I broached another subject. “Your Serene Highness believed once at Versailles that you knew how long you would live. You mentioned various figures, seven and nine, but I cannot now remember the year. I fancy it was seventy-six--the year of your life, I mean.” “Seventy-one,” he replied; “but God alone knows that.” When dinner was announced he let me go in front of him, and as he walked behind patted me a couple of times on the back, caressingly, evidently in the humour in which he was at Ferrières, when he called me “Büschlein,” his little Busch. Of what he said this evening at dinner and afterwards over our coffee I have only retained one delightful anecdote. Once upon a time the Junker of Kniephof had a visit from a lieutenant of hussars who was about to call upon an uncle in the neighbourhood. The uncle was particularly punctilious in the matter of etiquette and good manners, and he was next day to give an entertainment that would be attended by a number of guests of similar character and opinions. Overnight Bismarck induced the lieutenant to drink freely, and primed him so well with good liquor (if I remember rightly it was “Kriegsbohle”--war-bowl--composed of champagne and porter) that in the end he had considerably more than he could carry. Next morning Bismarck drove his guest to his uncle’s country-house in a car without springs. The roads were not good, the rain having transformed them into seas of mud, so that the two young gentlemen were badly bespattered when they arrived, while in addition to this the lieutenant was decidedly sea-sick. As they entered the drawing-room, the company of some forty persons (the ladies _en grande toilette_, the gentlemen in evening dress) regarded them with mixed amazement and disgust. The hussar presently disappeared. Bismarck, however, sat down to table with an air of careless gaiety, in spite of the evident disgust which the good people manifested, and acted as if there were nothing in his appearance that anybody could object to. People wondered at the time how it was he failed to have any idea of the unpleasant impression he had made. I left Varzin on Monday morning at 11 o’clock, again taking the post to Schlawe, proceeding thence by rail to Berlin and to Schönhausen. Before I ask the reader to accompany me further, I wish to make a few more remarks on the Varzin estate which I noted down on various occasions from statements made by the Imperial Chancellor. First, a few words as to its history, and then as to the manner in which it is administered and governed by its owner, and as to the life he led there in other respects, in 1877, and shortly before and after that year.