marck, the only daughter and lady of the house, entered the garde-robe, and directly behind her stood the Prince! From that moment through the long hours of my visit, amazement came like a series of electric shocks. I had looked to see an old man, a little bent, a little tremulous, the burden and heat of the day written visibly over face and figure. But as his Serene Highness presented his arm, and, with the great Dane, Tyrus II., close at heel, we swept through a series of receptionrooms to the waiting lunchtable, he seemed like a magnificent running soldier, erect, swift, the personification of physical grace and power, who had come to greet me out of some old Ro spair for his statue and I for my reminiscences. Soon, however, the contracted features relaxed under the revivifying influence of meat and drink, and the conversation subsided as the Prince began to talk. Immediately there was a sustained hush, an eager leaning forward to catch every word as if an oracle now spoke, the family manifesting a reverent attention which I fancied was mixed with a good deal of fear ard personal dread springing from a close PRINCE BISMARCK From a photograph taken in 1894. Dr. Schweninger, as dark and as handsome as the Mephistopheles whom he resembles, and the handsome young sculptor, BerwaldSchwerin, a son-in-law of the famous Kopf, invited here at the solicitation of the Grand Duchess of Mecklenberg-Sterlitz to study the features of his Excellency for a statue he was to model. The Prince, who suffers from an acute neuralgic affection which contracts the entire right side of the face, rendering speech impossible for the time, began the meal in great pain; the sculptor sat in de. and frequent acquaintance with temper and moodiness. But nervousness and irascibleness are hardly to be wondered at in the great, lonely old man who supported solitarily for long years the weight and the responsibility of the creation of a new Fatherland. He has been the best table-talker of his time, but be loves monologue, and from the mighty ambassador to the tradesman photographer whom he invariably invites to his table if at the Castle on business, the conversation, except for oc or casional suggestion, is all on one side. None can desire a greater privilege than to be an entranced listener, nor does the Prince desire better than to win a perpetual atten tion. When Bismarck represented Prussia at the Frankfort Diet, he visited Prince Metternich at his Rhenish château, and when the question was asked, how had he gotten on with the old statesman? he replied, "Oh, beautifully. I listened quietly to all his stories, only striking the bell every now and then till it rang again. That pleases the garrulous Among other things I learned there the art old gentleman." His speech was marked by great deliberation and a perceptible hesitancy, as if his mind sought the neatest phraseology to cloak his thought. Each word was freighted to send an echo down the avenue of time. Occasionally his sentences were as terribly involved as an editorial in a German newspaper, and in his parliamentary speeches they have been known to exceed a foot of print. "But surely, Durchlaucht," I said in response to a neat compliment on my knowledge of his native tongue, "you speak English?" "Yes," he replied, with a smile, "I believe I am more or less familiar with all the languages. As a young man of forty-two, while I was at St. Petersburg, I studied and spoke Russian. That was an excellent school, of saying nothing in a great many words. I made a practice of writing elaborate articles for our diplomatic bureau, which I polished to the highest degree, and of which neither I nor any one else could comprehend as much as a word this, we considered, was diplomacy.. I was married then, and I remember the smallness of our income did not admit of our entertaining elaborately, so we would invite the people in to pot-luck. I was compelled to expend fifteen or twenty, sometimes even twenty-five, roubles each time I paid the Czar a visit. If I went at the request of the Emperor, it cost even more. The coachman and footmen who fetched me, the house steward and other servants, must all be feed. Then there was the runner with high, round feathers on his head like an Indian, who got five roubles for going before me through the great corridors of the palace to the Emperor's rooms. 66 A BOLD SIGNATURE money, but political events are not always of a kind to aftect the money market at orce. Of course matters could be complicated so as to affect the exchange and produce a fall, but that would be dishonorable. A certain French Minister did this, and made a fortune. The only attempt I ever made to speculate in stocks on my knowledge of state secrets was in connection with the Neufchâtel incident, when I was sent from Berlin to Paris, expecting that Napoleon would favor my mission, and, if such were the case, it meant war with Switzerland. So, en route for the French capital, I called on the banker Rothschild, in Frankfort, to ask him to sell certain securities he held for me. When he endeavored to dissuade me, I insisted, telling him, 6 If you knew what I know, you would say as I do.' But the policy in Berlin shifted materially, and I was left to mourn the loss of my valuable securities. Gambetta was supposed to have realized five millions by the war. Napoleon III. is commonly supposed to have saved eighty million francs during his nineteen years' reign, but I do not believe it. The Duke of Morny, who was as unprincipled as he was agreeable, had a curious manner of making gains. I remember that when he came to St. Petersburg as Ambassador he brought many elegant equipages with him for himself; his servants had a carriage apiece, and his secretaries each had two; his trunks were filled with laces and silks and magnificent toilettes for the ladieseverything arriving free of duty; and he sold the entire impedimenta for something like eight hundred thousand roubles. Those were the days when the ability to drink off a large hornful of champagne at a single draught corstituted a passport to the diplomatic service. Bismarck's name carved by himself on the Carcerthür (prison door) There was always another coachman to carry me back. We Prussians were wretch edly paid, getting a salary of 25,000 thalers [£3,750], and 8,000 thalers [£1,200] for houserent. The French Ambassador got £12,000 a year, and charged his Government with the expenses of his entertainments. But we were not expected to live in St. Petersburg beyond our incomes. "Diplomatists have the reputation of tak ing advantage of their position to make. It My greatest happiness while in Russia was the magnificent sport. At Skiernievice I have shot fallow-deer for five hours, and then hunted hare; and in Finland, where we had superb sport, I have shot elk, bears, and wolves. There was an enormous quantity of blackcock and woodcock which the Fins and Samoyeds used to shoot with small rifles without ramrods, and with bad powder. may seem an anomalous condition, but I was always well out in the cold air, which is not so bad, for every one is used to struggling with it; it was at the balls and theaters that I caught cold. The company at the house of the Archduchess Helena, who was a great wit, was most agreeable, but it was still more agreeable to go off on the big bearhunts wrapped in my furs, with high boots, and my big brown juff s leather cloak. We used to keep some young cubs in the house, among whom Mischka was the favorite, and he and some of my pet foxes used to walk about among the plates and glasses on the dinner-table, which amused our gues's but frightened the footmen, as they would get every now and again a nip in the calf of their legs." Talking of all these savage conditions brought a gleam into Bismarck's eye, and I ventured to chaff him about his life as a diplomat; not, indeed, with fair ladies, for, with all the enmity and jealousy inspired among his enemies by his extraordinary career, the most ill-natured has not discovered a spot to point at on his moral horizon. "Did you never hear it said,' he laughingly asked, "that all Prussian Ambassadors die or go mad? I used to be as fearful of becoming a Minister as of taking a cold bath. But, my dear child, there has always been so much must in my life, and so much hard work, I was long ago weary; but God's will is like a great sea that always remains. All other things come and go: man's love and passion; avarice and ambition; war and peace, each its turn at the wheel, and God's ship rides on. Aus der Ewigkeit, zu der Ewigkeit hin. We should not demand too much, nor imagine that we have conquered the world because we have labored with tightened breath to accomplish our part. If we remain simple, we can hope for peace. The earth seems full of hypocrisy and jugglery. Who is not vain and malicious? I have often felt that so much depends upon how life ripens our nature, which is sometimes like a plank full of wormholes, and rotten, as some people are, to the very bottom. No, no; the only way is to begin life with a purpose. "Since the begining of my career the north star to which I looked has been to accomplish the unification of Germany, and, that done, to create a constitution that would endure. It seems odd to me now that at Göttingen my whole attitude was opposition to the unity party; yet surely, though unrecognized ther, the prophetic stirring must have possessed my soul of what I was later to do and dare. Since I first became a minister I have never belonged to any faction. Seeing only the end in view, I have plowed alike through friend and foe to obtain my purpose, and if it has been said that I sold my soul to the devil, it was at least a Teutonic one! "I have been hated by all in turn, and have been liked by few. But I was spared the craving for the flower of popularity. "Through every shadow of sorrow and bitterness I have preserved two articles of faith-belief in God and the final unification of the Fatherland. Why should I have disturbed myself and forced myself to incessant work-always the Thun und Treiben—if I had not been possessed with the thought that I must do my duty for Christ's sake? When I have felt as though I could throw off this life like a dirty shirt, the saving thought has always come that belief in God makes it worth while to live." "What a pity it seems, Durchlaucht, that, since you speak English so admirably, you have not been in our country," I said, after a PRINCE BISMARCK From a photograph taken in 1885. moment's pause; for I think every one of us at table felt subdued and impressed by the Prince's honest avowal of his Christian faith. "Well, a bet very nearly carried me off to your country," Bismarck replied. "It was at Göttingen. I laid a wager with Amory Coffin, an American, for twenty-five bottles of champagne, the loser to cross the seas for it, that Germany would be united in twenty years. In 1873 I remembered the bet and intended going to America for it, but they wrote me that my poor college friend was dead. "You know I have been in England, and although I spoke the language in my youth, that country was the high school where I perfected myself in English. The journey across the Channel was my first experience in seasickness. The water was very rough and I was very miserable. I was tortured with the idea of being thrown into the Channel, among the currents, to be ground to pieces, and, sinking to the bottom, add to the corpses and wrecks which already strewed the bottom of the sea. 66 "I consider that a knowledge of English is now necessary to the conduct of the commerce of the civilized world. England has distrusted and disliked me, but I have always refrained from giving her advice, and have only restrained her at times in certain pretensions which were injurious to the legitimate interests of Germany. I was never a Colonnial Mensch, and I never disliked the nation, but if I had in the entire course of my life inflicted upon Germany half the ignominy and weakness which Mr. Gladstone managed to infl.ct in a few short years on England, I would not have had the courage to look my countrymen in the face again. This is particularly true with regard to English influence in Egypt, which I did everything possible to support. I hoped the British Government, by its interference in Egypt, would maintain order there as negotiorum gestor of European interests, and take a care of the finances, both in the interests of the country and of the bondholders; however, we did not realize our expectations. But the Lord knows how to turn even our errors to our advantage!" "You give one the impression, Prince, of not greatly admiring our English cousins." "Not at all; they are a great people. Summing up the experiences of a lifetime, I believe that people are rewarded with success according to the amount of Teutonic blood in their veins, and only just so long as they preserve the peculiarities of this race. The English are a striking sample of the judicious mixture of races to get the thor |