“Dear Friend,--Nothing will ever come of the ‘Memoirs,’ even if He[21] and I were to live for ten years to come. The chief hindrance is laziness, as He himself expresses it. My work can only consist in dividing up the chaos of dictated material, and uniting the pieces into mosaics, as also in correcting his chronology, which is quite untrustworthy, and of course falsifies the casual relations of things. What He has to do is to read over the chapters which I have put together, and at the same time the letters referring to the subject, which I put with them. He cannot, however, be brought to do that. Of the fourteen chapters which I have submitted to him since last September he had on my departure from Kissingen read one through, and a portion of another! In correcting his chronology in four important instances I have forced him to acknowledge that the affair cannot really have happened in the way in which he had dictated it; but it was impossible for me to squeeze out of him any statement as to what actually had occurred. I am well-nigh desperate, and should be very pleased if my work were stopped and the whole thing handed over to you. I do not know what he will think, but in any case make the attempt. “Schweninger, who is very anxious to get him to take up some serious, continuous occupation, persuaded me to go to Kissingen, assuring me that he would keep the two disturbing elements, the Princess and Herbert, at a distance; we two should have him to ourselves, and he would therefore begin a new life. Nothing of the kind has occurred. It was the old lazy life in the Castle of Indolence (Schlaraffenleben)--guests and drinking every day. And, as I had suspected, the baths did me no good whatever. My right hand is greatly swollen, and it is only since I repeated my former cure here that a slight improvement is perceptible. In any case I shall be back in Berlin at the beginning of October, although He has expressed a wish that I should go direct from here to Varzin. For months together last year there was a temperature of 12 degrees in my room there, and that has ruined me. “Ever yours (in English), “B.” I wrote in reply from Leipzig, on September 2nd, 1891, _inter alia_: that if the “Memoirs” were never to be completed but remain mere materials, there was all the more reason for rescuing at least a portion from destruction.... I would do nothing in the matter before consulting him, but I was not without hope that the Chief would allow himself to be persuaded by my arguments, and would assist me with the dictated matter in my otherwise desperate undertaking. (...) After some consideration, however, I addressed my request to the Prince direct, ... and in the course of a week, on the 17th of September, the following answer came by post:-- “Varzin, _September 14, 1891_.