Czar. He wished for
war with Austria, but he was determined that when war came he should
have the arrangement of the terms of peace. On his advice the King
refused the offer.

The bitterness of the feeling created by these debates on Poland
threatened to make it impossible for Ministers any longer to attend in
the House; Bismarck did his part in increasing it.

"You ask me," he said, "why, if we disagree with you, we do not
dissolve; it is that we wish the country to have an opportunity
of becoming thoroughly acquainted with you."

He was tired and angry when during one of these sittings he writes to
Motley:

"I am obliged to listen to particularly tasteless speeches out of
the mouths of uncommonly childish and excited politicians, and I
have therefore a moment of unwilling leisure which I cannot use
better than in giving you news of my welfare. I never thought
that in my riper years I should be obliged to carry on such an
unworthy trade as that of a Parliamentary Minister. As envoy,
although an official, I still had the feeling of being a
gentleman; as [Parliamentary] Minister one is a helot. I have
come down in the world, and hardly know how.

"April 18th. I wrote as far as this yesterday, then the sitting
came to an end; five hours' Chamber until three o'clock; one
hour's report to his Majesty; three hours at an incredibly dull
dinner, old important Whigs; then two hours' work; finally, a
supper with a colleague, who would have been hurt if I had
slighted his fish. This morning, I had hardly breakfasted, before
Karolyi was sitting opposite to me; he was followed without
interruption by Denmark, England, Portugal, Russia, France, whose
Ambassador I was obliged to remind at one o'clock that it was
time for me to go to the House of phrases. I am sitting again in
the latter; hear people talk nonsense, and end my letter. All
these people have agreed to approve our treaties with Belgium, in
spite of which twenty speakers scold each other with the greatest
vehemence, as if each wished to make an end of the other; they
are not agreed about the motives which make them unanimous,
hence, alas! a regular German squabble about the Emperor's beard;
_querelle d'Allemand_. You Anglo-Saxon Yankees have something of
the same kind also.... Your battles are bloody; ours wordy; these
chatterers really cannot govern Prussia. I must bring some
opposition to bear agains