great gain for us. I do not know whether his departure from Berlin was
connected with circumstances which have left in him a lasting dislike of
Prussia, or whether confused political theories (regarding which he
expresses himself with more ease and with greater interest than
regarding practical affairs) have brought him to believe that the
Prussian influence in Germany is deleterious: but at all events his
antipathy to us exceeds the degree which, in view of the political
situation of Würtemberg, can be supposed to exist in the mind of his
sovereign; and I have reason to assume that his influence upon the
instructions which are sent him, and his activity, so far as this is
independent of instructions, are exerted, as a matter of principle, to
the disadvantage of Prussia.... In his bearing towards me personally
there is nothing which would justify the conclusion that his feelings
are of the sort I have indicated; and it is only rarely that a point is
reached in our debates at which, moderated by a certain timidity, his
suppressed bitterness against Prussia breaks out. I may remark
incidentally that it is he who invariably appears at our sessions last,
and too late; and who, through want of attention and through subsequent
participation in the discussion on the basis of misapprehensions,
occasions further repetitions and waste of time.

The envoy from Baden, Herr von Marschall, is not without sense and
fitness for affairs, but is scrupulously careful to avoid the
responsibility of an independent opinion, and to discover in the least
dubitable matter an intermediate point of view from it may be possible
to agree with both sides, or at least to disagree with neither. If there
is no escape, he inclines, either for family reasons or because his
government is more afraid of Vienna than of Berlin, to the Austrian side
rather than to ours. Support against the Chair--as, for example, in the
matter of the order of business, upon which he is charged with a