xiom that in all conflicts it
is just as fatal to underrate the difficulties of your enemy as to
overrate your own. Their chief one--and it multiplied a thousandfold
the excitement of the contest--was, I felt sure, the fear of striking
in error; of using a sledge-hammer to break a nut. In breaking it
they risked publicity, and publicity, I felt convinced, was death to
their secret. So, even supposing they had detected the finesse, and
guessed that we had in fact got wind of imperial designs; yet, even
so, I counted on immunity so long as they thought we were on the
wrong scent, with Memmert, and Memmert alone, as the source of our
suspicions.

Had it been necessary I was prepared to encourage such a view,
admitting that the cloth von Bruening wore had made his connexion with
Memmert curious, and had suggested to Davies, for I should have put
it on him, with his naval enthusiasms, that the wreck-works were
really naval-defence works. If they went farther, and suspected that
we had tried to go to Memmert that very day, the position was worse,
but not desperate; for the fear that they would take the final step
and suppose that we had actually got there and overhead their talk, I
flatly refused to entertain, until I should find myself under arrest.

Precisely how near we came to it I shall never rightly know; but I
have good reason to believe that we trembled on the verge. The main
issue was fully enough for me, and it was only in passing flashes
that I followed the play of the warring under-currents. And yet,
looking back on the scene, I would warrant there was no party of
seven in Europe that evening where a student of human documents would
have found so rich a field, such noble and ignoble ambitions, such
base and holy fears, aye, and such pitiful agonies of the spirit.
Roughly divided though we were into separate camps, no two of us were
wholly at one. Each wore a mask in the grand imposture; excepting, I
am inclined to think, the lady on my left, who, outside her own
well-being, which she cultivated without reserve, had, as far as I
could see, but one axe to grind--the intimacy of von Bruening and her
stepdaughter--and ground it openly.

Not even Boehme and von Bruening were wholly at one; and as moral
distances are reckoned, Davies and I were leagues apart. Sitting
between Dollmann and Dollmann's daughter, the living and breathing
symbols of the two polar passions he had sworn to harmonize, he kept
an equilibrium