pparent reconciliation.
Then a change of Ministry took place: General Caprivi was made the
scapegoat for the failures of the new administration, and retired into
private life, too loyal even to attempt to justify or defend the acts
for which he had been made responsible. The new Chancellor, Prince
Hohenlohe, was a friend and former colleague of Bismarck, and had in old
days been leader of the National party in Bavaria. When Bismarck's
eightieth birthday was celebrated, the Emperor was present, and once
more Bismarck went to Berlin to visit his sovereign. We may be allowed
to believe that the reconciliation was not deep. We know that he did not
cease to contrast the new marks of Royal favour with the kindly courtesy
of his old master, who had known so well how to allow the King to be
forgotten in the friend.

As the years went on, he became ever more lonely. His wife was dead, and
his brother. Solitude, the curse of greatness, had fallen on him. He had
no friends, for we cannot call by that name the men, so inferior to
himself, by whom he was surrounded--men who did not scruple to betray
his confidence and make a market of his infirmities. With difficulty
could he bring himself even to systematic work on the memoirs he
proposed to leave. Old age set its mark on him: his beard had become
white; he could no longer, as in former days, ride and walk through the
woods near his house. His interest in public affairs never flagged, and
especially he watched with unceasing vigilance every move in the
diplomatic world; his mind and spirit were still unbroken when a sudden
return of his old malady overtook him, and on the last day of July,
1898, he died at Friedrichsruh.

He lies buried, not among his ancestors and kinsfolk near the old house
at Schoenhausen, nor in the Imperial city where his work had been done;
but in a solitary tomb at Friedrichsruh to which, with scanty state and
hasty ceremony, his body had been borne.

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 1: There seems no authority for the statement that the
Bismarcks had sprung from a noble Bohemian family.]

[Footnote 2: It is to this visit that a well-known anecdote refers;
having landed at Hull one Sunday morning, he was walking along the
streets whistling, when a chance acquaintance of the voyage asked him to
desist. Disgusted, he left the town. The story, as generally told, says
that he went to Edinburgh; we can have no doubt that Scarborough was
meant.]

[Footnote 3: