where the most gracious Master would not at first hear a word of our proposals, and got so angry on one occasion that he brought down his fist violently upon the table and the inkstand nearly flew out of the window. And here you may supplement the report in the diary as to this incident. Fragmentary and incomplete in every respect, it leaves out the first act in the negotiations, in which I had to wean the Crown Prince of the notion, which doubtless originated at Baden, that the Emperor idea was un-German and would damage the country. He was thinking only of the mediæval emperors, the Roman expeditions, and Charles V. For that reason he wished to have only a King of Germany or of the Germans, while the other three kings were to resume the title of Dukes--Duke of Bavaria, of Suabia and of Saxony. And to this he added the idea of coercion--they should be invited to Versailles and once we had got him there it was to be a case of needs must when the devil drives (_jetzt friss Vogel oder stirb_). I replied to him that that would be treacherous, disloyal and ungrateful, and that I would not lend myself to it, as, moreover, it would have no permanency. No friendly persuasion could possibly induce the Kings to submit to this degradation. I then pointed out to him the advantages of the Emperor idea, somewhat in the same way as I did afterwards in my letter to the King of Bavaria. The Kings would prefer to subordinate themselves to a fellow-countryman, who bore the title of German Emperor and to grant him certain rights in war and peace, than to a King of Prussia, who would only be a somewhat more powerful neighbour. Among the people, however, the Emperors had left a deeper impression than had the few princes, who, after the time of Charlemagne, called themselves, like Henry the Fowler, German Kings. In the restoration of the Empire they looked forward to the Emperor as the keystone of the arch. The Emperor still sits enthroned in Kyffhäuser in North Germany, and in the South German Untersberge. This idea should not be connected with that of a Roman Emperor, Roman expeditions or any pretensions to universal sovereignty would be against the true interests of the nation. It was, on the contrary, a purely national idea which the Emperor would represent and which we also had in view, the idea of unification after discord and decay, of new power and security through unity, of the concentration of the whole people upon the same objects. As far back as 1818 such ideas were held by the students’ associations, and in 1848 they found expression in the _Paulskirche_. In 1863 Austria had something similar in view with her draft constitution to be laid before the Congress of Princes, only her first thought was for her own interests.” “Later, on the foundation of the North German Confederation there was some talk of an Emperor of the Confederation, and the idea was only dropped because it would have led to a