At six o'clock, when the snow had ceased falling and the old moon of
December glowed redly through a thinning veil of frost fog, the Crown
Prince arrived to dine with the Minister.
The Heir Apparent of Prussia came with an escort of Dragoons of the
Bodyguard, driving with one of his aides-de-camp in a closed sledge
belonging to the exiled Empress, an exquisite vehicle, finished like
an enameled _bonbonnière_, supplied with a great white Polar
bearskin, and drawn by two superb black Orloffs, whose glossy coats
had the burnish of old Italian armor in the ruddy light of torches
held by orderlies and grooms.
The Minister, followed by Hatzfeldt and his Chief Privy Councilor,
went down bareheaded, between a double row of Chancery attendants,
dressed in their new dark-blue liveries, with black velvet facings,
to welcome his Crown Prince. The broad breast of "Unser Fritz"
displayed the Order _Pour la Mérite_, with the First-Class of the
Iron Cross, and the Red Eagle, with an English Order, bestowed by
Queen Victoria upon her son-in-law. He sported new shoulder straps,
distinctive of his newly conferred rank as Field Marshal, and cut a
very gallant figure, as may be supposed.
Perhaps you can see him at the head of the long table in the
dining-room of the Tessier mansion, his Chancellor and host upon his
left hand. Upon his right sat the Bavarian plenipotentiary, Count
Maltzahn. Count Holnstein, another Bavarian Minister, newly arrived
from Munich with a letter from his King, and the Bavarian Minister of
War, Von Pranky, were severally disposed according to their degrees.
Prince Putbus was there, and a certain Herr von Zadowski, a large
red-faced man in a green Hussar uniform, wearing a white patch with a
red Cross, the badge of the Knights of St. John, and the Iron Cross,
was also present, and the Secretaries and Privy Councilors filled the
lower end of the board; sporting the new Foreign Office uniform of
dark blue, with black velvet side stripes to the trousers, and a
black-velvet-collared, double-buttoned military frock. Sword belts
and black-hilted swords with gold knots caused the more stout and
elderly among the Councilors infinite discomfort, to the secret but
acute delight of Bismarck-Böhlen and Count Hatzfeldt. The dinner,
composed of love gifts from admiring German patriots to their
Chancellor, was of a quality, quantity, lusciousness, and length
calculated, as Privy Councilor Bucher piously whispered to a
neighbor, "to make a guest imagine himself a banqueter in Abraham's
bosom before the time."
Long before his table companions had reached the zenith of their
sensuous enjoyment, the Crown Prince had finished his temperate meal.
The Chancellor commented mentally, glancing at the clear, rather set
features of the great golden-bearded figure seated beside him:
"Fritz is endeavoring to impress myself and these Bavarians, with
whom it rests to decide whether he is Emperor or no Emperor, _par la
fermeté de son attitude_ with regard to the pleasures of the table,
and by the Spartan simplicity of his habits and tastes. How I should
like to offer him black broth and barley bread in a special wooden
bowl and platter. But that, I suppose, would be _lèse majesté_."
And closely emulated by Von Holnstein and Von Pranky, he gave free
reign to his Gargantuan appetite, taking twice of nearly every
course, and washing the huge meal down, as was his habit, with floods
from Rheims and Épernay.
When the cloth was drawn and fresh relays of wine appeared, the
Prince accepted but a single glass of _fine champagne_ with his
coffee. When the costly cigars were offered, he pulled from his
pocket a porcelain pipe bearing his crest and monogram, painted and
sent him by his English wife as a Christmas present, and said:
"I should prefer to smoke this, if Your Excellency does not mind."
Dinner over, His Royal Highness, with the Bavarians and the Minister,
repaired to the salon. Overhead, Mademoiselle de Bayard, lonely in
her prison bedroom on the second floor, heard their voices--deep,
sonorous bass, shrill tenor, and penetrating, resonant
baritone--engaged in discussion or joining in argument. At ten
o'clock the Prince took leave, attended to his vehicle as previously
by the Chancellor, to whom he said, in a low tone, as he pressed his
hand:
"We are now no longer North Germans, but Germans. I shall urge upon
my father the speedy proclamation of the Empire with all external
state. Names, arms, titles, colors place us before the world in a
proper light. I have never coveted a Crown Imperial. I denounce the
idea of a bombardment as brutal and unnecessary. But I am willing to
reap all the honors and advantages that can be gained from our
victory. Impress this upon my father, who treats pomp and solemnity
with indifference. As to demanding the old crown of Charlemagne from
Vienna, I do not at all see the necessity for that. I shall write to
my wife to-night!"
And _Unser Fritz_ got into the exquisite sledge that had been given
to the beautiful Empress by the Third Napoleon, and was whirled away
in a glittering dust of snow, kicked up by the fiery Orloffs' heels.
And the Chancellor, recovering from his deep, ceremonious bow,
wheeled and went back up the steps, with his bald head glittering in
the ruddy torchlight.... None might guess what savage triumph
swelled the heart beating under his white full-dress uniform, upon
this the night that set upon the fabric of the man's colossal labors
the copingstone of Success.
The Bavarian plenipotentiaries took leave within ten minutes. Count
Hatzfeldt had been summoned to the salon a few moments previously.
When the unseen bustle of their departure had subsided, the
Secretaries and Councilors, smoking and drinking tea in the
dining-room, were unexpectedly joined by the Minister.
All rose up as he suddenly opened the folding doors, thrust in his
head and shoulders, and surveyed them, smiling. Behind him was
Hatzfeldt, pale and excited, and with eyes that seemed dancing out of
his head. There was a silence of expectation, then the great figure
moved to the table, and men scattered to make space for him as though
his contact might have slain.
He wore full-dress White Cuirassier uniform, without the steel
cuirass, and the First and Second Classes of the Iron Cross, and the
Red Eagle, with the peculiar deporation that he always sported, and
which had been given him in his young manhood for saving life. His
bald forehead and great domed cranium were studded with shining drops
of perspiration, under his tufted brows his blue eyes blazed with a
triumph almost fearful; his straight-bridged, snub-ended nose, thick
cheeks, and bulldog jowl were crimson and dripping. He drew out his
handkerchief and wiped them--and the hand that held the linen
palpably shook.
He said to them all, and they held their breath to listen:
"Gentlemen, the Bavarian business is settled, and everything signed
and sealed. We have got our German Unity--and our German Empire!"
There was a deep silence for a moment, broken by Busch's request to
be allowed to take the pens with which the treaty had been signed.
He got permission.
"That little Busch," said the Minister, "will never lose anything for
want of a tongue. If he thinks to find there the gold pen set with
brilliants, that was sent me by the Hamburg jeweler, he is mistaken.
Come!" he added, "this is a great occasion!" and bade Hatzfeldt ring
for a servant and order up more champagne.
The wine was brought and opened. He said to the servant who
officiated:
"Let the house steward know that some wine is to be sent to the
clerks and decipherers in their room. The servants also are to have
what they like best for drinking--I fancy Niederstedt will choose Old
Nordhausen. But--short of my best liquor, let what each likes best
be given to him. No!--not that glass. I will drink out of my
biggest goblet!..."
With the fizzing bumper in hand, he waited until all had been served,
looking, as he reared his great bulk at the head of the full table,
the biggest man, mentally and physically, who had ever served the
Hohenzollern. In his most powerful tones, he called the toast:
"_Hoch!_ to His Imperial Majesty, our Kaiser Wilhelm!"
Every man there strained his lungs to the utmost, but the great bull
voice of the Chancellor drowned every other there.
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.
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."
He held his great glass to the now drunken servant to be filled up.
"_Prosit!_" he said, and lifted the capacious vessel high, and tossed
off the wine and dashed the costly goblet into the fireplace, where
it exploded in crystal fragments and sparkling dust. Had they tried,
his satellites could not have followed his example. Their leaden
arms could only lift the wine to their dribbly lips. They drank--and
one by one each toper collapsed and buckled as though the solid oak
floor had given way under his boneless feet. Hatzfeldt sank prone
across a chair. Bismarck-Böhlen had rolled under the table some
moments previously, where, judging by the ominous nature of the
sounds that asserted his presence, Madame Tessier's Brussels carpet
was suffering for his excess. Similar noises, stertorous snores were
reëchoed from other quarters as the Minister surveyed his fallen
warriors:
"Men cannot drink in these days!" he commented, and left the room.