Progressist Burgomaster without any legal justification. "I ask for the severest, promptest legal satisfaction." VIII Bismarck took no official notice. But it was not long before the Countess succeeded in bringing the two men together. The way had indeed been paved. If Lassalle's idealism had survived the experience of the Hatzfeldt law-suits, if he had yet to learn that the Fighter cannot pick his steps as cleanly and logically as the Thinker, those miry law-suits, waged unscrupulously on both sides, had prepared him to learn the lesson readily and to apply it unflinchingly. Without Force behind one, victory must be sought more circuitously. But to a man who represents no Force, how shall Bismarck listen? What have you to offer? "_Do ut des_" is his overt motto. To poor devils I have nothing to say. Lassalle must therefore needs magnify his office of President, wave his arm with an air of vague malcontent millions. Was Bismarck taken in? Who shall say? In after-years, though he had in the meantime granted Universal Suffrage in Prussia, he told the Reichstag he was merely fascinated by this marvellous conversationalist, who delighted him for hours, without his being able to get a word in; by this grandiloquent Demagogue without a Demos, who plainly loved Germany, yet was uncertain whether the German Empire would be formed by a Hohenzollern dynasty or a Lassalle dynasty. And, in truth, since extremes meet, there was much in Lassalle's conception of the State, and in his German patriotism, which made him subtly akin to the Conservative Chancellor. They walked arm-in-arm in the streets of Berlin, Bismarck parading heart on sleeve; they discussed the annexation of Schleswig-Holstein. Bismarck promised both Universal Suffrage and State-Capitalized Associations--"only let us wait till the war is done with!" _En attendant_, the profit of his strange alliance with this thorn in his enemies' flesh, was wholly to the Minister. But Lassalle, exalted to forgetfulness of the pettiness of the army at his back, almost persuaded himself to believe as he believed Bismarck believed. "Bismarck is my tool, my plenipotentiary," he declared to his friends. And to his judges: "I play cards on table, gentlemen, for the hand is strong enough. Perhaps before a year is over Universal Suffrage will be the law of the land, and Bismarck will have enacted the rôle of Sir Robert Peel." He even gave his followers to understand that the King of Prussia's promise to consider the condition of the Silesian weavers was the result of his pressure. And was not the Bishop of Mayence an open partisan? Church, King, and Minister, do you not see them all dragged at my chariot wheels? Nevertheless, he failed completely to organize a branch at Berlin. And new impeachments for inciting to hatred and contempt, and for high-treason, came to cripple his activity. "If I have glorified political passion," he cried in his defence, "I have only followed