What tales could be told by that writing-table if it had understanding, memory, and speech! What secrets, what mental struggles, what inspiration and illumination, what slow development of ideas, what sudden energetic decisions; what prayers, perhaps, may those pictures on the walls have witnessed! How the eyes of old Fritz and of the great Elector must have gleamed when they looked over the writer’s shoulder as he drafted bold and far-reaching measures which were to recast the German world, and with it the entire relations of Europe! The creative mind that ruled here has departed, never to return. To-day perhaps some unimportant but pretentious Herr von So-and-so, the possessor of three high-sounding titles and three times three exalted orders, makes himself at home in his old workshop, for this part of the house has also been altered, and what was formerly on the ground floor has now been shifted upstairs. In our thoughts, however, he still occupies his old place. The Minister is now far away, but, as we feel, only for a time. We, at any rate, feel his invisible presence. We cannot picture to ourselves this historic chamber without thinking of him as its occupant. We pass through it silently, and hold our breath as if we might disturb him. We seem to be standing within sacred precincts. And these must be the feelings of every one, even after years and tens of years, who brings with him a sense of greatness and of hero-worship. The house will one day disappear, and with it this chamber. Otherwise the visitor who might come here a hundred years hence would be still more deeply impressed than we are to-day, and an inner voice would whisper to him, “Hush, this place is sacred ground!” Continuing our tour of inspection through the front rooms, which were occupied by Prince Bismarck up to 1878, we pass through the papered door into the bed-chamber. Here the walls are covered with a white paper. There is but one window with two curtains, one white and the other of woollen stuff, with a black and red arabesque pattern. The bed is shut in by a screen, covered with red cloth, and on an adjoining shelf stand some cloth slippers and a pair of huge wooden shoes, with the colours of the Empire painted across the instep, a present from a simple-minded but skilful and patriotic patten-maker. A sofa in green stuff stands against the wall opposite the bed, and near it a table and a couple of cushioned armchairs. An old woodcut over the sofa, representing two knights with horses and hounds, and a white earthenware stove complete the fittings of the chamber.