And now the intimate friends and relations of the Chancellor invite the guests to adjourn to the dining saloon, which is the last of the long row of apartments we had up till now passed through. This saloon, an oblong square, joins the apartment last described, at the right-hand corner; only its narrow side faces the street. The decorations and fittings-up of this dining saloon differ entirely from all the rest of the suite. It has been kept exactly the same as when Bismarck took it over from his predecessor; in fact, for fifty years this apartment has remained unchanged. There still hangs the same massive chandelier with its forty-eight candles; the same white panels with golden borders still cover the walls; the same shell-shaped mirrors, the same yellow marble mantel-pieces that were there under Hardenberg, Mannteuffel, and Schleichnitz, all remain unchanged. ‘The last time I was here I was under Mannteuffel,’ says old Count Schwerin, the head of the Liberal party, to me, standing in his favourite position with both his hands in his trousers’ pockets. The first feeling of shyness having worn away, the various dainties, in the shape of cold game, saddle of venison, mayonnaises, Italian salads, &c., with which the long centre table was laden, were speedily done justice to. Even the modest Saxon privy-councillor, who three minutes before had retreated from the table and refused the invitation with a polite wave of the hand and a, ‘No, no; thank you!’ now followed in the war-path of the pioneers for food. There was no time or space to think of sitting down; each one helped himself to a plate from the piles, placed in readiness on the table, together with the necessary table requisites, and hastened to partake of the delicacies that had been prepared for his delectation. A party of Saxon and Rhenish gentlemen had succeeded in getting possession of a side-table, and there, seated at their ease, they intrenched themselves against the annexation tendencies of the North German League appetites; getting all their provisions through the proper constitutional channel of the Bismarckian domestics. Meanwhile, as I have so often observed before, a saddle of venison is a most fruitful source for starting hunting adventures, and so it proved in this case. My old friend, worthy Dr Neubronner from Nassau, whom no one would have accused of being a bloodthirsty huntsman by nature, was no sooner presented to Bismarck, than he reminded the minister how, in former days, when he, Bismarck, was representative at Frankfort, they had hunted together in the neighbourhood of that town.