Dinner was served here at 5 to 6 o’clock in the evening, and during my stay at Varzin it usually lasted till after 7, the conversation being for the most part very lively, and sometimes of memorable interest. At the end of the dinner the Prince used to feed his dogs with his own hands, giving them cooked meat from a plate. If I confess that the tall figure in the armchair at the head of the table and the two big dogs on the right and left with their eyes fixed upon his face recalled to my mind pictures which I had seen of the god Odin and his two wolves, I shall possibly incur the censure of severe critics with “masculine souls” and hyper-serious (or hyper-comical) self-conceit, who are accustomed to fling about such polite terms as “flunkeyism” and so forth. Their disapproval will disturb or affect me as little as the chatter of our literary financiers in the less distinguished organs of the daily press about my views of the Chancellor. First plunder, and then abuse--such is their wont. Let them clap their hands or hiss, it will always remain a matter of complete indifference to me! So far as possible nothing was consumed at table that was not bred, grown or shot on the property. The Prince himself said to me one evening: “Almost everything that is eaten here comes from my estates, including Schönhausen--meat, fowl, game and fish, the vegetables, the artichokes, which of course do not thrive so well here as in the south, the peaches, the walnuts and the hazel nuts. But I must occasionally buy a sheep from the farmers, and my household is not large enough for me to kill an ox. It is only Dietze who can do that, as he employs so many people in his distillery and sugar factory, and feeds them.” It is scarcely necessary to add that the cellar at Varzin is well stocked.