¶ “Here, then, was a mysterious ‘Court of Chance,’ where things dragged on for years, a political circumlocution office, hopelessly bound by its own interminable seals, parchments and red tape.”
The secret object was to do nothing that would not favor Austria; with the idea that, in the end, the devious course of politics would bring Austria final control of the German lands, everywhere.
¶ It was in this absurd Parliament that Bismarck was to perfect himself in political intrigue. Frankfort made no organic laws; these were mysteriously settled at Vienna; the meetings of the Diet were held in secret; at best, the voting was along lines that gave to Austria and not to Prussia the deciding voice.
¶ It did not take Bismarck long to find that at Frankfort the King of Prussia was but a cipher. Furthermore, what raised Bismarck’s ire was the impotence of the Parliament. Frankfort had been unable to put down the blood-letting of ’48, and Bismarck detested weakness of any kind, mental, physical or spiritual.
He was, and always remained, a profound extremist; but his position was tempered by massive common sense.
¶ The world dearly loves a flunkey—and flunkeyism was universal at Frankfort.
The many members fluttered about in gay military dress, wore stars of sham authority, gold crosses, medals dangling from bright ribbons.
Names prefixed by count, duke, margrave—crests on the coach door and Latin mottoes—hyphenated family names, indicated all manner of political marriages de convenience. Bestarred gentlemen, one and all, if you please!
¶ Bismarck wrote home soon enough, for he was choking with anger, not on account of the aristocratic airs of Frankfort (for Bismarck dearly loved a title), but choking with anger because his beloved King of Prussia was a Nobody in this crazy Parliament. “I find them a drowsy, insipid set of creatures, only endurable when I appear among them as so much pepper,” are his sarcastic words.