t was," he said, "an
unheard-of anomaly that the Foreign Minister of a great Empire should be
responsible also for internal affairs." And yet he himself had arranged
that it should be so. The desertion of the Conservative party had, he
said, deprived him of his footing; he was dispirited by the loss of his
old friends and the illness of his wife; he spoke of his advancing years
and his conviction that he had not much longer to live; "the King
scarcely knows how he is riding a good horse to death." He would
continue to do what he could in foreign affairs, but he would no longer
be responsible for colleagues over whom he had no influence except by
requests, and for the wishes of the Emperor which he did not share. The
arrangement lasted for a year, and then Roon had again to request, and
this time received, permission to retire into private life; his health
would no longer allow him to endure the constant anxiety of office. His
retirement occasioned genuine grief to the King; and of all the
severances which he had to undergo, this was probably that which
affected Bismarck most. For none of his colleagues could he ever have
the same affection he had had for Roon; he it was who had brought him
into the Ministry, and had gone through with him all the days of storm
and trouble. "It will be lonely for me," he writes, "in my work; ever
more so, the old friends become enemies and one makes no new ones. As
God will." In 1873 he again assumed the Presidency. The resignation of
Roon was followed by a complete breach with the party of the _Kreuz
Zeitung_; the more moderate of the Conservatives split off from it and
continued to support the Government; the remainder entered on a campaign
of factious opposition.

The quarrel was inevitable, for quite apart from the question of
religion it would indeed have been impossible to govern Germany
according to their principles. We may, however, regret that the quarrel
was not conducted with more amenity. These Prussian nobles were of the
same race as Bismarck himself; they resembled him in character if not in
ability; they believed that they had been betrayed, and they did not
easily forgive. They were not scrupulous in the weapons they adopted;
the Press was used for anonymous attacks on his person and his
character; they accused him of using his public position for making
money by speculation, and of sacrificing to that the alliance with
Russia. More than once he had recourse to the law of