Several rambles in and about Schwerin only confirmed the impressions I had already formed—that the region was hopelessly conservative and that it had really seriously suffered from the war and the blockade. On the surface there was often no great change to be seen; but scratch beneath it anywhere and a host of social skeletons was sure to come to light. Even the famous old _Schwerinerschloss_, perhaps the most splendid castle in Germany, showed both this conservatism and the distress of the past years. The repairs it was undergoing after a recent fire had ceased abruptly with the flight of the reigning family of Mechlenburg, but the marks of something more serious than the conflagration showed in its seedy outward appearance. Yet not a chair had been disturbed within it, for all the revolution, and guards stationed about it by the Soldiers’ Council protected it as zealously as if they, too, were waiting for “our princes” to come back again. Almost the only sign of the new order of things was the sight of a score or more of discharged soldiers calmly fishing in the great _Schwerinersee_ about the castle, a crime that would have met with summary vengeance in the old ducal days. Rumor having it that the peace terms were to be published that afternoon, I hastily took train one morning back to Berlin, that I might be in the heart of the uproar they were expected to arouse. At the frontier of Mechlenburg soldiers of the late dukedom went carefully through passengers’ baggage in search of food, particularly eggs, of which a local ordinance forbade the exportation. The quest seemed to be thorough and I saw no tips passed, but there was considerable successful smuggling, which came to light as soon as the train was well under way again. A well-dressed merchant beside me boastfully displayed a twenty-mark sausage in the bottom of his innocent-looking hand-bag, and his neighbors, not to be outdone in proof of cleverness, showed their caches of edibles laboriously concealed in brief-cases, hat-boxes, and laundry-bags. “The peasants have grown absolutely shameless,” it was agreed. “They have the audacity to demand a mark or more for a single egg, and twenty for a chicken”—in other words, the rascals had turned upon the bourgeois some of his own favorite tricks, taking advantage of conditions which these same merchants would have considered legitimate sources of profit in their own business. Wrath against the “conscienceless” countrymen was unlimited, but no one thought of shaming the smugglers for their cheating.