_Friday, December 2nd._--I see Neininger in the morning and learn that he succeeded in obtaining an audience from the Chief by playing the informer. He hinted to a Dr. Schuster of Geneva that “there might possibly be collusion between the foreign settlement collected round headquarters, and the _personnel_ of the Government of National Defence,” and also that there were “fresh symptoms of intimate relations being maintained across the German investing lines with the Oriental colony at Versailles.” Schuster managed to convey these hints to the Minister. The “Oriental colony,” however, (a title which is intended to apply chiefly to Löwinsohn, and after him to Bamberg) appears to be innocent, and the intrigue to have been contrived merely for the purpose of providing a better position for Neininger on the _Moniteur_ by securing the dismissal of the other two journalists. Subsequently wrote some letters and articles again setting forth the Chief’s views in the matter of the Bavarian Treaty, and translated for the King the leading article in _The Times_ on Gortschakoff’s reply to Granville’s despatch. Alten, Lehndorff and a dragoon officer Herr von Thadden, were the Chief’s guests at dinner. The Chief said that he had taken measures for providing our sentries with more comfortable quarters. “Up to the present they occupied Madame Jesse’s coach-house, which has no fireplace. That would not do any longer, so I ordered the gardener to clear out half of the greenhouse for them. ‘But Madame’s plants will be frozen,’ said the gardener’s wife. ‘A great pity,’ said I. ‘I suppose it would be better if the soldiers froze.’” The Chief then referred to the danger of the Reichstag rejecting, or even merely amending, the treaty with Bavaria. “I am very anxious about it. People have no idea what the position is. We are balancing ourselves on the point of a lightning conductor. If we lose the equilibrium, which at much pains I have succeeded in establishing, we fall to the ground. They want more than can be obtained without coercion, and more than they would have been very pleased to accept before 1866. If at that time they had got but half what they are getting to-day! No; they must needs improve upon it and introduce more unity, more uniformity; but if they change so much as a comma, fresh negotiations must be undertaken. Where are they to take place? Here in Versailles? And if we cannot bring them to a close before the 1st of January--which many of the people in Munich would be glad of--then German unity is lost, probably for years, and the Austrians can set to work again in Munich.”