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Ghost Story:
Frederick William took the warning seriously. He called off his troops, returned to Berlin,
and lived another five years.
From this story, and that of the White Lady's next appearance, it would almost seem that
she held some watching brief over France. For in the early autumn of 1806 she was seen several
times. It was just before the Battle of Jena, when the Prussians were threatening to drive
Napoleon's army 'with whip-lashes' back to the Seine. At a party, Prince Louis of Prussia gaily
asked a young girl to play on the pianoforte as many tunes as he would kill Frenchmen the next
day. She played until dawn. The Prince, as he rode away, called' 'Forward, gentlemen, to crush
Napoleon!' The next night he lay dead at Saalfeld. Elector Frederick William III took the White
Lady's hint, and fled from Berlin; and Napoleon himself moved into the Old Palace and stayed
two months. The White Lady was quiet; perhaps French occupation pleased her.
When the White Lady was seen again in June, 1914, Kaiser William II may well have
expected his own death to follow. But the victim this time was the Archduke Francis Ferdinand,
heir to the throne of Austria. William lamented his friend, but kept on with his violently ,ilitarist
policy, and in August, 1918, its results broke upon the world-war between Germany and England.
The White Lady's prophesy of disaster had been more accurate than ever this time. Four years
later the defeated William left the empty title and the Old Palace behind him for ever. It is not
recorded whether the White Lady ever appeared again during his lifetime. Perhaps she had no
need to, for the long exile at Doorn was as fantastically tragic an end to the rule of the
Hohenzollerns as even she could have wished.
There is a story that on 29 April, 1945, as Berlin's death agony approached its end and the
fires of Allied bombing blazed brightly, the White lady walked once more in the no longer
princely corridors of the Old Palace. Their glory was departed, like the glory of the
Hohenzollerns, and the man who was to die ignominiously in the ruins of the Reich Chancellory
was a low-born person of the name of Schickelgruber. It is hardly likely that she would have
troubled to warn him. Perhaps this time she appeared in triumph, for the enemies of France and
England and the true Germany were slain upon the high places.
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