He only remained at Paris two months, during the two delightful months of May and June, but this short stay sufficed for him both to complete his studies and to throw light on his religion. He had more than one conversation with the sovereign of France, whose profound ideas every one exalted at this time, commented ad infinitum on the smallest words, admired even his silence, and whom he, however, the future conqueror of Sedan, did not hesitate in his confidential effusions to define even then as "a great unrecognized incapacity." He saw also the influential men in the government, and in society, and strove to rally them to his ideas and his projects. He did not conceal that his sovereign would not delay to appeal to him, and he exposed without a détour the line of conduct which he would adopt on such an occurrence. What history will perhaps most admire in the present chancellor of Germany, will be the supreme art with which he sometimes handled the truth: this man of genius has understood how to give to frankness itself all the political virtues of knavishness. Very artful and very cunning as to the means, he has nevertheless always been, as regards the goal which he pursued, of a désinvolture, of an indiscretion without equal, and it was thus that he had at Paris in 1862 those astonishing and confidential conferences which only amused and which should have made them reflect.[38]
France,—said M. de Bismarck then and since, in 1862 as in 1864 and 1865, every time that he conversed with any of the political men from the banks of the Seine,—France would be wrong in taking umbrage at the increase in Prussian influence, and, the case occurring, at its territorial aggrandizement at the cost of the small States. Of what utility, of what help are then those small States, without a will, without strength, without an army? However far the designs and wants of Prussia could reach, they would necessarily stop at the Main; the line of the Main is its natural frontier; beyond that river, Austria will guard it, even its preponderance will increase, and there will thus always be in Germany two powers balancing one another. Good order will gain, and certainly France will lose nothing there, it will even draw immense advantages for its politics, for its movement in the world. In fact Prussia has an unfortunate, impossible configuration; it wants a stomach on the side of Cassel and Nassau, it has a dislocated shoulder on the side of Hanover, it is in the air, and this painful situation necessarily condemns it to follow entirely the policy of Vienna and St. Petersburg, to turn without rest in the orbit of the holy alliance. Better outlined, planted more solidly, having its members complete, it would be itself again, would have freedom of movements, the freedom of alliances, and what alliance more desirable for it than that with the French Empire? More than one question pending to-day, and almost unsolvable could have been settled then with perfect security: that of Venice, that of the Orient,—who knows? perhaps even that of Poland! Finally, if the possible aggrandizements of Prussia seem to be excessive, and to break the balance of strength what would prevent France from growing, from increasing itself in turn? Why should it not take Belgium, and destroy there a nest of demagogy? The cabinet of Berlin would not oppose it; suum cuique, that is the antique and venerable device of the Prussian monarchy.
All that said with liveliness, with spirit, with intelligence, accompanied by many an ingenious malicious remark, happy mots on men and things, on that chamber of lords at Berlin, for instance, composed of respectable old fogies, and the chamber of deputies, equally composed of old fogies, but not respectable, and on an august personage, the most respectable, but the greatest old fogy of all. M. de Bismarck had at Paris during these two months almost the same success which had accompanied his three years' sojourn on the banks of the Neva. The important men, however, were careful not to overdo it; they readily recognized in him all the qualities of a man of intellect, but they could not make up their minds to consider him a serious man.
In the last days of the month of June, the new representative of Prussia at the court of the Tuileries undertook a pleasure trip in the south of France. He visited in turn Chambord, Bordeaux, Avignon, Luchon, Toulouse, and made an excursion in the Pyrenees. "The chateau of Chambord," he wrote in a letter dated the 27th July, 1862, "answers, by its isolation, to the destinies of its possessor. In the great porticoes, in the splendid halls, in which formerly the kings with their mistresses held their court and their hunts, the playthings of the child of the Duke of Bordeaux now form the only furniture. The concierge, who served as my guide, took me for a legitimist, and crushed a tear in showing me a little cannon of his prince. I paid him a franc more than the tariff for this tear, although I feel but little desire to subsidize Carlism." At Bordeaux he rejoiced in having been able to "study in the original, and in the cellar of those great masters called Lafitte, Mouton, Pichon, Larose, Margaux, Branne, Armillac, etc.," who are generally known in Germany only through bad translations. He is delighted with his tour in the Pyrenees, but above all the Baths of Biarritz and St. Sébastian made him happy. He "devotes himself there entirely to the sun and to the salt water," he forgets politics, and knows neither journals nor dispatches. It was at this moment (the end of September, 1862) that he received from his sovereign the pressing call to go to Berlin. The elections had given a deplorable result, the immense majority of the new chamber belonged to the progressionists. They had not been able to decide at Berlin on the choice of the president of the future ministry,—"a cover for the government pot," as M. de Bismarck said; he was to fill those functions in the interim by taking the portfolio of foreign affairs. Burned by the sun of the South and fortified by the waters of the Gulf, "tanned and salted," the former aspirant for the inspectorship of dikes in a district of the Mark, started for his country to fill there the first position in the state. He only, so to speak, crossed Paris this time, but he remained there long enough to leave a characteristic mot, which summed up his entire programme. "Liberalism," said the designated chief of the Prussian government, in taking leave in the bureaux of the Quai d'Orsay, "liberalism is only nonsense which it is easy to bring to reason; but revolution is a force, which it is necessary to know how to use."
III.
UNITED ACTION.
I.
However great one wishes to make the share of genius in the work of M. de Bismarck, one cannot deny that a great part also comes from the unforeseen, from an extraordinary combination of circumstances, in one word, from that goddess Fortune whom the minnesinger of the Middle Ages did not cease to praise in song, whom Dante himself did not fail to extol in the immortal verses, "The course always luminous like a star in heaven, and the decree always hidden like a serpent in the grass." Without doubt, one can admire the extreme audacity with which the present chancellor of Germany has so often let fall from his hand the iron dice of destiny; one can even, to speak with the witty Abbé Galiani, suspect more than one cogged one in such a persistent "pair royal of six." It is not less true that in his long career as player, the president of the council at Berlin has occasionally met, in the most decisive moments, such marvelous luck as no human wisdom could foresee, that no political subtlety could prepare, and in which the hardy punter only had the merit, very considerable it is true, of not letting the vein exhaust itself or of using up the series. One of these magnificent strokes of luck, one of these perfectly prodigious events fell to the lot of William I. on his accession to power, in the month of January, 1863. This event laid the first foundations of his future greatness, it became the mainspring of his action in Europe, the Archimedean point from whence afterwards he raised up a world of daring projects, and it is necessary to bear it well in mind.