When Bismarck dismissed Steiber the spy had the greatest commission of his career. He had little doubt of his ability to execute it. He feared no man, except possibly Bismarck. The meeting and the parting of the two men on that eventful day might be called historic. The Chancellor even went so far as to lay his hand on the shoulder of his agent. “Remember the Fatherland!” The builder of the German Empire stood there with all of the immensity and impressiveness of a bronze statue, and as the spy left he carried with him the remembrance of the tall figure, the broad shoulders, the thick neck, the grisly mustache, the keen eyes, and the grim, determined look. And as a background there was the table littered with the remains of that amazing meal and the Japanned plate filled with smoldering cigar stumps. Steiber went forth proud and boastful and with the vision of more medals to cover his ample breast. His big ears seemed to become bigger, his enormous nose appeared to grow larger, and his shifty eyes were fairly dancing with delight. He hurried to his office and began to prepare for the campaign of espionage. It was not the sort of thing to plan in an hour or a day. He devoted weeks of labor to the task. Maps of all kinds were consulted and all sorts of secret information was brought from all sorts of impossible hiding-places. He considered next the men that should go with him and the various branches of work that should be assigned to them, and finally the job was completed with the thoroughness for which the official German is noted. When Steiber started on this secret invasion of France he took with him two lieutenants, Zernicki and Kalten. Their work lay in the military line. They visited fortifications in all parts of France; they carried cameras with them, and in spite of the regulations forbidding such things, they made photographs of the defenses and even of the cannon in the forts. Disguised as peddlers they made their way into the various garrisons and studied the methods of the drill, discovered the number of men attached to each of the regiments, and altogether obtained a mass of information that could not possibly have been gleaned from blue books or official publications. In the same manner men were sent to the different navy yards. They explored the warships and cruisers and obtained data which was promptly forwarded to the Foreign Office in Berlin. Napoleon III reigned over France at this time, and while he must have known the danger that threatened his country by reason of German aggression, he apparently made no effort to avert it. Spies ran about almost under his nose and he could not see them. Some years before this, when it was reported that the people of Paris were discontented, he said: “Well, gild the dome of Les Invalides—that will give them something to look at.”