, but its speech is repressed. The evening newspapers publish, as it were with bated breath, the reports issued during the day, and the public discuss them with hushed voices. To-day the relieving guard marched past the Palace in silence, and a similar respectful quiet is impressed on this great city as if we were in the presence of death, though the august patient yet lives.