He talked a little more: "We should never have hooked the King of Bavaria, but for the pluck of Holnstein, who set off from Munich to tackle His Most Gracious at his Palace of Neuschwanstein, and—there being no railway—made in six days a journey of eighteen German miles on foot and on horseback over mountain passes, agreeably diversified by forest tracks and timber roads."
He drank and went on:
"He arrived, to find His Majesty nursing his toothache in absolute solitude, invisible to human eyes, save those belonging to the dentist, his valets and fiddlers and grooms. At first the King refused to receive him, but Holnstein was clever enough to gain over the dentist to deliver a letter from his own hand, and incidentally one written by myself...."
He went on, with a smile that curved the great mustache into lines of gayety:
"Knowing myself particularly detested by King Ludwig, I had taken pains to make my letter acceptable. I said in it that my family had enjoyed the patronage of his family a trifle of five hundred years ago. I mentioned that reinstitution in the Wittelsbach good graces had been the object of my whole life's labors. I incidentally pressed the claims of the King of Prussia to be made Emperor of Germany. I enclosed, with many apologies, the draft of a letter which expressed the concurrence of Bavaria. 'Your Majesty has only to copy this and sign it,' I added, 'and the troublesome business is closed.' What a prospect to a monarch afflicted by an obstinately throbbing gumboil! There was no paper or pen at hand with which to answer, so the dentist presented his patient with a sheet out of his pocketbook, and the patent ink reservoir pen with which he writes his prescriptions. King Ludwig sits up in bed, scrawls a copy of my draft reply, and the German Empire is made.... The Festival of the Orders and the Proclamation of the Emperor will come off in the Great Hall of Versailles upon a certain date not far off.... I will leave you to guess what the date is likely to be!..."
In the midst of a deafening tumult of joyful outcries and congratulations, he turned his great eyes upon one excited face after another, and drained his capacious glass and set it down.
"And with all this, gentlemen, our hopes might have foundered.... The Royal sign manual might have availed us nothing!... the Treaty might never have been signed!... Everything has depended upon a question as trivial and ridiculous as indeed are most of our human vanities. Imagine the gravity of the question at issue!... Whether the Bavarian officers are in future to wear the marks of their military rank upon their collars as heretofore, or on their shoulders, like us North Germans?... Upon that the German Empire has dangled, do you hear? Ah! how many times," he said, "I have been tempted to break out and tell those fellows in the devil's name to sew their stars and badges on the seats of their breeches. But I comforted myself with the old adage: Politeness as far as the last step of the gallows, but hanging for all that!"
They roared with laughter. He called:
"Fresh bottles! A little excess may be pardoned, upon this of all the nights in the year. Really, I need a buck-up after all that I have suffered, what with this Bavarian business, with Gortchakoff's Note, and the bumptiousness of the English, who, without knowing why or wherefore, are bellowing for war. All that danger has been avoided by the exercise of a little diplomacy.... But how can we expect to be taken seriously by the Powers when we procrastinate in the matter of the Paris Bombardment—which ought to begin at once!"
There was a hubbub of acquiescence, from which only the voices of Hatzfeldt and Abeken were missing.