Front matter (continued 6)

"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....

A man went down under the hoofs of a wretched Rosinante. There were cries for "Police!" and spiked helmets appeared in the crowd. It surged and swayed.... The guardians of the law had drawn their cutlasses and were beating their fellow-children of the Fatherland upon their heads with the flat of these weapons, in the attempt to effect a junction between the cabs and those who wished to hire them. Thus the pressure on the flanks, ribs and breast-bone of P. C. Breagh became suffocating. Lifted from his feet, he was carried backward and forward by rushes, growing less certain of his own identity as the roaring in his ears became louder. Just as his eyelids dropped and he passed out of his own knowledge, a powerful hand caught him by the coat-collar, and a solid rampart of human flesh interposed between his lately-drifting body and the waves of the human sea that raged beyond.

Gulping, P. C. Breagh became aware that he was spread-eagled against the railings of the Palace courtyard facing the Unter den Linden, and that a big man in a loose black waterproof rain-cloak and broad-leaved black felt hat was holding to a railing on each side of him and warding off the rushes.

"Th-thanks! I'm tremendously obliged!..." he was beginning, when the swish of the cutlasses and the shrieking of the cutlassed drowned his voice. Yet another voice, masculine, resonant, and imperious, dominated all others; it cried:

"The King commands the police to sheath their swords!"

And upon the instant lull in the tumult that followed came another order:

"His Majesty has work to do for the Fatherland. Let the people disperse quietly to their homes!"

And the crowd, pacified and quieted, answered, "We will so!" in a crashing volley of Teutonic gutturals, and began to split up and move away in sections, singing "Heil dir im Siegerkranz" in sonorous unison. When through the Palace gates came a small and shabby brougham drawn by a venerable bay, and driven by an elderly coachman in gray-and-black livery, the sight of whose military cockade evoked another whirlwind of enthusiasm....

"Moltke! It is our Moltke!" men shouted to one another, and the old General, who sat alone in the carriage, the lean, stooping, septuagenarian in the spiked helmet, whose thin, ascetic face was rosy with suppressed excitement and whose pale blue eyes twinkled good-humoredly between their narrow lids at the seething ocean of humanity in which the shabby brougham labored, saluted in acknowledgment of the cheers.

"Moltke! Long live our Moltke! But where has Otto got to!" hiccuped an alcoholic seaman, clutching the ledge of the brougham window. He continued in the midst of a silence born of consternation: "What has become of the Big Pomeranian? We would have—hic!—carried him home shoulder-high for this week's—hic!—work he has done!"

Zealous hands dragged the presumptuous speaker back, as the venerable expert in war doffed his spiked helmet, and said, popping his auburn-wigged head out of the brougham window:

"Where Count Bismarck is needed there he will be, depend on it! Now, children, let me get back to my maps!"

"Tell us first how things are going in France yonder?" bellowed another Berliner, and the great Field-Marshal answered, pointing the jest with his keenest twinkle:

"You want to know how things are going there? Well, the wheat has suffered from the drought, but acorns and potatoes promise to be plentiful, and pumpkins will be big this year!"

And the crowd, splitting with laughter, made way for the brougham of the Chief of the General Staff, and the joke was sown broadcast over Germany before the end of half an hour. For were not Moltke's acorns the oblong, round-ended bullets of the Prussian needle-gun, as his potatoes were the shrapnel shell cast by the six-pounder steel breech-loaders designed by Krupp for the Prussian field-artillery, and the big pumpkins the seventeen-pound projectiles fired by the siege-guns of nine centimeters' bore? ...

The massive ribs that had acted as buffers between P. C. Breagh and the battering onslaughts of the crowd shook with laughter as the brougham moved on through a lane that continuously opened in the mass of bodies and closed when it had passed.... Then their owner settled the wide-leaved felt hat more firmly on his head, and said in well-bred, fluent English, turning his heavily-jowled face and powerful, fiery-blue eyes on P. C. Breagh, who was thanking him in his best German for his timely assistance:

"Do not thank me so effusively. I have a habit of sometimes saving a man's life! Yours happened to be in peril; there is no need to say more!"

The clear incisive tones had an inflection that was almost contemptuous, yet a smile, curving the heavy mustache, showed the small and well-preserved teeth it shadowed, as he added in his admirable English, fastening a button of the thin black waterproof cloak which had been disarranged in the recent struggle sufficiently to show that it covered some sort of military uniform:

"Save this,—that I happen to possess a son about your age, and should not care to lose him!"

And with this he was gone, leaving P. C. Breagh breathless with the greatness of the adventure that had befallen him. For the owner of the bulldog face with the fierce blue eyes blazing over their heavy orbital pouches, was the unpopular Minister who had been booed by the Ultramontane and Socialist students three years before, as the Berlin express-train passed through the station of Schwärz-Brettingen—the all-powerful Chancellor, who was meant when diplomats and Press leader-writers referred to "Prussia."

What did he on foot in those packed, roaring thoroughfares, where the assassin's dagger or revolver might play its part so safely? Perhaps, like the Third Napoleon, whose peacock bubble of Empire might now have reached the point of bursting, Count Bismarck believed in his fortunate star....

Ah! what was that round bright object lying on the pavement? P. C. Breagh, still dazed with the magnitude of the thing that had befallen him, stooped and picked, it up.

It was a medal of silver, with the Prussian Eagle enameled in red upon the obverse, and a name which left no doubt as to the identity of P. C. Breagh's rescuer. Upon, the reverse was the inscription: "Fur Rettung aus Gefahr"—"For Saving From Danger." With the date of the 24th June, 1842....

No doubt the Chancellor prized this, the decoration earned at twenty-four for saving his orderly-groom and another private from drowning, when serving as Landwehr cavalry officer with the Stargaard Regiment of Hussars. Well, he should have it back,—but into no hands but his would P. C. Breagh surrender it,—P. C. Breagh, who had been cast out with mockery from the editorial offices of one daily and two evening newspapers, when he had offered—at a rate of astounding cheapness,—to supply their columns with material drawn from the experiences of one who had never previously enjoyed an opportunity of seeing the thing called War.

One Editor had dealt with him drastically, pitching his card into the waste-paper basket, and saying, "No! Get out with you!" A second had whistled up a tube and called down a sub-editor, and said to him, "Look at this!" The third had preached a brief but pithy sermon on presumption and cocksureness, winding up with the intimation that if P. C. Breagh ever found himself at the seat of war and in possession of any experiences worth recording, he might submit them for consideration if he chose.

These men would never know it, but they were profoundly humiliated. At least one of them had lost a half-column, striking the note of personal adventure to the clink of shekels of fine gold. As for Mr. Knewbit ... P. C. Breagh could almost hear him chuckling—had only to shut his eyes to see the poker, sketching out headings on the Coram Street kitchen wall:

"ADVENTURE OF YOUNG ENGLISHMAN.

WAR CORRESPONDENT IN BERLIN.

CRUSHED BY THE CROWD.

RESCUED BY BISMARCK.

THE IRON HAND SAVES A LIFE!"

Meanwhile, the medal had to be returned to the hands of its owner, who must, P. C. Breagh was firm on that!—consent to receive it from the hands of the finder, if he wanted it back again. P. C. Breagh knew the Foreign Office, in the Wilhelm Strasse—the shabbiest residence in all that street of official palaces—with its high-pitched, red-tiled Mansard roof, its shabby gray stuccoed front (a main building with two short wings, pierced by twelve windows, and decorated with a sham-Hellenic frieze and shallow pilasters),—and its big, park-like garden stretching away behind.

So, clutching the precious token, P. C. Breagh plunged back into the crowd. It was dense, but no longer solid, and, still lustily singing, with intervals of cheering, it bore him down the Linden as far as the Brandenburg Gate.

There it split into three vociferating rivers of humanity. One of which streamed north-westward toward the offices of the Great General Staff, where Moltke, the ancient war-wizard, was busy over his maps! Another, desirous of refreshment, surged onward in the direction of the Thiergarten. The third flowed down the street of palaces, and with it went P. C. Breagh.

XVIII

The Foreign Office knocker was a colossal funereal wreath, of sooty bronze laurel, that wakened hollow startling echoes in the tomb-like void of a grim stone vestibule.

The vestibule lay at the end of a glass-roofed passage. On the right was a window, behind the window gleamed an eye, belonging to the Chancery janitor who had manipulated the door-levers. The door banged behind P. C. Breagh, and his hope climbed a central flight of stairs, gray-white marble, with bronze balusters badly in need of cleaning. The staircase was covered with worn Turkey carpet, was lighted from above by a green and gold cupola, and guarded by two conventional figures of sphinxes, carved in shiny blackish stone.

All these details the eye of P. C. Breagh gleaned over the arm of the Chancellor's door-porter, a seven-foot East Prussian, who wore plain black official livery and carried no gold-headed staff, yet would have snubbed the Rector of the University of Schwärz-Brettingen had he presented himself in this unceremonious way.

"What does he want? The young man must know that His Excellency the Royal Chancellor of the North German Confederation is engaged upon State business—not to be approached by strangers having no appointments or credentials previously obtained. An introduction to His Excellency is indispensable. Where has the young man lived that he does not know that?"

To which the young man thus addressed could only reiterate that he deeply regretted the absence of a letter of introduction, and that his credentials could only be displayed to His Excellency himself.

"It is likely!" The porter's forehead corrugated with suspicion: "Thus is he approached by lunatics and dangerous persons, armed with crazy petitions or lethal weap——"

"Bosh!"

The English word made the porter leap in his square-toed, steel-buckled half-shoes. Recklessly P. C. Breagh went on:

"I'm neither a lunatic nor an assassin... It's just a case of Rettung aus Gefahr. Two lives saved in the year 1842, and another less than an hour ago.... Send that message to His Excellency, and he'll see me, I believe!"

"He believes!" ... snorted the porter indignantly.

A little, stooping, shabbily dressed old man in a chocolate-colored frock-coat with gilt buttons came shuffling across the vestibule carrying a handful of papers, telegrams they appeared to be. He had paused to listen to the latter part of the colloquy, holding his head on one side, as though the better to focus his sharp gray glance on the dusty, obtrusive young Englishman crowned with a sun-burnt Oxford straw hat, attired in a well-worn brown Norfolk jacket, knickerbockers and heather-mixture woolen stockings, and shod with stout, black, leather-laced, hob-nailed boots.

"He believes!" exclaimed the porter as though referring to the chocolate-coated old gentleman. "Will not the highly well-born Herr Legation-Councillor order that I summon Grams and Engelberg, and have this presumptuous person thrown into the street?"

"Softly, softly, my good Niederstedt!" advised the little chocolate-coated old gentleman. He added, shuffling forward in his immense black cloth boots over the slippery marble pavement of the vestibule: "It has occurred to me that an utterance of this young man's referred to an article that has been lost by His Excellency." He added, fixing his sharp, gray, jackdaw's eyes on the face of the young man: "Not valuable, but worth recovering—purely as a memento of the past!..."

Said Carolan bluntly:

"I did refer to such an article. In fact, I have it on me!"

A finger and thumb, stained with snuff, dipped into the Councillor's waistcoat pocket. He said, secretly conveying an order to the watchful porter with a twirl of one jackdaw-eye:

"For a couple of thalers," he displayed the coin, "a box of smokable cigars may be purchased in Berlin." He added, having cast for a bite, and missing the rise: "Four thalers secures a really excellent article!"

"Certainly," agreed P. C. Breagh.

"But for ten thalers," continued the old gentleman with forced enthusiasm, coaxingly beckoning P. C. Breagh to approach nearer, "one may smoke the choicest Havana brands. Give me the medal, fortunate young man, and take the money. Such a sum is not often picked up in the street!"

Said the young man, thus adjured, thrusting out his square chin obstinately:

"If His Excellency consents to receive me, I will personally return the medal to him. Be good enough to let him know as much."

"Unhappy young man! you realize not the greatness of your own presumption!" expostulated the old gentleman, lifting up his warty eyelids and puffing out his whiskered cheeks over his old-fashioned black satin stock. "Is the Chancellor of the Realm to be—and at a national crisis such as this?—at the beck and call of every English traveler?" He added with warmth: "For I know you to be of that nation, young man, though you speak German with some approach to facility. Hence! Trouble here no more, but give me that medal before you take your departure. Otherwise you will be forcibly relieved of it by the hands of those who are accustomed to deal with bumptious and obstinately-authority-defying persons of your description...."

He added, as the arms of P. C. Breagh were pinioned in an iron grip that clamped the elbows together behind the shoulder-blades, drew his arms down, and pinioned his wrists: "He, he, he! That was a capital stratagem of yours, my excellent Niederstedt! Really very smartly done!"

The grim, sable-clad porter, in whose huge hands P. C. Breagh vainly struggled, relaxed into a smile at the compliment. He said, as from different points two stalwart liveried attendants appeared, hastening to lend assistance:

"One has not served in the Prussian Guards for nothing. Once a soldier, always a soldier! Will the highly well-born Herr Legation-Councillor order Grams and Engelberg to hold this English pig-dog while I take His Excellency's medal out of the fellow's clothes?"

Snarled P. C. Breagh, livid with rage and glaring at the hostile faces like a young male tiger-cat:

"Add robbery to violence if you think well!—you are four to one—and in your own country. But as an English journalist I protest against the outrage.... And the British Ambassador shall take the matter up!"

There was an instant's pause of indecision, during which P. C. Breagh heard the opening of a door on the landing above. Then, with the rustle of silk, and the soft fall of footsteps traversing heavy carpets, a resonant voice called down the stair that led up between the basalt Sphinxes:

"Meanwhile, you will allow me to apologize for the too-excessive zeal of my servants. Do me the favor to come up here!"

The grip of the giant porter became flaccid as an infant's. The voice spoke again from the summit of the stair:

"Herr Legation-Councillor, will you kindly see Madame to her carriage? Au revoir, Madame, et bon voyage!"

A liquid voice responded:

"Au revoir, Monseigneur! At Paris—who knows!—before the Noël!"

She pulled down her veil, curtsied with demure elegance, and came softly rustling down in pale-hued, trailing silks and laces, one snow-white hand blazing with splendid emeralds lightly passing over the bronze baluster-rail, the other holding the ivory and jeweled stick of a dainty parasol.

"Madame!"

As by an afterthought he had called her. Midway in her descent the lady turned to look up at him. He said, bending his powerful eyes upon the face of sensuous loveliness:

"Pardon! but I believe—you are a native of France?"

The hint stung. She returned, with the stain of an angry blush darkening the roses purchased from Rimmel; and a hard line showing from the angle of each delicate nostril to the corner of the deep-cut, scarlet lips:

"Monseigneur is correct ... I am a Frenchwoman.... But the heart is free to choose its own country.... And—mine has learned to beat for the Fatherland!..."

So exquisite was the cadence with which the words were uttered, that P. C. Breagh heaved an involuntary sigh. The Legation-Councillor took snuff—it may have been his way of showing emotion. The huge porter sighed like a locomotive blowing off steam. His colleagues, who, like himself, stood waiting in rigid military attitudes, suffered no sympathy to appear in their wooden faces, yet may have felt the more. But the heavy mask of their master was divested of all expression.

"Even," said he, in his clear, resonant voice, "to the point of outdoing Agamemnon, King of Argos. For he—but doubtless you are familiar with the classic story!—merely sacrificed Iphigeneia on the altar of the virginal Artemis...." He added with a tone of intolerable irony: "It would have required fewer scruples and more toughness than Agamemnon possessed to have offered up an only daughter to Venus Libertina.... Only a woman of fashion would be capable of such infamy.... Pardon! but you have dropped your parasol!"

She had shuddered and winced as though his words had been vitriol,—dropped from above—corroding her delicate flesh.... The costly toy had fallen from her hand as the shudder had passed over her, and rolled down the stair, as she continued her descent. P. C. Breagh picked it up and handed it to her, as she set foot upon the lowest step of the staircase. She looked at him, and bent her head. And the beauty that had been hers a moment back was so strangely, bleakly altered, he could scarcely repress an exclamation of dismay.

Thus Circe might have stared, thought P. C. Breagh, when her feeding hogs leaped up as men frantic for vengeance. Thus Duessa, when the spotted image of her own vileness was reflected in the glassy shield of Truth.

The change in the boy's face stabbed Madame to consciousness. She caught at her mauve tulle veil, forgetful that it was already lowered, and tore it horizontally, so that her full white rounded chin emerged with fantastic effect, like the moon through a bank of storm-wrack. And then, with her head held high, she swept through the vestibule in a frou-frou of silks and a gale of perfume, and down the passage ending in the hall-door with the funereal knocker. The Legation-Councillor trotted after her. One of the servants followed him, and P. C. Breagh, mounting the staircase between the Sphinxes, reached the landing and the summit of his ambitions in a breath.

"Time is scarce!" said the man who was meant when Prime Ministers and political leader-writers referred to Prussia. "I have no more than five minutes to spare, but you shall have them. Come this way! So you are an English journalist! What paper do you represent, here in Berlin? Sit down and tell me in as few words as possible!"

They were in a small but lofty room on the first-floor, hung with green flock paper. It had a fireplace as well as a stove, and it was a study, yet it contained no bookcases, only a couple of shelved stands laden with pamphlets and papers of the official kind. The two high windows—open and unblinded, though the green-shaded reading-lamp upon the big carved mahogany writing-table was alight—looked across the extensive gardens reaching to the Königgratzer-Strasse. Beyond lay the Thiergarten, all black with masses of people under the sultry red-gold sunset of middle July.

Perhaps you can see—like Scaramouch and the Sultan in the Eastern story—P. C. Breagh, hot and dusty, flushed and rumpled, seated opposite the most formidable personage of the day. He who dictated to Kings and carried his Foreign Office trailing after him whenever he chose to go campaigning, stood upon the skin of a white lioness that served as hearthrug, and bit off the end of a huge cigar. He looked bulkier than ever, and the powerful modeling of his scant-haired temples, the splendid dome of the skull that housed the keenest intellect in Europe, the masterful regard of the great eyes, the sarcastic humor of the mouth shaded by the heavy mustache—traits and features reproduced so constantly in the illustrated newspapers of the period,—conveyed to Carolan the impression that a portrait moved and spoke.

He was attired, as usually represented, in a dark blue, braided military undress-frock, and trousers tightly strapped over boots with cavalry spurs. An Order hung at his collar. As he threw back his head in the act of lighting his cigar, P. C. Breagh recognized it—the Cross of a Commander of the Red Eagle. While on the left breast of the blue frock-coat was a small three-cornered rent in the cloth from which the lost medal had been somehow wrenched away....

The sight of that tear in the dark blue-faced cloth sent the blood racing to P. C. Breagh's forehead. He knew himself for a presumptuous young man. He plunged his hand into the pocket of the brown Norfolk jacket, and brought out the red-and-white enameled decoration, and said, awkwardly laying it upon the edge of the big writing-table, in the yellow radius thrown by the lighted lamp:

"I found this after Your Excellency had gone!"

"Hand it here!" said the heavy blue eyes imperiously. P. C. Breagh got up and obeyed. The Chancellor's long arm shot out, and the muscular white fingers whipped the medal from the palm that offered it. Its owner assured himself by a brief scrutiny that the token had sustained no injury, nodded, and re-pinned it on the breast of his frogged military frock-coat. When this was accomplished,—the small solution in the continuity of the cloth being covered by the decoration,—he said, taking the cigar from his mouth, and knocking off the long crisp ash upon the edge of the white earthenware stove:

"I should have been sorry to have lost that. But, while thanking you for having restored it, let me say that had my servants taken it from you by force majeure they would not have been robbing you,—though in law they might have been held guilty of a personal assault. Now as to your business. You have had one of your five minutes! You have just now said you are an English journalist. Does your business concern the War?"

P. C. Breagh stammered—for the heavy eyes that rested on him seemed to oppress him physically:

"To be frank with Your Excellency, I represent no newspaper. I have some slight experience as a journalist, that is all,—War Correspondence seems to me the highest branch of journalism,—and I want, naturally, to fit myself to practice it. Therefore, as no newspaper would employ me, I accepted a private commission given, out of good-nature, by a friend, who has helped me before. And—my first day in Berlin—I fell in with Your Excellency. I won't deny it seemed a hopeful augury!"

"For the future! ... I understand!" said the Chancellor, sending out a long cloud of cigar-smoke. "And in what way do you suggest that I should help you?"

He put the question so bluntly that P. C. Breagh, in the effort to answer, floundered and boggled. He had suddenly realized his own insect-like insignificance in the eyes that were so intolerably heavy in their regard. His own eyes sank to the neat, small, polished boots of the big man. who stood smoking upon the white lioness-skin. To the wearer of those boots he was merely a beetle who could be crushed by them. The slight ironical smile that altered the curve of the mustache said as much. But the Minister's tone was suave as he went on:

"I think I have grasped the mainspring of your reasoning. To begin with, you desire to accompany one of our armies on the campaign?"

"Yes—sir! Your Excellency, I should say!"

A lambent light of humor danced in the blue eyes that were bent on him. The faint ironic smile broadened into a laugh. The Chancellor took his cigar from his mouth, knocked off the ash, and said quite pleasantly:

"And deducting from this premise, I conjecture that—because I have been privileged to save you from being trampled to death under the feet of the mob upon the Linden, you naturally take it for granted that I would further your ambitions. Gratitude, one of your English authors has admirably defined as a lively sense of favors to come...."

P. C. Breagh, who had been for some time shrinking in his own estimation, suddenly saw himself in a newer, meaner light. His torturer went on in mellifluous English:

"I do not know that any classical German author has defined gratitude quite so cleverly. But we in Pomerania have a folk-story which may be new to you." He drew sharply at his cigar, then laid it glowing on the edge of the stove:

"You speak German quite passably, so I will tell it in our Pomeranian dialect. If this is not done, the dialogue lacks salt. Thus it goes: Wedig Knips, a peasant of Dalow, whose horses wanted watering, went one winter's day to break the ice that covered the drinking-hole.... 'Bless us! what have we here?' says he, when he finds a kerl called Peders, frozen in the ice, with his head down and his heels up. To make a long story short, he chops out Peders, takes him home, and sets him up to thaw before the fire.... 'Now, neighbor,' says he, 'go about your business!'—'How can I when my jerkin is wet and my breeches are full of muddy water?'—Says Wedig: 'Poor devil! I will give you my Sunday trows!'—'And a jerkin too, for you saved my life, you must remember!' ... Wedig scratches his head, but hands over a jerkin with the rest. 'Come, now be off!' says he. '"Off," with my under-pants and shirt all sopping! Do you want to kill me—now that you have saved my life?'—So Wedig pulls a wry face, but hands over the underclothes.... 'Put these on and be off, we are busy people in this house!' 'What,' says Peders, 'without paying me the value of the good duds spoiled in your stinking horsepond?'—'Must I pay?' ... 'Certainly, you have saved my life! Nobody asked you!—I had thrown myself in because I was tired of living. Now it is your bounden duty to make things tolerable for me!'—'How make things tolerable?'—'To begin with, I want a cottage to live in, and a plot of kail-ground to it, and a wee pickle furniture.'—'But I have only this cottage, and the bits of sticks you see!'—'Well, give me them! Didn't you save my life?' ... Wedig gets confused, sees no way out of it. 'The devil!' says he, 'this is a nice affair! However, take them, man!'—'I will take them,' says Peders, 'but you must give me the cart and plow, the cow and the two horses?'—'Himmelkreuzbombenelement! Have I got to give you all that because I saved your life?'—'Ay, undoubtedly!—and you must let me have your wife into the bargain. It's your bounden duty——' 'I know! because I saved your life! Shan't make such a mistake next time, you may be sure of that!'—'No, but you did, so to grumble is no use.'—'Thunder! my old girl will make a terrible squawking.'—'Not when you have explained how you saved my life!' ... Wedig scratches his head, rubs his chin, gets a bright idea.... 'Help me to explain to the wife, do you agree?'—'Ay, of course! What is it you want me to say to her?'—'Oh! say nothing. Only let me show her exactly how I got you out of the water-hole.'—'Willingly!'—'But to do that I must put you back just a minute!'—'Put me back?'—'Only for a minute.' 'Promise when I cry "Genug!" you'll take me out directly!'—'All right! Come along!' So Wedig takes Peders by the legs and sticks him back where he found him, driving his head well down into the mud at the bottom of the pond.... So—he never cried 'Genug!' and Wedig left him there....

The hard blue eyes that had been all alight with laughter, the heavily molded face that had unexpectedly proved itself capable of comic changes, the voice that, as the droll dialogue proceeded, had conveyed with slight, admirably restrained mimicry the complacent assurance of the knave and the dull bewilderment of the victim, changed, became the Minister's again. He said, in his smoothest tones:

"I cannot put you back into the crush of the crowd, because by an appeal to its loyal feelings and domestic instincts I was so fortunate as to disperse it. What I might do, of course, is to deliver you to the tender mercies of my servants, to whom,—when you brought back the medal,—you blustered about delivering it to me personally. This not-exactly-very-clever ruse would have failed—had I not happened to step upon the scene. Your English policy is often more fortunate than masterly.... Fortune certainly has favored you to-day. Not in the fulfillment of your ambition to accompany a Prussian Army to the field of action—that is a wish impossible to gratify. For we put up a general defense against the presence of any save the most highly accredited Correspondents, and the War Minister will only grant Legitimations to two or three. But in obtaining for an obscure paragraphist a special interview with the Prussian Minister for Foreign Affairs on the eve of a world-crisis, Fortune has certainly favored you. Go back now to your hotel and write your article; then telegraph to Fleet Street and make your own terms!"

"I'll be shot if I do!" choked out P. C. Breagh, flaming scarlet to his hair-roots. "And I thank Your Excellency for a lesson, and I beg to take my leave!"

"Why does he go? Why does he talk about a lesson?" asked the broad, cynical gaze that rested on him.

As though he had spoken aloud, P. C. Breagh answered:

"Because I set my personal advantage above common gratitude and honor. Your Excellency lost the medal in pulling me out of the scrimmage at the risk of your own life, and when I found the thing—I used it,—exactly as you say! True, you'd snubbed me when I'd tried to thank you! yet I did believe your having saved me might help me in some way.... But it would be better to cadge in the dustbins for a living, than make money out of information gained by trickery. And I apologize sincerely for having been such a cad!"

"'Cad' is the slang for vulgarian, is it not?" He added: "Yes, they inculcate a code of honor at the English public schools."

The voice grated. P. C. Breagh hated its owner. But he answered, looking squarely in the bulldog face that bent on him:

"They do, and I am sorry to have broken at least one of its articles. May I wish Your Excellency good afternoon!"

The speaker bowed, not clumsily, and turned to quit the room, when a ferocious growl behind him, and the scraping of heavy claws on slippery parquet pulled round his head. Savage, red-rimmed eyes challenged, and the bared gleaming fangs of a huge boarhound couched at length under a wrought-iron sofa at the west end of the longish room menaced the stranger's throat:

"Down, Tyras!" ordered the Minister harshly, and with a deep groan the heavy brute dropped its nose between its forepaws, and lay still, shaken by occasional rumbling growls.

"You see," said the Minister, laughing, "that I can afford to dispense with the services of detectives when this good servant is at hand. Come, sit down another moment.... I am really willing to help you.... You have not come so badly as you imagine out of the affair!"

"But I have said I will not write the article, and I am intruding on Your Excellency's privacy." The soul of P. C. Breagh yearned for the freedom of the streets. To be shut up in the study of the greatest of living Ministers,—set beak-to-beak with the man who was occupying the attention of Europe—the master-mind in statecraft, who used blunt truth as a weapon to beat down diplomatic falsehood, and comported himself amidst the striving parties of his national Parliament as a giant surrounded by dwarfs;—had seemed, previously, a thing to boast of—a dazzling feather in the cap of achievement. Now it was no triumph, but a torture. He writhed under those keen, amused, analytical glances, knowing himself worthy to be so despised.

"I have twenty minutes in which to refresh and rest, not having eaten or sat down since ten o'clock this morning. You have had ten—I will give you another five. Sit down again there!"

Tyras emitted another savage growl as though in support of his owner's authority, and P. C. Breagh, loathing his host even more intensely than he hated P. C. Breagh, obeyed the imperious hand that pointed to the chair he had vacated, and sat down, white-gilled now, and sick with longing to be out of this presence into which he had thrust himself—beyond the reach of the icy, contemptuous tones and the arrogant, domineering eyes.

The Chancellor had turned away to pull at one of the red woolen bell-ropes that hung on either side of the fire-place, shabby things, threadbare with use, like the Persian carpet that was trodden out in paths by the spurred feet of the man who stood for Prussia; worn like the leather cushions of the great wrought-iron sofa, under which the great man's faithful attendant couched, with one eye on the familiar face, and the other on the strange one that might mask an enemy.

Above the sofa, beneath a trophy of fencing-swords and masks, reigning over a rack supporting a number of red and white military undress-caps in all stages of wear, and another containing a collection of pipe-sticks and unmounted pipe-heads, hung the half-length oil-portrait of a beautiful girl in ball-dress. Below was a large-framed photograph of a noble-looking woman, with a mass of black braided hair framing a long, serious face, with grave dark eyes, thick straight nose, and full-curved, humorous lips recalling published engravings of the English author of "Adam Bede." Probably it was the Countess—that same Fräulein Johanna Puttkammer who had been hugged under the gaze of her assembled family. She looked strong, serene and courageous, fit—thought P. C. Breagh—to be the wife of a man destined by Fate and framed by nature to become a leader of men. Also, she looked like a woman who could love with old-world, elemental, forceful passion. She had bestowed such love upon this man—who had begun life as a roaring, hard-drinking young Pomeranian squire, well worthy of the sobriquet of "Mad Bismarck," bestowed upon him by his native county.

She had sifted the gold out of the sand.... She had never openly displayed her influence.... All the same it had been there, guiding, sustaining, controlling.... He had written to her, years after, when he had begun in earnest to be a power in politics.... "You see what you have made me! What should I have done without you?"

Arrogant, harsh, domineering, merciless, as his enemies had reason to term him, there must be something noble in the man who had written like that. He was said to be a kind, if not over-indulgent, father to his two big sons, even then serving as private soldiers in a well-known regiment of Dragoon Guards, and to be worshiped by his daughter, a feminine copy of himself, if that oil-portrait were anything like....

"Have you taken any food to-day?..."

The interrogation brought P. C. Breagh's head round. A servant must have appeared, and gone, and come again in answer to the bell-summons. For on a clear corner of an étagère otherwise piled with official papers and pamphlets, stood a tray, bearing glasses and a vast crystal jug of creaming golden-hued nectar with miniature icebergs floating on the surface; and several dishes of rolls, split, profusely buttered, and lined with something savory, the sight and scent of which awoke tender yearnings within....

"No!—I thought not. Drink this and eat some of these sandwiches. I myself have fasted longer than is agreeable!"

And a huge goblet of the ice-cold creaming nectar was handed to P. C. Breagh, who immediately realized that his tongue and palate were dry as the sun-baked asphalt of the Linden.

"Prosit!" said his host, and drained his glass, adding, as the guest duly responded according to the classic formula and drank: "You are University-bred, I see! What Alma Mater had the preference? Schwärz-Brettingen! ... Ah, they thought very badly of me there about the time of the Luxembourg Garrison Question. Nearly all the little foxes barked at me as I passed through. However, we are now reconciled, and more than a thousand of the students have applied to serve as volunteers in this war,—there's an item of interest for your paper!—though you have Quixotically determined, you say, not to make use of any information that I may be enabled to offer you. All Quixotism is weakness, in my estimation; a man, according to my code, should pursue his advantage where he finds it irrespective of ethical laws or religious prejudice. Now eat some of these stuffed rolls. Here are caviar, smoked goose-breast, Westphalian ham and liver-sausage. You see I set you an example!—and a would-be campaigner should be able to sleep soundly under any and all conditions; and eat whenever anything eatable is obtainable, with unflinching appetite!"

The savory rolls were vanishing under the speaker's repeated attacks, and the golden tide in the great crystal decanter was sinking visibly. He said, lifting and holding it so that between the light of the green-shaded table-lamp and the red glow of sunset pouring through the unblinded western windows, the liquid in it shone ruby and emerald....

"Come, let me fill your glass again, and then I shall send you about your business. Absolved, you understand, from that ridiculous vow of yours—and with a magic talisman to enable you to use your eyes."

The steady hand set down the now emptied jug, and took from the red marble mantelshelf a small and perfectly-finished pair of field-glasses, covered in black Russia leather and mounted in ivory. An inlaid silver shield bore a monogram, "O. v. B.-S.," and a date.

"You can shoot with a pistol?—Good!—then I should advise you to buy one, if possible. A revolver of the American Colt's invention—six-barreled—a feature which increases weight in proportion as it adds to effectiveness—would be useful. Indeed, I carry one myself! One day they will turn out such things with one barrel—but we must wait for that, I am afraid. Here is the case belonging to the glasses, with a strap to sling it round your shoulders—and one thing more I will give you—though I am less certain about its ultimate usefulness!"

The writing-table stood in the middle of the room. He moved to it with one of his long, heavy strides, sat down—dipped quill in ink—and penned a few lines rapidly, glancing at the sunburned, freckled face as though to refresh his memory—holding up an imperious baud for silence when the recipient of the field-glasses seemed about to protest against the value of the gift.

"Your nationality?—'British.' Name, 'Patrick Carolan Breagh—pronounced "Brack." Your height?—Be very accurate. One half-inch too much or too little might bring you into trouble of a serious kind. 'Five feet nine' ... you promise to be taller. Your age ... twenty-three last January.... Shoulders broad, good muscular development. Your hair ... Reddish, is it not? ... You have gray eyes with what the French would call taches of yellow in them. Complexion fresh, considerably freckled. Nose short and straight, ears small, teeth white and regular. Chin square and with a cleft—weaklings have not such chins!..."

He added a brief sentence to the hastily scrawled description, signed and blotted it, rose and came to P. C. Breagh and thrust it in his hand.

"Do not thank me! It is my passing whim to help you—regard it in that light. As to this pass, safe-conduct or whatever one may call it—it may forward you or hinder you.... Potztausend! I am a mere officer of Cuirassiers of the Landwehr—General by courtesy—not Generalissimo! ... You, Bucher! ... What is there wanted now?..."

For a scratch on the door-panel had been succeeded by the flurried entrance of the little Councillor of Legation, breathing hard, and red in the face. He gabbled in Spanish:

"Pardon, Your Excellency, that I enter without knocking. But His Highness the Crown Prince is coming upstairs!..."

And almost in the same instant, as Tyras uttered a deep "wuff" of friendly greeting, the open doorway was filled by the stateliest and most martial figure in Europe, and a pleasant, manly voice said:

"Not finding you in your official quarters below-stairs, I ventured, my dear Count Bismarck, to follow you to your private study. It is a question of whether Le Sourd delivered the war-gauntlet from Paris, or—— Pardon! I had no idea that you were not alone!"

The tall, broad-chested, golden-bearded Viking in the undress uniform of the First Regiment of Guards touched his cap in acknowledgment of P. C. Breagh's respectful salutation. Then, as in obedience to a glance from the Minister, the lean claws of the little Councillor closed upon P. C. Breagh's arm, and he was plucked from the room, the Prince asked, glancing after the queer couple:

"May one ask who your young friend is?" and got answer:

"It is only an English schoolboy, Your Royal Highness,—who thirsts to try his hand at War-correspondence—having had a few articles printed in some London rag. And this being so, he applies to me, who am the least leisured person in His Majesty's dominions—-for a moment of my spare time!..."

"It is annoying, my dear Count," answered the mellow-voiced Viking, "but cannot your people keep such troublesome persons outside?"

The Minister returned, laughing:

"He caught me on my doorstep,—as the polecat waylaid the badger!—and as he brought back a decoration I had lost, and which he, luckily for himself, had found!—I could not refuse him a minute's interview. But with regard to Your Royal Highness's question of an instant since—Le Sourd, the French Chargé d'Affaires, placed the Emperor's declaration of war in my hands about an hour after the opening of Council in the Palace to-day."

Said the Prince:

"Unhappy man! driven to risk the loss of an Empire that he may continue to rule a nation of enemies. One can hardly doubt the issue—yet at what cost of lives shall we not purchase victory!"

Bismarck said in harsh, metallic tones, bending his brows upon the Prince, who all the world knew loved peace, and loathed the thought of the red months of strife that were approaching:

"Your Royal Highness is aware that I look upon this war as necessary, and that I should not have returned to Varzin without giving in my resignation to His Majesty had the issue been other than what it is.... As for this weak-backed Napoleon, this Pierrot stuffed with bran,—who is kept in an upright attitude only by the slaps I deal him on one cheek and the buffets the Monarchists and the Revolutionists lend him on the other!—it will be better for him to meet his end by a bullet or a sword-thrust on the banks of the Rhine, than to be blown to pieces by some bomb in the streets of Paris, or to die of apoplexy in the bedroom of some nymph of the theater-coulisses!"

He drew himself to his full height and, folding his powerful arms upon his breast, said, looking full at the Prince, who had declined a seat and who was standing near the window, his hair and beard glowing golden-red in the full rays of the setting sun:

"Your Royal Highness speaks of the effusion of blood. I am of those who have drawn the sword in the service of their King and country. I do not regard war from the point of view of the man who stops at home. More than this! ... His Majesty is not the only father who has a son serving in our Army.... I have two. Herbert and Bill...."

A pale purplish tint suffused his heavy face and crept to the summit of his rugged forehead. His fierce blue eyes dimmed. He said, in slightly muffled tones:

"I am not given to pompous phrases. Yet if German unity can only be brought about by a great national war waged against our near-hand enemy—our old, cunning, sleepless foe—I hail that war, even though it leave me without posterity! If the gulf that divides the Northern and Southern sections of the Fatherland can be better bridged by my boys' dead bodies ... I would give them as freely as I would give my own!"

A spasm twisted his under-jaw. He said, laughing in his stern way:

"Three long-legged Bismarcks should equal one eighteen-foot-seven plank. And I speak not only for myself. My wife would echo me."

Said the Prince in his cordial way:

"My mother has a great admiration for Her Excellency. My wife, too, speaks of her as a woman of antique nobility of mind." He continued, with a smile that curved the bold, frank mouth under the glittering mustache into lines of exceeding pleasantness: "And her personal solicitude for Your Excellency pleases my father much!"

The heavy face that opposed him lost its dogged, set expression. The Minister broke into a hearty laugh.

"So! I have been waiting to hear somewhat of that voluble telegram of hers to Abeken: 'Pray ask the King not to bother Count Bismarck about State matters just now, when he is taking Carlsbad waters for the gout!'

"Ha, ha!" The Prince joined gaily in the laughter. "The Councillor was working with the King and myself, when he received that wire. It came with a sheaf of others—he read it aloud without a change of expression..... Then you should have seen his face ... a study for a comedian...."

The Minister said, still smiling:

"My wife pours many confidences of the domestic sort into Abeken's bosom. She said to him during the Constitutional Conflict of '66 ... 'Bismarck cares really nothing at all about these stupid political matters. A cabbage well grown, or a fir-tree well planted, means more to him than the Indemnity Bill.' Yet when the Bill passed she was all-triumphant. And to-day she remarked to me: 'War is horrible to me on principle. But it would be equally horrible to me if you said to me to-morrow: "All is over!—we do not fight!..."' I made her angry by telling her that one might parody in application to the mental attitude of her sex the lines of the English Poet Laureate, and say:

"Her reason rooted in unreason stood."

"When our German women become too highly educated," said the fair-haired giant, "love will take wing for a land where the culture of the feminine intellect is still unpopular. We males hold our supremacy on the very insecure tenure of a carefully inculcated belief that, being men, we must be wise!"

Said the Minister:

"There is a Pomeranian proverb bearing on that question. 'In the house where a strip of green hide hangs handy, the wife will never know better than her old man!'"

"Unless she happened to be the stronger of the two, bodily as well as mentally, dear Count," the Prince rejoined; "in which case the husband would be well advised to accept the inferior place. For against brute-strength and brains combined, there is no remedy but patience."

Bismarck retorted:

"Possibly—but what if the muscular brute with the brains possesses a share of patience also? There is nothing like knowing how to wait—I assure Your Royal Highness!"

The Prince looked at the great figure topped by the stolid bulldog face, and recalled something that the English Princess, his wife, had said to him that day:

"This fearful struggle will set the coping-stone upon that man's colossal labors and ambitions!"

But he was all grave, gracious cordiality as they passed from the lighter vein of talk to serious questions, though, as he took leave of the Minister at the hall-door and stepped into his waiting carriage, he said to himself mournfully:

"Alix was right. He has what he has waited and schemed for. To light this international conflagration he would have ventured down to fetch a burning brand from the nethermost Hell. And what oceans of blood will be poured out before the fire may be extinguished—none knows but God alone!"

XXIX

Von Moltke, the ancient war-wizard, went home from the Council-Extraordinary to his private quarters at the offices of the Great General Staff. He dispatched the three-word telegram, and the vast machine began to work....

All had been ready for two years. Nothing was left to finish at the last moment. Not a speck of rust marred shaft or spindle or bearing, not a drop of oil was clogged in any slot.

Days back, the Heads of Departments had been recalled by a brief telegram from the Chief who knew how to be taciturn in seven languages. Now, while in Berlin, as in every other city and town of Prussia Proper and her Eleven Provinces, palaces, mansions, restaurants and cafés, beer-gardens and schnaps-cellars blazed with gas and resounded with the clinking of glasses, and people sat late into the grilling July night discussing and rediscussing that special supplement of the North German Gazette—which was being distributed gratuitously by hundreds of thousands,—predicting the next move of the Man of Iron, and the latest ruse of the Man of Paris,—consuming tons of sausage, caviar, pickled salmon, herrings in salad, and potted tunny, with strawberries and other fruits and sweet dishes, all washed down by floods of cooling beer, or iced Moselle and champagne—the numberless huge barracks and other military establishments displayed another kind of activity.

Here no outbursts of patriotic song and festivity checked the rapid, organized, methodical scurry of warlike preparation. Soldiers ran about like busy ants, purposeful and unblundering. Long trains of Army Service carts and wagons streamed in at divers lofty gates, to emerge at others after the briefest interval, heavily laden with Army stores, Army baggage, War material of all kinds. Night and day, huge Government factories and foundries dithered and roared, filling up newly made vacuums in those huge magazines and storehouses which must always be kept full. In the gloomy dominions of the Iron King, Herr Krupp, that stout-loined Teuton who begat great guns instead of tall sons, and had them godfathered by Prussian Royalty—what forests of tall chimneys belched forth smoke, canopying begrimed and prosperous Westphalian towns, populated by innumerable swarthy toilers in the gigantic iron and steel foundries! At Essen, where mountains of coal kiss the sooty skies, and heavy locomotives ceaselessly grind over networks of shining steel rails, dragging strings of trucks, containing yet more fuel for the ever-hungry furnaces,—within an impregnable rampart of solid masonry,—he dwelt in a Babylonian palace. The panting of innumerable steam-power engines, the banging, moaning, crashing, groaning, and grinding of forges, lathes, and planing-machines; cutting, shaping, boring, and polishing machines; with the beating of sixty-two steam-hammers, of all weights up to that of fifty tons, which cost £100,000 to manufacture, sounded like a cannon whenever it was used, and was kept working without pause, so as not to lose a fraction of the interest of the capital sunk in it—made his concert by day, and by night served for his serenade and lullaby. He made laws for the control of his grimy subjects, this Briareus of ten thousand hands—and enforced them by the aid of his own police and magistrates. With orders in course of execution for Turkey, China, Egypt, Russia, and Spain, he was yet able to deliver eighty cannon per week to the different artillery depots of his Fatherland. His steel, tempered by his secret process, the new ore being brought him from his Spanish mines by his own fleet of transports, surpassed even Bessemer's. Yet he was not a conceited or purse-proud man. By the chief entrance of the biggest of all his factories stood the little soot-blackened forge where forty years before young Krupp had labored with his father and a couple of workmen. Small wonder the powerful Iron King had honor from his over-lord.

Conceive next the well-ordered bustle at the headquarters of the different Army Corps, when the withered finger of the Warlock pressed upon the button, and the spark of electricity leaped along a thousand wires, carrying with it the vitalizing word.... Moltke's methods were then fire-new, and made the world sit up.

You might have seen the Reserve men of the Twelve Provinces—whose summons for assembly lay ready in the Landwehr office of every city, town, village, or hamlet—streaming in at the district depots, bringing each Line regiment up to war-strength (nearly double its numbers in time of peace). Mobilization was no foreign word to them, for once a year, after Schmidt, the field-laborer, had done getting in the harvest, and when Schultz, the bank-clerk, and Kunz, the chemist's assistant, had got their annual autumn holiday, Schmidt, Schultz, and Kunz were accustomed to perform a series of carefully rehearsed physical exercises ending in maneuvers, and a safe if inglorious return to the domestic hearth.

Schmidt, Schultz, and Kunz were only remarkable by their unlikeness to each other—Schmidt being the brown, uncouth, and unshaven husband of a stout wife and numerous tow-headed babes. Schultz was more recently married to a young lady remotely connected on the maternal side with a family possessing the right to inscribe the aristocratic prefix "von" before its surname. The couple lived frugally on Herr Schultz's salary of thirty pounds a year, somewhere upon the outskirts of the select quarter of the country town (some four miles distant from Schmidt's native village)—while Kunz, the graduate of a University, and author of a text-book of Analytical Chemistry, sold impartially to both, squills, rhubarb-tincture, and porous plasters over the counter of his employer's shop.

Served by the Burgomaster's clerk, or a wooden-faced orderly-corporal, with the compelling bit of paper, Schmidt, Schultz, and Kunz, having taken farewell embraces of their nearest and dearest, would sling over their shoulders canvas wallets containing a lump of sausage, a shirt or so, a huge chunk of bread, white or black, with a bottle containing wine or schnaps, and stowing next their skins leather purses containing a few coins, and a parchment volume resembling the English soldier's "small book," would hasten by rail or road in the direction of their regimental rendezvous, toward which bourne the Reserve contingent of other towns, villages, and hamlets would also betake themselves, until the roads were blackened with their tramping bodies and the trains would be packed chock-full. Arrived at Headquarters, batch after batch,—subsequently to a brief but exhaustive medical overhauling—would be dispatched to the arsenal, where attaching themselves to a tremendous queue of other Schmidts, Schultzes, and Kunzes, they would mark time in double-file outside a vast, grim, barn-like structure, until the moment arrived for entering; when with well-accustomed quickness, each would find his way to a certain hook or group of hooks, surmounted with his regimental number, from which depended a certain familiar uniform, with accoutrements and weapons equally well known.

Picture innumerable alleys formed by these dangling uniforms, radiating away to the point of distance,—and suppose Schmidt, Schultz, and Kunz equipped in something answering to the twinkling of a Teutonic eye.

In—supposing Schmidt, Schultz, or Kunz to belong to the Infantry—a pair of dark gray unmentionables, red-corded down the side-seams, and a pair of mid-leg-high boots, very roomy and strong. Inside the boots were no stockings, tallowed linen bands being bound about the legs and feet. A single-breasted tunic of dark blue cloth with red facings followed, and a flat forage-cap of blue cloth with a red band, or a glazed black leather helmet with a brazen Prussian eagle front-plate and a brass spike-top. With the addition of a zinc label, slung round the neck, and bearing a man's name, number, company, and regiment, an overcoat made into a sausage and tied together at the ends, a canvas haversack, glass leather-covered canteen, a pipeclayed waistbelt with two cartridge-boxes of black leather, and a knapsack of calf-skin tanned with the hair, stretched upon a wooden frame, and slung by two pipe-clayed straps hooked to the waistbelt in front and then passing over the shoulders. Two shorter straps, going under the armpits, would be fastened to the knapsack, which had a receptacle for a packet of twenty cartridges at either end of it. Within, suppose the usual soldier's kit, with spoon, knife, fork, comb, and shaving-glass; and on top imagine a galvanized iron pot, holding about three quarts, with a tight-fitting cover which became, at need, a frying-pan. Arm with a strong waistbelt-sword about fifteen inches long, an unburnished needle-gun heavily grease-coated, and Schmidt, Schultz, and Kunz, having hung their civilian garments on the hooks that erst supported the martial panoply, tugged at a final buckle-strap, wheeled and passed out, transformed, by yet another door.

Always the three had known that an hour would come when these familiar exercises would not end with half-a-dozen exceedingly strenuous field-days, and a return,—on the part of Schmidt and Schultz,—to the arms of their respective wives. Schmidt, on whose breast shone the war-medal of '66, and who must now be addressed as "Herr Sergeant" by his social superiors, seemed not to mind at all, though he swore at his boots, quite unjustly, for pinching. But the bank-clerk's espousals were too recent, and his first experience of paternity too near at hand, for any display of hardihood, while Herr Kunz was but newly betrothed to the apothecary's daughter Mina, and could not forget how the tears had rolled out of her large blue eyes at the prospect of parting with her beloved Carl.

Therefore, although the mouths of the trio were, when not professionally shut, busily engaged in bellowing "Die Wacht am Rhein," "Ich bin ein Preusse," and other patriotic songs, or sending up deafening "Hochs" for the King, the Crown Prince, Prince Friedrich Karl, "Our Moltke," and another public personage recently very much elevated in the popular esteem,—the mental visions of at least two of them were occupied with prophetic visions in which blue-eyed sweethearts pined and faded away out of grief for absent betrotheds, and young wives wept over empty cradles until they too expired, with faltering messages of love for the husband so far distant on their dying lips....

"Sapperlot! What in thunder are you gaping at, you gimpel, you?" a rough, loud voice would shout, and a terrific thump from the hard and heavy hand of Sergeant Schmidt would visit the shoulders of Private Schultz, or Kunz. Who thus addressed would jerk out:

"Oh, nothing, nothing, Herr Sergeant, truly nothing at all!" and receive from their recently despised inferior the rude counsel to look alive and keep cheery:

"For this will be a war worth fighting in, mark you! The Man on the Seine has played the part of the Evil Neighbor too long. France and Prussia have got to come to clapperclaws—there's no help for it! The soup is cooked, so let us eat it. He is the luckiest who gets the spoon in first!"

You may suppose precisely similar scenes and dialogues occurring in the experience of Kraus, Klaus, and Klein, who, having served their time with the active Army and passed from the Reserve into the Landwehr, were now fetched out with the First Call, not only to replace the garrisons of Saxony, Prague, Pardubitz, and all the other fortified points on the lines of communication, but to guard and patrol those lines of road and railway over which the three marching armies were to receive supplies of food, ammunition, clothing, stores, and medicine; and maintain telegraphic communication with Berlin. Meanwhile Grein, Schwartz, and Braun, men of riper years, stiffer joints, and older experiences, remained at home; waiting the hour when, Death having thinned the ranks of the fighters in the forefront of the battle, the Second Call should sound. When these hardy veteran battalions, formed into divisions of the same numerical strength as those of the regular Army, would roll over the frontiers, to fill up the bloody gaps left by the scythe of the Red Mower, and play their part in the vast, chaotic, multi-tableauxed drama of War.

Prussia contributed some 652,294 actors of small parts to the said drama, not counting the leading men, stars of the war-theater, who supported the heavier roles. And Bavaria, Würtemburg, and Baden contributed their contingents, bringing up the strength of the cast to 780,923 performers. The equine actors numbered 213,159.

The vast machine worked wonderfully. It is interesting to know that the German Staff maps of France showed recently made roads which in July, 1870, had not been marked upon any map issued by the Imperial War Office at Paris, and that within three days from that three-word signal-wire of Moltke's, military trains full of men, guns, horses, ammunition, and proviant, began to run at the rate of forty per day, from north, east, and south, toward the narrow frontier between Strasbourg and Luxembourg.

"For God and Fatherland!" and "Watch well the Rhine!" said the miniature banners carried by thousands of people. You could see them fluttering from crowded roofs and packed windows, and variegating the sidewalks of thoroughfares below, as regiment after regiment marched to the station, in shining rivers of pickelhaubes and bayonets, or Dragoon helmets, Hussar busbies, and Uhlan schapkas, flowing between upheaped banks of waving women and cheering men.

Speedily, in response to communications addressed by the Crown Prince to the South German sovereigns, notifying these potentates of his appointment as Commander-in-Chief of their armies, came replies expressing satisfaction of different shades and qualities. The Grand Duke of Baden's bubbled with joy, and expressed the determination of his troops to gain their Royal Commander's confidence by fidelity and bravery. The King of Würtemburg rejoiced likewise, but in cooler terms, "in our German affair" being brought to a head at last; and was anxious to have the opportunity of saluting the heir of Prussia. The King of Bavaria telegraphed "Very happy. Many thanks your Royal Highness's attention!" A message which conveyed no more warmth than was felt.

His telegram of martial support, addressed at the outset of affairs to Onkel Wilhelm, had seemed quite genuine. Had not Count Bismarck quite a sheaf of documents, more or less compelling, signed in the youthful monarch's scrawling hand? King Ludwig had ordered immediate mobilization of the dark green and light blue uniforms—expended millions of gulden in variegated lamps, public fountains of white beer and red wine, bands, Royal Command Opera performances, patriotic set-pieces in fireworks (representing the tutelary genii of Prussia and Bavaria, cuirassed and armed, upholding the standards of black-and-white and blue-and-white), joined in the "Wacht am Rhein" as though he liked the tune (which he abhorred), and certainly enjoyed the tumultuous plaudits with which his subjects greeted their monarch's first and last appearance in the character of a man of action.

But instead of riding away at the head of the South German Army, Nephew Ludwig sent an excuse to Onkel Wilhelm—one has heard a gumboil named as occasion of the disability—and Cousin Fritz was dispatched to take over chief command.

Prince Luitpold of Bavaria accompanied the First Army Headquarter Staff. Alas, the appointment but served to inflame the gumboil of the jealous King,—the accounts that were daily to reach him of the prowess of his martial cousin of Prussia worked like poison in his blood. He drew the hood of his mantle of dreams more closely over his head to shut out those fanfares of triumph, those "Hochs!" and cheerings, and plunged more deeply into the solitudes of his forests and mountain-caves. Blood and iron were his bugbears, and yet they might have been his tonics too. They might have staved off the black hound of Destiny, already baying at his heels, and saved him from vicious decadence, ultimate madness, and a strange and sordid end.

And yet, how did his chivalrous cousin die, at the meridian of robust manhood, under the newly imposed weight of an Imperial Crown? Not the swift, soldierly death that is given by the bullet of a chassepot—the projectile from a mitrailleuse—the flying fragment of an exploding shrapnel-shell—but a straw-death, a bed-death such as angry seers and cursing Valkyrs of Scandinavian legend foretold as the speedy punishment of warriors who had broken faith and tarnished by false oaths the brightness of their honor.

But no shadow of the grim fate that was to befall him darkened those brave blue eyes at this period. Laboring night and day at the mobilization of his Third Army, in concert with his Chief of Staff, Von Blumenthal, he was buoyantly happy, despite his hatred of the shedding of blood and his undisguised compassion for the conjectured plight of the Man on the Seine.

With whom Britannia at first expressed a sympathy not at all restrained or guarded, and for the success of whose arms she was openly eager, until, toward the close of this momentous month of July, 1870, the text of a brief but pithy diplomatic document, penned in precise and elegant French, and dated a few years previously—made its appearance in the columns of the Times.

The movements of the opposing forces camped on the banks of the Meuse and the Saar lost interest for the public eye in perusal of this rough memorandum of a proposed treaty between the Third Napoleon and the King of Prussia, scrawled in Count Benedetti's flowing Italian hand.

Since the spring of '67 it had been hidden away in a snug corner of Bismarck's dispatch-box, waiting to jump out. You recall the terms of the thing—one of many overt attempts to seize a coveted prize. The Empire of France was to recognize the acquisitions made by Prussia in the war of 1866 with Austria. Prussia was to aid Napoleon III. to buy from Holland the debatable Duchy of Luxembourg. The Emperor was to shed the luster of his smile and the ægis of his approval upon Federal Union between the North German Parliament and the South German States—the separate sovereignty of each State remaining. In return, Prussia was to abet the Bonaparte in the military occupation and subsequent absorption of the Kingdom of Belgium. And in furtherance of these laudable ends, an alliance, offensive and defensive, against any Power, insular or otherwise, was to be compact between the great gilt eagle of the Third Empire and the black-plumaged bird across the frontier.

Britons, with inconveniently good memories, perusing this draft, recalled the existence of a treaty existing between France, England, and Prussia, mutually binding these Powers to protect the neutrality of Belgium, and drew reflections damaging to the betrayer and the betrayed. French diplomatists asserted that the project had been drawn up by Benedetti at Bismarck's dictation. Why preserve so explosive a document, they argued, if it was never to be drawn out and supplied with detonators in the shape of signatures? Later on M. Rouher's boxes of official papers, found at his château of Cercay, gave up the original draft-treaty annotated in the Emperor's handwriting.

For it was his nature, may God pardon him! to be false and specious, ungrateful and an oath-breaker. He must always repay great services with great wrongs. Thus in the red year 1870, England, who in '54 had poured out blood and treasure lavishly to aid him, receiving this plain proof of treachery, stood sorrowfully back and saw him rush upon his fate. Sick and desperate, madly hurling his magnificent Army hither and thither upon the arena, a Generalissimo out-generaled before the War was a week old.

He had made France his mistress and his slave, and now her fetters were to be hacked apart by the merciless sword of the invader. Through losses, privations, and humiliations; through an ordeal of suffering unparalleled in the world's history; through an orgy of vice and an era of infidelity; through fresh oceans of blood shed from the veins of her bravest; she was to pass before she found herself and GOD again.

Meanwhile, North, East, South and West, prevailed a great swarming scurry of military preparation, the tunes of the "Wacht am Rhein" and "Heil dir im Siegeskranz" clashing with "Partant pour la Syrie" and the "Marseillaise"; and the solemn strains of masses rising up together with Lutheran litanies, as two great nations strove to convince Divine Omnipotence that Codlin deserved to whip, and not Short.

Strange! that Christian men, who frankly confess themselves to be sinners, worms, and dust-grains before the supreme Majesty of the Creator, should be so prone to offer Him advice.

XXX

The lovely lady whose lace parasol P. C. Breagh had picked up at the bottom of the Prussian Chancellor's staircase was driven, by the tipsy-faced Jehu of a debilitated hack-cab, to a semi-fashionable hotel situated in a graveled courtyard facing toward the Linden. The bureau-manager looked out of his glass-case as she swept her rustling draperies over the dusty Brussels carpets of the vestibule, and muttered to the pale-faced ledger-clerk at his side:

"A representative from the firm of Müller and Stettig, Charlotten-Strasse, has called three times to see the lady in Suite 35. With a jewelry account for payment, promised and deferred."

The clerk assented with a nod of the double-barreled order, and reaching an envelope from a numbered pigeon-hole offered it for the inspection of his superior.

"Baroness von Valverden," sniffed the bureau-manager, and in his turn reached a squat red Almanach de Gotha from the top of a pile of ledgers, and ruffled the leaves with an industrious thumb.

"It is as I thought—there is no Baroness von Valverden. Baron Ernst von Schön-Valverden is a minor and a bachelor, private in the —th Regiment of Potsdam Infantry of the Guard. This must be the Frenchwoman I have heard of as mixed up in the scandal connected with the death of Baron Maximilian at Schönfeld in the Altenwald some years ago. He left Madame a lapful of thalers—I suppose she has played skat with the money. Not that that matters if the hook-nosed, long-haired Slav she has got with her upstairs has the cash to settle with us! But if not——"

The manager's tone was ominous. The clerk scratched his nose with the feather-end of his pen, and said admiringly:

"If not, the Herr Bureau-Director will give orders to detain their valises and trunks?"

The bureau-manager smiled, and said, jerking his chin at another envelope reposing in the numbered pigeon-hole:

"Send that up at once and let them know we will stand no nonsense. Keep Müller and Stettig's back for the present. Understand?"

And the clerk nodded again, and whistled down a tube, and evoked from regions below a brass-buttoned, gilt-braided functionary, to whom he entrusted the missive indicated, which bore the monogram of the hotel-company, and indeed contained their bill.

It was handed to Madame by the brass-buttoned functionary just as she reached the ante-room of her second-floor suite of apartments. She took it from the salver, and said without looking at it:

"Presently!"

The functionary gave a peremptory verbal message. She repeated:

"Presently, sir, presently.... At this moment I am exceedingly fatigued!"

The brass-buttoned functionary begged to remind the gracious lady of similar excuses previously received by the management. At this she turned upon him the battery of her magnificent eyes. Always economical of her forces, she had removed her torn tulle veil during the cab-drive, and with a delicate powder-puff drawn from a jeweled case dependant from her golden châtelaine, removed from her lovely face all traces of emotion. Only a spiteful woman would have called her thirty-five.... And the functionary was a man, despite his brass buttons and gilt braiding. When she smiled, he caved in, bowed, and left her. But he did not forget to leave the bill.

She had it in her hand as she entered the drawing-room of the suite of apartments, one of those impossibly shaped, fantastically-uncomfortable salons, possessing a multiplicity of doors and windows, upholstered with rose-satin and crusted with ormolu, such as are only seen in foreign hotels and upon the stage. Despite the sultry heat of the July weather the windows were shut, their Venetian blinds lowered, and their thick lace curtains drawn over these. And in a rose-colored arm-chair with twisted golden legs and arms and an absurd back-ornament like an Apollonian lyre, huddled a dark, hawk-featured, powerfully built man of something less than forty, wrapped in a short, wide coat lined, cuffed, and collared with black Astrakhan; wearing a traveling-cap similarly lined, and presenting the appearance of one who suffers from a cold of the snuffly, catarrhal kind.

He sneezed as Madame surged across the threshold, and would have told her to shut the door, only that she divined his intention and forestalled him, throwing her parasol upon a sofa and sinking into a chair as ridiculous as his own. Yet when her wealth of pale-hued draperies poured over it, and the ripe outlines of her voluptuous form concealed its crudities of design and coloring, it could be forgiven for being in bad taste.

She looked in silence at the traveling-cap, not at its sulky wearer, until, conscious of her sustained regard, he raised his hand to his head. In haste then, as though she dreaded the shock of his purposeful abstention from the customary courtesy, she said:

"Do not take it off! Pray keep it on!"

"Thanks!" He uttered the word laconically, drooping his immense, black-lashed eyelids over his fierce and staring eyes. They, too, were black, with the white, hard glitter of polished jet; black also were the great curved eyebrows, the coarse and shining hair that fell to his shoulders, the parted mustache, and the wedge-shaped beard that depended from his boldly curved chin. Rippling in small, regular waves, suggestive of the labor of a primitive sculptor's chisel, the inky chevelure of this man with the cold,—taken in conjunction with his large, aquiline nose, deep chest, fleshy torso, and thick muscular limbs, reproduced the type of an ancient Assyrian warrior, as represented in some carved and painted wall-frieze of Nineveh or Babylon, marching in a triumphant procession of Shalmaneser or Sennacherib. Even the conical head-dress was reproduced by the modern cap with ear-pieces, and turned-up border; and the deep yellowish-white of the alabaster in which the ancient sculptor wrought his bas-relief was reproduced in thick, smooth, unblemished skin.

Handsome as he undoubtedly was in his exotic, Oriental style, even in spite of influenza, Madame contemplated him with ill-concealed distaste. To a woman who loves, what matters the temporary thickening of the beloved object's profile, even when accompanied by attacks of sneezing and a running at the nose and eyes? She can wait the day when his voice will clear, and his leading feature will regain its former beauty. That is, as long as she continues to love.

The passion of this man and this woman had in its brief time burned high and fiercely. So does a fire of paper or straw. Now Passion lay dying, and Satiety and Weariness were the only watchers by the death-bed. Every twenty-four hours that passed over the heads of the couple brought nearer the hour when these would give place to Hatred and Dislike. And meanwhile both were infinitely hipped.

"Every window.... Every curtain.... Must we, then, asphyxiate?..." At the end of her patience, she made an angry gesture as though to loosen the ribbon of mauve velvet that held a diamond locket at the base of her round white throat, bit her full lip—and let her hand drop idly into her silken lap again.

Her companion stretched out a pair of muscular, but shortish legs, encased in dark green trousers with braided side-stripes, and looked with interest at his patent boots. Then he answered, speaking with a drawling, nasal accent:

"Unless M. de Bismarck has supplied you with the means of averting a singularly-unpleasant catastrophe, it may be that the answer to your question should be 'Yes'!"

She understood that he questioned, and said, drooping her proud, languorous eyes under the hard black stare of his:

"You would be wiser to speak in a lowered tone, when you refer to—that personage. One does not trifle with him—here or elsewhere!"

"The Pomeranian bear," said her companion, pouting a slightly swollen lip, and dabbing gingerly at his reddened nostrils with a voluminous cambric handkerchief exhaling the heavy perfume of opoponax, "has claws and fangs. Also a hug, in which friends of mine have stifled. But they were men and you are an enchanting woman!" He removed his cap and bowed; resuming: "Besides you went to M. le Ministre with a trump in your hand—a little Queen of Diamonds, fresh as a rosebud. Have you played her, may I ask?"

He got up, pocketing his handkerchief, came over to her and stood beside her, in the upright attitude which called attention to the disproportion between his huge torso and his too-short legs. He held his furred cap upon his hip with one hand, and with the other stroked his waved wedge-beard. The rasping sound made by his heavily-ringed fingers as they passed through the thick, crisp hairs irritated her to anguish. Yet not so long ago it had thrilled her to sensuous ecstasy.

"I played the girl—and I have lost!" Almost against her will a cry broke from her. "My God! what things he said to me! My God! what humiliations we women endure for men!"

"I had imagined, my Adelaide," said he of the Assyrian hair and profile, showing in a smile a double row of teeth so perfect that they struck the imagination as being carved out of two solid curves of ivory—"that you were playing for your own advantage—even when you played my game. Did M. le Comte mention me at any point of the interview?"

She started at the unexpected question. Her voice shook a little in the reply.

"He said that he had heard—that M. de Straz had lately visited Berlin. That his agents would tell him. Of course!"

"He said nothing of—a flying visit of mine to Sigmaringen?"

She answered hastily:

"I think not. No! I am quite certain he did not."

"No?"

Straz sniffed and whipped out his handkerchief, grumbling:

"Yet the purport of my mission to that South German crow's-nest was known to him—here in Berlin—I can prove it!—by nightfall of the day I interviewed the Prince." He added, trumpeting in his handkerchief, "Of course, M. Bismarck has spies everywhere. But all the same it was quick work!"

Her face was immovable. No guilty flush stained its smooth ivory surface. Only the lines about her scarlet mouth sharpened, that was all.

Straz went on, peevishly, strolling to the fireplace, and leaning an elbow on the corner of the mantelshelf.

"I suppose they call that princely hospitality—to send a man who has traveled night and day, and is decanted out of a crazy railway-station droschke at the door of their confounded Stammschloss at five o'clock in the morning—to an inn!"

She said in a velvet tone of amorous insinuation, and with a glance of sleepy fire:

"To an inn where Love lay waiting!..."

"Truly," he admitted, "but how were they to know that you were there? What possible connection could have been imagined between two chance travelers—I—arriving from Paris—you coming from Berlin? Besides—to send me to a summer tavern on the banks of the Danube!—when they have two hundred bedrooms at the Schloss! If that is princely hospitality, I tell you that I spit upon it! I grind it under the heel of my boot!"

Her nostrils dilated with disgust as he demonstrated by spitting on the hearthrug. She said, meeting his angry black stare with eyes that were of the color of tawny wine:

"The Prince cannot have regretted his omission to accommodate you with an apartment, when the Emperor's message was made known to him!"

He demanded:

"Am I a hired bravo? Pardieu! your words suggest it. Were either of the old man's sons in danger personally, from me? Not at all! I but repeated a lesson—gave a warning as it had been given.... But I understand—you have been chagrined by the nature of your reception from the Federal Chancellor!"

She returned, now flushed and breathing deeply:

"It is true. I suffocate at the recollection. Give me time to breathe!"

She rose. Straz said, going over to her, taking both her hands, kissing them and replacing her in her chair:

"Compose yourself. Let me understand the attitude M. le Ministre is taking. I need not remind you that not until I had learned from you that, through the lamented Count Valverden, you were sufficiently acquainted with M. de Bismarck to obtain an interview, did I suggest that you should seek one. Well, you did, and it has taken place. You told him of the little episode I witnessed in January—on the day of the funeral of Victor Noir at Neuilly. Monseigneur the Prince Imperial was riding with his governor and escort—the Avenue of the Champs Elysées was blocked by troops. A charming girl threw M. Lulu a bunch of violets—made a little scene of loyalty and enthusiasm in contrast with the unamiable attitude of the crowd assembled. An equerry dismounted and gave the flowers to Monseigneur. He carried them with him as he galloped toward the Bois de Boulogne. Nothing of importance in that, perhaps, had he not afterward sent for the equerry who had picked up the flowers, and said to him, blushing, 'Pray tell me who was she?' So skilled a master of phrases as M. de Bismarck could hardly have undervalued the question from the heir to an Empire, taken in combination with the blush. Or discounted the importance of the fact that, later, when the equerry brought him the information that the charming unknown was the daughter and only child of a certain gallant Colonel commanding the 777th Regiment of Mounted Chasseurs of the Imperial Guard—at that moment quartered at Versailles,—Monseigneur said, with another blush as ingenuous as the first, 'I am glad she is the daughter of so brave a soldier! Possibly I may meet her one of these days.' Being told that her baptismal name was 'Juliette' he blushed once more, and wrote it down,—together with Mademoiselle's surname and address,—in a little memorandum-book he habitually carries.... And there, my exquisite Adelaide—if your narrative style did credit to my teaching, the interest of M. de Bismarck should have been engaged."