circles that I was very soon to be
Manteuffel's successor at the Foreign Office. Although the King had
entertained such an idea on and off, it was already then known in the
innermost Court circles that a change had taken place. Count William
Redern, whom I met in Paris, told me that the ambassadors continued to
believe I was destined to be made a minister and that he himself had
also believed this; but that the King had changed his mind--of further
details he was ignorant. Doubtless since Ruegen.

August 15, Napoleon's day, was celebrated among other ways by a
procession of Russian prisoners through the streets. On the 19th the
Queen of England made her entry, and on August 25 a State ball was
given in her honor at Versailles at which I was presented to her and
to Prince Albert.

The Prince, handsome and cool in his black uniform, conversed with
me courteously, but in his manner there was a kind of malevolent
curiosity from which I concluded that my anti-occidental influence
upon the King was not unknown to him. In accordance with the mode
of thought peculiar to him, he sought for the motives of my conduct not
where they really lay, that is, in the anxiety to keep my country
independent of foreign influences--influences which found a fertile soil
in our narrow-minded reverence for England and fear of France--and in
the desire to hold ourselves aloof from a war which we should not have
carried on in our own interests but in dependence upon Austrian and
English policy.

In the eyes of the Prince--though I of course did not gather this from
the momentary impression made during my presentation, but from
ulterior acquaintance with facts and documents--I was a reactionary
party man who took up sides for Russia in order to further an
Absolutist and "Junker" policy. It was not to be wondered at that this
view of the Prince's and of the then partisans of the Duke of Coburg
had descended to the Prince's daughter, who shortly after became our
Crown Princess.

Even soon after her arrival in Germany, in February, 1858, I became
convinced, through members of the royal house and from my own
observations, that the Princess was prejudiced against me personally.
The fact itself did not surprise me so much as the form in which her
prejudice against me had been expressed in the narrow family
circle--"she did not trust me." I was prepared for antipathy on
account of my alleged anti-English feelings and by reason of my
refusal to obey