328 RECALL TO BERLIN. cessity, or I shall send in my resignation. At this moment I am not in a state to decide; I will first take a walk, and perhaps I shall get an idea what to do. I wonder my letters have not reached you regularly. The longest interval I have ever allowed was four days between my last letter from Luchon and the last but one from Bayonne, because we were riding every day from morning till night, eating or sleeping, and paper was not always at hand. Yesterday was a rainy day, fitted for railway travelling, bringing us from Montrejeau to this place-new and bad, a flat country with vines and meadows. I am now writing and If possible, I shall remain in Paris. to With these letters the Apprentice and Journeyman years of Bismarck are at an end; the next few days conducted him from Avignon to Berlin, to prove his Mastership. forgetfulness. Most of us would have some difficulty in forming any thing like a clear picture of the decidedly involved situation in which Prussia stood in the autumn of 1862. It is beside our purpose to attempt any definition of this situation here, without taking into consideration the difficulties surrounding the solution of such a problem at that time; we must, therefore, content ourselves with cursory hints and indications. The Liberal Ministry, which had just resigned, had left the conflict with the Electoral Chamber of the Diet as an inheritance to the Conservative Government now in power. King William did not desire a coup d'état; he therefore unweariedly strove to bring about a good understanding, and found his efforts seconded throughout this stormy crisis by the loyal zeal and devotion of the Conservatives as well as the Liberalsespecially by his ever-faithful War Minister General von Roon; but all endeavors, to the deepest sorrow of the paternal-hearted monarch, proved unavailing. It was at last necessary to find some guiding Minister, sufficiently possessed of devotion, energy, daring, and circumspection, to carry on the business of the State, despite of the crisis, until, in the course of time, the action of history should have reconciled these fiery opponents. The choice of the King fell upon his then representative at Paris-upon Bismarck, who was summoned by telegraph from the Pyrenees to Berlin. It was well known to King William that the selection of this statesman, at any rate for the moment, would tend to heighten the sharpness of the strife; for, in the eyes of his opponents, Bismarck then was, and long remained, the Hotspur of the Junker party—the fiery and energetic Conservative party leader. Very few knew to what a statesman Bismarck had ripened in Frankfurt, where he had thoroughly learnt to know the fox-trap, so dangerous for Prussia, of German small-statism, with its innumerable corners and windings; as also in St. Petersburg, where he had studied under a politician of the first rank, Prince Gortschakoff; and finally in the hot atmosphere of Paris. "Bismarck! that is the coup d'état !" a democratic organ exclaimed; and this was re-echoed in an undertone by many Conservatives, who, perhaps, only saw safety in a coup d'état. But |