The fifth meal to which the reader is invited was one corresponding to our “business man’s lunch.” The clients were wholesale merchants, brokers, lawyers, and the like. In its furnishings the place was rather sumptuous, but as much cannot be said of its food. My own luncheon consisted of a turnip soup, roast veal (a mere shaving of it, as tasteless as deteriorated rubber), with one potato, a “German beefsteak,” some inedible mystery dubbed “lemon pudding,” and a small bottle of water—beer was no longer served in this establishment. The bill, including the customary forced tip, was nineteen mk. eighty, and the scornful attitude of the waiter proved that it was considerably less than the average. Even here the majority of the dishes were some species of _Ersatz_, and the meat itself was so undernourished that it had virtually no nourishment to pass on. Of ten pounds of it, according to the wholesale butcher who sat opposite me, at least five disappeared in the cooking. Finish such a meal at one and you were sure to be ragingly hungry by three. Yet there was less evidence of “profiteering” in establishments of this kind in Berlin than I had expected. The ice-cold bottle of mineral water, for instance, cost forty-five pfennigs, a mere four cents to foreigners. The German does not seem to go over his entire stock daily and mark it higher in price irrespective of its cost to him, as in Paris and, I fear, in our own beloved land. But there was one restaurant in Berlin where a real meal, quite free from _Ersatz_, could still be had, by those who could pay for it—the famous Borchardt’s in Französischerstrasse. Situated in the heart of the capital, in the very shadow of the government that issues those stern decrees against “underground” traffic in foodstuffs, it was protected by the rich and influential, and by the same government officials whose legal duty it was to suppress it. Admittance was only by personal introduction, as to a gambling club. The only laws this establishment obeyed were in the serving of bread and the use of paper in place of table linen. Meatless days meant nothing to its chefs; many articles specifically forbidden in restaurants were openly served to its fortunate guests. It depended, of course, entirely on _Schleichhandel_ for its supplies. Among the clients, on the evening in question, were generals out of uniform, a noted dealer in munitions, a manufacturer of army cloth, several high government officials, two or three Allied correspondents, and Bernsdorff’s right-hand “man” in several of his American trickeries—in a silky green gown that added to the snaky effect of her serpent-like eyes. It was she who “fixed” so thoroughly the proposed attack on us from Mexico during the early days of 1917. Four of us dined together, and this is a translation of the bill: