“Excuse me, but I had not,” replied the Chief, “I was obliged to pay for that too. Food would not have been so dear if the officials had not made it so. I remember once seeing some very good timber in a Finnish boat. I asked the peasants what the price was and they mentioned a very moderate figure. But when I wanted to buy it they asked if it was for the Treasury (he used the Russian term). I was imprudent enough to reply that it was not for the Imperial Treasury (he again used the Russian words) but for the Royal Prussian Legation. When I came back to have the wood removed they had disappeared. Had I given them the address of a tradesman, with whom I could afterwards have made an arrangement, I might have got the wood at a third of the price I usually paid. They evidently regarded the Prussian Minister as one of the Tsar’s officials and thought to themselves: ‘No, when it comes to payment he will say that we have stolen the wood, and have us locked up until we give it to him for nothing.’” The Chief then gave some instances of the way in which the Tschinowniks harassed and exploited the peasantry, and afterwards returned to the subject of the poor pay of Prussian Ministers as compared with those of other countries. “It is just the same in Berlin,” he said. “The Prussian Minister has 10,000 thalers, but the English Ambassador has 63,000, and the Russian 44,000, while the latter’s Government bears the cost of all entertainments, and if the Tsar stays with him he usually receives a full year’s salary as compensation. Of course, in such circumstances, we cannot keep pace with them.” _Tuesday, November 22nd._--Prince Pless, Major von Alten, and a Count Stolberg dine with us. Mention is made of a great discovery of first-rate wine in a cellar near Bougival, which has been confiscated in accordance with the laws of war. Bohlen complains that none of it has reached us. Altogether the Foreign Office is as badly provided as possible. Care is always taken to set apart the most uncomfortable lodgings for the Chief, and they have been invariably lucky in finding such. “Yes,” said the Chancellor, laughing, “it is pure churlishness on their part to treat me like that. And so ungrateful, as I have always looked after their interests in the Diet. But they shall see me thoroughly transformed. I started for the war devoted to the military, but I shall go home a convinced Parliamentarian. No more military budgets.”