The Force of the modern world is the working-man. And as you yourself have taught me that there are no real revolutions except those that formally express what is already a fact, there wants then only the formal expression of the working-man's Force. To this Force you will now give Form." "What an apt pupil!" He stooped and kissed her lips. Then, walking about agitatedly: "Yes," he cried; "I will weld the workers of Germany--to gain their ends they must fuse all their wills into one--none of these acrid, petty, mutually-destructive individualities of the _bourgeois_--one gigantic hammer, and I will be the Thor who wields it." His veins swelled, he seemed indeed a Teutonic god. "And therefore I must have Dictator's rights," he went on. "I will not accept the Presidency to be the mere puppet of possible factions." "There speaks Ferdinand Lassalle! And now, _mon cher enfant_, you deserve to hear my secret." She smiled brilliantly. His heart beat a little quicker as he bent his ear to her customary whisper. Her secrets were always interesting, sometimes sensational, and there was always a pleasure in the sense of superiority that knowledge conferred, and in the feeling of touching, through his Princess-Countess, the inmost circles of European diplomacy. He was of the gods, and should know whatever was on the knees of his fellow-gods. "Bismarck is thinking of granting Universal Suffrage!" "Universal Suffrage!" he shouted. "Hush, hush! Walls have ears." "Then I must have inspired him." "No; but you will have." "How do you mean? Is it not my idea?" "Implicitly, perhaps, but you have never really pressed for it specifically. Your only contribution to practical politics is a futile suggestion that the Diet should refuse to sit, and so cut off supplies. Now of course Universal Suffrage is the first item of the programme of your Working-Men's Union." "Sophie!" She smiled and nodded. "Why should Bismarck have the credit," she whispered, "for what is practically your idea? You will seem to exact it from him by the force of your new party, which will peg away at that one point like the Anti-Corn-Law people in England." "Yes; but I'll have no Manchester state-concepts." "I know, I know. Now even if Bismarck hesitates,"--she made her whisper still lower--"there are foreign complications looming that will make it impossible for him to ignore the masses. Now I understand that what the Leipzig working-men suggest is that you shall write them an Open Letter."