“Yes, it is the same man; and, when requisite, he is as acute and biting as of yore, although, since his great victories, he has adopted more of statesmanlike earnestness, quiet objectivity, and a conciliating carriage, corresponding to his present universally admitted greatness. Gradually his speech begins to flow and to warm, and soon unfolds its especial charm—that original and fresh, free and straightforward mode of expression to which we, in our commonplace days, were quite unaccustomed. Hence it has been called by his opponents ‘paradoxical,’ ‘frivolous,’ and ‘scholastic.’ We are indebted to them for a whole vocabulary of sentences, such as ‘Cataline existences,’ ‘People who have missed their vocation,’ ‘Blood and iron,’ ‘Austria should transfer her centre of gravity to Ofen,’ ‘This conflict must not be taken too tragically,’ and which soon became proverbially current, and, in the mean time, have revealed their deep truth and apposite precision. How true and exact, and, at the same time, how colored and tangible, is his definition of the national character of the Germans, on the occasion of the introduction of the Bill for the Constitution of the Confederation, which has hitherto prevented the attainment of a great united fatherland. ‘It is, as it seems to me,’ says Count Bismarck, ‘a certain superfluity in the feelings of manly self-consciousness which in Germany causes the individual, the community, the race, to depend more upon their own powers than upon those of the totality. It is the deficiency of that readiness of the individual and the race to merge itself in favor of the commonwealth, that readiness which has enabled our neighbor nations to secure, at an earlier period, those benefits after which we are striving.’ And when the orator, at the end of his speech, exhorts the House to fulfill their task as soon and as perfectly as possible, he continues:—‘For the German nation, gentlemen, has a right to expect from us that we should preclude the possibility of a recurrence of such a catastrophe (i.e., a German war); and I am convinced that you, together with the allied government, have nothing so nearly at heart as to fulfill this just anticipation of the German nation.’ With this beautiful exhortation, simply, but worthily and warmly, uttered, like the greatest of orators, he electrified the whole assembly, for tumultuous applause resounded from all the benches.”
Next to the Reichstag of the North German Confederation, the Luxemburg question, in the year 1867, principally drew attention to Bismarck. Probably many of those who in the pride of recent victory then demanded war for the former Federal fortress, have become convinced that Bismarck’s measured attitude was full of high political wisdom. At Bismarck’s dinner-table, a short time after Luxemburg had been declared neutral, a learned man gave it as his opinion that Prussia ought to have made it a casus belli with France. Bismarck answered very seriously:—“My dear Professor, such a war would have cost us at least thirty thousand brave soldiers, and in the best event would have brought us no gain. Whoever has once looked into the breaking eye of a dying warrior on the battle-field, will pause ere he begins a war.” And, after dinner, when he was walking in the garden with some guests, he stopped on a lawn, and related how he had paced to and fro upon this place in disquiet and deep emotion in those momentous days of June. He awaited the royal decision in an anguish of fear. When he came indoors again, his wife asked what had happened that he looked so overcome. “I am excited for the very reason that nothing has happened,” he replied, and went into his study. A few minutes later, shortly before midnight, he received the royal decision—the declaration of war.
From the 5th to the 14th of June, 1867, Count Bismarck remained at Paris in the suite of the King, where he became an object of general attention. The Parisians could not picture our Minister-President in any other way than in his white uniform of Cuirassiers. A regular flood of generally horribly bad pictures of him were sold at a sou per copy—the white uniform alone showing that Bismarck was the subject.
From the end of June to the beginning of August he visited his family at Varzin, an estate in Farther Pomerania, which he had bought in the spring.
On the 14th of July, 1867, he was appointed Chancellor of the North German Confederation, went in the beginning of August to the King at Ems, and on the 15th of August opened the session of the Council of the Federation at Berlin. On the 15th of November the Diet was opened, and on the 29th of February, 1868, it was closed. On the 23d of March the Reichstag of the North German Confederation was opened, and to this the Customs Parliament was added; it was no wonder, therefore, that under the gigantic load of work the strength of the Minister-President at last gave way altogether. In the June of 1868 he was taken seriously ill, and it was only at the end of the month that he was able to go to Varzin, where, in complete retirement and entire abstinence from all regular business, he very slowly mended; but was not able to regain his strength, in consequence of nervous sleeplessness. He seemed to feel the obstacles to his activity even more than all his illness. “Send me no secretary hither, or I shall go to work again!” he was heard querulously to exclaim. Despite of all public notifications, a flood of letters pursued him to Varzin; the whole correspondence, as might be naturally supposed, had to be returned unopened to Berlin, where it was estimated that during this stay at Varzin the Minister-President had been solicited for aid to the extent of not less than a million and a half of thalers.[60]
When at last he had grown somewhat better, Bismarck had the misfortune, on the 21st of August, to have a dangerous fall from his horse. He had gone out riding with his friends, Moritz von Blankenburg and the Legation’s Rath von Keudell, on a meadow near Puddiger, one of his farms, a German mile and a quarter from Varzin; his horse put his foot into a hole, fell, and fell with all its weight upon his body. So severe a fall might have had still sadder results, but such as they were they were sad enough, and weeks of severe pain again had to be endured, often not unmixed with many fears. At the very time when the foreign newspapers were picturing the most secret and wonderful activity in the Chancellor, he was lying prostrate in the most dangerous state. It need hardly be said that most anxious looks were directed towards Varzin—that general excitement eagerly anticipated news from thence, and that many hearts breathed lightly again when better intelligence arrived. The news was better than, properly speaking, it had any right to have been, but, fortunately, it has been justified by time.
The delight at the good news from Varzin was shown in the most various ways, especially in presents of remedies against sleeplessness. Bismarck was particularly amused with an old soldier, who advised him to smoke a pound of Porto Rico tobacco every day: he sent the old warrior a pipe and a quantity of tobacco, with the request that he would be so good as to smoke for him.
On the 1st of October the Burgomaster of Bülow arrived, with a deputation of the magistracy and town council, and brought the Minister-President the honorary diploma of the citizenship of the town. Bismarck received the gentlemen from Bülow with special friendliness, and said, among other things, that he accepted the diploma with the greater satisfaction, as Bülow had ever shown itself a patriotic and loyal city. After dinner, he offered the deputation the hospitality of his house for the night. But the respectable citizens declared that they had promised their careful and inquisitive wives to return before midnight, and that they must, therefore, keep their words. On this the Countess turned merrily to her husband and said: “As you are now also a citizen of Bülow, I should be very glad if you would, from this time, follow the good example of your colleagues of Bülow!” Bismarck laughed and shrugged his shoulders, but returned no answer.
The fresh and vigorous manner with which Bismarck has since returned to his duties, allows us to hope that his long and severe illness is quite at an end. He has certainly never thought of sparing himself when duty called; but he takes part freely in hunting parties, for the free air of the forest is his best medicine, and in the month of December he was present at several parties in the Province of Saxony, in the Mark, and even in Holstein. In Holstein, at Ahrensburg, where he hunted for two days with Count Schimmelmann, a brilliant torchlight procession was formed in his honor.
On the 13th of December, shortly before the Count’s departure, a long train of several hundred people, young and old, with two hundred flaming pitch torches, appeared in the castle-yard, preceded by a band, and followed by sixty mounted yeomanry. After the leader of the procession had announced that they had come to pay their respects to the Minister-President, Count Bismarck approached the window, before the crowd, and spoke to the following effect:—