He sat at gambling tables, he wheedled secrets from the prostitutes of princes; he stood by and egged on human dog-fights; he took part in church-rows about doctrines; he had inside glimpses of the venality of Austrian kept-press-writers, “the scum of the earth,” he calls them, “who sell opinions as the petty merchant sells butter and eggs.” Bismarck seemed to be the only man in Europe who really was able to grasp the solution of the German problem.
¶ Also, the granite soil of his heart is shown again and again. What a hater he was!
For example, refusing to go to Mass for the repose of Schwarzenberg’s soul, Bismarck gave the reason: “He is the man who said: ‘I will abuse Prussia and then abolish her.’”
¶ You see, our Otto is one of those uncomfortable Germans who in his own amazing personality expresses the National ideal of earnestness; Otto is frightfully in earnest in his cups, or over his half dozen eggs for breakfast—as you please. He frightens timid souls.
¶ His temper few men could curb, much less sit calmly by and receive without retiring in bad order. Incident after incident at Frankfort might be cited, but what is the use?
¶ With fiendish earnestness Bismarck plotted to break the bones of two democratic editors whose writings threw the Prussian mastiff into periodical black rages. Bismarck justified his cruelty by insisting that “bounds must be set for these infamous press scribblings.” He means that attacks on the Divine-right of kings must at all hazards be choked off. He always hated journalists, called the press “a poisoned well,” and as for himself he is on record to this effect: “I always approached the ink-bottle with great caution.”
¶ But mark this well: Our Otto, in his turn, craftily used the press to present the smooth side of his own political intriguing; indeed he had his very valuable Prussian press bureau; and we have authority for the statement that the Bismarckian idea of journalism was to have “hireling scribes well in hand, men who stabbed like masked assassins and mined like mobs.”
¶ During the decade we call Bismarck’s apprenticeship, 1851-’61, he was thus engaged: 1851, envoy at Frankfort Diet; 1852, Prussian ambassador at Vienna, during the illness of Count Arnim; St. Petersburg, 1859; Paris, 1862.
Thus, he had an opportunity to get acquainted with all the leading diplomatists on the European chessboard, to study them in their own haunts, and to perfect himself in playing with pitch without blackening his hands.