I vividly remember the first occasion on which I saw Bismarck. It was on the little tree-shaded _Place_ of St. Johann, the suburb of Saarbrücken, in the early evening of the 8th August, the next day but one after the battle of the Spicheren. Saarbrücken was full to the door-sills with the wounded of the battle and stretcher-parties were continually tramping to the "warriors' trench" in the cemetery, carrying to their graves soldiers who had died of their wounds. The Royal Headquarters had arrived a couple of hours earlier, and I was staring with all my eyes at a fresh-faced, white-haired old gentleman who was sitting in one of the windows of Guepratt's Hotel and whom I knew from the pictures to be King Wilhelm. Two officers in general's undress uniform were walking up and down under the pollarded lime-trees, talking as they walked. Presently from out a house opposite the hotel there emerged a very tall burly man of singularly upright carriage and with a certain air of swashbucklerism in his gait. A long cavalry sabre trailed and clanked on the rough pavement as he advanced to join the two sauntering officers under the trees. He wore the long blue double-breasted frockcoat with yellow cuffs and facings and white cap which I knew to be the undress uniform of the Bismarck Cuirassiers, but he was only partially in undress since the long cuirassier thigh-boots in which he strode were conventionally full uniform. The wearer of this costume was Bismarck; nor did I ever see him otherwise attired except on four occasions--at the Château Bellevue on the morning after Sedan, in the Galerie des Glaces in the Château of Versailles on 18th January, in the Place de la Concorde of capitulated Paris, and in the triumphal entry into Berlin; when he appeared in full uniform. Saluting His Majesty and then the two officers whom I recognised as Moltke and Roon, he joined the pedestrian couple, taking post between them and joining in their promenade and conversation. We heard his voice and laugh above the rumble of the waggon wheels on the causeway; the other two spoke little--Moltke, as he moved with bent head and hands clasped behind his back, scarcely anything.