BOOK THE FIFTH
The German People Are One and United
CHAPTER XIV
Windrows of Corpses
49
He is no longer the roaring delegate of the “White Saloon,” but has developed the astuteness of the devil, the open sincerity of a saint.
¶ Fight, fight, fight! Nothing but fight! And all this trying time, Bismarck suffered excruciating pains from his old rheumatic complaint.
He was irritable, melancholy and jaundiced; sat up all night half-buried in his mounds of state papers; dictating telegrams, quarreling with callers, denouncing, adjusting, scheming; four o’clock found him in bed; he tossed about till seven, when he managed to get to sleep; and was not seen again till late in the afternoon. The situation was getting on the master’s nerves.
¶ Enemies in the house of his friends spied on Bismarck, endeavored to poison the King against the doughty Minister. The Crown Prince, especially, who always had an aversion to Bismarck, despite the war-dog’s inestimable services to the House of Hohenzollern, now tried to pull the Pomeranian giant down.
To this end, the Prince dissassociated himself from Bismarck’s policy, avoided the great man at court. The situation passed rapidly from political to social objections on part of the Prince, who spread before the King the ruin of Hohenzollern if Bismarckian policies were longer pursued.