Bismarck-Böhlen begged leave to propose a toast. The Minister asked, tolerantly regarding his young relative, who vibrated with suppressed hiccups, and was palpably unsteady upon his long legs:
"What is this toast we are to drink?"
Bismarck-Böhlen, in labor with speech, got out with a final effort:
"The—hic!—bombar—hic!—ment! Big—hic!—potarroes for Paris!"
"Ah, as God lives!" he said to them, "I must drink that toast!"
It went round. Hatzfeldt followed with:
"Our glorious Chancellor!"
"Our glorious Chancellor! Our great, ineffable, powerful Kaiser-maker! Hoch! the Fürst von Bismarck-Schönhausen, Imperial Germany's master-mind!"
Sobs mingled with their acclamations. Their faces were now purple red with the exception of Hatzfeldt's, which was ghastly, and Bismarck-Böhlen's, which presented a combination of shades, in which pea green and orange predominated, as, bathed in tears, he staggered to embrace his august relative. He was turned off with a single jerk of the Minister's wrist, to fall weeping on the bosom of Privy Councilor Abeken, who, shocked at finding himself involved in something approaching to an orgie, was in the act of escaping from the room.
"My thanks for the toast!" said the resonant voice in their dulled and singing ears, "but pray all remember that I am no longer the North German Chancellor, or even the Chancellor of the Germanic Federation, but Chancellor of the German Empire, which has a better sound! And this is now, or will be by the New Year—the Imperial German Chancellery, and Foreign Office, while you, my friends, are Imperial Privy Councilors, Secretaries, and so on. We will baptize your green honors in a fresh round of champagne, and then I must leave you. I have yet before me some hours of hard work, and must keep my head clear and cool."