He: “It is a question of three days, perhaps of three weeks, but I am going for certain. I cannot stand him any longer. He wants even to know whom I see, and has spies set to watch those who come in and go out. For that reason, too, I do not well see how I am to get the papers away. They might be sent to you, but how?” I replied: “I could take the more important ones away with me, a few small packets at a time, carrying them in the first place to Hehn’s and then perhaps to Leipzig.”
He: “Hehn? Who is he?”
I told him, and that he was perfectly trustworthy.
He: “I could also have sent them to Schönhausen, and you could go there from Friedrichsruh to fetch them. I want you to have the most important of them copied and to keep the copies for the present.”
I: “But if a stranger were to copy them he might betray the contents to others.”
He: “Ah, I am not afraid of that. Of course he might, but I have no secrets among them—none whatever. Come to Friedrichsruh when I am there and we will work together. But I should like you first to get a letter from Frederick William IV. into the press. I saw it at the end of a new book, of which I do not remember the title, but it was a fabricated version, inaccurate in form and full of impossibilities and absurdities. I have a correct copy of the original, but I cannot find it in your envelopes. (Searched in that for 1852.) Ah, yes, here it is. Take it with you, copy it, and then return me the original.”
I suggested that it should be printed in the Grenzboten.
He: “All right, but it must be given as coming from Vienna, and the publication of the false version must serve as a reason for publishing it.”
While I was helping him to pack the papers in one of the boxes he came to speak about the Rescript, and said: “It comes of an over-estimate of himself, and of his inexperience of affairs, and that can lead to no good. He is much too conceited, however, to believe me that it will merely cause confusion and do harm.”
I: “It is the disgusting —— of the press and of the Court menials that are to blame for his self-deception.” He laughed. I told him that the article on the influence exercised by the Rescript on the elections had been written and sent off, but was not published by the Daily Telegraph.