Perched on the wall,--hung with an old-world Chinese paper, figured
with sprays of bamboo, pagodas, bridges, mandarins promenading under
yellow umbrellas, and fair Celestials reclining on the banks of a
meandering, bright blue stream--the German fly of Mr. Knewbit's envy
would have reaped scant information from the conversation of the
three men sitting at the dinner-table, for the reason that they
conversed in English--perhaps for privacy's sake.
The apartment, not ordinarily used as a dining-room, possessed three
sets of folding-doors, and beyond a sofa and twelve heavy chairs,
upholstered with a Chinese brocade matching the paper, was scantily
furnished. The table plate was solid and handsome. A pair of huge
silver-gilt wine-coolers displayed a goodly array of champagne
bottles, a cellar-basket with rows of horizontal wicker-nests
contained claret, Burgundy, and Rhine wine. The second course was
under discussion, but the servants, after placing the dishes on the
table, had withdrawn. By a bell kept on a dumb-waiter at the host's
elbow, bearing sauces, clean plates, spare glasses, bread of white
and black, and other requisites, the attendants could be summoned at
need.
The hostess's chair at the table-head was vacant. The two guests'
places were laid on the right and left hand of the host. All three
men were in uniform, two were well stricken in years; and Time had
not left sufficient locks among them to furnish a wig-maker with
material for covering a bald patch.
Also, they were men of whom the world had heard much already, and
was, before the ending of the year, to hear a great deal more.
The tall, heavily-built man of sixty-seven, in the uniform of a
General of Division, who sat upon the host's right hand, boasting a
hair-tuft above either ear, a pair of shaggy eyebrows, and a
bristling mustache dyed to savage blackness, any intelligent Berliner
would have recognized as Von Roon, the Prussian Minister of War;
while the mild-looking veteran of seventy who opposed him, displaying
the crimson badge of the Great General Staff upon a plain dark
close-buttoned military frock, with the ribbons of a dozen
decorations showing in a narrow line on his left breast and the
coveted Cross of the Red Eagle of the First Class hanging at the
black regulation stock that clipped his unstarched linen collar,
would have been claimed by the veriest street urchin as "Our Moltke!"
You saw in this hale, lean, stooping Staff Officer, who covered a
scalp as bare as a new-born babe's with an obvious auburn wig, the
first soldier of the day, the past-master in war-craft. His fine,
transparent beaky profile, tight mouth, clear light eyes, set in a
net of innumerable knowing little wrinkles, and the cross-hatching of
tiny scarlet veins that made his hollow cheeks ruddy as Cornish
apples, might have belonged to some aged, ascetic Cardinal, or
venerable Professor of Science, rather than to Baron Helmuth Carl
Bernhard von Moltke, General, Field-Marshal, and Chief of the Great
General Staff of the Prussian Army; whose heraldic motto, _Erst wagen
dann wagen_ summarizes his strategical policy; whose conduct of the
Danish War of '64 and the Austrian War of '66 had placed Prussia in
the forefront as a military nation, under whose banner were soon to
gather the Confederated German States.
Questioned as to the identity of the man at the head of the table,
the long-limbed, heavily molded, powerfully built personage of
five-and-fifty, attired in the undress-uniform of a Colonel of White
Cuirassiers, and wearing the Order of Commander of the Red Eagle, the
citizen would most likely have scowled, the street-boy spat forth
some unsavory epithet, tacked on to a name that was destined to be
inscribed upon the era in divers mediums, inclusive of marble and
iron, brass and gold and silver; lead and fire; bright steel and red
blood.
For this was the Minister to whom diplomats, Parliamentary orators,
and political leader-writers referred when they mentioned Prussia;
the accursed of Ultramontane, the abhorred of Socialists. Walking
alone through the streets, as, indeed, he loved to do, his keen eye
and huge physical strength had saved him, ere now, from the
assassin's bullet or knife. And you could not look upon him without
recognizing a Force, all-potent for good or all-dominant in evil, an
enemy to be execrated or a leader to be adored.
The massive, high-domed head was scantily covered, save for a grayish
lock or so above either temple, and a thin thatching behind the
finely shaped, sagacious ears. The eyebrows were thick--of gray
mixed with darkish brown; the luxuriant brown-gray mustache covering
the large, mobile, sarcastic mouth, grew heavily as any trooper's.
The short, straight nose was rounded at the end like the point of a
broadsword. And in the indomitable, vital regard of the blue eyes,
partly hidden under thick and level lids, you felt the master-mind,
as they coldly considered some question of finance or diplomacy, or
blazed challenge and defiance, scorn and irony. And in the sagging
orbital pouches, as in the puffy jowl, you read the unmistakable
signs of bygone orgies, deep potations, marvelous vital powers taxed
to the utmost in the past pursuit of pleasure, as by present
indefatigable, unsleeping labors with brain, voice, and pen in the
service of Throne and State.
The table-talk dealt chiefly, at first, with culinary and
gastronomical matters. Asparagus soup iced and a clear soup with
vermicelli had preceded the course of fish, placed on the table by
the servants, who had then been dismissed. A huge dish of Waldbach
trout with green sauce and another, as capacious, of crayfish stewed
in cream with mushrooms, vanished before a double onslaught on the
part of the War Minister and the Chancellor, the Chief of the General
Staff partaking sparingly, as was his wont.
Said his host, smiling and setting down an empty wine goblet:
"You eat nothing, Herr Baron Field-Marshal, whereas I, who come of a
family of great eaters, and His Excellency, who boasts a similarly
inherited capacity, have taken twice of each dish."
"Thanks, thanks, dear Count," said Moltke mildly, glancing downward
at the well-marked hollow behind his middle buttons; "but I do not
like to overload my stomach, particularly at my time of life."
"Being aware of Your Excellency's objection to dishes that are
heavy," the Chancellor continued gravely, but still smiling, "I took
pains to select a menu of light, easily digested things. What are
three or four dozens of oysters at the commencement of a dinner?"
Von Roon agreed, in a hoarse bass, that set the chandelier-glasses
vibrating:
"Or a few half-pound trout, or a helping or so of stewed crayfish?
Mere nothings--to a strong digestion."
"Mine cannot be strong," the great strategist remarked modestly, "for
I find that an over-plentiful meal oppresses the brain, and hinders
steady thought."
Said the Chancellor, filling from a long-necked bottle one of the
three large crystal goblets that served him as wine-glasses, emptying
it at a draught and setting it down:
"Hah! Were that known in a certain high quarter at Paris, what a
cargo of delicacies you would presently receive from the Maison
Chevet!"
Von Roon's big voice came in:
"Was not Chevet the Parisian purveyor who supplied the
banker-minister Lafitte with fish for a Dieppe dinner in the time of
the French Monarchy?"
"So!" The Chancellor, holding his napkin delicately in both hands,
dried the wine from his mustache, and added, turning his great,
slightly bloodshot eyes upon the interrogator. "And who is now chief
caterer for the Emperor Napoleon the Third." He added, glancing back
at Moltke, and observing that his glass stood unemptied: "Since Your
Excellency will not eat, let me recommend you the wine, which is of
special quality. Not only Rüdesheim, but good Rüdesheim. Ha, ha,
ha!"
The veteran's clear eyes became mere slits in the mass of puckered
wrinkles. He pushed back his auburn peruke, showing his high-arched
temples, and laughed, revealing gums as healthy as a child's, and
still accommodating three or four staunch old grinders inclined at
various angles, like ancient apple-tree stumps.
"_Nu, nu_! You are twitting me with my candor to Sultan Mahmoud in
1835; but what else could I say when Chosref Pasha intimated that His
Sublimity required my opinion? Directly I tasted his wretched wine,
I knew some rogue had sold him an inferior brand, and thus I told him
honestly: 'It is Rüdesheim, Your Majesty, but it is not good
Rüdesheim!' And with the first of the boxes of tobacco and
cigarettes that came from Constantinople after my return to Germany,
I received the message that the _tutun_ was not only Turkish _tutun_,
but good Turkish _tutun_." He drank off his wine, ending: "And so my
nephews say it is, for I smoke neither cigarettes nor pipes."
"I smoke pipes," said the Chancellor, stretching a white, muscular
hand toward the bell on the dumb-waiter, "when my doctor prohibits
cigars." He added: "Pipes of all materials and descriptions--one
sort excepted. I have no doubt Your Excellency could give it a name."
The War Minister, pondering, knotted his heavy tufted eyebrows, and
presently blew out his cheeks as a man may when the jest baffles his
wit. The Field-Marshal began to laugh, a gentle chuckle that began
by agitating his lean abdomen, and shaking his bowed but vigorous
shoulders before it widened his mouth into a slit curved gaily at the
corners, and squeezed tears of merriment out of his puckered eyes.
"I'll wager half a pfennig I will name it at the first guess! You
mean the Calumet of Peace!"
Von Roon barked out a laugh. The Chancellor nodded, smiling. Then
two middle-aged, grave-looking male servants in plain black entered
with the third course, and the faces of the diners underwent a
curious change. They were more suave, and all expression seemed as
though it had been wiped from them. Until, following on the heels of
the servants (who brought the _entrées_), there appeared a colossal
boarhound, dark tawny in color, with black pointings, short, rounded
ears, massive chest, square muzzle, and red-rimmed eyes. Fixing
these fierce orbs upon his master with an affection proved not
altogether disinterested by the copious dribbling of his jaws, the
great brute sat upright at his left hand, flogged the carpet with his
heavy tail, and saluted the placing of the dishes on the table with
three gruff barks.
"Aha, Tyras!"
"Hey, then, Tyras! So they have cut short your furlough, boy!"
"He would tell you, like that sergeant of infantry who was made
postman of a country district after the war of '66, and at whom the
illiterate population--who never got anything but bad news or dunning
letters--used to shoot as a mild hint to keep away altogether, that
all the days are field-days to him. Speaking as a dog with a master
who walks when he does not ride, and must be waited for when he is
neither riding nor walking."
The Chancellor, smiling, looked at the huge brute, which rose and
laid its massive jowl entreatingly upon his chair-arm, and receiving
no immediate return in caress, lobbed a heavy forepaw pettishly upon
the tablecloth. A chased silver-gilt salt-cellar, in the shape of a
Bavarian peasant-girl carrying two milk-pails, toppled, and might
have fallen to the floor, but that the Field-Marshal caught it
dexterously, though without being able to prevent the salt being
spilt.
"No harm done. See!" He triumphantly set the milk-maid in her place
again: "Only the salt is spilled upon the cloth!"
"Now, if Tyras were superstitious!" commented the host, as a servant
hastened to repair the damage with the aid of a napkin and a
porcelain dessert-plate, "he would be convinced that Madame Tyras and
her sons were not doing as well as might be hoped."
"The bitch has pupped, then?" said Von Roon as a trio of corks
exploded; and the servants, having carried round the dishes, placed
them on the table, set an open bottle of champagne, dewy from the
ice, and enveloped in a damask napkin, at the right of each diner,
and noiselessly quitted the Chinese room.
As the door shut, the Chancellor continued, responding to Roon's
question with a nod, and looking at the Chief of the Great General
Staff:
"However, Tyras is not one of those nervous sires who rend heaven and
earth with outcries if danger threatens one of their offspring. The
Pomeranian breed are possibly less nervous than the strain at
Sigmaringen. I think Prince Antony----"
Blurted out the Field-Marshal, bolting a mouthful of cutlet and
crimsoning to the edges of his wig with sudden anger: "May the great
devil fly away with that pompous old sheep's-head!"
"It was not without reason," said the Chancellor, without slackening
in his onslaught upon an _entrée_ of duckling stewed with olives,
"that I arranged for us three to dine without the servants. Did I
not foresee that the hot blood of the warlike youth would effervesce
in some such expression as that I have just heard!"
Said the old man, still flushed, but laughing, and sipping at a
bumper of dry Sillery:
"He is a sheep's-head, and a pompous one! He negotiates with Prim,
as head of the Hohenzollern family, quite forgetting the King, it
would appear! He is very well pleased--he thinks the place will suit
his son capitally! He sends him on second thoughts to ask the King
if he does not think so. Then when France hurries her Ambassador to
Ems to inform the King, who has not said 'Ay' or 'Nay' in the matter,
that she will not tolerate a Prince of Prussia on the Throne of
Spain, he writes to the King saying that he is much impressed by the
turn things are taking at Paris, and though he thinks he cannot in
decency break off the affair, perhaps the King will do it for him!
Meanwhile Prince Leopold, who is the chief person concerned--where
withdrawal or acceptance is in question--has quitted Ems and gone
where you please.... Not to his parents' country castle of
Sigmaringen, but to the Tyrol.... Now why to the Tyrol? This
marching and countermarching--with no definite purpose in it, makes
my blood boil. Phew!"
And really the perspiration fairly bubbled from the pores of the old
warrior, as he took off his auburn peruke and mopped his dripping
head and face with a large white handkerchief.
The Chancellor, who had been discussing a second helping of the dish
before him, laid down his knife and fork upon their silver-gilt
supporters, unfastened a hook of his undress frock, and said,
withdrawing a small roll of tissue papers and separating one thin
penciled sheet from the rest:
"There is some reason for the Prince's agitation. This morning a
telegram in cipher--of which this is a fair transcript--was
dispatched from Sigmaringen to Olozaga, the Spanish Ambassador at
Paris. It conveys the intimation that Prince Antony withdraws from
the candidacy in the name of Prince Leopold. It was sent by the
French Emperor's secret agent, a Roumanian named Straz."
He went on informing himself, with a quiet side-glance to right and
left, of the effect his communication was producing:
"Perhaps you do not know Straz--a man with the profile and curls of
one of M. Layard's man-god bulls of Nineveh, a living tool that might
have been tempered in the workshop of an Alexander Borgia, or a
Catherine de Medici----"
He stopped to fill one of his great crystal goblets from the
champagne-bottle that stood beside him. Moltke, indifferent to the
dishes that stood temptingly within reach, had been wiping the inside
of his wig dry with his handkerchief. Now, oblivious of the wig, and
crumpling it with the handkerchief into a ball, he was squeezing the
ball between his narrow palms as he listened to the speaker. Von
Roon, who had been busy upon some sweetbreads cooked in sour cream,
paused in the act of helping himself again largely.
"So--so--this fellow--Straz----" The Chancellor stuttered now and
then, and he did it here effectively--"This uns-scrupulous f-fellow
of whom I am t-talking----" He drained the big glass to the dregs,
wiped his mustache carefully, and began delicately unfolding more
thin sheets of paper from the small but pregnant wad.
"Ah, yes, where was I? Th-this morning, the twelfth of July, the
originals of these three telegrams, which are not in cipher, were
sent from Sigmaringen by Prince Antony. The first, to Marshal Prim,
at Madrid, withdraws his son from the candidacy. The second, to
Olozaga, recapitulates the wording of this. The third, ostensibly
addressed to the principal journals of Berlin and Germany, and to the
German Submarine Telegraphic Agencies by order of Prince Leopold of
Hohenzollern, abandons all pretensions to the Spanish scepter, and
restores to Spain her freedom of initiative."
Von Roon bellowed like a nine-inch siege gun:
"What May-madness has the confounded old billy-goat?"
The Chief of the Great General Staff put on his wig, and said,
folding his lean arms upon his sunken chest:
"How has he at Paris managed to frighten the old man?"
The Chancellor said, fixing his full, powerful eyes upon the light
ones twinkling through their wise old puckers:
"The mission of M. Straz, privately sent, upon the advice of the Duke
de Gramont, by the Emperor of France to Sigmaringen (while Count
Benedetti repairs to the King of Prussia at Ems, and a third
emissary, Bartholdi, is sent to menace President Zorilla at
Madrid)--the mission of M. Straz is to terrify the Prince and
Princess with threats of the assassination of one, if not both their
sons."
Commented Moltke, shrugging a shoulder:
"To work on the woman, always--if there is one! ... Badinguet's
tactics are not new--but they are effective beyond doubt."
"Knave!" came from Roon, in a blurt of indignation
"Says Straz to Prince Antony of Hohenzollern--I give you the exact
words;--'Highness, His Imperial Majesty the Emperor authorizes me to
inform you that a group of Roumanian conspirators are plotting
against the life of your elder son, Prince Charles von
Hohenzollern--now Charles of Roumania. The threads of this plot
being centered in Paris, it is in the Emperor's power to sever
them--he will do so if Prince Leopold withdraws from the
candidature,--he will not seek to deter the conspirators, should the
Prince prove obstinate. Reflect in addition that Prince Leopold, as
King of Spain, will have to contend against the plots of Alfonsists
and Carlists--as against the intrigues of Montpensier and other
aspirants to Isabella's vacated throne. He will not be summoned to
reign--he will be called to a disaster. Death will sit beside him,
under the Royal canopy.'"
The reader's muscular white hands drew another crackling sheet from
the little roll of papers. He went on:
"The mother of the two young men was present--as was intended--when
Straz delivered this message from the Emperor. Naturally the
Princess brought her batteries to work upon the Prince and her
younger son, who, though it is not admitted, was actually present.
She has wept, implored, prayed, fainted, argued for forty-eight
hours----"
The Field-Marshal muttered:
"Poor soul!"
And with his wrinkled hand he rubbed a glistening drop from his
cheek, that was not perspiration. Von Roon snorted like a dyed old
war-horse:
"Meanwhile, the Imperial Ambassador, Count Benedetti, will be setting
forth the object of his mission to the King!"
Said the Chancellor, letting the words come out softly and
distinctly,--and one would have expected so huge a man to roar after
the fashion of giants, rather than to speak in such mellifluous tones:
"His instructions run thus: '_Say to the King that we have no secret
motive, that we do not seek a pretext for war--and that we only ask
to reach an honorable solution of a difficulty that was not created
by us._'"
"It is honorable, then," said Von Moltke in a tone of childlike
wonder, "to threaten to murder that old woman's two sons?"
"Meanwhile," said the mellifluous, pleasant voice of the Chancellor,
"the Emperor and Marshal le Bœuf have sent Staff-Colonel Gresley
to Algiers with secret orders to MacMahon to embark those troops from
Africa which are most available for service on the Continent, and to
warn the most distant regiments to be at Algiers on the 18th. The
Generals of his Artillery and Engineers have been dispatched upon a
plain-clothes confidential visit of inspection to the fortresses of
the North-East, all leave has been stopped, and the commanders of
brigades have apprised the staffs of the mobilization offices to
dispatch the orders of recall of the reserves. This was put into
effect on the 8th. Upon the same day the order was given to bring
the Infantry regiments up to War strength by the creation of their
Fourth Battalions, and General Blondeau, of the Administrative Branch
of the War Department, has been authorized to exceed his credit by
the sum of a million francs." He ended, showing his small, regular
teeth, as he smiled agreeably upon his hearers: "The Tuileries system
of Secret Intelligence is certainly excellent, but I do not think we
are so badly served!"
"Badly served!" echoed Roon. "One would say not!"
"You must be served by the great devil himself and all his devilkins,
Otto, my dear fellow!" said the Chief of the Great General Staff,
with a merry chuckle, "to have all this dished up to you before it is
cold! Well, well! Thanks be to the good God--we are not so far
behind these French as we might be! No, no! not at all so far
behind! ..."
He said this musingly, his startlingly limpid eyes almost hidden by
the wrinkles and puckers, his long, humorous upper lip drawn down and
set firmly on the lower one, as he cupped his sharp chin in the palm
of one wrinkled hand, nursing the elbow appertaining to it in the
palm of-the other hand.
"'So far behind,' do you say?" growled Von Roon. "_Sapperlot_! I
should call it a day's march and a half-day's march ahead!"
"It may be--it may be!" said the Field-Marshal placidly. "God grant
that it prove so!"
"You are as pious as the King to-night," said the Chancellor,
laughing heartily. "And your God is the God of Battles, we all know!"
"Yes, yes, the Friend Above does not forget this old fellow!" said
the Field-Marshal simply. "The thousand-ton Krupp gun--whose
acquaintance the Parisians made at the Exposition of 1867,--has been
waiting ever since to make upon them an impression of a different
kind! Like the gun, I have _bided my time_, as the Scotch say.
Neither the cannon nor myself will last for ever, but to worry is
folly! ... Heaven will not let us rust upon the shelf!"
"'_Mensch ärgere Dich nicht_' is a good proverb," said the
Chancellor, "not only for Your Excellency! Chained to my study-table
all yesterday and this morning,--horribly handicapped by the absence
of my First Secretary Abeken, who is doing duty with the King at
Ems.--listening to reports, receiving showers of telegrams, dictating
replies in answer to the appeals or expostulations of Foreign
Ministers--sending instructions to Ambassadors, and drinking
Mühlbrunnen water,--which must not be taken when one is vexed or
worried, if one wants it not to play the very devil in one's inside,
I chewed the cud of that proverb, '_Man, do not vex thyself!_' to
keep myself from gnawing my tongue. That official international
threat of Gramont, uttered in the session of the Corps Législatif of
July 6th,--the filth hurled by the Paris Press--did not cost me a
sleepless night. But that, after such insults, the King of Prussia
should treat with Benedetti at Ems while the Prussian Foreign
Minister remained at Varzin--stuck in my gizzard as though I had
swallowed a prickle-burr. It was worse than Olmütz.... I saw
nothing but resignation ahead of me!"
Von Roon agreed:
"To me also it seemed a slight not to the Foreign Minister alone--but
to His Majesty's Government in your person."
The Field-Marshal added, his wrinkled face lengthening dourly:
"I may tell you--there being no ladies present!--the whole affair
acted on me like unripe gooseberries, especially after reading that
sentence in the _Gaulois_, written by a _gamin_ with a finger to his
nose...."
Von Boon thundered:
"'_La Prusse cane_!' Only say black-dose, rather than sour
gooseberries, and there you have the effect of the words on me!"
Said the Chancellor, with a twinkle of humor:
"They wrought upon myself as an emetocatharsis. For, repudiating the
slight, and simultaneously expelling from my system the last remains
of compunction, I decided then and there to hurry off from Varzin to
Ems for the purpose of urging upon His Majesty the urgent necessity
for summoning the Reichstag. The words I meant to use kept drumming
in my skull--_We shall be traitors to ourselves if we do not accept
this challenge. Without an instant's delay, we must mobilize!_"
Said Roon:
"Why not, when we are prepared to take measures for the safety of the
Rhenish provinces? We can put Saarbrück in a state of defense in
twenty-four hours, and Mainz in less than forty-eight. Is it not so,
Herr General Field-Marshal?"
Von Moltke's dry, level voice returned quietly:
"My plan of invasion was drawn up in 1868. All my arrangements are
made, as I have said. When His Majesty--when the Chancellor of the
Confederation and Your Excellency give the signal--I go home to my
quarters on the first floor of the south-east wing of the Great
General Staff Department, and dispatch a telegraphic message of three
words..." He began to laugh, rubbing his hands together. "Then--you
will see whether I am ready! All I ask is Opportunity--like Krupp's
thousand-tonner gun!"