No doubt consciousness of the gravity of the quarrel with Bismarck, which the Kaiser and his new friends saw now must come swiftly to a point, contributed with the unexpected election results to temporarily unsettle William’s nerves. For a week or so, during this momentous period, there were actual fears lest his mental balance should break down under the strain. Fortunately the excited tension relaxed itself in good time, and there has since been no recurrence of the symptoms which then caused genuine alarm. It was at the culmination of this unsettled period that William made his celebrated speech to the Brandenburg Diet. The occasion was the session dinner, March 5th, and those present noted that the Kaiser’s manner was unwontedly _distrait_ and abstracted. His words curiously reflected his mood--half poetic, half pugilistic. He began by a tender reference to the way in which the Brandenburgers had through evil and joyous days alike stood at the back of the Hohenzollerns. With a gloomy sigh he added: “It is in the hour of need that one comes to know his true friends.” After an abrupt reference to a joke which had recently been made about him as the _reisende_, or Travelling, Kaiser, and a pedagogic injunction to his hearers to by all means travel as much in foreign lands as they could, he drifted into a lofty and beautiful description of the spiritualizing effects his recent sea voyages had had upon him. Standing alone on the great deck at night, he said, communing with the vast starry firmament, he had been able to look beyond politics and to realize the magnitude and tremendous responsibilities of the position he held. He had returned with a new and more exalted resolve to rule mercifully and well under God’s providence, and to benefit all his people. Then there came a sudden anti-climax to this graceful and captivating rhetoric. “All who will assist me in my great task,” he called out, throwing a lion’s glance over the tables, “I shall heartily welcome; but those who attempt to oppose me I will dash to pieces!” The reporters were so frightened at these menacing words that they toned them down in their accounts of the speech; but the Kaiser with his own hand restored the original expression in the report of the official _Reichsanzeiger_. Naturally the phrase created a painful sensation throughout Germany. Everybody leaped to the conclusion that the threat was levelled at the Socialist and Radical leaders in particular, and the new Reichstag in general. But within a fortnight the astonished world learned that it was Bismarck who was to be dashed to pieces. *****