¶ "Red wine is for children, champagne for ladies, and schnapps for generals," is one of his drinking mottoes, but he tells that he himself prefers his old-line invention, the Bismarck champagne and porter, a most powerful decoction, putting ordinary mortals under the table very early in the evening--but not the Iron Chancellor, not at all! ¶ He recalls amusing stories of his ancestors. "One ancestor put pigs' ears in pea soup and made a gastronomic hit." ¶ Bismarck's eyes water one day and he explains, "The wine my ancestors drank to excess comes back in punishment for their sins." * * * * * ¶ What do you think? Bismarck's old enemy, Herr von Sybel, the eminent author of the ponderous "History of Prussia," called today, and Bismarck was glad to see Sybel, and they chatted a long time. As he and Sybel talked of history, Bismarck had moments when he held himself the one authentic builder of the German Empire. ¶ Gradually, he came to think that he alone of his own unaided might did the work. ¶ Last scene of all in this great drama of Bismarck! The octogenarian, in his downfall, is bitterly storming against his enemies. Consistent to the end, he never weakened. He did not pass under the yoke of defeat by revealing any of those soft virtues that writers who make a wax doll of this mighty man would have us believe. He raged and stormed impotently in his retirement at Friedrichsruh, and by every loud and insulting means in his power--by voice, pen, by special interviews, in his private letters, in his telegraphic dispatches, in his talks with the old friends or new callers, and to the last scratch of his Memoirs--Bismarck remains unrepentant, turbulent, to the end fighting bitterly against the Fate to which he could not and would not submit. Temperamentally and psychologically, it was impossible for him to act in any way other than that in which he did act--even as you, in your own life, are true to yourself in storm and sunshine, following some unformulated but idiomatic law of your being. Bismarck believed himself a chosen instrument in the hands of God and tenaciously clung to the dominant idea that the Bismarck work comprised all the raw materials of German history, affecting the German Empire. 70 His face is ashen, his grizzled mustache, eyebrows and hair white as the driven snow. ¶ On the whole, the old man is interested in events not in persons; he does not keep track of individuals; but he studies their work and its effects. So, in his retirement he talks of big events, mostly; all the while suffers from fits of depression and exhibits a growing moroseness, a peculiar characteristic of highly developed German character. He calls for Kant, Hegel, Christ; and reads them, deeply. He likes Hegel's idea that the history of the world shows "rational order," conceals a "manifest destiny." ¶ But the old man's one consolation is the Book of Job.