"He caught me on my doorstep,—as the polecat waylaid the badger!—and as he brought back a decoration I had lost, and which he, luckily for himself, had found!—I could not refuse him a minute's interview. But with regard to Your Royal Highness's question of an instant since—Le Sourd, the French Chargé d'Affaires, placed the Emperor's declaration of war in my hands about an hour after the opening of Council in the Palace to-day."
Said the Prince:
"Unhappy man! driven to risk the loss of an Empire that he may continue to rule a nation of enemies. One can hardly doubt the issue—yet at what cost of lives shall we not purchase victory!"
Bismarck said in harsh, metallic tones, bending his brows upon the Prince, who all the world knew loved peace, and loathed the thought of the red months of strife that were approaching:
"Your Royal Highness is aware that I look upon this war as necessary, and that I should not have returned to Varzin without giving in my resignation to His Majesty had the issue been other than what it is.... As for this weak-backed Napoleon, this Pierrot stuffed with bran,—who is kept in an upright attitude only by the slaps I deal him on one cheek and the buffets the Monarchists and the Revolutionists lend him on the other!—it will be better for him to meet his end by a bullet or a sword-thrust on the banks of the Rhine, than to be blown to pieces by some bomb in the streets of Paris, or to die of apoplexy in the bedroom of some nymph of the theater-coulisses!"
He drew himself to his full height and, folding his powerful arms upon his breast, said, looking full at the Prince, who had declined a seat and who was standing near the window, his hair and beard glowing golden-red in the full rays of the setting sun:
"Your Royal Highness speaks of the effusion of blood. I am of those who have drawn the sword in the service of their King and country. I do not regard war from the point of view of the man who stops at home. More than this! ... His Majesty is not the only father who has a son serving in our Army.... I have two. Herbert and Bill...."
A pale purplish tint suffused his heavy face and crept to the summit of his rugged forehead. His fierce blue eyes dimmed. He said, in slightly muffled tones:
"I am not given to pompous phrases. Yet if German unity can only be brought about by a great national war waged against our near-hand enemy—our old, cunning, sleepless foe—I hail that war, even though it leave me without posterity! If the gulf that divides the Northern and Southern sections of the Fatherland can be better bridged by my boys' dead bodies ... I would give them as freely as I would give my own!"
A spasm twisted his under-jaw. He said, laughing in his stern way: