While in his official life Bucher enjoyed the high esteem and full confidence of the Chief, whose example was followed more or less willingly by others, he experienced in later years considerable bitterness and neglect, principally, but not exclusively, under the Secretaries of State, von Bülow and Hatzfeldt. He finally asked for his discharge, not merely on account of age and illness, which were the ostensible motives. His request was acceded to. He declined the proposal of the Prince that he should retire into private life with the title of Excellency, because “he could not then have continued to stitch on his own buttons, or to stroll about the Jungfernhaide with a botanist’s impedimenta on his back.” Bucher, who was one of the truest of the true, paid several long visits to the Prince after the fatal 18th of March, 1890, and helped him to prepare his “Memoirs,” of which, so long as he was engaged upon them, his valuable assistance materially enhanced the trustworthiness. It may be added that Bucher remained unmarried, and that, considering his position, he had little intercourse during recent years with his fellows. His friends in diplomatic circles included Schloetzer, Limburg-Stirum, and Kusserow; and in the financial and industrial world, Hansemann and Werner Siemens. The bond between him, Victor Hehn, and myself was our common veneration for the Chancellor and our equally deep contempt for hypocrisy and place hunting. His character in company was that of a sober, taciturn man, who was, nevertheless, by no means devoid of poetic feeling and humour, who could tell many a good story in an effective manner, and who sometimes talked also in very pleasant fashion of his canaries and the Alpine flowers in his herbarium. His ideas and feelings were expressed in a low tone, without being wanting in energy. A cool head, but a warm heart; still water, but clear and deep. I have given more time and space to his picture than I had intended at first, but I believe I shall have thereby compensated for the mischief done by others to his memory; for I remember that Count Caprivi’s menials, who had the preparation of the _Reichsanzeiger_, thought it sufficient to devote three dry lines to his departure when he passed into eternity at Glion, on the Lake of Geneva, on the 12th of October, 1892. I propose to deal with Keudell later. Of Bülow I will only remark that he is a man of routine, of moderate ability, and is understood to be not altogether free from an inclination to intrigue. Geheimrath Hepke, a lean, wizened man in the fifties, is not a very pleasant personage. He has something in him of the Privy Councillor as he exists in the popular imagination--great self-conceit, a consciousness that he knows practically everything considerably better than the rest of the world, and doubtless also a high opinion of his own rank and title.