XXVI
The Chancellor said, emptying another bumper of champagne:
"This morning the opportunity lay within grasp. So strongly convinced was I of this that as my phaeton passed through the village of Wussow, on the way to the station, 'War is Inevitable' seemed written on every house. The old clergyman stood before his parsonage door and greeted me with a hand-wave. My answer was the gesture of a thrust in carte and tierce. For me the three words: 'War is Declared' replaced the lettering of the advertisement posters on the walls of the stations the special rushed through. Yet, though I had notified His Majesty of the advisability of summoning me to his assistance, I received, even as I stepped out of the train at the Stettin Station, a vacillating telegram from him, enjoining delay." He added, laughing: "Together with a message in cipher from our Prussian Ambassador at Paris, informing me that it has been given forth from the tribune of the Corps Législatif that had not Prince Leopold retreated from the Spanish candidature, to prevent the war with which the Emperor threatens us—the Government of Napoleon III. would have extorted a letter of apology from the King."
Roon could not speak. Said Moltke:
"The Gallic cock crows loudly! Such a letter would nicely recoup France for the humiliation of Sadowa."
"Did France succeed in extorting it," retorted the Chancellor, "but she has got to get it first!"
The forehead of Roon was black as thundercloud. He unhooked his collar, and wiped his congested face. The Field-Marshal thrust his hand under his wig perplexedly, saying:
"That His Majesty should continue to treat with Benedetti after all these insults and outrages.... It passes my understanding, I am fain to confess!"
"The Count himself would have no difficulty in reading the riddle," said the Chancellor, shrugging. "He is—according to his own conviction—a diplomat of the first water, a statesman of infinite finesse and irresistible persuasions. Yet he did not coax us into the Emperor's trap in 1867. Speaking of that, I have in my pocket something that will presently jump out of it, a testimony in his own handwriting that he is not quite so clever a fellow as he thinks!"
"To-day," boomed Roon, "I met Prince Gortchakoff. We were riding in the Unter den Linden when he stopped. He spoke of the King's age—the merest allusion in reference to a site he pointed out as being suitable for a statue. His Majesty was to be represented holding a wreath of laurel with the dates of 1864 and 1866 upon it. While emblematical figures of Peace, and the Genius of the Domestic Hearth, were shown disarming him of his helmet and sword."
"A sneer thoroughly merited," said the Chancellor, "by these days of hesitation!" He added: "The Genius of the Domestic Hearth is for the moment at Coblenz. However, wifely expostulations can be conveyed by telegram. Her Majesty's cry is, 'Remember Jena and Tilsit and avoid war, even at the cost of national dishonor!' Should these entreaties of the Queen prevail, she will merit the reproof of Sir Walter Scott—I think it was Sir Walter Scott!—who addressed to his grayhound, Maida, who had torn up—unless I err?—the manuscript of a newly-completed novel. 'Poor thing! thou little knowest the injury thou hast done!'"
"Women are less reasonable," declared Von Boon, "than bitches, to my mind!"
"Nay, nay!" said the Field-Marshal with sudden anger. "Maida was not a bitch, and I cannot agree with you! Great and noble female characters have been, and exist now—not only in the pages of history-books. It may be that Her Majesty is prejudiced—her influence has not always been favorable to the adoption of measures I would have counseled. But she is high-minded!—a great lady, and truly devoted as a wife. And with this ring upon my finger"—he held up his wrinkled left hand and showed the narrow band of gold—"it would ill become me to sit still and hear women likened to the unreasoning beasts that perish, when for all I know my beloved wife Mary is standing by my side!"
He drank a sip of wine, and continued more mildly:
"The good God took her to Himself twelve years ago, in the fullness of life and strength and English beauty!—while I, more than thirty years her senior, hang yet upon the tree. On the top of the hill at Crusau is her tomb, where one day I shall lie beside her. But before that day"—the brave old eyes snapped fire, and he wrinkled up his ancient eagle-beak as though he savored the fumes already—"it may be that I shall smell powder again!"
"Let us drink to that!" said the Chancellor. As they filled their glasses there came a peculiar, scratching knock on the door.
"Come in, Bucher!" cried the host harshly, and the summons was answered by one of His Excellency's Privy Councillors of Legation, a little, stooping old gentleman, with a large hooked nose and a grizzled mustache and whiskers, who was dressed in a chocolate-colored, single-breasted frock-coat, tightly fastened with gilt buttons, and who wore a black satin stock, with the tongue of the buckle sticking up among the locks at the back of his neck, and baggy black cloth trousers ending in the feet of a Prussian Lifeguard, encased in huge and shapeless cloth boots; these moved him noiselessly to the elbow of the Chancellor, to whom he whispered, handing him a card, large and square, and unmistakably feminine:
"And so, as Madame was urgent ... Your Excellency knows what women are!"
"Thanks to some early studies in femininity, I am credited," said the Chancellor, "with knowing a great deal too much about the sex. Where have you put Madame?"
Bucher answered, raising himself on his toes to approach his lips to the large, well-shaped ear; for even seated, the Chancellor overtopped him:
"In the gracious Countess's little red damask back drawing-room."
"It is doubtful, my good Bucher, whether—did she know how she was honored—the gracious Countess would welcome her visitor."
"Alas! Your Excellency!" pleaded the Councillor, "but Her Excellency does not know!—and the room contains nothing valuable. Only a few family pictures—no china, silver, or bric-à-brac. Nothing that it would be any use to steal!"
"Come, come!" expostulated the Minister, his blue eyes alight with cynical amusement, "you must not speak of Madame as though she were a house-thief. Our good Bucher," he went on, turning jestingly to his table companions, "sees little difference between a person who picks brains for pay, and sells the pickings, and another person who picks locks and steals silver vases and cups. Rather a reflection on the Diplomatic Service, now I think of it!"
"Ach! Herr Gott!" said the Councillor in alarm, "I cast no reflection, Your Excellency knows it! Only the woman is of light reputation——"
"And may be light-fingered into the bargain. Possibly—" said the Chancellor, "and all the better if she be so! We will risk my wife's family portraits in her vicinity until after dinner. Have coffee and liqueurs sent to her, and beg her to wait a while." He added, "Let them put cigarettes on the tray—I have no doubt she smokes tobacco. And as the smell will have passed off before my wife and daughter return from Varzin, neither of the ladies will ever know of the desecration of the red damask back drawing-room."
And as Bucher shuffled out of the room to execute his errand, his Chief rang the bell for the third course.
"By the way, Excellency," said the War Minister, as the demure servants out of livery removed the empty dishes: "that Frenchwoman of poor Max Valverden's is driving about Berlin."
"So!" commented the host, turning an inscrutable face upon the Minister. "She must find it very warm, and insufferably dull."
"She consoled herself," said Roon, "not long after Count Max's suicide."
"There," burst out the Field-Marshal, "was an incomprehensible catastrophe! That young man—who was military attaché at our Embassy in Paris until the return of the Allied Armies of Great Britain and France from the Crimea in 1856; and in 1866, ten years later, joined my staff in Austria as third aide-de-camp—I cannot understand it—he must have been demented!"
He unbuttoned the frock-coat, showing an unstarched, but scrupulously clean white shirt and vest of white nankeen, and taking a little silver snuff-box from his waistcoat pocket, laid it down carefully upon the tablecloth as he said:
"In '56 he brought his mistress from Paris with him—he was infatuated with her spirit and beauty. They said she was the wife of an officer in Grandguerrier's Division, who had served throughout the whole of the War in the Crimea."
"A chef d'escadron of Mounted Chausseurs, who seems to have taken his wife's desertion philosophically," commented the Chancellor.
The Field-Marshal took a pinch of snuff, and gravely shook his head.
"Of that I know nothing, but there was no meeting. Max Valverden assured me, on his honor, that an opportunity for the challenge had been given. Otherwise the young Count could not have continued in our Prussian Army—one would naturally have been obliged to retire him." He sneezed and went on: "My personal acquaintance with Valverden began ten years later. He served me—excellently. One should always give due praise to the dead. But when he returned from Austria—then happened the tragedy, at Schönfeld in the Altenwald, where lies his patrimonial property, and where the lady waited. And—he shot himself, upon the very night of his return to her."
"Not," interposed the cool, level voice of the Chancellor, "not being expected until noon of the day following."
"Of that I know nothing," said Moltke, turning his ascetic hairless face full upon the speaker. "What I know is that an officer who faithfully served his country and whom I had recommended for distinction, at the earliest opportunity—died by his own hand! How the woman was left, I cannot tell you."
"Count Maximilian von Schön-Valverden had provided for Madame de Bayard when summoned upon active Service," said the Chancellor. "His family did not contest the will, and she is not badly off. Therefore," he added with a smile, "when she condescends to serve my Intelligence Department as a spy, you may suppose she does not do it too cheaply. I must refer to my perambulating ledger, Bucher, before I quote you the exact figures of the sum I am to hand her to-night. She is a true daughter of the horseleech, who cries 'Give, give, give!' incessantly. But all the same I am indebted to her for those remarkably interesting particulars concerning the Mission of M. de Straz to Prince Antony."
"So!" ejaculated Von Roon in astonishment. The Field-Marshal rubbed his chin and turned his clear eyes upon the speaker, who went on smilingly:
"M. de Straz is susceptible—a fatal fault in a conspirator. Madame is still seductive, with a figure like Circe, ropes of black silk hair, a skin of cream, though the roses are bought ones! and eyes the color—exactly the color of old, pale tawny port. Now, when you reflect that she is waiting in my wife's red boudoir to interview me in my next spare moment—do you fear for my hitherto unassailable virtue, or regard me as proof against such charms?"
"I never bet more," said Moltke, "than half a pfennig, and then only when I play cards with my niece."
"I will wager you proof," cried Roon, "for two hundred thalers!"
"I can hardly bet upon my own marital infidelity!" said the Chancellor, laughing, as a servant uncovered the dish newly placed before him. "Will Your Excellency take some of this?"
"This" was the savory pièce de resistance of the masculine banquet, a lamb of six weeks, roasted to a golden brown, basted with marrow, and surrounded with tiny cucumbers stuffed with seasoning.
Moltke accepted the offer with alacrity, indifferent to the charms of veal with tomatoes and aubergines. Von Roon, declining, hurled himself upon a fillet of beef jardinière, and hacked a huge steak from its surface as with a sword, rather than a carving-knife. The Chancellor, plying his gleaming weapons delicately, liberally supplied his guest and piled his own plate, saying as he launched himself upon its contents with unabated appetite:
"Confederations may disappoint us—Kings may deceive us—while our teeth and our digestions faithfully serve us, we can find some zest in life. When I retire, I shall cultivate vegetables, plant forest-trees, rear trout, breed cattle, sheep, pigs, and poultry—drop my hereditary patronymic as I shed my titles of office and be known to all posterity as the Farmer of Varzin!"
The hall-bell had been heard to ring a moment previously. There was another scratching signal on the door, and Bucher appeared, manifestly excited and carrying a telegraphic dispatch.
"What now?" asked the Chancellor, finishing a mouthful.
"A telegram from Ems——" began the Councillor.
The imperious hand whipped it from between his pudgy fingers; the masterful voice demanded, as the envelope was rent open:
"The decipherer has not left?"
"Excellency, no!" twittered the Councillor, agitated by the portentous frown of his Chief, and by the grave faces of Moltke and Roon. The paper was thrust back to him with the curt order:
"Get this deciphered—do not delay!"
And as the Legation Councillor vanished, Bismarck said with a short laugh, bending his powerful regard on the gaunt, black stare of the War Minister:
"It is from the King, and will not please us. We may make up our minds beforehand to that. Yet I drink this glass to the honor of Prussia!" And filling his great bumper glass from a fresh bottle that had been placed at his elbow, he gulped down at least a pint of the creaming nectar of the Widow Clicquot, and his guests, in smaller measures, pledged the same toast. After that they sat in silence, the Chancellor alone continuing to eat with appetite—until the Councillor's big feet came shuffling back again.
"The copy, Excellency, 200 groups altogether," he began, "signed by the Herr Privy Councillor von Abeken, at His Majesty's command."
The papers he held were whipped away from him. The Chancellor read—and his countenance most grimly altered. His brows grew thunderous, trenches dug themselves along his forehead, caves appeared about his blazing eyes, and the pouches under them portentously bagged. The heavy mustache might shade the mouth and chin, but could not hide that they were changed to granite. He passed his firm hand over them and said, his incisive tones veiled with a curious hoarseness:
"Mr. Councillor of Legation, you will now leave us. When I ring the bell it summons you. Pray tell Dr. Busch that his services will be needed. Some articles must be written for the Press to-night."
He said, as the door closed behind Bucher, and the smile that accompanied the words was grim and cynical:
"Well, gentlemen, we have got our final slap in the face! The Press organs of the Ultramontane and the Democrats will call us by our nicknames to-morrow: 'Old Hellfire' and 'Death's Chess-Player' and 'The Pomeranian Ogre' and all the rest. But—I swear to you that no enemy of mine will ever despise me as I now despise myself!"
Roon and Moltke regarded him in silence. He went on speaking, still with that strange hoarseness:
"Some have called me the Iron Chancellor. I will tell you by what title Wilhelm the First of Prussia will go down to posterity. Men will speak of him as the Fluid King. It is written in the Scriptures,—all day the phrase has haunted me,—'Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel!'"
At a glance from the War Minister, Moltke rose up suddenly. His stooping scholar's body sprang upright as a lance. He said, and the words rang clear as steel on steel:
"Your Excellency, I deplore the necessity of imposing silence upon you. But the obligation of my military oath, and your own——"
He paused as the great figure of his host reared up at the head of the table. He saluted the Field-Marshal and said coldly:
"Herr General Field-Marshal, the rebuke is merited. Holding the King's commission as Colonel of White Cuirassiers of the Landwehr, I have spoken treasonably. Does your Excellency wish me to ring for my sword?"
Moltke's wrinkled face flashed into amusement, as the Chancellor imperturbably stretched his hand to the bell beside him. He said, laughing:
"Colonel Count von Bismarck-Schönhausen, I accept your apology. I will limit the period of your arrest to confinement to this room until conclusion of dinner, on condition that you read now this message from Ems."
The Chancellor saluted, and glancing at Roon, who was now standing, gloomy and downcast, "We look," he said, "like three mourners about a bier. It is, in fact, Prussia who lies dead upon the table. However, judge of the situation for yourselves."
And he read out the famous telegram handed in at Ems at three-thirty:
"Count Benedetti spoke to me on the Promenade in order to demand from me finally, in a very important manner, that I should authorize him to telegraph at once to Paris that I bound myself for all future time never again to give my consent if the Hohenzollerns should renew their candidature. I refused at last somewhat sternly, as it is neither right nor possible to undertake engagements of this kind à tout jamais. Naturally I told him that I had received no news; and as he was earlier informed from Paris and Madrid than myself, he could clearly see that my Government once more had no hand in the matter."
"Ei-ei!" broke in Moltke, "'Somewhat sternly' ... 'Naturally I told' ... 'Neither right nor possible,' and then 'no hand in the matter!' Do I hear the King—or have my ears played tricks on me?"
"Kreuzdonnerwetter!" exploded Roon. "Well might one ask 'Is this the master or the servant speaking?' But go on, go on, I pray your Excellency!"
The reader had transformed his face to an expressionless mask that might have been wrought in stone or metal. Now the tell-tale huskiness of fierce emotion cleared from his voice. He resumed:
"This closes His Majesty's personal communication. Herr Privy Councillor Abeken continues to the end."
Said Moltke: "Let us hear what little Abeken has got to say to you."
The cold, incisive voice recommenced reading:
"His Majesty commands me to inform you, that he has since received a letter from the Prince. His Majesty, having told Count Benedetti that he was awaiting news from the Prince, has decided, upon the representation of Count Eulenburg and myself, not to receive Count Benedetti again, but only to let him be informed through an aide-de-camp that His Majesty has now received from the Prince confirmation of the news Benedetti has already received from Paris, and has nothing further to say to the Ambassador. His Majesty leaves it to Your Excellency whether Benedetti's fresh demand and its rejection should not be at once communicated both to our Ambassadors and to the Press representatives."
The close of the Royal communication plopped into a pool of silence. The Chancellor coughed, and said with his characteristic stutter:
"The-the laxity and diffuseness of the verbiage of this dispatch l-lul-leave me in no doubt as to the favorable effect the Ems waters have already wrought upon the constitution of His Majesty!"
Roon barked his laugh. Moltke raised his thoughtful head from his breast and said laconically:
"It gives me the belly-ache to listen to such rubbish. Are we German men or German mice?"
The Chancellor shrugged and said:
"More than ever it is clear that my position is untenable. The King, under pressure of threats mingled with entreaties, has permitted himself to be heckled by the Emperor's Franco-Italian emissary. He ignores my urgent request that he should refer Benedetti to his Foreign Minister. Now, by the medium of an inferior official, he tells me that I may acquaint the representatives of the State and the Press—that nothing is settled and no definite end in view! What is settled is, that I resign!"
Von Roon called out harshly, striking a sinewy fist upon the table:
"Your Excellency will not leave your friends in this extremity?"
Moltke turned to him half whimsically, half pleadingly:
"For our sake, Otto, stick by the old wagon!"
The Chancellor said, with a sudden softening of the grim lines of his strong face, and of the eyes that had been fixed and expressionless:
"You talk, both of you, like two babes in the wood. As far as regards my personal influence to sway the King or control the feeling of the Reichstag—another hand may guide the State as well as this of mine. Yet, were it possible—having already the King's permission—to produce a somewhat concentrated version of this verbose telegram.... Has either of you a pencil?—mine has been mislaid.."
"Here, take mine!" said the Field-Marshal eagerly.
The Chancellor took the offered pencil with a brief nod of thanks, swept the silver-gilt milkmaid ruthlessly aside, and spreading the forms containing the Royal dispatch on the space she had occupied, pored over them for a moment, frowning heavily, before the red-chalk crayon began to play its part. Words were struck out—then whole sentences....
"Ah, ah!" said Moltke, beaming. "He has finished at last. Now let us hear what it sounds like with its mane cropped and its tail docked?"
"Reduced," said the Chancellor, lifting his great eyes from the red-crayoned papers, "without addition or alteration, the message might run thus..."
He read:
"After the news of the renunciation of the hereditary Prince of Hohenzollern had been officially communicated to the Imperial Government of France by the Royal Government in Spain, the French Ambassador at Ems further demanded of His Majesty the King that he would authorize him to telegraph to Paris that His Majesty the King bound himself for all future time never again to give his consent should the Princes of Hohenzollern renew their candidature."
"Good, very good!" growled Roon.
"That seems to me excellent!" said Moltke, twinkling.
The Chancellor finished:
"His Majesty the King thereupon decided not again to receive Benedetti, the French Ambassador, and sent the aide-de-camp on duty with the information that His Majesty had nothing further to say to him!"
"Bravo, bis!" roared Roon.
"Why," said Moltke, rubbing his hands delightedly, "now it has a different ring altogether. Before it sounded like a parley. Now it is a fanfare of defiance! Sentences like these are worthy of a King!"
"And there can be no accusations of falsification," said the Chancellor, bending his powerful regard upon his two colleagues. "The Bund Chancellor carries out what the Prussian monarch commands. He communicates this text by telegraph to all our Embassies and to the Press agencies. Is it his fault if its published words provoke the Gallic cock to show fight?"
"I understand," said the War Minister joyfully, "that we should be the party attacked first. And we shall be, and we shall win! Our God of old lives, and will not let us perish!"
"Has Your Excellency nothing to say to me?" asked the Chancellor, fixing his great eyes on the face of Moltke, now radiant with childlike happiness.
"Were I a poet," returned the joyous old artist in war, seizing the hand outstretched to him across the table, and wringing it between both his own, "I should crown you with a wreath of laurel inscribed 'Hail to thee, Guardian of Prussia's honor!' or something of that kind. Being what I am, I say that you are what my English nephews would call 'a trump!' As you said this morning when you quitted Varzin, 'War Is Inevitable!'" He added, hitting himself a resounding thump in the chest: "And if I may but live to lead our armies in such a war—then the devil may come directly we have conquered these Frenchmen and fetch away this crumbling old carcass!" He added, with a change to gravity: "I do not say my soul, for I am a decent Christian. Hey, look here, our dinner has got cold!"
It was true; the viands were stagnant in the dishes. The fillet sat in the center of a stagnant lake of congealed gravy; the roasted lamb, reduced by the onslaughts of the Chancellor to a partial skeleton, was covered with a frosting of rich white fat. He said, with a laugh that clattered against walls and ceiling like a discharge of musketry, and reaching for the bell that would summon Bucher:
"It does not matter; my cook has always a second menu ready in case of delays or accidents. While Bucher communicates to our Embassies and the European Press Agencies the concentrated essence of His Majesty's telegram—while hundreds of thousands of handbills are being printed that shall disseminate the text throughout Germany, and Busch writes the articles that shall put the needful complexion on this affair—we will order up the Moet and Chandon White Star—I am thirsty after so much talking!—and eat our dinner again!"