Bismarck took no official notice. But it was not long before the
Countess succeeded in bringing the two men together. The way had
indeed been paved. If Lassalle's idealism had survived the experience
of the Hatzfeldt law-suits, if he had yet to learn that the Fighter
cannot pick his steps as cleanly and logically as the Thinker, those
miry law-suits, waged unscrupulously on both sides, had prepared him
to learn the lesson readily and to apply it unflinchingly. Without
Force behind one, victory must be sought more circuitously. But to a
man who represents no Force, how shall Bismarck listen? What have you
to offer? "_Do ut des_" is his overt motto. To poor devils I have
nothing to say. Lassalle must therefore needs magnify his office of
President, wave his arm with an air of vague malcontent millions. Was
Bismarck taken in? Who shall say? In after-years, though he had in the
meantime granted Universal Suffrage in Prussia, he told the Reichstag
he was merely fascinated by this marvellous conversationalist, who
delighted him for hours, without his being able to get a word in; by
this grandiloquent Demagogue without a Demos, who plainly loved
Germany, yet was uncertain whether the German Empire would be formed
by a Hohenzollern dynasty or a Lassalle dynasty. And, in truth, since
extremes meet, there was much in Lassalle's conception of the State,
and in his German patriotism, which made him subtly akin to the
Conservative Chancellor. They walked arm-in-arm in the streets of
Berlin, Bismarck parading heart on sleeve; they discussed the
annexation of Schleswig-Holstein. Bismarck promised both Universal
Suffrage and State-Capitalized Associations--"only let us wait till
the war is done with!" _En attendant_, the profit of his strange
alliance with this thorn in his enemies' flesh, was wholly to the
Minister. But Lassalle, exalted to forgetfulness of the pettiness of
the army at his back, almost persuaded himself to believe as he
believed Bismarck believed. "Bismarck is my tool, my plenipotentiary,"
he declared to his friends. And to his judges: "I play cards on table,
gentlemen, for the hand is strong enough. Perhaps before a year is
over Universal Suffrage will be the law of the land, and Bismarck will
have enacted the rôle of Sir Robert Peel." He even gave his followers
to understand that the King of Prussia's promise to consider the
condition of the Silesian weavers was the result of his pressure. And
was not the Bishop of Mayence an open partisan? Church, King, and
Minister, do you not see them all dragged at my chariot wheels?
Nevertheless, he failed completely to organize a branch at Berlin. And
new impeachments for inciting to hatred and contempt, and for
high-treason, came to cripple his activity. "If I have glorified
political passion," he cried in his defence, "I have only followed
Hegel's maxim: 'Nothing great has ever been done in the world without
passion.'"
He was in elegant evening dress, with patent-leather boots, the one
cool person in the stifling court. For hours and hours he spoke, with
the perpetually changing accents of the great orator who has so
studied his art that it has become nature. Now he was winning,
persuasive, now menacing, terrible, now with disdainful smile and
half-closed eyes of contempt. And ever and anon he threw back his head
with the insolent majesty of a Roman Emperor. Even when there was a
touch of personal pathos, defiance followed on its heels. "I used to
go to gaol as others go to the ball, but I am no longer young. Prison
is hard for a mature man, and there is no article of the code that
entitles you to send me there." Yet six months' imprisonment was
adjudged him, and the most he could obtain by his ingeniously
inexhaustible technical pleas was deferment of his punishment.
But there was consolation in the memories of his triumphal tour
through the Rhenish provinces, where the Union had struck widest root.
Town after town sent its whole population to greet him. Roaring
thousands met him at the railway stations, and he passed under
triumphal arches and through streets a-flutter with flags, where
working-girls welcomed him with showers of roses. "Such scenes as
these," he wrote to the Countess, "must have attended the foundation
of new religions." And, indeed, as weeping working-men fought to draw
his carriage, and as he looked upon the vast multitudes surging around
him, he could not but remember Heine's prophecy: "You will be the
Messiah of the nineteenth century."
"I have not grasped this banner," he cried at Ronsdorf, "without
knowing quite clearly that I myself may fall. But in the words of the
Roman poet:
"'Exoriare aliquis nostris ex ossibus ultor.'
May some avenger and successor arise out of my bones! May this great
and national movement of civilization not fall with my person. But may
the conflagration which I have kindled spread farther and farther as
long as one of you still breathes!"
Those were his last words to the working-men of Germany.
For beneath all the flowers and the huzzahing what a tragedy of broken
health and broken hopes! Each glowing speech represented a victory
over throat-disease and over his own fits of scepticism. His nerves,
shattered by the tremendous strain of the year, the fevers, the
disillusions, the unprofitable shiftings of standpoint, painted the
prospect as black as they had formerly ensanguined it. And the six
months' imprisonment hanging over him gained added terrors from his
physical breakdown. Even on his eider-down bed he could not woo
sleep--how then on a prison pallet?
When he started the Union he had imagined he could bring the
Socialistic movement to a head in a year. When, after a year as
crammed as many a lifetime, he went down at the Countess's persuasion
to take the milk-cure at Kaltbad on the Righi, he confessed to his
friend Becker that he saw no near hope save from a European war.