e deprived of their advertisement
columns. What wonder if they accused him of playing Bismarck's game!
And, indeed, there was not wanting direct mention of Bismarck in the
speech. He at least was a man, while the Progressists were old women.
The orator mocked their festive demonstrations. They were like the
Roman slaves who, during the Saturnalia, played at being free. To
spare themselves a real battle, the defeated were intoning among the
wines and the victuals a hymn of victory. "Let us lift up our arms and
pledge ourselves, if this Revolution should come about, whether in
this way or in that, to remember that the Progressists and members of
the National League to the last declared they wanted _no_ revolution!
Pledge yourselves to do this, raise your hands on high!" At the
Sonningen meeting in the great shooting-gallery, they not only raised
their hands, but their knives, against interrupting Progressists. The
Burgomaster, a Progressist, at the head of ten gendarmes armed with
bayonets, and policemen with drawn swords, dissolved the meeting.
Lassalle, half followed, half borne onward by six thousand cheering
men, strode to the telegraph office, and sent off a telegram to
Bismarck. His working-men's meeting had been dissolved by a
Progressist Burgomaster without any legal justification. "I ask for
the severest, promptest legal satisfaction."

VIII

Bismarck took no official notice. But it was not long before the
Countess succeeded in bringing the two men together. The way had
indeed been paved. If Lassalle's idealism had survived the experience
of the Hatzfeldt law-suits, if he had yet to learn that the Fighter
cannot pick his steps as cleanly and logically as the Thinker, those
miry law-suits, waged unscrupulously on both sides, had prepared him
to learn the lesson readily and to apply it unflinchingly. Without
Force behind one, victory must be sought more circuitously. But to a
man who represents no Force, how shall Bismarck listen? What have you
to offer? "_Do ut des_" is his overt motto. To poor devils I have
nothing to say. Lassalle must therefore needs magnify his office of
President, wave his arm with an air of vague malcontent millions. Was
Bismarck taken in? Who shall say? In after-years, though he had in the
meantime granted Universal Suffrage in Prussia, he told the Reichstag
he was merely fascinated by this marvellous conversationalist, who
delighted him for hours, without his being able to get a word i