amination as
_Regierungs-Assessor,_ and then, by the circuitous route of
employment in the Zollverein to seek admittance into the _German_
diplomacy of Prussia; he did not, it would seem, anticipate in a scion
of the native squirearchy a vocation for European diplomacy. I took
his hint to heart, and resolved first of all to go up for my
examination as _Regierungs-Assessor_.

The persons and institutions of our judicial system with which I was
in the first instance concerned gave my youthful conceptions more
material for criticism than for respect. The practical education of
the _Auscultator_ began with keeping the minutes of the Criminal
Courts, and to this post I was promoted out of my proper turn by the
_Rath_, Herr von Brauchitsch, under whom I worked, because in those
days I wrote a more than usually quick and legible hand. On the
examinations, as criminal proceedings in the inquisitorial method of
that day were called, the one that has made the most lasting
impression upon me related to a widely ramifying association in Berlin
for the purpose of unnatural vice. The club arrangements of the
accomplices, the agenda books, the levelling effect through all
classes of a common pursuit of the forbidden--all this, even in 1835,
pointed to a demoralization in no whit less than that evidenced by the
proceedings against the Heinzes, husband and wife, in October, 1891.
The ramifications of this society extended even into the highest
circles. It was ascribed to the influence of Prince Wittgenstein that
the reports of the case were demanded from the Ministry of Justice,
and were never returned--at least, during the time I served on the
tribunal.

After I had been keeping the records for four months, I was
transferred to the City Court, before which civil causes are tried,
and was suddenly promoted from the mechanical occupation of writing
from dictation to an independent post, which, having regard to my
inexperience and my sentiments, made my position difficult. The
first stage in which the legal novice was called to a more independent
sphere of activity was in connection with divorce proceedings.
Obviously regarded as the least important, they were entrusted to
the most incapable _Rath_, Praetorius by name, and under him were
left to the tender mercies of unfledged _Auscultators_, who had to
make upon this _corpus vile_ their first experiments in the
part of judges--of course, under the nominal responsibility of Herr
Praet