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DER HAUSMEIER

complaint you utter in your letter I must strongly protest! He is said to haveturned away the hearts from their parents of your three eldest children.What the two others have to say for themselves, I do not know, but formy part I simply but firmly and with a clear conscience am able to answer:,No!' He never dared and I never should have allowed him to talk aboutyou or dear Papa in my presence! But if you mean to allude to the possi-bility of any tending a hand to the overthrow of the then allmightyChancellor in the days of dear Papa's Reign, I quite openly confess, thatI was dead against it and for a very good reason. The death of Grandpapahad so fatally upset and even unnerved the country, that it was quite outof its mind; and in a State of hysterics. In this State it looked at Bismarck,not at us as the sole transmitter and keeper of the old tradition — it waswholly wrong and was his own crafty doing — but it was a fact! Had Papaand I with him sent Bismarck home, then such a storm would have brokenlose against him and you, that we would have simply been powerless tostay it and you would have embittered poor Papas last days, spoilt thesplendid, ineffaceable figure he had in his People's eye and — fancy —endangered your stay with us, yes perhaps made it impossible. For themoment Bismarck was the Master of the Situation and the Empire! Andthe house of Hohenzollern was nowhere! Had we only even tried to touchhim, the whole of the German Princes —■ I was secretly informed of this —would have arisen bke one man and would have made us take back theChancellor, to whom we and especially later I would have been deliveredover bound hand and foot! The Situation was simply impossible. I fromthat moment perfectly understood the terrible task, you then did notforesee, which Heaven had shaped for me; the task of rescuing the Crownfrom the overwhelming shadow of its minister, to set the person of theMonarch in the first raw at ,his' place, to save the honour and the future ofour House from the corrupting influence of the Great Stealer of our People'shearts and to make ,him' atone for what he harmed Papa, you and evenGrandpapa! Appalling enough for a young man of 30! to have to begin areign with, after such a glorious one, having just passed! I however feitwhat was my duty and thank God He helped me. Without him I was lost.When the strife waxed hot and Bismarck began his most daring tricksagainst me, not recoiling before even High Treason, I sent a message tohim saying: it seemed to me as if he was riding into the lists against theHouse of Hohenzollern for his own family; ifit were so I warned him,that this was useless as in that case he must be the loser. The reply waswhat I had expected, and I felled him stretching him in the sand, for thesake of my Crown and our House ! Now since that terrible year I had tobear up with the storm of Germany 's feelings and the vilest tricks of the