I delivered Gretchen’s greetings, and was instructed to thank her very kindly. In the afternoon Chrysander came to my room and begged me to send him from Leipzig my opinion of the professor and the “intimate friend.” “It is my duty,” he said, “to protect his Serene Highness against tactlessness.”

After dinner, when the Mercks, who had also been present, had withdrawn, there was a scene in the coffee room. The indefatigable Y. once more addressed a series of questions to the Prince, whose newspaper hour had arrived, but who nevertheless listened to him politely, until suddenly—I did not notice to what special point the sucker had been applied, but it must have been an exceptionally tender spot—he exclaimed angrily: “You should not put such questions, professor. I cannot imagine how any one can put such idiotic questions.” Tableau! A thunderbolt! Silence for a moment, and then the conversation is resumed with the ladies on matters of no importance, while the Chief studies his paper. On Y. rising to leave, the Countess makes a sign to me to remain, and I talk for some time to her and the Princess. On taking leave I kiss the Chief’s hand for the first time, and doubtless also for the last. He says: “Good-bye, dear old friend, but come back again soon.”

In the meantime may God protect our dear old master from his new friends—his business friends! Amen!

INDEX

INDEX TO PROPER NAMES.

William I.—Prince Bismarck—Busch, the Author—France—Germany and smaller German States occur so frequently that they have not been indexed. The prefixes “von” and “de” have been generally omitted.

FOOTNOTES

[1] The Alliance Israelite is here referred to. Glaser, the ex-Minister of Justice, was a baptised Jew from Bohemia.

[2] As far back as the 2nd of April, 1858, he wrote from Frankfurt to a friend (see Hesekiel, page 183): “I believe that the Zollverein, which must be reorganised after 1865 ... will provide an opportunity of securing the exercise of the right of federal consent in customs matters on the lines of the Union scheme of 1849, and establishing a kind of customs parliament.” On the 18th of September, 1861, in a letter to a friend, which was written at Stolpmunde on the way from St. Petersburg to Berlin (same work, page 189), he said: “I do not see why we should be so coy and reserved with regard to the idea of popular representation, whether in the form of a confederation or of a customs parliament. An institution which enjoys legitimate authority in every German State, and which even the Conservatives in Prussia would not willingly dispense with, cannot be opposed as revolutionary.... In that way one might create a thoroughly Conservative national representation, and at the same time secure the gratitude of even the Liberals.”