informal betrothal; and Lassalle was on the eve of a great public triumph which seemed more likely to take him to the throne than to the scaffold.
To many this will seem an exaggeration. Yet hear Prince Bismarck in the Reichstag seventeen years after Lassalle’s death:—
He was one of the most intellectual and gifted men with whom I have ever had intercourse, a man who was ambitious in high style, but who was by no means Republican: he had very decided national and monarchical sympathies, and the idea which he strove to realize was the German Empire, and therein we had a point of contact. Lassalle was extremely ambitious, and it was perhaps a matter of doubt to him whether the German Empire would close with the Hohenzollern dynasty or the Lassalle dynasty; but he was monarchical through and through. Lassalle was an energetic and very intellectual man, to talk with whom was very instructive. Our conversations lasted for hours, and I was always sorry when they came to an end. [198]
The year 1864, which was to close so tragically, opened indeed with extraordinary promise. Lassalle left Berlin in May—Helen had gone
back to Geneva two or three months earlier—travelling by Leipzig and Cologne through the Rhenish provinces, and holding a “glorious review” the while.
“I have never seen anything like it,” he writes to the Countess von Hatzfeldt. “The entire population indulged in indescribable jubilation. The impression made upon me was that such scenes must have attended the founding of new religions.”
And it appeared possible that Heine’s description of Lassalle as the Messiah of the nineteenth century was to be realized. The Bishop of Mayence was on his side, and the King of Prussia sympathetic. As he passed from town to town the whole population turned out to do him honour. Countless thousands met him at the stations: the routes were ornamented with triumphal arches, the houses decorated with wreaths, and flowers were thrown upon him as he passed. As the cavalcade approached the town of Ronsdorf, for example, it was easy to see that the people were on tip-toe with expectation. At the entrance an arch bore the inscription:—
Willkommen dem Dr. Ferdinand Lassalle
Viel tausendmal im Ronsdorfer Thal!
Under arches and garlands, smothered with flowers thrown by young work-girls, whose fathers, husbands, brothers, cheered again and again, Lassalle and his friends entered the town, while a vast multitude followed in procession. It was at Ronsdorf that Lassalle made the speech which had in it something of fateful presentiment:—
“I have not grasped this banner,” he said, “without knowing quite clearly that I myself may fall. The feelings which fill me at the thought that I may be removed cannot be better expressed than in the words of the Roman poet:
‘Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor!’
or in German, ‘Möge, wenn ich beseitigt werde, irgend ein Rächer und Nachfolger aus meinen Gebeinen auferstehen!’ May this great and national movement of civilization not fall with my person, but may the conflagration which I have kindled spread farther and farther, so long as one of you still breathes. Promise me that, and in token raise your right hands.”