Hail and Farewell
71
Prince Otto V. Bismarck receives his final and his one glorious
decoration; and here we leave him, his fame secure among
Germany's immortals.
¶ The game is now all but played out. The last phase is to be the
noblest expression.
In his prime, Bismarck was of massive proportions in mind and body;
but of his moral nature both friends and enemies had often been in
doubt for many years. Now, even that was revealed to be in concord
with his herculean bulk.
¶ The old glory passed from him, like a dream. He committed his soul
to his God; and he heard again voices of Nature that had been
inaudible to him, during his many years of intriguing diplomacy.
These voices spoke to him of the vanity and emptiness of human life,
of the worthless baubles for which men exchange all they have, that is
to say, their immortal gift of time, which soon passes away and is no
more.
The musings of the Prince on the follies, inconsistencies and
ambitions of life conspire to create a heroic figure like King
Solomon. All is vanity! The conqueror of a continent has so declared.
He had held the world in his hand, and had found that the sphere is
hollow.
So go the fates of men.
¶ The great Prince Bismarck has now become as a beggar at the city's
gates.
* * * * *
¶ Over his grand spectacle of human pomp and power, contrasted with
his final self-abnegation, shining forth we see the heights and depths
of human life; but in this case the end was greater than the
beginning; the defeat than the victory; the downfall than the glory;
and the disillusion than the dream.
¶ Prince Bismarck in his long career as friend and confidant of the
kings of this earth, had been honored with forty-eight orders of
distinction. It is needless to mention them all, but they included the
Iron Cross and the Order of Merit, the one entitling him to sit with
kings, the other to command an army corps.
¶ But the greatest decoration of all was the one he now wore, his high
tide of glory gone.
It is the Decoration of the Order of the Disillusioned, bestowed upon
himself by his own soul.
Soon or late, prince or pauper, and you and I, wear this Order as at
last we sit and wonder at the years gone by.
¶ Let us silently pass on, leaving Bismarck here, in the one solemn
moment of his life; when he attains to real grandeur, stamps himself
as greater than when he sat before kings.
For now he possesses his own soul, in peace.
And in this last picture, the end is greater than the beginning; the
defeat than the victory; the downfall than the glory; and the
disillusion than the dream.
¶ His final consolation was the Book of Job; and he read therein these
strange and solemn words:
¶ What is my strength, that I should hope? and what is mine end, that
I should prolong my life?
Is my strength the strength of stones, or is my flesh of brass?
¶ So am I made to possess months of vanity, and wearisome nights are
appointed to me.
When I lie down, I say, when shall I arise, and the night be gone? and
I am full of tossings to and fro, unto the dawning of the day.
My days are swifter than a weaver's shuttle, and are spent without
hope.
¶ Yea, man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward. I would
seek unto God and unto God would I commit my cause;
Which doeth great things and unsearchable; marvelous things without
number;
Who giveth rain upon the earth, and sendeth waters upon the fields;
To set up on high those that be low; that those which mourn may be
exalted to safety.
He disappointeth the devices of the crafty, so that their hands cannot
perform their enterprise.
¶ Behold happy is the man whom God correcteth; therefore despise not
thou the chastening of the Almighty;
For he maketh sore and bindeth up; he woundeth and his hands make
whole.
He shall deliver thee in six troubles; yea, in seven there shall be no
evil touch thee.
In famine, he shall redeem thee from death; and in war from the power
of the sword ... neither shalt thou be afraid of destruction when it
cometh.
72
"As One Asleep"
¶ On July 30, 1898, just before midnight, Otto Edward Leopold von
Bismarck, Prince of Lauenburg and former Imperial Chancellor of the
German Empire, died peacefully in the old homestead of his ancestors.
The immediate cause of death was congestion of the lungs.
¶ "Ich danke Dir, mein Kind," were his last words, addressed to his
daughter, who had stooped to wipe the moisture from his pale brow.
¶ As late as the day he died, he had read the newspapers and talked
politics.
His final remarks were on the relations of Germany and Russia, at all
times a subject of deep concern to him.
¶ Dr. Schweninger had promised to bring him to 90--and was seven years
short.
But the Bismarck of retirement was not unhappy in the taking off; he
had grown tired of it all; and it is pleasant to record that his last
hours were without pain.
¶ A few days before, he had had his champagne, and had smoked five
pipes in succession; also the day before he died, he had asked an
attendant to "color" two new meerschaums, gifts of friends. Toward the
last, he had used an invalid's chair for breakfast, but otherwise he
seemed as well as could be expected.
* * * * *
¶ The windows looking upon the garden were opened, early next morning,
and the servants of the household gathered there to look at the
master, at rest.
He was seemingly asleep in his four-poster bed, his head slightly
inclined to the left; his expression was that of one gently dreaming;
his arms were resting over the coverlet, and in his left hand he held
one white and three red roses, a last love-token from an Austrian
lady.
¶ The expression of his features was, at the end, proud and noble; but
the face was as grey as ashes; for the fire of life was out at last!
* * * * *
¶ Later, came two Cuirassiers, in white, with drawn swords; and these
massive figures stood there by the bedside, and by and by kept solemn
guard beside the coffin; also, near by were two Foresters, in green.
¶ Books, papers, telegrams and a laurel wreath were in the death
chamber, where the master had worked to the end.
Not far away was his favorite chessboard, also, within touch the
Emperor's last present, a fac-simile of Frederick the Great's great
crook-headed gold cane; a step the other way the globe of the earth
that Bismarck used to roll over with his big hand, when he studied his
endless foreign political combinations.
¶ Later, came the magnificent funeral with the high military, and all
the rest; but we think we shall take leave of him in his old room with
these simple objects around him, his tools of work, his big oak desk,
his mounds of state papers, his writings, his quill pens, his box of
blue sand, his pipes, steins and champagne glasses, his letters, his
telegrams, his great heaps of books, his immense correspondence on the
affairs of nations, his diplomas from universities, his degrees of
law, philosophy and letters, and finally, his big Ulmar dogs.
¶ Here we leave him as one asleep, reminded of his final words,
uttered when the master was breaking fast with the infirmities of his
eighty-three years:
¶ "There is only one happy day left for me. It is the one on which I
shall not wake again."
* * * * *
¶ His son refused the request that a death-mask be made of the noble
old face, but Lenbach's famous painting will recall the stern head for
years to come.
¶ Bismarck's coffin was of polished dark oak, with eight silver
handles in the shape of lion's paws; candles burned around his coffin,
the pale lights softened by veils of black and silver gauze that
ornamented the silver candelabra. The floor was literally covered with
wreaths, many bearing cards of sympathy in gold letters, from various
eminent personages throughout the world.
¶ The Kaiser heard the funeral services.
* * * * *
¶ Bismarck's mausoleum rests on a spot Bismarck selected for himself;
a plain Romanesque House of Death against a background of trees; and
to the right still may be seen his favorite bench where he used to
sit, under the shade of spreading oaks.
The sarcophagus of yellow marble bears this inscription, selected by
Bismarck himself:
Here Lies
PRINCE BISMARCK
A Faithful German Servant
of Emperor William I.
¶ Hostile critics of Germany, brought forth by the great war of 1914,
profess to believe that this inscription on Bismarck's tomb shows that
Bismarck did not wish his work to be associated with the future of the
Empire, but with its past.
Instead, it really proclaims the man's great mind, his clairvoyant
historical vision. He could have said many things about himself,
touching the great part he played in sustaining the pomp and majesty
of kings; but his simple acknowledgment of the rôle of faithful
servant, is more eloquent than sermons in brass.
¶ Finally, a small altar to the right of the porch carries this text
from Colossians iii:23, the motto given to Bismarck many, many years
before by Rev. Schliermacher, the pastor who confirmed the boy Otto;
and that motto became indeed Bismarck's guiding star through life, as
now well you do know, balancing his record with the solemn Biblical
injunction you read here beside the master's tomb:
¶ "And whatsoever ye do, do it heartily, as to the Lord, and not unto
men."
THE END