¶ "In the summer of 1865 when I concluded the Convention of Gastein with Blome (the Austrian), I went in for quinze so madly that the rest could not help wondering at me. But I knew what I was about. Blome had heard that this game gave the best possible opportunity for discovering a man's real nature, and wanted to try it on with me. So I thought to myself, here's for you then, and away went a few hundred thalers, which I really might have charged as spent in His Majesty's service. But at least I thus put Blome off the scent, so he thought me a reckless fellow and gave way." 3 Despite vast areas of political bogs, quaking under foot, that one must traverse, our Otto is not inaccessible! ¶ For many years they hate him like hell-fire itself, this Otto von Bismarck. The Prussians hate him, the Austrians, the Bavarians, to say nothing of the intervening rabble; but our tyrant is strong enough, in the end, to win foreign wars, and then the haters veer about, almost in a night, come up on bended knees and kiss the hand that smites--that hand of Bismarck, at once the best-beloved and the most-hated hand of his time. What more pray do you ask of human nature? ¶ Now here is a strange reality: If you look at the general outlines of the German map in 1815, you will see that the frontiers trace in a startling way the scowling outlines of Frederick the Great, "Old Fritz," who first dreamed this German unity idea. But mighty Frederick is in the royal tomb these many years; and a new Frederick in spirit is rapidly learning the business of king-maker and empire-builder. * * * * * ¶ Behind the name Bismarck is a story extraordinary, compounded of the intrigues, blood and passions of Austria, Russia, Italy, France, Belgium, Bavaria, Spain, and England. Volumes would not suffice to give you the bewildering details; mountains of diplomatic letters, orders, telegrams, truths, half-truths, shuffling, cutting and stacking; you go confusedly from palace to people, prince to pauper, university to prison pen--all the way from Waterloo to Versailles, where William I received at last his great glory, German Emperor. ¶ Bismarck's story is best told in flashes of lightning--as you try to picture a bolt from the black skies. By the patience of the methodical historian who laboriously examines each document in the National archives, one fills soon enough a ten-volume account--with a swamp of cross-references, footnotes to each paragraph, and with notes to the footnotes. ¶ Yet this Bismarck is not inaccessible if we get at his inner side, grasp the man's essence. Strong arm and tireless brain Time asked;--a man who could neither be bent, broken nor brow-beaten; a man who would for 40 years follow a plan by no means clear; often had to go out in the dark and find his way, all old landmarks lost, and no pole-star in sight.