Up the newly carpeted grand stairway the War Lord rushed. The smiling Bülow stood at the library door. Wilhelm merely extended his hand; he was too full of his subject to reply to Bülow's respectful greetings and inquiries after his health.
"Wedell will stay," he said, "for our talk will concern his department no less than yours."
Bülow had arranged arm-chairs about the blazing fireplace, but the War Lord was in no mood to sit down.
"Here's a devil of a mess," he said, "just discovered it in time. That confounded Este is too much of a blackleg to be trusted."
"Too deeply steeped in clericalism," suggested Bülow.
"That and Jesuitism, Romanism, Papism and every other sableism. Found him out in our first confab, and to-day's meeting with Haeseler confirmed it. He will never consent to a Roman Empire of German nationality. Wants all Italy for himself and Rome for his Church. Intolerable!" cried the War Lord, as he strode up and down. "Twenty marks if Otto were in his place."
The War Lord's joke drew tears of appreciative hilarity from the obsequious eyes of the two courtier-politicians.
"Your Majesty's remark reminds me of a patriotic speech made by the Prince of Bueckeberg at the beginning of the railway age: 'We must have a railway in Lippe, even if it costs five thousand thalers,' said His Transparency, amid thunderous applause."
This from the Chancellor, who, like Talleyrand, delights in quotations and has a knack of introducing other people's witty, or stupid, sayings when desiring to remain uncommittal on his own part. In this instance he would rather exhaust Bartlett and his German confrère Hertslet than discuss that Prince of mauvais sujets, Otto of Austria.
At the time of the discussion (it was in 1903—three years before the royal degenerate died) the father of the present heir to the Dual Monarchy was on the apex of his ill-fame.