Just as we sat down to table, one of the Court officials announced that the Crown Prince proposed to come to dinner and to stay for the night. The Prince’s secretary at the time asked that the bureau and the large salon next the Chancellor’s room, should be prepared for the five gentlemen who accompanied his Royal Highness. The Chief replied, “We cannot give up the bureau, as we want it for our work.” He then placed his dressing room at their disposal, and further proposed that either Blumenthal or Eulenburg should sleep in his bedroom. He required the salon for the reception of the French negotiators and any Princes who might call upon him. The Court official went off, pulling a long face, and was impertinent enough to make some remarks in the corridor about “discourtesy” and so forth. Count Lehndorff dined with us, and the conversation was very lively. Some allusion having been made to Frederick the Great’s statue in Unter den Linden, which had been decorated with black, red and yellow flags, the Minister condemned Wurmb for allowing this controversy to be stirred up. “This stupid quarrel about the colours should not have been reopened, and it once more proves Wurmb’s incapacity. For me the question is settled and done with since the North German flag has been adopted. Otherwise this battle of colours is a matter of indifference to me. As far as I am concerned they may be green, yellow, and all the colours of a fancy dress ball, or they can take the banner of Mecklenburg-Strelitz. Only the Prussian soldier will have nothing to do with the black, red, and yellow.” The Chief then spoke of the peace, which he still considered remote, adding: “If they (the French Government) go to Orleans, we shall follow them there, and further--right down to the sea shore.” He read out some telegrams, including one giving a list of the troops in Paris. “There are supposed to be 180,000 men in all, but there are hardly 60,000 real soldiers amongst them. The mobile and national guards with their snuffboxes (a reference to their obsolete weapons) are not to be reckoned as soldiers.” I asked if I should telegraph about the report of artillery and rifle-fire in the streets of Paris, which people fancied they had heard. He said I was to do so. “But not yet, I suppose, about the negotiations with Favre?” “Yes,” he replied, and then went on as follows: “First at Haute-Maison, near Montry, then the same evening at Ferrières, and next day a third conversation, but without effect, as regards the armistice and the peace. Other French parties have also entered into negotiations with us,” he said, and gave some indications from which I gathered that he referred to the Empress Eugénie. Something else led him to speak of his skill in shooting. He said that as a young man he could hit a sheet of paper with a pistol at a hundred yards, and had shot off the heads of ducks in the pond.