In connection with my report of to-day regarding the attitude of certain
envoys in the Kettenburg affair, I take the liberty of making some
confidential remarks regarding the personal traits of my colleagues in
general, in case it should interest your Excellency to have the
information.

Herr von Prokesch is probably well enough known in Berlin to make
further indications of his personal characteristics unnecessary; at the
same time, I cannot refrain from remarking that the calmness and ease
with which he advances false statements of fact, or contests true
statements, surpass my expectations, although I have been led to expect
a good deal in this direction. These qualities are supplemented by a
surprising degree of coolness in dropping a subject or making a change
of front, as soon as the untruth which he has taken as his point of
departure is identified beyond the possibility of evasion. In case of
necessity he covers a retreat of this sort by an ebullition of moral
indignation, or by an attack, often of a very personal character, which
transfers the discussion to a new and quite different field. His chief
weapons in the petty war which I am obliged to wage with him, as often
as the interests which we represent diverge, are: (1) Passive
resistance, _i.e._, a dilatory treatment of the affair, by which he
forces upon me the rôle of a tiresome dun, and not infrequently, by
reason of the nature of the affair, that of a paltry dun. (2) In case of
attack, the _fait accompli_, in the shape of apparently insignificant
usurpations on the part of the Chair. These are commonly so calculated
that any protest on my part cannot but seem like a deliberate search for
points of controversy or like captious verbal criticism. It is therefore
scarcely possible for me to avoid, in my dealings with him, the
appearance of quarrelsomeness, unless I am willing to sacrifice the
interests of Prussia to a degree which every concession would