At tea he spoke again of the “conflict” and his conversation with the King at that time, which he had related to me on my last visit to him in Berlin. He now said: “During the ‘conflict’ they thought out a variety of measures which they intended to take against me--the scaffold, or at least the confiscation of my property. I consequently raised as much money as I possibly could upon my estates. I was then called the Prussian Strafford--you remember Parliament condemned him to the block in the Revolution of 1641. The King was also afraid of being beheaded--the women had talked him into it at Baden. He wished to abdicate if he could not find any one who would govern with him. When I went to meet him on the railway he was quite discouraged and depressed. At length he asked me: ‘But what if they were to send us both to the scaffold?’ At first I merely said, ‘What then?’ but I afterwards added, ‘You are thinking of Louis XVI., but I would remind you of Charles I. He died with honour, at all events.’ That produced a very sobering effect upon him. I had touched his conscience as an officer.” From this incident he came to speak of the behaviour of the King at Ems in presence of the attacks of Benedetti, and said: “I soon noticed that he was beginning to take fright and was ready to pocket another Olmütz. I was at that time in Varzin, and as I drove through Wussow, on the way to Berlin, the Pastor stood outside his house and saluted me as I passed. I described a sabre cut in the air to show that we meant business. But the news in Berlin was by no means good. I accordingly telegraphed to him (the King) that I requested my dismissal from office if he received Benedetti again. No answer came, and I telegraphed once more that if he had now received Benedetti I should regard it as an acceptance of my resignation and return to Varzin. Then came a telegram of two hundred lines (doubtless words) from Abeken. I thereupon invited Moltke and Roon to a dinner of three, and told them how the matter stood. Roon was beside himself, and so was Moltke. I asked if we were quite prepared for such a war. He replied that so far as it was humanly possible to foresee we might hope for victory. I then took the two hundred lines, and, without altering a word of the King’s, reduced them to twenty, which I read over to them. They said it would do in that form. I then had it sent to all our Embassies, with the exception of Paris, of course, and got it inserted in the Berlin papers. And it really did do. The French took it excessively ill.” _Sunday, October 21st._--A beautiful bright day. The snow has disappeared. At lunch the Chief, while reading through despatches and telegrams as usual, said to Holstein: “Write that it would be desirable for the press to let it be understood that it is intended, in case of a French _coup d’état_, to recommend the Emperor to convoke the Reichstag for the consideration of such eventualities as may then arise.”