Office, or even with the government, but being sealed
with apparently authentic seals. If you send these papers to
London, I fancy you will find that they will there create the same
situation as that caused here by this letter of safe-conduct.

I am also sending you a charcoal sketch of the person who calls
himself Benjamin Bathurst. This portrait was taken without its
subject's knowledge. Baron von Krutz's nephew, Lieutenant von
Tarlburg, who is the son of our mutual friend Count von Tarlburg,
has a little friend, a very clever young lady who is, as you will
see, an expert at this sort of work: she was introduced into a
room at the Ministry of Police and placed behind a screen, where
she could sketch our prisoner's face. If you should send this
picture to London, I think that there is a good chance that it
might be recognized. I can vouch that it is an excellent likeness.

To tell the truth, we are at our wits' end about this affair.
I cannot understand how such excellent imitations of these
various seals could be made, and the signature of the Baron von
Stein is the most expert forgery that I have ever seen, in thirty
years' experience as a statesman. This would indicate careful and
painstaking work on the part of somebody; how, then, do we
reconcile this with such clumsy mistakes, recognizable as such by
any schoolboy, as signing the name of Baron Stein as Prussian
Chancellor, or Mr. George Canning, who is a member of the
opposition party and not connected with your government, as
British Foreign secretary.

[Illustration: 25 NOVEMBER 1808]

These are mistakes which only a madman would make. There are those
who think our prisoner is mad, because of his apparent delusions
about the great conqueror, General Bonaparte, alias the Emperor
Napoleon. Madmen have been known to fabricate evidence to support
their delusions, it is true, but I shudder to think of a madman
having at his disposal the resources to manufacture the papers you
will find in this dispatch case. Moreover, some of our foremost
medical men, who have specialized in the disorders of the mind,
have interviewed this man Bathurst and say that, save for his
fixed belief in a nonexistent situation, he is perfectly sane.

Personally, I believe that the whole thing is a gigantic hoax,
perpetrated for some hidden and sinister purpose, possibly to
create confusion, and to undermine the confidence existing
between your government and mine, and to set against o