“Exception has been taken in a quarter upon whose approval everything depends to the closing words of the ‘P.S.’ It is thought that they sound as if the Chancellor had spoken through the writer of the article. It would be well to avoid such an authoritative tone. Thus far the message I have to deliver. I fancy such an impression would not have been made if the _Magdeburger Zeitung_ could have been read at the same time, but I could not lay my hands upon it. Of course it would not be desirable to state expressly that such an impression is incorrect. Perhaps it may be possible to efface it indirectly by saying something to the following effect.” He then gave me a recipe, in accordance with which I prepared as follows the fourth article of our series, which appeared in the next number of the _Grenzboten_. “In Explanation. “Berlin, _May 6th_. “We observe that the second of our articles on the Chancellor crisis has been judged in very different ways by the press. The _Germania_ has discovered amongst other things that it is directed against the Empress Eugénie. Other papers were astounded at information which they received from us for the first time. Others, again, considered themselves so fully acquainted with the truth, which is generally known to lie at the bottom of a deep well, that they declare the contents of the article to be untrue, or--as some with discourteous indignation chose to express themselves--invented. Finally, another section of the press, including the chief organ of public opinion in a small German capital (this referred to the _Weimar Zeitung_), found that the bulk of what we had stated was long since known. In spite of its unfriendly tone towards us, we must do that organ the justice of acknowledging that its statement is correct. In other words, we do not enjoy the power of slipping through keyholes, we cannot make ourselves invisible in order to spy out what happens in otherwise inaccessible spheres, and finally we have no devil upon two sticks at our disposal to remove for us the roofs of palaces and clubs. We have nothing more than a tolerably good memory and the habit of collecting material. In dealing with what we have read in the press and heard in conversation, we act pretty much as the botanist does when collecting specimens in upland meadows and lowland marshes--we place carefully side by side the specimens we have found scattered in various directions and examine their affinities, noting how they complement each other. To our great surprise we now find that the result of this surely very simple process has produced here and there the impression that we possess magical powers, and that we had brought profound secrets to light. It is certainly quite true, however, that we have said nothing that attentive readers with a certain capacity for comparative analysis and sound deductions have not been long ago aware of. Why, then, all this excitement?