plendor with the sums paid for pontifical indulgences.
Bismarck did as he liked with the empire when it was ruled by William
I., and did not foresee what would be the irremissible and natural
issue of the system to which he lent his authority and his name. When
William I. snatched his crown from the altar, as Charlemagne might
have done, and clapped it on his head, repeating formulas suited to
Philip II. and Charles V., the minister was silent and submitted to
these blasphemies, derived from the ancient doctrine of the divine
right of kings, because they increased his own ministerial power,
exercised under a presidency and governorship chiefly nominal and
honorary. But a thinker of his force, a statesman of his science, a
man of his greatness, should have remembered what physiologists have
demonstrated with regard to heredity, and should have known that it
was his duty and that of the nation and the Germans to guard against
some atavistic caprice which would strike at his own power. The
predecessor of Frederick the Great was a monomaniac and the
predecessor of William the Strong was a madman. Could Bismarck not
foresee that by his leap backwards he ran the risk of lending himself
to the fatal reproduction of these same circumstances, of
transcendental importance to the whole estate, nay, to the whole
nation? A king of Bavaria singing Wagner's operas among rocks and
lakes; a brother of the king of Bavaria resembling Sigismund de
Calderon by his epilepsy and insanity; Prince Rudolph showing that the
double infirmity inherent in the paternal lineage of Charles the Rash
and in the maternal line of Joanna the Mad continues in the Austrians;
a recent king of Prussia itself shutting himself up in his room as in
a gaol, and obliged by fatality to abdicate the throne of his
forefathers during his lifetime in favor of the next heir, must prove,
as they have done, what is the result of braving the maledictions of
the oracle of Delphi, and the catastrophes of the twins of OEdipus
with such persistency, in this age, in important and mature
communities, which cannot become diseased, much less cease to exist
when certain privileged families sicken and die. Not that I would ask
people to do what is beyond their power and prohibited by their honor.
There was no necessity, as a revolutionist might imagine, to overturn
the dynasty. A very simple solution of the problem would have been to
take against the probable extravagances of the Frede