Part 21

"Come, come!" expostulated the Minister, his blue eyes alight with cynical amusement, "you must not speak of Madame as though she were a house-thief. Our good Bucher," he went on, turning jestingly to his table companions, "sees little difference between a person who picks brains for pay, and sells the pickings, and another person who picks locks and steals silver vases and cups. Rather a reflection on the Diplomatic Service, now I think of it!"

"_Ach! Herr Gott!_" said the Councillor in alarm, "I cast no reflection, Your Excellency knows it! Only the woman is of light reputation----"

"And may be light-fingered into the bargain. Possibly--" said the Chancellor, "and all the better if she be so! We will risk my wife's family portraits in her vicinity until after dinner. Have coffee and liqueurs sent to her, and beg her to wait a while." He added, "Let them put cigarettes on the tray--I have no doubt she smokes tobacco. And as the smell will have passed off before my wife and daughter return from Varzin, neither of the ladies will ever know of the desecration of the red damask back drawing-room."

And as Bucher shuffled out of the room to execute his errand, his Chief rang the bell for the third course.

"By the way, Excellency," said the War Minister, as the demure servants out of livery removed the empty dishes: "that Frenchwoman of poor Max Valverden's is driving about Berlin."

"So!" commented the host, turning an inscrutable face upon the Minister. "She must find it very warm, and insufferably dull."

"She consoled herself," said Roon, "not long after Count Max's suicide."

"There," burst out the Field-Marshal, "was an incomprehensible catastrophe! That young man--who was military attaché at our Embassy in Paris until the return of the Allied Armies of Great Britain and France from the Crimea in 1856; and in 1866, ten years later, joined my staff in Austria as third _aide-de-camp_--I cannot understand it--he must have been demented!"

He unbuttoned the frock-coat, showing an unstarched, but scrupulously clean white shirt and vest of white nankeen, and taking a little silver snuff-box from his waistcoat pocket, laid it down carefully upon the tablecloth as he said:

"In '56 he brought his mistress from Paris with him--he was infatuated with her spirit and beauty. They said she was the wife of an officer in Grandguerrier's Division, who had served throughout the whole of the War in the Crimea."

"A _chef d'escadron_ of Mounted Chausseurs, who seems to have taken his wife's desertion philosophically," commented the Chancellor.

The Field-Marshal took a pinch of snuff, and gravely shook his head.

"Of that I know nothing, but there was no meeting. Max Valverden assured me, on his honor, that an opportunity for the challenge had been given. Otherwise the young Count could not have continued in our Prussian Army--one would naturally have been obliged to retire him." He sneezed and went on: "My personal acquaintance with Valverden began ten years later. He served me--excellently. One should always give due praise to the dead. But when he returned from Austria--then happened the tragedy, at Schönfeld in the Altenwald, where lies his patrimonial property, and where the lady waited. And--he shot himself, upon the very night of his return to her."

"Not," interposed the cool, level voice of the Chancellor, "not being expected until noon of the day following."

"Of that I know nothing," said Moltke, turning his ascetic hairless face full upon the speaker. "What I know is that an officer who faithfully served his country and whom I had recommended for distinction, at the earliest opportunity--died by his own hand! How the woman was left, I cannot tell you."

"Count Maximilian von Schön-Valverden had provided for Madame de Bayard when summoned upon active Service," said the Chancellor. "His family did not contest the will, and she is not badly off. Therefore," he added with a smile, "when she condescends to serve my Intelligence Department as a spy, you may suppose she does not do it too cheaply. I must refer to my perambulating ledger, Bucher, before I quote you the exact figures of the sum I am to hand her to-night. She is a true daughter of the horseleech, who cries '_Give, give, give!_' incessantly. But all the same I am indebted to her for those remarkably interesting particulars concerning the Mission of M. de Straz to Prince Antony."

"So!" ejaculated Von Roon in astonishment. The Field-Marshal rubbed his chin and turned his clear eyes upon the speaker, who went on smilingly:

"M. de Straz is susceptible--a fatal fault in a conspirator. Madame is still seductive, with a figure like Circe, ropes of black silk hair, a skin of cream, though the roses are bought ones! and eyes the color--exactly the color of old, pale tawny port. Now, when you reflect that she is waiting in my wife's red boudoir to interview me in my next spare moment--do you fear for my hitherto unassailable virtue, or regard me as proof against such charms?"

"I never bet more," said Moltke, "than half a pfennig, and then only when I play cards with my niece."

"I will wager you proof," cried Roon, "for two hundred thalers!"

"I can hardly bet upon my own marital infidelity!" said the Chancellor, laughing, as a servant uncovered the dish newly placed before him. "Will Your Excellency take some of this?"

"This" was the savory _pièce de resistance_ of the masculine banquet, a lamb of six weeks, roasted to a golden brown, basted with marrow, and surrounded with tiny cucumbers stuffed with seasoning.

Moltke accepted the offer with alacrity, indifferent to the charms of veal with tomatoes and aubergines. Von Roon, declining, hurled himself upon a fillet of beef _jardinière_, and hacked a huge steak from its surface as with a sword, rather than a carving-knife. The Chancellor, plying his gleaming weapons delicately, liberally supplied his guest and piled his own plate, saying as he launched himself upon its contents with unabated appetite:

"Confederations may disappoint us--Kings may deceive us--while our teeth and our digestions faithfully serve us, we can find some zest in life. When I retire, I shall cultivate vegetables, plant forest-trees, rear trout, breed cattle, sheep, pigs, and poultry--drop my hereditary patronymic as I shed my titles of office and be known to all posterity as the Farmer of Varzin!"

The hall-bell had been heard to ring a moment previously. There was another scratching signal on the door, and Bucher appeared, manifestly excited and carrying a telegraphic dispatch.

"What now?" asked the Chancellor, finishing a mouthful.

"A telegram from Ems----" began the Councillor.

The imperious hand whipped it from between his pudgy fingers; the masterful voice demanded, as the envelope was rent open:

"The decipherer has not left?"

"Excellency, no!" twittered the Councillor, agitated by the portentous frown of his Chief, and by the grave faces of Moltke and Roon. The paper was thrust back to him with the curt order:

"Get this deciphered--do not delay!"

And as the Legation Councillor vanished, Bismarck said with a short laugh, bending his powerful regard on the gaunt, black stare of the War Minister:

"It is from the King, and will not please us. We may make up our minds beforehand to that. Yet I drink this glass to the honor of Prussia!" And filling his great bumper glass from a fresh bottle that had been placed at his elbow, he gulped down at least a pint of the creaming nectar of the Widow Clicquot, and his guests, in smaller measures, pledged the same toast. After that they sat in silence, the Chancellor alone continuing to eat with appetite--until the Councillor's big feet came shuffling back again.

"The copy, Excellency, 200 groups altogether," he began, "signed by the Herr Privy Councillor von Abeken, at His Majesty's command."

The papers he held were whipped away from him. The Chancellor read--and his countenance most grimly altered. His brows grew thunderous, trenches dug themselves along his forehead, caves appeared about his blazing eyes, and the pouches under them portentously bagged. The heavy mustache might shade the mouth and chin, but could not hide that they were changed to granite. He passed his firm hand over them and said, his incisive tones veiled with a curious hoarseness:

"Mr. Councillor of Legation, you will now leave us. When I ring the bell it summons you. Pray tell Dr. Busch that his services will be needed. Some articles must be written for the Press to-night."

He said, as the door closed behind Bucher, and the smile that accompanied the words was grim and cynical:

"Well, gentlemen, we have got our final slap in the face! The Press organs of the Ultramontane and the Democrats will call us by our nicknames to-morrow: 'Old Hellfire' and 'Death's Chess-Player' and 'The Pomeranian Ogre' and all the rest. But--I swear to you that no enemy of mine will ever despise me as I now despise myself!"

Roon and Moltke regarded him in silence. He went on speaking, still with that strange hoarseness:

"Some have called me the Iron Chancellor. I will tell you by what title Wilhelm the First of Prussia will go down to posterity. Men will speak of him as the Fluid King. It is written in the Scriptures,--all day the phrase has haunted me,--'Unstable as water, thou shalt not excel!'"

At a glance from the War Minister, Moltke rose up suddenly. His stooping scholar's body sprang upright as a lance. He said, and the words rang clear as steel on steel:

"Your Excellency, I deplore the necessity of imposing silence upon you. But the obligation of my military oath, and your own----"

He paused as the great figure of his host reared up at the head of the table. He saluted the Field-Marshal and said coldly:

"Herr General Field-Marshal, the rebuke is merited. Holding the King's commission as Colonel of White Cuirassiers of the _Landwehr_, I have spoken treasonably. Does your Excellency wish me to ring for my sword?"

Moltke's wrinkled face flashed into amusement, as the Chancellor imperturbably stretched his hand to the bell beside him. He said, laughing:

"Colonel Count von Bismarck-Schönhausen, I accept your apology. I will limit the period of your arrest to confinement to this room until conclusion of dinner, on condition that you read now this message from Ems."

The Chancellor saluted, and glancing at Roon, who was now standing, gloomy and downcast, "We look," he said, "like three mourners about a bier. It is, in fact, Prussia who lies dead upon the table. However, judge of the situation for yourselves."

And he read out the famous telegram handed in at Ems at three-thirty:

"_Count Benedetti spoke to me on the Promenade in order to demand from me finally, in a very important manner, that I should authorize him to telegraph at once to Paris that I bound myself for all future time never again to give my consent if the Hohenzollerns should renew their candidature. I refused at last somewhat sternly, as it is neither right nor possible to undertake engagements of this kind _à tout jamais_. Naturally I told him that I had received no news; and as he was earlier informed from Paris and Madrid than myself, he could clearly see that my Government once more had no hand in the matter._"

"Ei-ei!" broke in Moltke, "'_Somewhat sternly_' ... '_Naturally I told_' ... '_Neither right nor possible,_' and then '_no hand in the matter!_' Do I hear the King--or have my ears played tricks on me?"

"_Kreuzdonnerwetter!_" exploded Roon. "Well might one ask 'Is this the master or the servant speaking?' But go on, go on, I pray your Excellency!"

The reader had transformed his face to an expressionless mask that might have been wrought in stone or metal. Now the tell-tale huskiness of fierce emotion cleared from his voice. He resumed:

"This closes His Majesty's personal communication. Herr Privy Councillor Abeken continues to the end."

Said Moltke: "Let us hear what little Abeken has got to say to you."

The cold, incisive voice recommenced reading:

"_His Majesty commands me to inform you, that he has since received a letter from the Prince. His Majesty, having told Count Benedetti that he was awaiting news from the Prince, has decided, upon the representation of Count Eulenburg and myself, not to receive Count Benedetti again, but only to let him be informed through an _aide-de-camp_ that His Majesty has now received from the Prince confirmation of the news Benedetti has already received from Paris, and has nothing further to say to the Ambassador. His Majesty leaves it to Your Excellency whether Benedetti's fresh demand and its rejection should not be at once communicated both to our Ambassadors and to the Press representatives._"

The close of the Royal communication plopped into a pool of silence. The Chancellor coughed, and said with his characteristic stutter:

"The-the laxity and diffuseness of the verbiage of this dispatch l-lul-leave me in no doubt as to the favorable effect the Ems waters have already wrought upon the constitution of His Majesty!"

Roon barked his laugh. Moltke raised his thoughtful head from his breast and said laconically:

"It gives me the belly-ache to listen to such rubbish. Are we German men or German mice?"

The Chancellor shrugged and said:

"More than ever it is clear that my position is untenable. The King, under pressure of threats mingled with entreaties, has permitted himself to be heckled by the Emperor's Franco-Italian emissary. He ignores my urgent request that he should refer Benedetti to his Foreign Minister. Now, by the medium of an inferior official, he tells me that I may acquaint the representatives of the State and the Press--that nothing is settled and no definite end in view! What is settled is, that I resign!"

Von Roon called out harshly, striking a sinewy fist upon the table:

"Your Excellency will not leave your friends in this extremity?"

Moltke turned to him half whimsically, half pleadingly:

"For our sake, Otto, stick by the old wagon!"

The Chancellor said, with a sudden softening of the grim lines of his strong face, and of the eyes that had been fixed and expressionless:

"You talk, both of you, like two babes in the wood. As far as regards my personal influence to sway the King or control the feeling of the Reichstag--another hand may guide the State as well as this of mine. Yet, were it possible--having already the King's permission--to produce a somewhat concentrated version of this verbose telegram.... Has either of you a pencil?--mine has been mislaid.."

"Here, take mine!" said the Field-Marshal eagerly.

The Chancellor took the offered pencil with a brief nod of thanks, swept the silver-gilt milkmaid ruthlessly aside, and spreading the forms containing the Royal dispatch on the space she had occupied, pored over them for a moment, frowning heavily, before the red-chalk crayon began to play its part. Words were struck out--then whole sentences....

"Ah, ah!" said Moltke, beaming. "He has finished at last. Now let us hear what it sounds like with its mane cropped and its tail docked?"

"Reduced," said the Chancellor, lifting his great eyes from the red-crayoned papers, "without addition or alteration, the message might run thus..."

He read:

"_After the news of the renunciation of the hereditary Prince of Hohenzollern had been officially communicated to the Imperial Government of France by the Royal Government in Spain, the French Ambassador at Ems further demanded of His Majesty the King that he would authorize him to telegraph to Paris that His Majesty the King bound himself for all future time never again to give his consent should the Princes of Hohenzollern renew their candidature._"

"Good, very good!" growled Roon.

"That seems to me excellent!" said Moltke, twinkling.

The Chancellor finished:

"_His Majesty the King thereupon decided not again to receive Benedetti, the French Ambassador, and sent the aide-de-camp on duty with the information that His Majesty had nothing further to say to him!_"

"_Bravo, bis!_" roared Roon.

"Why," said Moltke, rubbing his hands delightedly, "now it has a different ring altogether. Before it sounded like a parley. Now it is a fanfare of defiance! Sentences like these are worthy of a King!"

"And there can be no accusations of falsification," said the Chancellor, bending his powerful regard upon his two colleagues. "The Bund Chancellor carries out what the Prussian monarch commands. He communicates this text by telegraph to all our Embassies and to the Press agencies. Is it his fault if its published words provoke the Gallic cock to show fight?"

"I understand," said the War Minister joyfully, "that we should be the party attacked first. And we shall be, and we shall win! Our God of old lives, and will not let us perish!"

"Has Your Excellency nothing to say to me?" asked the Chancellor, fixing his great eyes on the face of Moltke, now radiant with childlike happiness.

"Were I a poet," returned the joyous old artist in war, seizing the hand outstretched to him across the table, and wringing it between both his own, "I should crown you with a wreath of laurel inscribed '_Hail to thee, Guardian of Prussia's honor!_' or something of that kind. Being what I am, I say that you are what my English nephews would call '_a trump_!' As you said this morning when you quitted Varzin, 'War Is Inevitable!'" He added, hitting himself a resounding thump in the chest: "And if I may but live to lead our armies in such a war--then the devil may come directly we have conquered these Frenchmen and fetch away this crumbling old carcass!" He added, with a change to gravity: "I do not say my soul, for I am a decent Christian. Hey, look here, our dinner has got cold!"

It was true; the viands were stagnant in the dishes. The fillet sat in the center of a stagnant lake of congealed gravy; the roasted lamb, reduced by the onslaughts of the Chancellor to a partial skeleton, was covered with a frosting of rich white fat. He said, with a laugh that clattered against walls and ceiling like a discharge of musketry, and reaching for the bell that would summon Bucher:

"It does not matter; my cook has always a second menu ready in case of delays or accidents. While Bucher communicates to our Embassies and the European Press Agencies the concentrated essence of His Majesty's telegram--while hundreds of thousands of handbills are being printed that shall disseminate the text throughout Germany, and Busch writes the articles that shall put the needful complexion on this affair--we will order up the Moet and Chandon White Star--I am thirsty after so much talking!--and eat our dinner again!"

XXVII

Ever since the King, returning from the baths of Ems, had been met at the railway-station by his Under-Secretary of State bearing France's declaration of war,--a huge, orderly crowd, compact of all classes and callings, had ceaselessly rolled through the streets of Berlin, chanting with its thousands of sturdy lungs "_Heil dir im Siegerkranz_" and the "_Wacht am Rhein_" until its patriotic fervor reached a state of ebullition only to be relieved by volleys of cheers.

Jammed in the solid mass of bodies blackening the Unter den Linden and packing the Opera-Platz to suffocation,--until the bronze equestrian statue of the Great Friedrich, opposing the eastern courtyard gateway of the small stuccoed Palace, reared above a tossing sea of heads,--P. C. Breagh tasted the raptures of emancipation from the mill-round, and drank in news at every pore.

For this was life in earnest.... With the red-hot cigar-end of a corpulent merchant burning the back of his neck, and the crook of a market woman's blue-cotton umbrella imperiling his left eye; while the sword-hilt of a gigantic Sergeant of Uhlans insinuated itself between his third and fourth ribs on the right side, and the huge flaxen chignon of a servant-girl, armed with a capacious market-basket crammed with meat, fish, and vegetables for family consumption, bobbed itself into his mouth whenever he opened that feature to cheer, or gasp for air, heavily burdened with the fumes of beer, schnaps, herring-salad, garlic, sauerkraut, and perspiring humanity, he was happier than ever he had been before.

The King, it was said, was holding a council with his Ministers and Generals in his study on the ground-floor of his Palace looking on the Opera-Platz. Presently His Majesty might be expected to come out.

The tall, elderly, white-whiskered officer in the undress uniform of the Prussian foot-guards--a blue tunic with red facings, silver buttons and epaulettes--had already appeared upon the balcony of a window overlooking the Linden, and touched his spiked helmet in response to the frenzied acclamations of his scarlet, perspiring subjects, whose staring eyes and open mouths a Berlin dust-storm was filling with peppery grit.

Presently the King had moved back into the room behind him, and returned with the Queen, a tall, thin, elegant lady in half-mourning, who was weeping; people said, because she hated the thought of war, and had besought her husband, on her knees, to truckle to the Napoleon at Paris, and thus avert hostilities.

When the royal couple had retired amid plaudits of a somewhat less enthusiastic kind, the people had demanded the Crown Prince; and the King had stepped out yet again with his hand on the shoulder of the heir-apparent, a tall and stalwart man of thirty-nine, with a clear red-and-white complexion, setting off his well-cut features, kindly blue eyes, and flowing beard of yellow-brown.

_Unser Fritz!_--his manly good looks and the Order of Merit shining on his general's uniform had provoked fresh outbursts of patriotic enthusiasm, in which the gray-powdered foliage of the overrated linden-trees, limply resting during a sudden lull of the dust-storm, had been wildly agitated, and the very street-lamps had rocked.

But when the King, turning to his heir, gave him his hand,--when the son, reverently bending, raised it to his lips, and the father with manifest emotion embraced him,--there had fallen a silence of sympathetic emotion.... Then the great martial figure had reared erect again and, stepping to the front of the balcony, had shouted to the people:

"_Krieg! Mobil!_"

"Mobilization!... War!..."

All the shouting that had gone before was no more than the squealing of a kindergarten compared with the mighty roar that greeted these two pregnant words! The scorching, dusty blue sky-dome, now tinged with sandy-pink sunset toward the Brandenburg Gate, seemed to quiver with the upward rush of it. And--not by accident--from the forest of flagstaffs mounted on the Palace, the Opera House, and the buildings contingent,--as down the whole length of the Linden to the Ministerial palaces of the Wilhelm Strasse,--the black-and-white Flag of Prussia and the Hohenzollern banner of white with the black eagle and the cross of the old Teuton Order, broke and fluttered on the sandy breeze.

The National Anthem broke out once more, and the war-song, "_Ich bin ein Preusse_." The King retired on his son's arm manifestly overcome with weariness. Still the vast crowd of heated faces, set with shining eyes, and holed with roaring mouths, persistently turned toward those ground-floor windows of the Palace. _Something more yet!_ asked all the gaping mouths and staring eyes.

But the blinds of the monarch's study were pulled down, unmistakably signifying that all was over for the present.... The central valves of the great gilded Palace gates were now shut, leaving open only the smaller carriage-way, through which mounted _aides_ and orderly officers conveying dispatches presently began to stream. The carriages of Ministers and other State officials followed these, while lesser personages, emerging from the exit left for pedestrians, began to hail cab-drivers from the stand of hackneys on the Linden side of the Opera House. Swearing, the frustrated Jehus of these vehicles laid about them with their whips in the endeavor to force their animals through the solid crowd....