'Our ministers are expected to report everything to the Kaiser, especially from Copenhagen; but Henckel-Donnersmarck does not report enough. He is either too haughty or too lazy. My master will send him to Weimar, if he is not more alert; but we have others!'

'I like him.'

'It is evident. Why?' asked the Count, with great interest.

'I sent him a case of Lemp's beer. He says it is better than anything of the kind made in Germany—polite but unpatriotic.'

'You jest,' said the Count. 'You have the reputation of being apparently never in earnest, but——'

'You shall have a case too,' I said, 'and then you can judge whether his truthfulness got the better of his politeness, or his politeness of his truthfulness.' He rose and bowed, he seated himself again.

'Remember, we shall always be interested in you,' he said; 'but there is one thing I should like to ask—are you interested in potash?'

'I have no business interests. If you wish to talk business, Count, you must go to the Consul General.'

That was the beginning. Henckel and I continued to be friends. He seldom spoke of diplomatic matters. He assured me (over and over again) that, if the ideas of Frederick the Great were to be followed, Germany and the United States must remain friends. I told him that Count von X. had said that 'if the United States could arrange to oust England from control of the Atlantic and make an alliance with Germany, these two countries would rule the world.'

'You will never do that,' he said. 'You are safer with England on the Atlantic than you would be with any other nation. I am not sure what our ultra Pan-Germans mean by "ruling the world." You may be sure that your Monroe Doctrine would go to splinters if our Pan-Germans ruled the world. As for me, I am sick of diplomacy. Why do you enter it? It either bores or degrades one. I am not curious or unscrupulous enough to be a spy. As to Slesvig, I have little concern with it. If Germany should find it to her interest, she might return Northern Slesvig; but there would be danger in that for Denmark. She must live in peace with us, or take the consequences.'