He paused for a moment, and then returning to the attempt at blackmail, said: “The bookseller wrote once more on the subject, and this time he said he would be satisfied with fifty thousand thalers. I kept to my former decision, however. ‘Not five groschen, and not a single policeman.’” With the exception of my own family and a few old friends, I had spoken to no one about the diary I kept during the war, and least of all to a bookseller, at Leipzig or elsewhere. I was quite certain of that; it was utterly impossible; and I was, therefore, absolutely dumbfounded at these remarks. This, then, was obviously the reason--which I had so long sought vainly to discover--why he had broken off all direct intercourse with me. I had been calumniated, and he mistrusted me. I was more than once on the point of saying that this bookseller was a myth, and, what was more, a gross and palpable invention by some malignant fellow, who found me in his way because he could not use me for the advancement of his own selfish ambition. I checked myself, however, and only said I was thankful to him for his confidence. It was not unjustified. The diary certainly existed, but I had never intended to publish it. It was only for myself, and it by no means consisted merely of what he had said respecting the King and other Princes. “And besides,” I concluded, “it was no secret for the Foreign Office. At Versailles Abeken had called attention to it at table, and you observed that it would one day be quoted, ‘_Conferas Buschii_,’ &c.” “Yes,” he observed, “that is quite right. I remember now. By the way, you will hardly have cared much for Abeken either.” I replied: “Well, not very much.” “Nor did I,” he added. “He was only happy in the atmosphere of the Court and at the Radziwills; and when he had his nephews with him, ‘my nephews, the Counts York,’ he was quite beside himself with delight. He was useful, however, in his own red-tape fashion. He had such a sackful of phrases that, when I wanted some, he had only to shake it out, and there I had a whole pile.” He then referred for the third time to the fabulous bookseller, who still seemed to cause him some anxiety; and I again assured him that I had no idea of publishing my notes. “After my death,” I said, “some fifty years hence, perhaps.” “It need not be so long,” he replied. “You may even now write on the subject; and, indeed, I should be pleased if you did. And just ask me when there is anything you do not know or are in doubt about. It should be my epitaph. I should not like to have it done by Hesekiel, though. But you will proceed with tact and discrimination, and in this respect I must trust entirely to you. But you must not let Decker publish it, but some other publisher, or people will notice that I have had a hand in it.”