This sharp ear and faithful memory, joined with a quick eye, stood me in good stead in the years of welcome service which I undertook as a private individual for the Prince. To these and to the habit of putting all that I had experienced, seen, and heard in black on white without delay, I owe the accurate accounts of the memorable conversation of the 11th of April, 1877, of the visit to Varzin and the statements made by the Chancellor on that occasion, as well as the long list of detailed reports of pregnant and characteristic conversations that I had with him from the year 1878 up to 1890 in the palace and garden at Berlin when, at times of crisis or under other circumstances, I was either invited by the Prince or called on him without invitation for the purpose of obtaining news for the _Grenzboten_ or foreign newspapers. I kept up the same habit of committing everything of moment to paper during my various visits of shorter or longer duration between the years 1883 and 1889 to Friedrichsruh, where in the year last mentioned I was engaged for several weeks in arranging the Prince’s private letters and other documents. This custom also served me well in that ever memorable week in March, 1890, when I spent some of the darkest days of that period in the Prince’s immediate vicinity, nor did it fail me when I again greeted him in the Sachsenwald in 1891 and 1893, and was able to convince myself that in the interval his confidence in me had as little diminished as had my loyalty towards him.