In the well-known review, the _Deutsche Rundschau_, Dr. Geffcken, a Liberal publicist who had been honoured by the Emperor Frederick's friendship, published extracts from the diary of the late Sovereign. They were designed to defend his memory against his traducers, and in particular to prove that it was he who suggested the united German Empire. It seems that the diaries were found locked up at the Villa Zirio, and it was stated that they were given, or at least shown, by the Emperor Frederick to Baron von Roggenbach, the Baden statesman. Bismarck at first affected to believe, and apparently he succeeded in persuading the Emperor William, that the published extracts were forgeries. The offending number of the review was accordingly suppressed, and Geffcken was arrested on September 29 on a charge of high treason. He was acquitted of criminal intention in the following January, and in the interval the _Cologne Gazette_ charged Sir Robert Morier, then British Ambassador in St. Petersburg, with having given information to Marshal Bazaine of the movements of the Prussian forces in 1870. Fortunately Morier was able to produce convincing documentary evidence of his innocence, but it was generally felt that this monstrous attack on the Empress Frederick's old friend was really directed against the Empress herself. The Empress behaved with the greatest dignity and self-restraint during this time of bitter persecution, and in the many diaries and memoirs of the period we can find but one reference which reveals how she really felt. This reference is in Sir Horace Rumbold's _Recollections_. He tells of the deep feeling with which the Empress spoke of the suffering she had passed through and the wrongs she had endured. "She spoke of them with an exceeding bitterness, emphasising what she said with clenched hands and betraying an emotion which suddenly gained me, and more than explained the Queen's well-known reference to her as her 'dear persecuted daughter.'"