¶ Thus for two long weary years the bitter fight went on.
¶ The old man now went on a trip to Vienna, to see his son Herbert married, but ahead of him the Government had telegraphed, “No official welcome for Bismarck!”
The German ambassador, under instructions from Berlin, did not dare attend the wedding, refused to notice Bismarck’s presence in Vienna, officially.
¶ This was the last straw; it worked revulsion of popular feeling; the common people of Germany, the self-same people that Bismarck had so long doubted, now took up arms for fair play for the old man; and Caprivi, made the scapegoat, was forced to resign. He was succeeded by Hohenlohe, Bismarck’s friend, and leader in the Bavarian National party.
¶ On Bismarck’s eightieth birthday, the Emperor came in person, and with military honors presented the old man with a magnificent sword; but on Bismarck’s part the reconciliation was not sincere, you may well imagine that.
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Wherein, at last, abandoned by his King, the plain people, whom the great Bismarck so long politically ignored, now do indeed bind up the old man’s wounds.
¶ Bismarck’s mighty nature never softened, but remained bitter to the day of his death, with fire and sword pursuing his enemies; broken by Fate, his power gone, Bismarck still continued consistent to the last; true to his iron nature, he returned the hatred of enemies with his own arrogant contempt.
¶ As the years of his downfall passed and men came to comprehend somewhat his extraordinary combination of overshadowing political genius in administrative and executive life, side by side with his strange superstitions and his many weaknesses of a grand order, this awe-inspiring man became beloved for his frailties by the very common people whom all his life long he had held under suspicion. The people rallied to his defense when kings quitted his side; they took up his cause because the old man had been outraged in his sensibilities, rather than because he was right; they sent him thousands of sympathetic letters, telegrams, presents; thousands of students, business men, women and children, visited him in his retirement; and by that touch of human nature that proves the world kin, took the embittered old man to their hearts in the name of the United Germany that he had created with toil so infinite and battlings so long and blood-stained;—and they disarmed Bismarck by honoring the name of their old enemy.