[27] Lassalle was killed in a duel in 1864, at the age of thirty-nine.
[28] In the play, Charles V. has a long conference with Franz, but
ends by saying of him what Bismarck must have said to himself about
Lassalle: “The man is great, but his is not the greatness which I seek,
and which I can employ.”
“Der mann ist gross, doch ist es nicht die Grösse,
Welche ich suche und gebrauchen kann.”
[29] Karl Sand, a student of Erlangen, assassinated Kotzebue at Manheim
in 1819, and having ineffectually tried to commit suicide, was executed
in the following year. In striking Kotzebue, he meant, as he said, “to
exterminate the apologist of despotism.”
[30] “Personne n'a de l'esprit, comme tout le monde.” “On peut avoir
plus d'esprit qu'un autre, mais non plus d'esprit que tous les autres.”
[31] Prince Bismarck does not care much about the theatre, and it
may be mentioned that when he visited Paris in 1867, Offenbach's
“Grande Duchesse,” which, as a skit upon militaryism, made so many
laugh, excited in him only anger. He was especially indignant at the
song of “Here is the Sabre of my Sire.” “You can't expect a pair
of Jews (Offenbach and Ludovic Halévy) to feel any reverence for
military traditions,” he said; “but now 'Le Sabre de mon Père' will
be associated with ludicrous ideas in the minds of Frenchmen, and old
generals will be ashamed to give their swords to their sons on account
of this odious jingle.” At this same visit to Paris, however, Bismarck
saw a performance of Sardou's “Nos bons Villageois” at the Gymnase,
and he laughed loudly at the scene in which a Colonel, who is Mayor
of his village, makes all the municipal Councillors sign a document
acknowledging that they are “a troop of donkeys.”
[32] Two of Bismarck's heroes in history are Wallenstein and William
the Silent. He once said of Marshal von Moltke: “Lucky man, he need
only make his one speech a year in the Reichstag and then the echoes
of cannon seem to be speaking for him!” Marshal von Moltke, however,
speaks as well as he writes. His _Letters_ to his late wife, while he
was travelling in Turkey and the Danubian Provinces, are faultless
in their composition, instructive, amusing, and models of style. All
the qualities which distinguish them are to be found in the Marshal's
speeches, which are clear, short, and captivate the attention, not
less by what they contain than by the tuneful voice in which they are
uttered.
[33] Some years ago, when a young Prussian officer of noble family
was turned out of the army for declining a challenge on conscientious
grounds, an English clergyman sent Prince Bismarck a copy of the Diary
of Mr. Adams, who was American Minister of the Court of St. James's
at the beginning of this century. Mr. Adams speaks with admiration of
the efforts which were being made to put down duelling in England by
force of public opinion. Prince Bismarck, in courteously acknowledging
the book, wrote: “There is much good sense in England, but you have
not done away with duelling, as you suppose. There is more of it among
your schoolboys, who fight with fists, than among those of any other
country; and this may prevent the necessity for much fighting in
after-life. English boys take rank at school according to their pluck,
and hold that rank afterwards.”
[34] M. Teste had been one of Louis Philippe's Ministers. Getting into
disgrace through financial jobberies, which subjected him to criminal
proceedings, he had to resign his portfolio and retire altogether from
public life. To revenge himself on Louis Philippe's family (though no
member of it had had any share in his ruin) he privately drew up for
Napoleon III. the report that was required to justify the seizure of
the Orleans property. No respectable lawyer could be found to do this
work.
[35] After a dinner at Count Lehndorff's the conversation once fell
upon religious topics, and Bismarck exclaimed: “I cannot understand
how without faith in a revealed religion we can believe in God; nor do
I see how, without faith in a God, Dispenser of all good and Supreme
Judge, a man can do his duty. If I were not a Christian, I should not
remain at my post. It can yield me nothing more in the way of honors;
the exercise of power is no longer a pleasure but a worry, since I
can never carry out the simplest scheme without struggles, trying to
a man of my age and weak health. If I were ambitious of popularity, I
could get it by retiring. All men would speak well of me if I lived
in retirement. I should then perhaps have more real power than I have
now. I should certainly have more power to help my friends. But it is
because I believe in a Divine dispensation which has marked out Germany
for great destinies that I remain at my post. I have a duty to perform
and must continue to do it so long as I am permitted. If I am stricken
down and rendered incapable for work, then I shall know that my time of
rest has come; but not till then.”
[36] Bismarck has never had much veneration either for diplomatists or
diplomacy. Here is an extract of a letter which he wrote to his wife
in 1851 when he was at Frankfort: “In the art of saying nothing and
in a great many words, I am making rapid progress. I write many pages
of letters which read like leading articles, and if Manteuffel, after
perusing them, can tell what they are about, he certainly knows more
than I. Every one of us pretends to believe that his colleagues are
full of ideas and plans; and yet all the time the whole body of us
knows nothing, and each is aware that the others know nothing. No man,
not even the most malicious sceptic of a democrat, can believe what
charlatanism and big pretence is all this diplomacy.”
It may be remarked, in view of Prince Bismarck's opinions on duelling,
that for an affront like that which he offered to the young attaché,
a French Admiral, the Bailli de Suffren, was killed by a lieutenant.
The affront was offered on the high seas; the subaltern bore it at the
time without a murmur, but on returning to France he resigned and sent
the admiral a challenge, saying: “You are no longer my superior now. We
are both gentlemen and you owe me a reparation.” In Germany this would
have been impossible, for the attaché must have belonged either to the
_Landwehr_ or the _Landsturm_, so that the Chancellor as a general of
the _Landwehr_ remained always his superior. Thus in military countries
one of the chief excuses for duelling—namely, that it enables a man to
punish the insolence of office—cannot be urged.
[37] A fact that speaks well for Prince Bismarck is that ladies are
not afraid of him. Napoleon I. made women cower; they knew that
his Corsican spitefulness would disdain no means of retaliation
for a slight or an injury. But ladies have often been maliciously
epigrammatical, or downright saucy to the Chancellor, without having
anything worse to fear from him than scowls and grumbles.