ictorial paper, I thought might be you."

I replied that this could not be, since at that period I was not in
Germany. "Besides," I added--a little impudently perhaps--"would you
not have had me arrested as a malefactor?"

"Oh," he exclaimed, with a good, natural laugh, "you mistake me. I
would not have done such a thing. You mean on account of that Kinkel
affair? Oh, no! I rather liked that. And if it were not that it would
be highly improper for His Majesty's minister and the Chancellor of
the North German Confederacy, I should like to go with you to Spandau
and have you tell me the whole story on the spot. Now let us sit
down."

He pointed out to me an easy-chair close to his own and then uncorked
a bottle which stood, with two glasses, on a tray at his elbow. "You
are a Rhinelander," he said, "and I know you will relish this." We
touched glasses, and I found the wine indeed very excellent.

"You smoke, of course," he continued, "and here are some good Havanas.
I used to be very fond of them, but I have a sort of superstitious
belief that every person is permitted to smoke only a certain number
of cigars in his life, and no more. I am afraid I have exhausted my
allowance, and now I take to the pipe." With a lighted strip of paper,
called in German "Fidibus," he put the tobacco in the porcelain bowl
of his long German student pipe in full blast, and presently he blew
forth huge clouds of smoke.

This done, he comfortably leaned back in his chair and said: "Now tell
me, as an American Republican and a Forty-eighter of the revolutionary
kind, how the present condition of Germany strikes you. I would not
ask you that question," he added, "if you were a privy counsellor (a
Geheimrath), for I know what he would answer. But you will tell me
what you really think."

_Bismarck's Sarcastic Humor_

I replied that I had been in the country only a few weeks and had
received only superficial impressions, but that I had become sensible
of a general atmosphere of newly inspired national ambition and a
confident hope for the development of more liberal political
institutions. I had found only a few old fogies in Nassau and a banker
in Frankfort who seemed to be in a disappointed and depressed state of
mind. Bismarck laughed heartily. The disgruntled Nassauers, he said,
had probably been some sort of purveyors to the late ducal court, and
he would wager that the Frankfort banker was either a member of one of
the old patrici