* * * * * ¶ But first we wish to tell you something of his honors during the past few years, also of the munificent patronage of the Kaiser, going far to refute the libel that the Kaiser was ungrateful. The patient Kaiser in truth dealt nobly with the moody old man. On the old man's 70th birthday (1885), the people of Germany offered a gift of $1,350,000, one-half of which Bismarck used to repurchase the ancestral estate, Schoenhausen, which he had sold in his impecunious years; and now, thanks to the gratitude of the German nation, the old place, mightily enlarged and improved, passed again into Bismarck's hands. The other half of the $1,350,000 Bismarck set aside as an endowment fund for school teachers. ¶ Even Victor Hugo added his hero-worship, in this curious letter: "The giant salutes the giant! The enemy salutes the enemy! The friend sends the greeting of a friend! ¶ "I hate you, cruelly, for you have humiliated France; I love you because I am greater than you. ¶ "You kept silence when my eighty years sounded from the belfry of my glory; but I speak now because the stolen clock which stands upon your desk, refuses to announce to you that your 70th birthday has come. ¶ "If you and I were united in one person, the history of the world would have been ended.... But you are great because you know not what fear is. Therefore, I, the poet, offer my hand to you, the great man." ¶ The Prince, thunderstruck, wrote in reply two words, "Otto--Adieu!" * * * * * ¶ Nor was this all. The Pope bestowed upon Bismarck the Order of Christ, for ameliorating the last of certain hard conditions against the Church, dating from the culture-struggle of years gone by. ¶ In 1871, Emperor William I had invested Bismarck with the hereditary dignity of Prince, and William II conferred on Bismarck, at the time of dismissal (1890), the title Duke of Lauenburg, together with a larger share of the Duchy of Lauenburg, an estate on which the Emperor expended $1,000,000. ¶ The old man's income was now said to be in excess of $100,000 a year; in addition he received unnumbered gifts of a princely nature, as well as priceless tokens of sentimental esteem, from patriotic Germans the world around. ¶ It was a relief to Bismarck, in his old age, to know that his family would be rich and famous. He had been deeply engrossed in politics for years, and all his ambitions had been exhausted on his beloved Germany; he not only had no time to make money, but was heavily in debt; his interest account, for loans, was said to have been, for many years, $30,000 per annum. How he managed to keep his head above water (with all the distractions of statesmanship, to say nothing of the burdens of three great wars, and the embarrassments of his private finances) shows the man's iron constitution as well as his sagacity in practical affairs.