"Three long-legged Bismarcks should equal one eighteen-foot-seven plank. And I speak not only for myself. My wife would echo me."
Said the Prince in his cordial way:
"My mother has a great admiration for Her Excellency. My wife, too, speaks of her as a woman of antique nobility of mind." He continued, with a smile that curved the bold, frank mouth under the glittering mustache into lines of exceeding pleasantness: "And her personal solicitude for Your Excellency pleases my father much!"
The heavy face that opposed him lost its dogged, set expression. The Minister broke into a hearty laugh.
"So! I have been waiting to hear somewhat of that voluble telegram of hers to Abeken: 'Pray ask the King not to bother Count Bismarck about State matters just now, when he is taking Carlsbad waters for the gout!'
"Ha, ha!" The Prince joined gaily in the laughter. "The Councillor was working with the King and myself, when he received that wire. It came with a sheaf of others—he read it aloud without a change of expression..... Then you should have seen his face ... a study for a comedian...."
The Minister said, still smiling:
"My wife pours many confidences of the domestic sort into Abeken's bosom. She said to him during the Constitutional Conflict of '66 ... 'Bismarck cares really nothing at all about these stupid political matters. A cabbage well grown, or a fir-tree well planted, means more to him than the Indemnity Bill.' Yet when the Bill passed she was all-triumphant. And to-day she remarked to me: 'War is horrible to me on principle. But it would be equally horrible to me if you said to me to-morrow: "All is over!—we do not fight!..."' I made her angry by telling her that one might parody in application to the mental attitude of her sex the lines of the English Poet Laureate, and say:
"Her reason rooted in unreason stood."
"When our German women become too highly educated," said the fair-haired giant, "love will take wing for a land where the culture of the feminine intellect is still unpopular. We males hold our supremacy on the very insecure tenure of a carefully inculcated belief that, being men, we must be wise!"