able to get on with Bernstorff, and Schleinitz would probably interfere.
"I have no confidence in Bernstorff's eye for political matters; he
probably has none in mine." Bernstorff was "too stiff," "his collars
were too high." During these long discussions he wrote to his wife:

"Our future is obscure as in Petersburg. Berlin is now to the
front; I do nothing one way or another; as soon as I have my
credentials for Paris in my pocket I will dance and sing. At
present there is no talk of London, but all may change again. I
scarcely get free of the discussions all day long; I do not find
the Ministers more united than their predecessors were."

Disgusted with the long waiting and uncertainty he pressed for a
decision; after a fortnight's delay he was appointed Minister at Paris,
but this was in reality only a fresh postponement; nothing had really
been decided; the King expressly told him not to establish himself
there. To his wife he wrote from Berlin:

"I am very much pleased, but the shadow remains in the
background. I was already as good as caught for the Ministry.
Perhaps when I am out of their sight they will discover another
Minister-President. I expect to start for Paris to-morrow;
whether for long, God knows; perhaps only for a few months or
even weeks. They are all conspired together that I should stay
here. I have had to be very firm to get away from this hotel life
even for a time."

He did not really expect to be away more than ten days or a fortnight.
At a farewell audience just before he started, the King seems to have
led him to expect that he would in a very few days be appointed as he
wished, Foreign Minister.

He arrived in Paris on the 30th, to take up his quarters in the empty
Embassy. He did not wait even to see his wife before starting and he
wrote to her that she was not to take any steps towards joining him.

"It is not decided that I am to stay here; I am in the middle of
Paris lonelier than you are in Reinfeld and sit here like a rat
in a deserted house. How long it will last God knows. Probably in
eight or ten days I shall receive a telegraphic summons to Berlin
and then game and dance is over. If my enemies knew what a
benefit they would confer on me by their victory and how
sincerely I wish it for them, Schleinitz out of pure malice would
probably do his best to bring me to Berlin."

Day after day, however, went by and the summons did not co