We then spoke about the negotiations with the Curia, which were making satisfactory progress; of Held’s contribution to the social history of England; of Taine’s account of the Jacobins, in whom Bucher discovered some characteristics of the Progressist party; of Stirum, who had also left because he was not disposed to put up with the intrigues of the clique that surrounded the Prince, and who had told him, Bucher, that he “preferred in future to admire the Chancellor at a distance”; and of the Chief’s recent criticism of my article. I said that the Chief must be mistaken in asserting that after the visit to Varzin he had had no further negotiations with Bennigsen respecting his joining the Ministry, as he had himself told me that at that time Herbert had written to Bennigsen, which he would scarcely have ventured to do without his father’s knowledge. Bucher agreed with me, and added that some one had expressed the opinion that Bennigsen had acted like a gentleman with regard to the statements published by the semi-official press. Bucher arranged to send me Taine’s book when he had finished reading it, in order that I might write an article upon it. He is extracting passages which point to the similarity between the Jacobins and the Progressist party. On the evening of the 8th of January, Count William Bismarck sent me an article for the _Grenzboten_ on “Agricultural Credit in Prussia.”[3] On Monday, the 16th of January, I took back the third volume of Taine’s _History of the Revolution_, _La Conquête des Jacobins_, to Bucher. He told me that according to a conversation with the Chief, a campaign would presently be opened in the press in order to clear up some points respecting Stockmar and Bunsen. He was to write a pamphlet on the latter in which various documents, of which only portions were given in Frau von Bunsen’s book, would be published _in extenso_. I could then make myself useful by utilising this information, in addition to which he would give me further material. We then spoke of the Coburg clique, of Abeken, who had been described on one occasion by Bunsen as the “magnificent Abeken,” of Max Müller of Oxford, with whom he had spent some pleasant hours, of Geffcken, and finally of Hepke. On my asking how it was that the latter had fallen into disfavour with the Prince, Bucher said that in 1862, shortly after the Chief had come into office, Hepke, who had charge of the German reports, reproduced, almost literally, in a brochure which he published under the title of “A Word from a Prussian,” a memorandum which Bismarck had submitted to the King. Although this pamphlet was anonymous, the Chief came to hear of it, and forbade Metzler to mention it in our papers. Then, again, shortly before the war of 1866, Hepke, “through vanity, in order to show how well informed he was,” communicated some scheme that was in hand against Austria to the Austrian Envoy, probably at dinner, and this came to