¶ On his part, as a human being, for many years Bismarck nursed his seemingly impossible dream of expelling Austria from the German states and binding up thirty-nine principalities in one grand Empire. This ambition he pursued incessantly, and ultimately succeeded in reaching by his genius in manipulating the human nature side of the men around him. He worked for himself, for his King and for his ideal of a United Germany. He gave to the seemingly hopeless cause all his time, strength, nay, his very soul. ¶ His was also now the secret discontent of a man who thought himself the sole founder of the German Empire. It was so understood by Kaiser William. For the time being, then, the patient Kaiser, averse to wounding the pride of a true German servant of the Empire, permitted the overleaping ambition of his great Minister of State to have sway; but William knew that, soon or late, the break must come; and in his own mind had already decided on the man who was to take Bismarck's place. ¶ Little by little threats came; men in high office secretly inveighed against Bismarck's new ambitions; it did not escape the attention of the Emperor's intriguers, who now worked against the old man's family aspirations; then came more resolute attitudes on Bismarck's part, egged on by his wife and by his son, who each had grown prodigiously ambitious. * * * * * ¶ Enter General Caprivi! * * * * * ¶ Before the will of the Kaiser, Bismarck must bow; and now behold how the mighty has fallen! We must henceforth seek him not in the splendid halls of state, but among simple rural scenes in Schoenhausen, where he was born, where he lived as a child; and to these quiet shades under the oaks and elms he now returns at the last remove of life; a broken, world-weary man, full of honors it is true, but by the irony of fate come back to die stripped of worldly grandeur, and to ponder the vanity of all earthly ambitions. 66 Bismarck inveighs against the ingratitude of kings--A fighter to the end. ¶ Did he take kindly to his enforced retirement? Far from it. With all the querulous impatience of an octogenarian, full of whims, sick in soul and body, suspicious, irritable, dying inch by inch, a prey to insomnia, his neuralgic pains, his swollen veins, in short, a crabbed old man, awaiting the call--behold now our great Otto von Bismarck, and mark well to what narrow limits his power has shrunk. ¶ On one occasion he moodily replied to a question: "Who are the Hohenzollerns? My family is as good as theirs!" And the old man meant it, every word of it.