Here, again, in front of one of the couches, lay the head and skin of a splendid elk, another trophy of Bismarck’s prowess as a sportsman. The walls of this room were hung with yellow Gobelins of ‘Chinese patterns,’ and furniture to correspond. By degrees, all the guests had gradually congregated in this room—deputies, councillors, ministers, admirals, secretaries, all mingled together. There was none of that reserve and strict etiquette with which ministers usually love to surround themselves, like a wall of division between them and the people’s representatives, none of that exclusiveness and national party spirit which, as a rule, is always present in the Diet. Very few uniforms were visible among the guests. The nooks and corners, in which, according to Bismarck’s own words, the great affairs of the state could be settled and arranged in five minutes, were now all filled with eager talkative groups of deputies and councillors, or the leaders of the different parties. The conversation in our neighbourhood was carried on in a pretty loud and easy tone and without any reserve; for there did not lurk here, as there does behind every door and in every retiring-room of the imperial parliament, some insidious reporter for the press.
‘Who is that stout gentleman yonder, with the very elaborate shirt-front, blue coat with brass buttons, and a huge and perfectly new order of the Eagle of the third class? He tries in vain to disguise his eastern origin.’
‘Is it possible you do not know him?—this man, whom Bismarck’s son in his last pamphlet described as the greatest man of his century!—this father of millions of—railway shares! Do you really mean to say you do not know him? Well, then, my dear sir, you see before you Dr Strousberg, formerly Baruch Hirsch Strousberg, of the firm of Dr Ujest, Strousberg & Company!—Shall I introduce you?’
But the subject of this discourse had already joined that arch-satirist, Von Unruh Magdeburgh, the President of the Constitutional Prussian National Assembly. Beside him appeared the venerable head of Simson, the perpetual President of the German parliament.
‘Do you know the best way of enforcing respect into our noisy neighbours, the French?’ asked my vis-à-vis.—I thought of our millions of soldiers; but he continued: ‘You need only tell them that our three Presidents, Simson, Ujest, and Benningson, have twenty-seven children between them—nine each.’
Meanwhile, the servants again came round with refreshments for the guests; this time it was Maitrank,[1] in long Venetian glasses, and magnificent silver tankards filled with sparkling ale.
But the heat still continued to increase, and became almost unbearable. Lasker was the first to move an amendment, to dispense with kid gloves; and like most of Lasker’s motions, this proposition found plenty of support among the deputies, and in this instance, even among the councillors.
And now the intimate friends and relations of the Chancellor invite the guests to adjourn to the dining saloon, which is the last of the long row of apartments we had up till now passed through. This saloon, an oblong square, joins the apartment last described, at the right-hand corner; only its narrow side faces the street. The decorations and fittings-up of this dining saloon differ entirely from all the rest of the suite. It has been kept exactly the same as when Bismarck took it over from his predecessor; in fact, for fifty years this apartment has remained unchanged. There still hangs the same massive chandelier with its forty-eight candles; the same white panels with golden borders still cover the walls; the same shell-shaped mirrors, the same yellow marble mantel-pieces that were there under Hardenberg, Mannteuffel, and Schleichnitz, all remain unchanged.
‘The last time I was here I was under Mannteuffel,’ says old Count Schwerin, the head of the Liberal party, to me, standing in his favourite position with both his hands in his trousers’ pockets.
The first feeling of shyness having worn away, the various dainties, in the shape of cold game, saddle of venison, mayonnaises, Italian salads, &c., with which the long centre table was laden, were speedily done justice to. Even the modest Saxon privy-councillor, who three minutes before had retreated from the table and refused the invitation with a polite wave of the hand and a, ‘No, no; thank you!’ now followed in the war-path of the pioneers for food. There was no time or space to think of sitting down; each one helped himself to a plate from the piles, placed in readiness on the table, together with the necessary table requisites, and hastened to partake of the delicacies that had been prepared for his delectation. A party of Saxon and Rhenish gentlemen had succeeded in getting possession of a side-table, and there, seated at their ease, they intrenched themselves against the annexation tendencies of the North German League appetites; getting all their provisions through the proper constitutional channel of the Bismarckian domestics.