I make abstracts for the King of two articles that appeared in the _Morning Post_ of the 28th and 29th of October, which are understood to have come from Persigny or Prince Napoleon. The assertion in these articles that in the negotiations with the delegate of the Empress our demand extended only to Strassburg, and a narrow strip of land in the Saar district, with about a quarter of a million inhabitants, is (the Chief tells me) based on a misunderstanding. I am instructed to telegraph that in consequence of yesterday’s negotiations the Chancellor has offered M. Thiers a truce of twenty-five days on the basis of the military _status quo_. Thiers returned at 12 o’clock, and negotiated with the Chief until 2.30 P.M. The demands of the French are exorbitant. At lunch we hear that in addition to a twenty-eight days’ armistice for the elections and the meeting of the National Assembly thus chosen to determine the position of the Provisional Government, they demand nothing less than the right to provision Paris and all other fortresses held by them and besieged by us, and the participation of the Eastern provinces, of which we require the cession in the elections. Ordinary logic finds it difficult to conceive how the provisioning of fortresses can be deemed consistent with the maintenance of the military _status quo_. Amongst other subjects discussed at dinner were the elections in Berlin. Delbrück was of opinion that they would be more favourable than hitherto. Jacoby, at any rate, would not be re-elected. Count Bismarck-Bohlen thought otherwise. He anticipated no change. The Chancellor said: “The Berliners must always be in opposition and have their own ideas. They have their virtues--many and highly estimable ones--they fight well, but they would not consider themselves to be as clever as they ought to be unless they knew everything better than the Government.” That failing, however, was not confined to Berliners, the Chief added. All great cities were much the same in that respect, and many were even worse than Berlin. They were in general more unpractical than the rural districts, where people were in closer contact with nature, and thus not only got into a more natural and practical way of thinking. “Where great numbers of men are crowded together they easily lose their individuality and dissolve into one mass. All sorts of opinions are in the air, they arise from hearsay and repetition, and are little or not at all founded on facts, but are propagated by the newspapers, popular meetings and conversations over beer, and then remain firmly, immutably rooted. It is a sort of false second nature, a faith or superstition held collectively by the masses. They reason themselves into believing in something that does not exist, consider themselves in duty bound to hold to that belief, and wax enthusiastic over narrow-minded and grotesque ideas. That is the case in all great cities, in London for instance, where the cockneys are quite a