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Berlin Society

BY
COUNT PAUL VASILI in

Translated from the French by
J. LODER

NEW YORK
W. GRE.EN'S SON
69 Beekman Street

Copyright, 1884,
By CHAS. M. GREEN.

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The Chas. M. Green Printing Co.,
74 and 76 Beekman Street,
KEW YORK.

CONTENTS.

PAGE
The Royal Family  5
The Parliament  r8
The Princes and Princesses  34
The Court  30
The Intimates of the Empress  49
The Chancellor  59
The Bundesrath (Federal Council).  69
The Ministry  80
The Politics of Prussia  89
M. de Windthorst and the Catholics  97
M. Bebel and the Socialists  105
The Count von Moltke — the Marshal von Manteuffel — the
General von Kameke  113
The Princely Families  121
M. de Bleichroder and the Princes of Finance  133
The Countess of SchleTnitz and Wagnerism  142
The Grand Monde in Berlin  149
The Three Sisters  156
M. Stoecker and the Jewish Question  165
The Diplomatic Corps  — 174
The Bourgeoisie (Middle Class)  189
Artists and Savants  ,  199
The Press and the Journals   ............ 206
The Dupes of the Chancellor  215

BERLIN SOCIETY.

My Young Friend :
I have received your letter of the 18th of this
month, by which you apprise me of your entrance
into the diplomatic service, as well as of your
nomination as attach? at Berlin. The first news
has delighted me, and I congratulate you on it
with all my heart ; the second has given me no
pleasure.- Berlin is not an agreeable post at which
to make one's dtbut. There are there too many se
rious political interests at stake, and not enough
amusements for a young man of your age who
arrives there unknown. The society there is not
very hospitable for strangers : the men in position
are very reserved ; the women prudish or dissolute ;
the young men, for the most part, hard cases.
They dance there a good deal, which would please
you but moderately ; and they don't converse
there at all, which would please you still less.
Berlin is essentially a little city. They gossip

O BERLIN SOCIETY.
and slander there more than anywhere else ; be
sides, there is a quantity of intrigues. The society
has an excessively backbiting tongue, and is con
tinually on the lookout for some scandal ; it has
no reading, little education, and not the least in
terest outside of what concerns it immediately.
One should know the society of Berlin very well
not to get lost in it, or rather one should know
well all the different phases of society in Berlin
for the stay there to become interesting and
profitable.' I fear that you would have neither
the time nor the opportunity to study the charac
ter of the people with whom you are going to live.
You say that you regret arriving at • Berlin at
the moment when I quit it to return no more,
and you ask me to aid you in your dtbut by trac
ing for you some sketches of persons whom you
will have occasion to meet. I do not see any
thing improper in that; but it is on the condition
that you are absolutely discreet. I will write only
for you, for your personal and special instruction.
I say instruction, not conviction : my fashion of
judging, of observing, of concluding, ought not in
any way to influence you. You know that I am
a man very susceptible to prejudices and antipa
thies. It may be that I am never just ; it is for

BERLIN SOCIETY. 7
you to discern when I am true, when I am false.
A double work upon the observations and upon
the observer will be profitable for you.
Do not ask of me any logical sequence in my
letters. I will make them as they please me,
when they please me. You know my horror of
categories and classifications. According as I
may have one, two, or three interesting ones, I
will send them to you. Do not rely upon any
frxed dates. The chase, my taste for strolling (a
long time crossed), will make me more than once
neglect my promise to write for you my recollec
tions of Berlin. You will attach so much the more
value to my letters, I hope, as they will always be
to you a surprise from what was anticipated.

BERLIN SOCIETY.

THE ROYAL FAMILY.
FIRST LETTER.
The Emperor William is, without contradic
tion, the most popular prince among his people in
our time. Apart from his military successes, he
is a man very amiable, very benevolent in appear
ance, very paternal in his kindness. Without
being of remarkable intelligence, he has quick
perceptions, and possesses the talent of discover
ing people capable of becoming useful to him, of
pushing them forward and supporting them in
the face of all opposition. He has no vanity, dis
appears when it becomes necessary, effaces him
self behind his Chancellor, and whatever he may
suffer from the latter's imperious will, he has too
much dignity to allow the world to perceive it.
He is ambitious, but coarsely so, from a feeling
of covetousness for his neighbor's goods ; he has
the same appetite morally as physically ; he wants
always more than he already possesses, and even
to this day cannot console himself for not having
taken Saxony in 1866. He is absolute in his

THE ROYAL FAMILY. q
principles, in his will ; has his favorites, but never
permits them to occupy themselves with politics,
reserving that exclusively for his ministers. The
Emperor William believes in the inefficiency of
his son, and makes a point of it that all Germany
should think as he does.
He joins to great perseverance an immense ego
tism. He occupies himself with government
more than is generally believed. The moment it
becomes a question personal to himself, then he
obstinately persists in the triumph of his ideas ;
but otherwise he defers to others. The army has
in him a solid defender, and it is the only thing in
which he has not allowed Prince de Bismarck to
be mixed up. He never approved the conduct of
the Prince Royal during his short regency in
1878. The treaty of Berlin displeased him ; he would
have wished a smaller Bulgaria, and was indignant
at the emancipation of the Jews in Roumania.
These two points were very displeasing to him,
according to what one day he assured one of my
friends in a moment of frankness. Is it perhaps
spite at not having been consulted in so grave a
matter that governs him ? Is it perhaps really
his political conviction which urges him to deplore

IO BERLIN SOCIETY.
these two points ? He has had especially in his
life a great deal of happiness ; a happiness which
he knows, moreover, how to appreciate. In pub
lic he never speaks of politics, but he is essentially
a man of the world. His politeness, although
extreme, is not affected. He knows what he
owes to others, and does not ignore gratitude ;
but, on the other hand, he never permits any one
to forget that it is his name which has covered
everything that was done. On the whole, he is
genuinely kind, really frank, moderately intelli
gent, somewhat narrow-minded, of well-developed
good sense, and of an excellent heart. He is a
personage who could inspire only the sympathy
and respect of his people, and who will have his
place among the great sovereigns without ever
having been a great man.
The Empress Augusta has a certain natural
ness of mind — she thinks she has more than is
really the case. She is a person who has had ar
dent friends, passionate admirers, and bitter de
tractors. Those who have attributed to her a
great intelligence were in the wrong ; those who
have called her spiteful and malicious were equally
so. She has not an unbounded intelligence ; she
is not bad : but she is intriguing, false, affected.

THE ROYAL FAMILY. II
She insists absolutely upon playing a rSle, gives
herself infinite trouble to make people believe that
she is learned, literary, versed in everything that
passes in the world of science and art, and also, in
fine, to render herself popular. But she has no
dignity, no sense of discretion : she confides her
secrets to her femme de chambre, Mile, de Neun-
dorff, and the latter gives herself up, in common
with many ladies of the highest class, to all sorts
of little intrigues, at the head of which is the Em
press. She surrounds herself, with courtiers and
favorites, who are the first to speak ill of their
protectress. A good woman at -the bottom, very
charitable, but ridiculous by her efforts to appear
remarkable. Her heart is excellent, her kindness
inexhaustible, but she does not know the art of
giving, and has the faculty of taking away from
her favors all their value. Tiresome by reason of
her amiability, she- always obtains the contrary of
what she desires. Little loved in general, she has
never been appreciated. They believe neither in
her philanthropy nor her charity, nor in any of
the qualities which she really possesses. She tires
everybody, from the Emperor down to her do
mestics. An unhappy creature, but unhappy
principally through her own fault. When she

12 BERLIN SOCIETY.
disappears, they will utter a sigh of relief, — but
they will regret her later.
The Prince Royal has not been, up to the pres
ent time, a man of action : he is father of a family
in the fullest sense of the term. He seems to
live only for his wife, and adores his children,
with the exception of his eldest son, whose dar
ing spirit he fears. It is frequently repeated at
Court that his political ideas belong to the realm
of dreams. His passionate admiration for the
Princess has made him completely English in
heart. For the last twenty-five years he has lived
in the situation of a prince who might reign from
one day to another, and becomes irritated at the
false and subordinate position in which he is held.
The Emperor and M. de Bismarck consider him
as an Utopian. He loves the arts, encourages
letters, and I should not be astonished if his ideal
were the character of Augustus ; he protects the
little Virgils, who even united, we confess, are
not worth as much as the great. When he
mounts the throne- he will pursue quite a differ
ent policy from that of his father. Those, there
fore, who detest the latter's policy at home or
abroad put their hope in the former. Are they
deceived ? Will the Prince ever know how to

THE ROYAL FAMILY. I 3
come to a decision, or at least take it in time?
His manners are cold ; in spite of his graciousness
one does not feel at ease with him. He has
familiarity rather than kindness. His heart is
really good, but his detractors claim that he will
not succeed in conquering a greater position as
sovereign than he has been able to do as heir to
the throne. He has no ambition but a legitimate
desire to reign. He never forgets an injury, not
withstanding his kindness, which is infinite.
Under his reign Germany will have peace ; and the
greatest happiness that could happen to France
would be that this reign should be prolonged.
He is not popular with the army. He is dis
cussed not as ordinary but as political intelligence
in society even by those who approach him the
nearest. They have told some unfavorable stories
about him. His father fears him and tries to
efface him as much as possible ; his son maintains
his rights. In the country they entertain a very
high idea of the Prince Royal, but in his own
family a very small one.
The Princess Royal is a woman of universal
attainments. She writes political memoirs, keeps
up a correspondence with philosophers, is a sculp
tress, a painter, composes sonnets, makes archi-

14 BERLIN SOCIETY.
tectural plans, etc. She has a great deal of nat
ural intelligence, but an education so extended
that at certain moments it seems that the super
abundance of her ideas is detrimental to their
arrangement. Her strength has sometimes the
result of obscuring the clearness of the ideas
which she seizes and the opinions she professes.
She does not rack her mind for the occasion ;
its riches are so numerous that she is constrained
to withhold them, and speaks, somewhat as
Rochefoucauld wrote, by maxims.
Society must be distasteful to her. She does
not like it ; without doubt she despises it, for
one meets at her soire'es people not to be met
with elsewhere, and who mingle in society only
at her house. She does nothing to merit the
title of "woman of the world," but, on the other
hand, she has the feeling — one might say the
pride — of her superiority as Princess. She seems
to disdain the fidelity of social relations. A mere
nothing detaches or irritates her ; while if it is a
question of sustaining an idea, she will display a
resolute persistency destined to triumph over all
obstacles. She occupies herself with politics, and she has
upon this subject her private opinions, which are

THE ROYAL FAMILY. 1$
not always those entertained in her immediate
surroundings. Thus, under the pretext of satis
fying her artistic tastes, she often goes to Italy,
so as not to be obliged to approve what she con
demns, or to yield a point which she defends.
She is sincerely and boldly liberal, and this is
one of the grave reproaches addressed to her.
Her relations with the Empress are very
strained ; they are less so with the Emperor. She
exerts over her husband, by affection and by skill,
an influence without limit.
The Prince William, her eldest son, is but
twenty-four years of age. It is, then, difficult to
say as yet what he will become ; but what is in
contestable at this moment is that he is a young
man of promise, of mind, of head and heart. He
is the most intelligent among the princes of the
royal family. With that, brave, enterprising, am
bitious, hot-headed, but a heart of gold, sympa
thetic to the highest degree, impulsive, spirited,
vivacious in character, and having a gift of repar
tee in conversation which would almost make one
believe that he was not a German. He adores
the army, by which he is loved in return. He has
known how, in spite of his extreme youth, to
make himself popular in all classes of society, is

l6 BERLIN SOCIETY.
highly educated, is well read, forms projects for
the prosperity of his country, and possesses a re
markable perception for everything touching upon
politics. He will be certainly a distinguished
man, and very probably a great sovereign. Prus
sia will find perhaps in him a second Frederick
II., but without his scepticism. In addition to
this, he possesses a fund of gayety and good-
humor which will attenuate the little hardnesses
which, as a true Hohenzollern, he has in his char
acter. He will, be essentially a personal king,
will not allow himself to be led, will have a sound
and straightforward judgment, prompt decision,
energy in action, and firm will. When he attains
the throne he will continue the work of his grand
father, and will certainly undo that of his father,
whatever it may be. In him the enemies of Ger
many will have a formidable adversary : he may
become the Henry IV. of his country. His greatest
fault consists in a too decided penchant for women.
He has mistresses by the quantity, and he might
stumble one day upon a favorite who would know
how to govern him. His wife is of too little con
sequence to exercise over his impetuous nature
the least empire ; he already neglects her, and
will soon abandon her entirely, for she has no

THE ROYAL FAMILY. \J
charm capable of attracting or retaining him. It
is not probable that he will ever be caught in the
net of a person destitute of intelligence ; and as
to what concerns his present liaisons, they are not
yet of consequence. As long as he continues, as
he has done up to the present, to satisfy his pas
sions in the lower classes of society, the thing will
remain without danger ; but if his attention were
one day aroused by a woman of the world, then
it would be necessary to follow his actions with
great care, and one could then judge him definite
ly only by this vulnerable point.

1 8 BERLIN SOCIETY.

THE PARLIAMENT.
SECOND LETTER.
One of the recent articles of the Gazette de
V Allemagne du Nord, on the subject of the last
note of the Cardinal Jacobini, has, so to say, much
excited the Ultramontane journals, the Germania
among others, which paper has replied to it by an
other boldly aggressive article. This aggression,
for which the Prince de Bismarck was certainly
well prepared, and which perhaps even accorded
with his wishes, will probably end, for the present,
negotiations with Rome, which, while not being
broken off, will remain in suspense until it pleases
the Chancellor to cast them again as bait to the
deputies of the Centre party, in order to obtain
from it a vote of some sort of which he will have
need. It is a curious thing to observe the adroit
way in which the Prince de Bismarck manages in
the midst of all the perils of parliamentary life in
Germany ; and one might almost believe that he
has concluded a secret compact with the devil, to
see the way in which he triumphs over every ob-

THE PARLIAMENT. 1 9
stacle, surmounts all hatreds, and succeeds always
in making people say Yes who were, apparently,
firmly decided to say No. These constant suc
cesses are explained in part by the extraordinary
capacity of the Chancellor ; but their primary
cause and the reason for their existence are due
to the want of adhesion of the parties, and to the
total absence of patriotism which distinguishes
the Parliament of the Empire of Germany.
In fact, if we examine the different factions
which compose this Parliament, if we study their
desires and aspirations, we will not fail to be con
vinced that none of them comprehend the true
signification of the word "patrie," and that it is
for this reason that they are led, dominated, over
whelmed by the great figure of the Chancellor,
who is perhaps the only man in Prussia capable
of thoroughly appreciating the power of his work,
and who is so well identified with it that on the
day when he disappears he will drag it with him
into his tomb.
Of the three great parties which divide the
Reichstag — the Conservative, the National Liber
als, and the Centre — the first is powerless by the
complete dependence in which the government
holds it, the second is discredited, as are all those

20 BERLIN SOCIETY.
who do not know how to profit from their success
of the moment, and the third is badly directed by
a chief blinded by a secret and unavowed ambi
tion. None of the three, as I will try to show,
has energy enough to maintain its ground against
any one whatever, and least of all against Prince
de Bismarck.
The Conservatives comprise principally great
Protestant or Catholic seigneurs, who, well under
standing that they could not, by reason of their
position, ally themselves to liberalism, have
deemed it to their personal advantage to abdicate
all initiative, all personal opinion, and to vote with
the Chancellor always, or almost always, save a
protest when it becomes a question of reassuring
the conscience of their electors. It is a party
composed at the same time of honest but weak
individuals,, of people without profession or con
science, of ambitious persons without means, and
finally of frank imbeciles desirous of becoming
something at any price. The government vaunts
itself before the public of having it fgr an ally,
and distributes to it from time to time some deco
rations in order to make of it an accomplice. It
is the cortege of honor which accompanies the de
cisions of M. de Bismarck, which the Prince flat-

THE PARLIAMENT. 21
ters, caresses, and praises, either in mass or indi
vidually. The majority of the Conservatives are
elected ^by virtue of the local influence which
each presumptive or absolute proprietor of im
portant lands possesses. Their candidacy is
sustained by the government, which sees in
them a docile instrument, and which, moreover,
holds them almost all between its hands. The
nobility has so degenerated in Prussia, it is so
poor and has so often desired to enrich itself in
indefensible ways, that it finds itself forced by the
stress of circumstances to lean upon the State
and cover itself with its powerful protection as
with a mantle. Strousberg, " the railway king,"
as he was called in Berlin, has upon his conscience
parliamentary votes wrested by necessity (repre
sented in the guise of M. de Bismarck) from his
victims. The Prince, who despises humanity
enough to have said that every conscience could
be bought provided that a sufficient price was
offered, has with extreme ability known how to
fish out of the troubled waters, where they were
drowning, many Serene Highnesses, of whom he
has made lost souls by saving them from shame
or ruin, while giving up their spoils to the Jew
bankers, his friends of the left hand. The mali-

22 BERLIN SOCIETY.
cious tongues pretend (though we have no proof)
that he has lately conquered a minister more do
cile than any other, who has to execute all his
behests, suffer all his ill-humors, even receive on
occasion his kicks, and who dares neither to pro
test against this bad treatment nor allow himself
the slightest scruple of conscience, for he knows
that he would immediately be delivered up, bound
hand and foot, to the hangman of M. de Bis
marck, to whom he owes large sums of money,
they say, and who favors him only out of regard
for the Chancellor, and at his order.
The situation of this minister, I am told, is also
that of many others more noble and more illus
trious than himself — such, for example, as certain
dukes whose property rights would have been
sequestered but for the intervention of the Crown.
All of them now pay their debts while sitting in
the Reichstag, where they are overwhelmed with
honors. These are only a few examples taken from a
thousand among the Conservatives, but which
suffice to show their humiliating weakness. Other
members of the party, hypocritically ambitious,
sustain the government in order to become minis
ters. Such are the Count Udo Stolberg and the

THE PARLIAMENT. 2%
Prince of Hatzfeldt-Trachenberg, cousin of Count
Paul. The first of these two personages is incon
testably a man of intelligence, but, in spite of that,
destitute of political judgment and soured by his
position of younger brother ; the second, a rich
proprietor of Silesia, is pressed forward by his
wife, in whose veins runs the blood of a princely
family of Gotha, and who has all its ambitions.
She is the motive power which makes him ad
vance, for such is the weakness and insufficiency
of this "solid Conservative party" that it must
absolutely be set a-going by love, fear, ambition,
or interest : a pitiful image of an aristocracy which
is dying, passing away, and which, being unable
to be any longer anything by itself, wishes to
sustain itself by the aid of a power and a glory of
which it is jealous, which it hates, against which
it conspires sometimes and murmurs always, but
with which it cannot dispense, and which, more
over, it obeys blindly because it fears it.
The National Liberals, indeed, have a pro
gramme ; but this programme is vague, indefinite
as their name. They were formerly solid friends
of the Chancellor. Who has not been of his
friends in Prussia ? They sustained him in his
projects against Rome and in many others, but

24 BERLIN SOCIETY.
they committed the error of believing that they
had become indispensable to him. This error was
a capital one. There are no indispensable people
for M. de Bismarck : there are useful people at
the most, and that's all. This man promises
always, but never keeps his promises. How many
persons who formerly swore by him only have
now become his mortal enemies ! Such are Mes
sieurs Lasker and Bennigsen, both men of remark
able intelligence, but who annoyed him, and
of whom he succeeded in disembarrassing him
self. These gentlemen believed for a moment
that they had attained power. They even
did touch it with the end of their fingers.
Unfortunately, between touching and holding
there is an abyss. Moreover, the Nationals do
not deserve much sympathy. They are not
frankly liberal, although on certain sides they
touch upon socialism , they are not monarchists :
they think only of their own interests, being above
anything else men of the Bourse ; they are pas
sionately in favor of the unity of Germany, but
only so far as it is personally profitable to them ;
they attack the principle of property, but defend
their own; they cry out against the aristocrats,
but do not disdain a noble title ; in a word, they

THE PARLIAMENT. 2$
are Conservatives for that which belongs to them,
but of a profound and egotistical inconsistency.
They everywhere constituted a powerful party
some years ago ; now they have lost their former
power, first because the Chancellor has turned
against them, then because the country has begun
to regard them with suspicion, and finally because
their principal chiefs have resigned their functions,
either out of disgust or from weariness, or be
cause the mirage of some future utility has been
made to dazzle their eyes, as was lately the case
with M. Bennigsen ; for he has been suspected
of having received from the Chancellor le mot
d'ordre for such an inexplicable retreat.
Soon the National Liberals, who have already
lost much ground at the last election, will no
longer form anything but an insignificant fraction
in the Chamber. Though they have among them
people of undoubted talent, gifted with a genuine
political sense, and of a lofty intelligence, yet
they did not know how to make use of all these
qualities. Their hour came in its turn, but they
did not perceive it, and it was utilized and turned
to profit by M. de Bismarck. Now their r6le is
ended, their power finished. They are no longer
numerous enough to constitute a majority, and

26 BERLIN SOCIETY.
they confine themselves to making an active op
position to the Chancellor, to annoying him by
recalling to him the past. Save that, their influ
ence is nothing. One likes to hear them speak on
account of their eloquence ; but their voice, which
often points out truths to the nation, is no longer
listened to. What has perhaps also injured them
is their slightly idealistic tendencies ; they have
had some social dreams. Now the German ad
mits only poetic dreams. He admits that one
could have thirst for the ideal as Werther ; but
one ought to think of the people, of the work
man, him who suffers and works, and who, ac
cording to the theories of the men who govern
Prussia at present, ought not to be anything but
a soldier. The party of the Centre, or Catholic is, without
contradiction, the most powerful in the Chamber.
However, it could not any longer constitute itself
alone a majority ; but it is the party the most
united, the most compact, and — the most foolish
sometimes. It has no political significance ; it is
essentially personal ; its opposition is nothing
but obstinacy ; its eloquence even is only the elo
quence of the preacher — which would be more in
its place if it were launched from the height of a

THE PARLIAMENT. 2^
Christian pulpit than from a parliamentary tri
bune. It encloses within its bosom people of
much intelligence, but who either put this in
telligence to the profit of their individual inter
ests or guide it in a false direction, that of a tri
umph. Its chief, M. de Windthorst, has not been
one of the ministers of the King of Hanover in
vain ; he has kept the feeling of home-sickness
for his portfolio, and desires to be employed by
the Prince de Bismarck. Perhaps he does not
take sufficient account himself of his aspirations,
but they exist, although well concealed ; and at
the bottom of his soul he says to himself, " If I
triumph, I will be great and must be taken into
account." This secret thought communicates for
some time past a certain indecision to his actions.
He has not known how to impress upon his
friends any clear direction ; he has induced them
to yield sometimes, and to resist inopportunely,
following the exigencies of the moment and ac
cording as he wished to appear amiable or for
midable. In 1878 he decided by his attitude
the rejection of the law against the socialists :
a useful and necessary law however, but
which they were not able to pass except by
means of a dissolution, and even then solely

28 BERLIN SOCIETY.
through the force of public opinion strongly ex
cited by the repeated attempts of Hedel and Nob-
ling against the life of .the King. In 1883 he had
the budget voted, a capital and irreparable fault.
Why? Because the Prince had dazzled him by
the prospect of an arrangement with the Vatican —
and because he did not wish to expose himself to
the reproach of having, on his side, failed in polite
ness towards the government. What then hap
pened? The budget was no sooner voted than
there appeared the note of the Gazette de V Alle
magne du Nord, followed by a fierce dispute between
the journals of the two parties — and that was all.
The Chancellor confined himself to promising con
cessions — but the party of the Centre gave him
the budget. This unfortunate affair of the budget
displayed more than ever the want of patriotism
which distinguishes the Reichstag in general and
the party of the Centre in particular. In fine,
its members are for the most part convinced that
budgets embracing many years at a time are pre
judicial to the interests of the country. On the
occasion of the last message of the Emperor to
the Chamber, in the month of April, they an
nounced repeatedly their resolution not to vote
it, as well as their conviction that new elections

THE PARLIAMENT. 29
could only be unfavorable for the government;
and yet three months after these fine promises,
while holding the same convictions, they voted this
same budget which they had at first decided to
refuse, only because M. de Windthorst saw from
afar the shade of a portfolio ; and they said,
" Perish the State, provided that the Vatican rep
resents triumph for us !" And neither the Vatican
nor they have triumphed ! It was what they
should have expected. A man of the stamp of
the Chancellor never recedes. The day when he
seriously wishes to make peace with Rome, he will
conclude it without the aid of the Reichstag or
of the Centre ; but for the present he does not
think of it ; only it pleases him to keep this hook
fastened to the end of his line : he still hopes with
its aid to bring to him very large fish.
The Centre, if it had wished to follow an honest,
loyal, and at the same time efficacious policy, had
only two courses to take : either to unite frankly
with the Chancellor and then not to attack or in
sult him through the medium of its journals ; or
to be openly hostile to him and join themselves
to the Liberals in rejecting the budget. But
Messieurs the Catholics cannot rise to such a wise
and sound policy ; they only know how to groan

30 BERLIN SOCIETY.
or launch maledictions. As to conducting them
selves reasonably and with prudence, in accordance
with a determined and premeditated plan, that is
impossible for them ; they have too many per
sonal interests at stake.
Of the other factions of the Reichstag it is use
less to Speak. The Poles are obstinate in their
constant opposition based upon a preconceived
determination, the Socialists influential by their
eloquence, the Alsatians and Lorrainians powerless.
These three elements are worthless to the same
degree, but at least are not detrimental to their
own cause either because it is too good to be
spoiled or too desperate to be restored, or, finally,
because it is impossible to make proselytes. As
to the Parliament taken as a whole, it embraces, as
I have just shown, some ambitious persons, some
Utopians, many fools, rarely men of genius, utili
tarians of no consequence, and a certain quantity
of individuals who are seriously convinced that a
cross of itself suffices to govern the world. The
Reichstag, morever, entertains strange illusions as-
to its own value. Thus it believes itself to be a
Chamber, while it is only an Assembly ; it im
agines itself to exist under a constitutional govern
ment, while there is nothing of the sort. It thinks

THE PARLIAMENT. 3 1
it yields to a feeling of tenderness, when it only
gratifies the desire which the Emperor expresses
to it in a messa.ge, when it only bends to the will
of an absolute sovereign. It is ignorant of its
own force and does not know how to make use of
its power. It is only the mask that serves to dis
guise an aristocracy more atrabilious than that
which exists in Russia, for it reposes not upon a
name as with us, but in reality upon a fact. It
will always be a docile instrument in the hands of
power, as long as this power is wielded by M. de
Bismarck, that master of the art of sounding
hearts, of appealing to ambitions, of flattering the
strong, of encouraging the wavering, of govern
ing, in fine, all consciences with his cunning, his
astuteness, his energy, his force of will, and es
pecially his profound knowledge of human nature,
of its weaknesses and its infamy.
For opposed to this incapable Parliament des
titute of patriotism stands a formidable force —
that of the Chancellor, whose grand figure is pro
tected by the throne which serves him as a buck
ler. Certainly one of the greatest merits of the
Emperor William is to have known how to sus
tain against everybody his all-powerful minister.
It is, true that this support has procured for him

32 BERLIN SOCIETY.
the illusion of a power wielded really by his Chan
cellor ; nevertheless, only to know how to recog
nize the superiority of another, especially when
this other is an inferior, is something great.
M. de Bismarck has, moreover, succeeded per
fectly in his views of an absolute monarchy : in
Prussia there is no longer now a responsible
ministry, nor a Chamber, nor anything which con
stitutes the machinery of a constitutional rAgime.
There is nothing except the Chancellor, who has
absorbed in himself the sovereign, the deputies,
the people, the magistracy— everything, in fact,
He has so thoroughly bent Germany to his will
that one can boldly affirm that this country would
no longer know how to conduct itself if M. de Bis
marck were there no longer to direct it. At this
moment everybody flatters him in the hope of
obtaining something thereby, while he mocks
humanity as much as he despises it ; and, though
more able than Richelieu, he disdains to decapi
tate his political adversaries, but confines himself
to discrediting them in public opinion. He has de
stroyed Lasker, overthrown Delbriick, banished
Bennigsen, and now he is about ruining Windt-
horst, solely by knowing how to flatter oppor
tunely, making half-understood, indefinite prom-

THE PARLIAMENT. 33
ises, exciting secret hopes, arousing shameful
cupidities and egotistical ambitions. He reigns
everywhere as much as he governs ; but Germany
will pay dear for the honor of having him at its
head, and for having had the most incapable Par
liament that has ever existed. The future will
avenge Europe, for that which makes the glory of
Prussia now will be the cause of its future ruin.
It is not without paying dearly for it that all the
vital forces of a nation are concentrated in a single
individual. Sooner or later the moment will
arrive when this nation must expiate the absence
of governors ; and if he has known how to triumph
over six successive Parliaments, using always
the same artifices ; if he has rendered his country
great ; if he has understood how to make of him
self the arbiter of the world, to impose upon
everybody his will, the Prince de Bismarck has at
the same time prepared the fall and the destruc
tion of this country by crushing all those who
might have been able to continue his work.

34 BERLIN SOCIETY.
PRINCES AND PRINCESSES.
THIRD LETTER.
THE Princess Augusta Victoria, wife of Prince
William, is insignificant enough not to be
spoken of otherwise than as performing her duties
admirably, and as not likely to leave Prussia with
out heirs. Some malicious tongues pretend that
her character might be more amiable, but it is
probable that the petulance with which she is re
proached is attributable to the natural irritability
of all women whose life is passed perpetually in
an interesting condition, rather than to a bad dis
position. Not at all pretty, she is nevertheless
very agreeable, yet timid, owing to want of society,
but inspires sympathy in spite of a certain awk
wardness, which nevertheless is admirably suited
to her. The relations of the young couple are
very agreeable and affectionate without being
tender. The Prince loves to amuse himself, but
that is natural in the case of a man of twenty-five ;
and surely an Empress's crown is more than suffi
cient to console a Princess of Schleswig for the
little infidelities of her husband.

PRINCES AND PRINCESSES. 35
Prince Frederick Charles, nephew of the Em
peror, of whom so much was said in 1870, does
not justify in any way all the stir that has been
made about him. He is not a man endowed with
great powers : he is simply a very good and brave
soldier ; a bore of the worst kind in private life,
knowing admirably how to obey ; a tactician by
study, formidable by his brutality, but without am
bition, without desires, without passions other than
that for the chase and wine. He lives a retired life,
almost always in his chateau of Dreilinden, de
tests society, and is only content when he is sur
rounded by a little circle of friends, almost all
hard drinkers, before whom he observes no cere
mony. He is, they say, more than rude to his
wife, a. charming creature overflowing with wit,
kindness, and talent, endowed with an intelli
gence keen and subtle, at the same time with a
heart ignorant of no delicacy and capable of every
devotion, but who has the misfortune to be af
flicted with a complete and incurable deafness,
which has not a little contributed to excite the
aversion of her husband. With the exception of
the particular friends of the Prince, the couple
see scarcely anybody, and are very much neglected
by society, which bores the Princess and avoids

36 BERLIN SOCIETY.
the Prince ; the one on account of her infirmity,
the other on account of his gross impoliteness.
Prince Albert of Prussia occupies in the royal
family the place which the ball-room holds in a
large suite of apartments. He is very tall, well
made, and represents admirably his country on all
occasions when it is necessary. At baptisms,
marriages, coronations, funerals, everywhere where
the presence of a Hohenzollern is useful, either
for reasons of expediency or courtesy towards
another reigning house, he is seen figuring in his
blue dragoon uniform, in his tightly fitting jacket
— head high, blank look, but with martial air.
With the exception of these occasions of cere
mony he remains at Hanover, shut up in that city
like a gilded coach in its coach-house. He is
an honest man, an excellent husband, a good
father, and just such a prince as may be seen
every day — =no better, no worse than others — en
joying his position, and never dreaming that fate
could have made him born in any other.
Besides these different persons the royal family
counts also some members too insignificant to be
considered. There is indeed the Princess Char
lotte of Meinigen, eldest daughter of the Prince
Imperial ; but when one has said of her that she

PRINCES AND PRINCESSES. 37
is a young woman very gay, very pretty, very
coquettish, very much courted, very fond of dis
traction, very badly married to a man who does
not deserve her, one has nothing more to add on
her account.
As to the Prince and Princess of Hohenzollern,
I do not know whether they are counted among
the members of this august house, although the
Emperor has accorded them the rank. It has a
strange position — that of this household. Before
his marriage the Prince Frederick lived in Berlin
as a private individual, went into society both
bad and good, had many well-known liaisons — in
a word, led the life of a bachelor in the fullest
signification of the word. They were so much
accustomed in society to consider him as a person
of no consequence, that when he married nobody
was willing to accord it to his wife. And yet the
Empress took the latter under her protection,
gave her a lady of honor, and exacted that she
should be treated as a princess of the blood.
This decision provoked frightful tempests in
Berlin. All the aristocratic and feminine princely
clan refused to recognize the precedence of the
Princess Louise, asserting that a Thurn and
Taxis had no right to any, and forgetting com-

38 BERLIN SOCIETY.
pletely that the Hohenzollerns are the cousins of
the King. After battles, cries, protestations, they
had nevertheless to be resigned ; but the poor
Princess was also obliged to pay for the con
cessions made on her account. They found her
ugly, awkward, haughty, disagreeable, and at the
present time, after four years have passed, she
has never been pardoned the social position
acquired by her marriage. Envy, low and vile
envy, attacks continually this young woman,
graceful as she is pretty, intelligent as she is
good, amiable as she is benevolent ; a living
impersonation of charm, wit, and beauty — of
everything, in a word, which constitutes feminine
attraction. In spite of her numerous accomplish
ments the Princess Frederick de Hohenzollern
is not counted among the happy ones of this
world ; she divines without doubt the hatred as
well as the malevolence by which she is sur
rounded, for she lives very much isolated, seeing
only some chosen persons, overcome with ennui,
chained down by a rigid etiquette from which she
is the first to suffer, but which nevertheless she
is accused of wishing to keep up around her.

THE COURT. 39

THE COURT.
FOURTH LETTER.
The immediate surrounding of the Emperor is
not commendable in any way. It is an assem
blage of valetudinarians. The Court at present
produces the impression of furniture of an old
museum. One is accustomed to find always the
same persons in the same place. When on a gala
night one sees the sovereign advance, preceded
by a whole cortege of cripples, and followed by
people who, by the aid of art, try to repair the
irreparable ravages of years, one cannot fail to
admire this king, who has known how to outlive
two generations while remaining robust and vigor
ous himself.
Physical decrepitude may be overlooked — that
is pardoned to the old parade horses who sur
round the Emperor ; but one cannot but feel dis
gusted by all his favorites, who abuse not the af
fection but the kindness of their sovereign to ob
tain favors of all kinds — this one a title, that one a
decoration. All believe they have a right to put

4° BERLIN SOCIETY.
aside those who annoy them by their haughtiness
and insolent way of watching over the monarch,
as if he belonged to them solely. The Emperor
does not perceive these little manoeuvres : he per
sists in keeping near him his old servants, and al
though he may be too egotistical to regret them
if death should remove them, he does not like to
be separated from them when they are still in pas
sable health. In this way the Count Puckler rests
always at the head of the royal house, and the
Count Perponcher remains court marshal, although
one is almost blind, and the other — it is better
not to speak too much of the other.
The personal service of the Emperor is per
formed by six aides-de-camp. Two of them, the
Count Lehndorff and the Prince Antoine Radziwill,
are already generals, and have not quitted their
post for fifteen years, if not longer. Of the sec
ond I will speak more particularly in another chap
ter. As to the first, he is an ex-Lovelace, an old
heart-devourer, who has been in the good graces
of almost all the beauties of Berlin. Of empty
mind, immense vanity, and profound egotism, he
has nevertheless known how to please by reason
of his personal beauty and his foppery. He is not
a bad man ; yet he has become obnoxious, either

THE COURT. 41
from lack of delicacy or from stupidity. He has un
derstood how to keep in the good graces of the Em
peror; he has even succeeded in making him pay
his debts — nobody has ever known why. His po
sition at court is so well established, that all the
mothers quarrel over him in spite of his tempes
tuous past. But about two years ago the Count,
to the despair of a great number of young girls,
and of a handsome widow who counted so confi
dently upon marrying him that she had already
arranged for him a study, asked the hand of
Mile, de Kanitz, a young lady of twenty years,
pretty, amiable, but insignificant, and who ap
peared to have been the very last one of whom
an old libertine would have become enamored.
The marriage took place, and up to the present,
the union counts among the happiest in the world.
The four other aides-de-camp oi the Emperor
are nullities in point of influence and individual
ity. One, however, is an exception — the Prince
Henry XVIII. of Reuss, a handsome young man,
a bold hunter, very well established in society,
amiable, a- good fellow, a little stupid, passably
vain, but a successful man all the same, having
made in his time a great deal of court to the
women, and posing to-day as disgusted with love ;

42 BERLIN SOCIETY.
of satirical humor, sometimes even very disdain
ful ; whole-souled in his sympathies and antipathies,
nursing revenge and knowing how to gratify it
in his character of good talker. He is loved by
Prince William, and will not fail to become one
of the favorites of the Emperor, near whom he
has been for a few months only.
The General Albedyll, chief of the military
cabinet, is one of the best-hated personages that
live in Prussia. His functions make him, it is
true, a formidable being, for it is upon him that
all nominations as well as promotions in the army
depend. He is a brave man, quite indolent, who,
by reason of fearing to make himself enemies
among people already successful, secures implac
able ones among those who are rising. The
young officers execrate him for his mania for
tender consideration of persons in position — a
mania which paralyzes all advancement in the
army. Never have there been in Germany so
many old generals " trailing their wings and drag
ging their feet," never so many lieutenants wait
ing in vain for promotion. Rightly or wrongly —
I don't know which — M. d'Albedyll is accused of
being responsible for this state of things, and the
day on which he obtains the command of a corps

THE COURT. 43
d'arme"e will be celebrated by fireworks in all the
regiments. Personally the General is very amia
ble, very polite, but of a false character, like that
of all the Prussians of the eastern provinces. He
has prot/g/s for whom he tries to find places,
which is an injustice on the part of a man in the
possession of so important a post as his. The
Emperor likes him very much, and appreciates his
devotion ; society flatters him in the person of his
wife, who, moreover, is very amiable. She is a
sister of the beautiful Duchess of Manchester;
with less charm and brilliancy than her elder
sister, she has perhaps more seriousness of char
acter. Madame d'Albedyll is especially good,
frank, and benevolent ; she has her enemies, but
they are enemies that do her honor.
The head of the civil cabinet of the King is M.
de Kilmowski. He is little seen in society, and
people concern themselves about him still less.
He is an admirable functionary, but one who, by
reason of having made himself a mere machine,
has no influence. He is generally esteemed, and,
when his existence is recalled, he is well spoken
of. To the persons whom I have just mentioned,
and who are the intimates of the Emperor, it is

44 BERLIN SOCIETY.
proper to add Dr. Lauer, his physician. Honest
and of excellent disposition, disinterested, loyal,
devoted to his master and his family, and who
has never profited from his position otherwise
than to do good.
The household of the Empress is composed of
a head-mistress, of two ladies of the Palace, of a
master of court, a private secretary, and of many
maids-of-honor and chamberlains,- who relieve each
other in turn, according to the exigencies of the
service. The head-mistress, the Countess of Perponcher,
sister-in-law of the court-marshal of the Emper
or, is an amiable woman, tres grande dame, affa
ble, polite, filling admirably the duties of her
position, always obliging, always cordial, distin
guished for nothing but an immense black peruke
fastened in the form of a tower on the top of her
head — as null as she is good, as insignificant as
she is well-intentioned. She gives soirAes a little
gayer than a funeral ; but to which, however, one
makes a point to get invited, for one elbows
there all the royal or serene highnesses that are
in Berlin.
Of the two ladies of the Palace, one, the Count
ess Adelaide Hacke, is humpbacked, and without

THE COURT. 45
having the wit that ordinarily distinguishes this
variety of the human species, possesses its mali
ciousness. She has a great influence over the
Empress, whom she sometimes ill-treats. She is
the alter ego of the Sovereign, the person who
replaces her in all circumstances where that is
possible. She loves intrigue, movement, noise.
Her voice, gentle and deep, has false and affected
notes ; she says " Ma chere," " Mon cher," to
everybody; takes madonna airs, which suit her
face but indifferently ; and in a covert way attacks
secretly the reputation of this one, speaks ill of
that one, makes discreetly equivocal allusions to
the faults of Madame X., emphasizes the weak
nesses of M. A., scatters to the left the poison of
her perfidious insinuations, to the right the venom
of her outrageous insinuations. She is mischiev
ous, but without suspecting it ; and does wrong to
others, not from malice, but from the impulsive
ness of her nature, which by reason of its own
ugliness cannot admit the beautiful to exist in the
case of her neighbor.
Her companion, the Countess Oriolla, was, they
say, pretty in her youth ; the Emperor himself
even, as it appears, formerly paid her some little
court, which he still continues sometimes, out of

46 BERLIN SOCIETY.
respect for ancient traditions. She Is not liked
by the Empress, at whose death she will without
doubt rejoice, having at the bottom of her heart
the vague hope that this obstacle once removed,
the Emperor might be brought to imitate the
example of his father, and create a second Prin
cess Liegnitz. The Countess Oriolla, while all
the time professing an exterior goodness, is al
ways happy when chance exposes some vices or
faults of her friends. She has, while uttering
ill-natured things, a little tranquil and sardonic
smile, which makes one involuntarily think of
the sneer of Mephistopheles. In society, where
ordinarily judgments are superficial, she is well
enough liked : they do not remark the black
maliciousness nor the jealousy which sometimes
prompts the lady of the Palace to put her own
feet into the brook so as to be able to bespatter
the others.
M. de Knesbeck, secretary of the Empress, is
a spare little man, thin, bald although but thirty,
witty, keen, subtle, and always knowing how to
extricate himself from anything, even from the
most difficult situations, with marvellous dex
terity. He is educated, well read, able to talk,
knows on occasion how to intrigue, and exercises

THE COURT. 47
over his mistress a discreet but real influence.
He has many enemies among those who feel
themselves devined by his penetration, but knows
how to pay them back a hundred times the in
jury that they would wish to do him. Very
observing, he fathoms immediately the desires,
the hopes, and the ambitious designs of all the
parasites who revolve round the Empress, in
order to obtain from her — some a gracious word
spoken in public, others a Chinese jar or a Ja
panese vase with which to decorate their salons.
The young secretary jots down in his memory all
these acts of cupidity, all these ignoble mean
nesses, of which he is a daily witness ; and al
though he makes no use of them against their
authors, he registers them in his recollection. The
result of his experiences is his contempt for hu
manity, which increases every day. This makes
him a striking contrast to the Count de Nessel-
rode, grand master of the court of the Empress,
a bon vivant and brave man, too shallow to look
for the faults of his neighbor, too indifferent to
the things of this world to remark them as either
handsome or ugly ; the father of a daughter very
agreeable, without being pretty, and of a son, an
officer in the Lancers of the Guards.

48 BERLIN SOCIETY.
I do not wish to finish this chapter without
saying a word about Mlle. de Neundorff, the first
femme de chambre of the Empress. She is, in
her way, a personage, knowing all the secrets of
her royal mistress, writing her letters, transmit
ting her messages, imagining herself devoted to
her, but doing her much injury by her indiscre
tion and intrigues. She is flattered, overwhelmed
with adulation by all the ladies desirous of pre
serving the good graces of the sovereign, who
sometimes dance attendance for two hours on
Mlle. de Neundorff, with the sole object of grati
fying her vanity, flattered at having made a
countess or princess wait. Rather friend than
femme de chambre, she unites the servility
of the servant to the veiled and affectionate
insolence of the confidante who knows that
they cannot send her away because they are
afraid of her. The Empress only sees through
her eyes, and allows herself to be influenced by
her astuteness to an extent compromising to her
dignity, so much the more as Mlle. de Neundorff,
like all persons in her position, has neither the
tact nor the wit to dissimulate in public her sit
uation as intimate adviser of Her Majesty.

THE INTIMATES OF THE EMPRESS. 49

THE INTIMATES OF THE EMPRESS.
FIFTH LETTER.
THE Empress Augusta likes society and cannot
dispense with it. Her very active nature has
need of being constantly in movement ; and now
that her infirmities keep her in her chair, she has
no other distraction than that of gathering her
intimates around her. Her custom has been to
invite five or six persons to pass the evening at
the Palace two or three times a week. At present
these little teas have become of daily occurrence ;
the Emperor makes his appearance there for a
few minutes at the end, and brings by his pres
ence a little animation to these reunions, ordi
narily very solemn, during which they drink tea
and nibble cakes for the sake of pastime. The
Empress tries to keep up the conversation, but
she does not always succeed, on account of the
coldness or somnolency of her guests, who would
all become bored to death without daring to con
fess it even among themselves, so penetrated are
they with a sense of the honor done them in be-

50 BERLIN SOCIETY.
ing admitted to her Majesty's presence. When
the Duke and Duchess of Sagan are in Berlin,
then the teas of the Empress become altogether
gay. The Duke, a type of the French gentleman
of the eighteenth century, is well received at
Court. He is an amiable old man, very vigorous
and active for his age, a courtier worthy of having
lived under the reign of Louis XIV., knowing how
to flatter discreetly, neither too much nor too
little ; witty, without being brilliant ; superficially
educated, having the manners of a grand seigneur
and an immense knowledge of the world. He
loves to compliment the women and pour adula
tion upon crowned heads. Formerly he had suc
cess with the feebler sex, and still continues to
frequent the green-room. At bottom he^ is a
frank but charming egotist, always of the opinion
of the one with whom he is speaking; vain of
his name, of his position, of his fortune, know
ing admirably how to display the latter ; an un
equalled organizer of fites and dinners, pushing
even his genius so far as to compose new designs.
in liveries for his servants. He knows how to pro
tect those who caress him, but never harms those
who criticise him. He is, above all, a man for
the occasion. A Frenchman in Paris, he becomes

THE INTIMATES OF THE EMPRESS. 5 1
Prussian the moment he arrives at Berlin : to
metamorphose himself into reigning Duke at
Sagan before re-transforming himself into the
nephew of Prince de Talleyrand as soon as he
strikes the soil of Valencay.
His wife, widow by her first marriage of the
Count Maximilian de Hatzfeldt, is the daughter
of the famous Marshal de Castellane. One would
say that she had inherited the soldier-manners of
her father. The Duchess of Sagan, highly edu
cated and intellectual, is a type rarely met with.
Her bearing, essentially masculine, has a brusque
ness which would not be tolerated in any other
person, but which is liked in her. Of an incredi
ble frankness, she says her say to everybody — to
relatives, friends, and enemies, without distinction;
shrinks from no crudity of language; kills people
with a word with the same coolness with which
she would shoot at a stag or wild boar in the
forests of Silesia. It is impossible to be wearied
a single moment in her society; she would ani
mate a statue by remarking upon its faults. No
thing ridiculous escapes her ; no fault or forget
fulness of her neighbor is forgotten by her
teasing spirit. In spite of this a very fine woman,
knowing how to play the great lady when that is

52 BERLIN SOCIETY.
necessary; polite notwithstanding her brusque
ness ; incapable of injuring with premeditation any
one whomsoever; cruel without maliciousness;
sarcastic in the extreme, but so amusing that her
intemperance of language is willingly pardoned on
account of the spirit which animates it. By her
first marriage the Duchess has had six children,
no one of whom does her honor; by the second,
a girl, Mlle. Dorothee de Talleyrand, married to
the eldest son of the Prince de Furstenberg, at
tractive in person, having inherited the intelligence
of her mother, but not her amiability.
Faithful to her system of protecting semi-
strangers, the Empress honors with her especial
favor the Countess Louise de Benckendorf,
widow of the aide-de-camp-ge'ne'ral oi the Em
peror Nicholas of Russia. The Countess was
born Princess of Croy ; she thus remained as Ger
man as she could, and has nothing Russian about
her except the decoration of Saint Catherine.
She is a type of a Serene Highness of Gotha.
Her ideal is a rank at Court ; the height of her
happiness consists in breathing the same air as her
Majesty. She passes for being intellectual, while
she is intriguing. In society she is a great re
source, for she knows everybody, has travelled a

THE INTIMATES OF THE EMPRESS. 53
good deal, and has at the end of her fingers that
common salon slang so indispensable at a re
union. At a dinner she holds the place of honor
admirably, and she likes very much to have it
accorded to her. At a distance she has the
handsome face of a dowager ; near by a wheezy
mouth from which, between two teeth, the saliva
exudes makes a disagreeable impression when one
looks at her. At bottom, she is a person very
ambitious, very haughty, very vindictive, and
capable of becoming dangerous if her vanity or
pride are wounded. Her eldest daughter, mar^
ried to the Prince of Hatzfeldt-Trachenberg, re
sembles her in more than one respect, but re^
deems her faults by the charm of youth and a
pretty face.
One of the great admirers of the Countess
Benckendorf is the General Count de Goltz,
brother of the ancient ambassador to Paris, so
advanced in the good graces of the Empress
Eugenie. The Count de Goltz, aide-de-camp of
the Emperor, has been a hunter of adventures
these thirty years ; now age has compelled him
to put spokes in his wheels, but he still preserves
a certain worship for young women, and even for
the old when they remind him of some emotions

54 BERLIN SOCIETY.
of his youth. He is a very honest man, who
would have wit if he were not continually dis-~-
tracted. When he doesn't sleep he talks agree
ably, and amuses the Empress by a quantity of
little gossip narrated with a great deal of vigor
and spirit.
As to the Count William of Pourtales, he was
formerly amusing; but good living, the dan-
seuses, and the pleasures of life in general have
marked him with the seal that time impresses
prematurely upon men of dissolute habits. The
Count has been an egotist, amiable only towards
those who could be useful or agreeable to him,
impertinent towards the rest of the world. To
day the old viveur is nothing but a ruin, and he
only talks from habit without knowing what he
says. In the evening he sleeps in company with
the Count de Goltz, but the latter keeps an eye
open to watch the movements of the sovereign ;
his mouth repeats always the same common
flatteries said formerly with some wit, but doled
out at present mechanically. Among his tastes
of former days he has preserved that of a good
eater, as well as the love of objects of art and
bric-a-brac. He has a splendid collection. His house,

THE INTIMATES OF THE EMPRESS. 55
situated in the Universitatsstrasse, is deliciously
furnished and decorated ; its court is already a
little museum. This court, covered with a glass
roof, was the occasion of one of the deepest
chagrins the Count de Pourtales ever had in
his life. He had always hoped to receive the
Empress at his house, and in order to facilitate
this visit had in constructing it made two portes
cocheres, in order that the carriage of the sove
reign might turn- within the court itself. Alas!
neither the Count nor his architect remarked that
this court was too small for a carriage to turn
around in. The old courtier was then obliged
to resign himself, since his house was finished, to
the loss of his dearest hope. After numerous
sighs he decided at last to console himself, to
which his excellent cook contributed largely. '
The intimate reunions of the Palace are fre
quented, besides the persons whom I have just
named, by the Grand Master of Ceremonies, the
Count Augustus Eulenberg, as well as by the
Grand Chamberlain, Count William de Redern,
his brother and sister-in-law, and some other per
sons altogether insignificant.
The Count Eulenberg, who before becoming
Grand Master of Ceremonies was court-marshal

56 BERLIN SOCIETY.
of the Prince Royal, is a very agreeable and
polished man, who, in spite of the difficulties of
his position, has understood how to make friends
everywhere, even among those to whom he was
obliged to refuse the rank which they claimed.
The place which he occupies is only a sinecure, in
a country like Prussia and in a city like Berlin,
where no one aspires to the first rank in the King
dom of Heaven while there is a German Empire
on earth. In the lifetime of the predecessor of
the Count Eulenberg every court ball was the
scene of quarrels and discussions without end be
tween the Chamberlain on duty and some ladies
more or less unruly. The Count has put an end
to all that : he joins much civility to great firm.
ness, and knows how to make his authority felt.
Moreover, very quiet, always calm, endowed with
a great deal of good sense, he will never do any
thing out of place. He knows how to cover up
the weakness of his intellect, which is essentially
moderate. His brother, who was for some months
Minister of the Interior, has more mind than he,
but less address, and particularly less coolness.
His position with the Prince Royal has been a
very difficult one, owing to the enmity of the
Princess, and they say that he did not regret being
called to other functions. The Count Eulenberg

THE INTIMATES OF THE EMPRESS. S7
is married to a good and amiable woman, loved
by all who have approached her.
The Grand Chamberlain, Count William de
Redern, is an old man of seventy-five years of
age, very robust still, and whom one can meet
every day between two and four o'clock at the
Thiergarten, taking his walk. He is an upright
man, enormously rich, who formerly had wit, is a
great musician, very fond of the arts, good to
wards everybody, and singularly hoodwinked by
his nephew and heir, who discounts in advance
the rich patrimony of the dear uncle. The Count
William is occupied with literature. He published
last year memoirs, against which many persons
have protested — his brother most of all.
This brother has really the worst tongue that
ever was. He pities no one, shrinks from no pain,
listens to no prayer, when once there is question
of putting in circulation some gossip or other.
His life is passed in collecting news true or false,
which he circulates afterwards with perfect fury —
the fury of a lazy man. He is a malicious being,
and besides he is tiresome from the slowness of
his speech and the length of his explanations. In
society he is feared as much as he is detested, and
for a long time he would have been no longer
tolerated there were it not for his wife, born

58 BERLIN SOCIETY.
Princess Odescalchi, an amiable old lady, as con
ciliatory as her husband is exasperating.
The Countess Victoria de Redern is one of the
most respected ladies of Berlin; her salon, open
every evening, is one of the rare places where one
can converse ; she joins much amiability to a
mind which, while not very enlightened, is more
than sufficient, very straightforward, very whole
some, and very just. Her only weakness consists
in an unbounded affection for her only son, a hard
case if there ever was one — a gambler and liber
tine, who has already made the principal cities of
Europe resound with the noise of his follies. The
Countess is not ignorant of that, but she is so
good that in spite of it she keeps the door of her
heart open to the prodigal son.
Besides the persons whom I have just named,
the Empress does not admit anybody to her in
timacy. In Lent she gives every Thursday grand
concerts, to which society is invited by turns ; but
her ordinary life passes in seeing the same faces,
in listening to the same judgments, and submit
ting more or less to the charm, if not the influence,
of the same people, all vain, or interested, or flat
terers, or simply victims of the sympathy with
which they have inspired their sovereign without
wishing it.

THE CHANCELLOR. 59

THE CHANCELLOR.
SIXTH LETTER.
So much has already been said of the Prince
de Bismarck, so many things have been written
about him, that I am very much embarrassed in
approaching this subject. What can be said,
what told, of a man on whom in turn history,
legend, and fable have laid hold ? For fif
teen years the Chancellor has been shown us
under all possible and impossible aspects. They
have tried to make us admire his policy, to make
us detest the individual, to make us fear the min
ister ; M. de Busch has even tried to initiate us
into the private life of the Colossus, to show us a
Bismarck en n/glige", in dressing-gown and slip
pers. And yet none of these attempts has suc
ceeded, and the Prince is still an enigma for all
those who wish to acquire a just idea of his char
acter. Even the persons who have approached
him the nearest have been unable to penetrate
the secrets of this many-sided nature, grand in
its intel!igence,xdangerous by its genius, superior

60 BERLIN SOCIETY.
to Machiavelli in its astuteness, to Richelieu in
its contempt for humanity. To tell the truth,
the Chancellor does not know himself very well.
He-is ignorant to-day of what he will do to-mor
row, and while directing for years the events of
the world, often allows himself in reality to be
governed by the circumstances which accompany
these events. The great secret of his power con
sists in the facility with which he changes opinion,
abandons his friends, courts his enemies, takes
advantage of the rancors of one, the hatred of
another, and the egotism of all. His conscience,
thoroughly elastic, ignores scruples; his soul has
no other ambition than that of absolute power
over men. and things, kings and peoples. There
is the " I " of Medea in his life ; he has seen the
destinies of sovereigns and empires so completely
condensed in his person that he has arrived at the
point of forgetting that this person does not rep
resent the whole world. This is why he crushes
all that is not himself, all who serve him badly or
do not obey him blindly, all who resist or thwart
him. Formerly, some time ago, M. de Bismarck
was ambitious for his country, desirous of seeing
Prussia occupy the first rank among the Euro
pean powers ; to-day one may boldly affirm that

THE CHANCELLOR. 6l
this ambition has disappeared, to give place to an
inordinate desire to exercise dominion in his own
person. As much as he has labored for'his king,
so much he applies himself, at present, now that
this king has become Emperor, to prevent him
from even glancing at the affairs of state. The
German Empire certainly owes its present exist
ence to the perseverance and audacity of the
Prince, who has founded it, raised it, rendered it
solid and strong. But now that this colossal
work is ended, he cannot decide to consolidate it
and allow it to develop itself. He wishes to
maintain over this Empire an unlimited authority,
and hence come these hesitations, these vacilla
tions in his policy, which astonish us so often,
coming from this man of iron. Everything is
worn out by use, and the energy of the Chan
cellor has ended by becoming obstinacy and spite.
He has been so much accustomed always to suc
ceed that he imagines he has acquired the right
to subject to his caprices all those who surround
him. At bottom he is naturally full of dash,
often acts by fits; but at present, now that his
cherished projects have been brought to a suc
cessful termination, he conceives no more plans,
but acts according to the impulse or exigency of

62 _ BERLIN SOCIETY.
the moment. He rules solely because he has
understood how to make himself feared. Fre
quently his enemies attribute to him designs of
which they are afraid, and which they sometimes
suggest themselves without suspecting it. Such
as he is, the Chancellor none the less represents a
great historic figure, especially when looked at
from a distance and imagined to be on a pedestal,
as he will present himself one day to posterity ;
but when examined close at hand, one very soon
discovers his meanness, his pettiness, his forget
fulness of the great interests confided to him, in
favor of his personal sympathies or antipathies.
M. de Bismarck has always desired to see the
whole world bend before him. To establish his
authority he has made use of all means within his
reach. One of the most formidable traits of his
character consists in his penetrating knowledge
of men, whose weak side he discovers at the first
glance, flatters, gently excites, and knows how to
profit by. From the moment one completely
despises humanity, one rules it ; for then one
knows exactly what can be expected or exacted
from the cupidity of this one, the envy of that,
the baseness of one, and the hypocrisy of another.
The Prince is a cynic and at the same time a

THE CHANCELLOR. 63
sceptic. When he thinks that a man's conscience
is undecided he tries to buy it, and nine times
out of ten he succeeds ; for men are cowards and
surrender always to the one from whom they
hope to gain something.
The plans of the Chancellor have often been
talked about. Even his recently-published cor
respondence has been cited to prove that all he
had done was calculated beforehand. For my
part, I am firmly persuaded that he has, above
all, understood how to take advantage of circum
stances, and that on assuming power he had no
other project than that of establishing his own
position. Later on his ambitions developed
themselves; then he recalled the dreams of his
youth, and after the triumph of the man wished
to assure that of the country. Still later, he
wished to aggrandize himself by making the
world believe that he owed his successes, not to
circumstances, not to good luck, but in reality to
a preconceived determination, and conducted to
a happy end by the simple exertion of a will as
indomitable as it was resolute.
Few political men have had so many enemies,
and none has known how to get rid of them so
adroitly. To tell the truth, it was not only his

64 BERLIN SOCIETY.
enemies whom he knew how to set aside : his
friends also underwent the same fate the- moment
they troubled or annoyed him. But it is certain
that he is terrible in his grudges, implacable in
his resentments, pitiless in his vengeance. One
knows what he has been for the Count d'Arnim,
and one has only to recall M. Delbruck, the Count
Stolberg, the Count Eulenburg, — all his friends
and fellow-laborers of former times, — who have
displeased him, and whom he has known how to
set aside, efface, crush out, and, in a word, re
move from the political or parliamentary arena
with a marvellous dexterity. By turns in good
relations with all parties, he has made use of
each, only at last to disgrace them, in the eyes of
the public, by his alliance. An able tactician, he
loves to appropriate the success of others, and has
the talent to bring to a successful issue this diffi
cult enterprise. One of his favorite tricks con
sists in taking possession of some ambitious in
triguer and persuading him that he has in him the
stuff of a great man. The victim always falls into
the trap, and it is thus that the Prince has pro
cured a certain number of " lost souls," who serve
him with love and adoration, who naively imagine
themselves to be indispensable to him, while they

THE CHANCELLOR. 65
are really only useful, and whom he flatters only
the better to repudiate them afterwards, if the
thing appear advisable to him.
His conduct with regard to the Emperor is sin
gular. While all the time affecting a great re
spect for the old sovereign, he poses neverthe
less as an autocrat in his presence. There, as
everywhere, he exploits the weaknesses which are
accessible to him ; he knows how to shake the
sensitive cords of the monarch whose love for
Prussia is real and sincere to the point of bringing
him to sacrifice himself when that is necessary.
When they are seen in each other's presence, the
tall form of the Chancellor towering by a head
over that of the King, one involuntarily asks
which of the two is the master of the other, and
which is the most deserving in the eyes of his
country — the one who has known how to efface
himself with self-abnegation, or the one who .has
aggrandized his country only to crush it with the
weight of his individuality.
As to the Empress Augusta, she has never
liked the Prince. Formerly, she even intrigued
against him with her intimates and favorites, but
very soon experience taught her that it was not
good to play jokes with such a rude adversary ;

66 BERLIN SOCIETY.
at present things are upon a footing of armed
neutrality between the two enemies, who, not be
ing able to devour each other close at hand, ob
serve each other at a distance, both of them de
cided to renew hostilities on the slightest occa
sion. However, all these hatreds accumulated around
him, all these imprecations directed constantly
against his person, have had a certain influence
upon M. de Bismarck. / They have made him mis
anthropic, or at least have made him take a dislike
to the world and become fond of solitude. He
lives like a hermit, shut up within the four walls of
his palace, concealed from the gaze of everybody,
friends as well as enemies, showing himself only
in Parliament from time to time, or to some one
from whom he has occasion to draw some infor
mation. Then he makes himself agreeable, be
comes conversational — a good fellow — knows how
to fascinate those who do not know him or do not
dfvine him. Apart from these rare occasions, no
body sees the Chancello'r, who shuts himself up
more and more in the bosom of his family, who
for their part surround him with the most tender
affection. His wife is a good and honest creature, very

THE CHANCELLOR. 67
vulgar in her manners, but having a kind heart ;
endowed with much wit, although without
penetration ; admiring her husband naively, with
a tenderness as true as it is profound ; in no
way proud of her position ; kindly disposed al
though brusque ; amiable to everybody, taking
note of the enmity of some and the false protesta
tions of devotion of others, but disdaining the first
and placing no reliance upon the second.
Two sons and a daughter are the issue of this
marriage. Of the sons, the elder, the Count Her
bert de Bismarck, has been much talked about
h propos of the scandal about his relations with a
lady celebrated for her beauty. In this sad story
he played a reprehensible role, and showed him
self as egotistical as he was cruel and weak. He
is a man very vain, very much engrossed with his
own person, very proud of his position as son of
the Chancellor, and, like almost all children of great
men, as insignificant as his father is remarkable.
In society they cringe before him on account of
the power attributed to him^ they sing to him con
tinually the song of the fox in the fable of La
Fontaine : " Eh ! good-day, Monsieur de Crow ;
how pretty you are, how handsome you appear to
me!" Unfortunately for the flatterers, it is not

68 BERLIN SOCIETY.
the Count Herbert who holds in his beak the
cheese, the object of their ambitious desires.
His brother, more serious and more thought
ful, has less brilliancy, but more of solid founda
tion to his character. He is a worker, a politi
cian by conviction, who knows how to apply him
self, but who will never succeed in becoming any
thing else than an excellent functionary. He re
sembles physically his father, morally his mother,
save a ferocity in his antipathies, which is in the
blood of all the Schoenhausens.
Their sister, Mile. Marie de Bismarck, after hav
ing seen die the fiance" of her choice, married the
Count de Rantzau, counsellor to the Ministry of
Foreign Affairs. She is the favorite of the Chan
cellor, whom she recalls by the turn of her mind.
Her intelligence is very vigorous, very broad —
much like that of the Prince her father. The
Countess de Rantzau is very skilful in devining
men, and very much inclined to mock at them.

THE BUNDESRATH. 69
THE BUNDESRATH.
(FEDERAL COUNCIL)
SEVENTH LETTER.
When the new Empire of Germany was founded
in 1870, the thing was not accomplished without
commotion. The little princes who, at Versailles,
acclaimed King William as their chief did not
resign themselves very easily to this hard neces
sity. In spite of their so-called enthusiasm, they
would not have asked anything better than to be
spared the occasion, of manifesting it. M. de Bis
marck, with his intelligence and his genius, had
comprehended the situation long before those who
were its victims ; he had anticipated this secret
irritation of the little sovereigns of Germany, and
it was to soothe the bitterness of the sacrifice ex
acted of them that he proposed the Bundesrath,
or Federal Council. This assembly, by recalling
the North German Union of former times, might
make the- little knights who crawled at the feet of
Prussia believe that they had been left the power
of participating in the affairs of their country.

70 BERLIN SOCIETY.
In reality the Bundesrath is an immense mysti
fication, the same as the Reichstag, the same as
the Ministry. The Federal Council is nothing
but an instrument in the hand of the Chancellor,
who makes it vote everything that pleases him,
and who leads it and directs it entirely at his will.
Instituted as a means of government, it has be
come a machine in the name of which one governs.
All its members are either creatures of M. de Bis
marck or enemies of his, too stupid to be danger
ous, foo insignificant to be troublesome. It is a
theatre decoration very well gotten up — that is
all. The mass of the public, who look upon the
stage with a simple opera-glass, imagine that it all
works admirably, that the trees are natural, and
the fountains real running water ; but when one
makes a little excursion upon this same stage, one
very soon discovers the illusion of which he has
been the victim. The Bundesrath serves as a
bureau of registration for the decisions of the
Chancellor. It is very useful for him as a lightning-
rod when he desires to present to Parliament
some proposed law which he knows to be anti
pathetic to it, and indispensable when it becomes
a question of rejecting a measure voted by the
Chamber. In the first case, it is the Federal

THE BUNDESRATH. 71
Council, which has insisted on affirming its inde
pendence ; in the second, it is still the Council
which is at fault. Nothing is more amusing than
M. de Bismarck confiding to his friends among
the deputies the mortification which the obstinacy
of his colleagues causes him. He plays this
comedy so frequently that sometimes one asks
what he would do if he had not this scapegoat
always at his service. You would be almost
tempted to believe that he would often find him
self embarrassed if you did not know that a man
of his stamp could never be taken unawares, and
that if the excuse of the Bundesrath were lacking
this ingenious mind would find something else.
The Federal Council has not, however, any illu
sion about the r6le it plays. In that, it shows
more wit than the Reichstag, which imagines that
it has some weight in the destinies of Germany.
The members of the Federal Council know per
fectly that their duty consists in obeying blindly
the orders given them. That is why they do not
even try to express an opinion, much less to have
the least will or the smallest initiative in anything
whatever. Their existence passes in expectation
and submission ; they represent not their sover
eigns, but a compensation accorded to their amour

72 BERLIN SOCIETY.
propre ; and In the same way as these sovereigns
are nothing more than shadows, they take ¦ the
parts of phantoms in the terrible comedy in which
the Chancellor plays the first rSle.
In Germany but small importance is attached
to the Bundesrath. Ambitious people despise it,
intelligent people ridicule it, sensible people find
it useless ; all agree in saying that it has no dig
nity, no sense of propriety, and that if there ever
was any reason for its existence, it has none under
the present circumstances, in which its influence
is nothing, its rSle purely passive, its opinions un
decided — variable, vague, and modelled upon that
of the master. However, everybody wants to
preserve it. I do not know why ; for, in truth,
for all the good that it does one could just as
easily suppress it. But it represents a principle,
one of the rare principles which, though they have
been secretly undermined, have never been at
tacked openly by the Prince de Bismarck ; and
for that reason the whole of Germany finds it ne
cessary to put this unfortunate Bundesrath under
a glass ball, through which it can be admired as
conveniently as possible.
When I use the word admired I employ an in
correct expression. I should rather have said cri-

THE BUNDESRATH. 73
ticised, for one does nothing else when one speaks
or occupies himself about the Federal Council,
which happens, to be sure, quite rarely. The
German in general thinks little of all that belongs
to politics. He is proud of the success of his
country, but brutally proud, in the manner of the
redskin who rejoices at the number, more or less
great, of the scalps which he has taken ; he is fe
rocious towards his enemy, egotistical towards his
friends ; but while proud of the elevation of his
country, he has never given himself the trouble to
investigate the causes which have brought about
this elevation. The only sentiment which he
thoroughly understands is a thirst for acquisition,
for absolute dominion. He would like the whole
world to be peopled by Germans. His only de
sire consists in maintaining and establishing every
where his supremacy. Save that, nothing excites
his passion, nothing interests him, nothing diverts
him from his daily occupation. He takes, there
fore, little interest in the way in which he is gov
erned, and does not discuss it, with the exception
of the small number of individuals whom an irre
sistible vocation urges in the direction of politics.
This little knot of spirits more or less exalted
neither admires nor esteems the Bundesrath, but

74 BERLIN SOCIETY.
submits to its existence in the same way as it bows
to the decrees of the Chancellor — that is to say,
with a stoical resignation based upon the convic
tion that for the present there is nothing to be
done against the irresistible force of existing cir
cumstances. Amongthe nullities who compose the Federal
Council, two men alone are distinguished from the
others, one by his loyal honesty, the other by his
cynical spirit : M. de Nostilz Walwitz, the repre
sentative of Saxony, and the Count Lerchenfeld,
Minister of Bavaria.
M. de Nostilz is still a diplomat wof the old
school. He is one of those men who in default
of brilliant have good sense ; in lieu of wit, a good
deal of intelligence ; in place of address, firm and
solid convictions. He is always very calm, very
cold, very polite, very reserved, — never ventures to
express lightly any opinion whatever, — and has
prudence,-tact, coolness. He has succeeded until
now in avoiding a conflict with the Chancellor,
but it has not been without difficulty. His posi
tion is that of a dog on the watch. He knows
perfectly that they would like to swallow him as
well as his country, and that they are always re
gretting the so-called independence of Saxony.

THE BUNDESRATH. 75
And notwithstanding that, he is obliged to listen
every day to hollow words of tenderness, and sim
ulate a friendship which it is permissible to believe
that he in no way feels. M. de Nostilz feels the
insignificance of his rdle, divines that still.greater
insignificance to which they would reduce Saxony,
and is perfectly aware that it is submitted to solely
from necessity ; but being powerless to change
this state of things, he resigns himself to it on his
side, and tries only to comport himself with dig
nity. He rarely combats or discusses a project of
the Chancellor; he does it only when he feels
himself sure of having with him a large majority.
Ordinarily he approves the resolutions which are
submitted to him, and in order to be circumspect
sometimes renounces the influence which he
might have. He lives always on very good terms
with his colleagues in the Council, as well as with
those of the diplomatic corps, among whom his
wife is equally well appreciated. Madame de
Nostilz is an amiable person, kind, affable, distin.
gue"e, who with more brilliancy than her husband
has sometimes less calmness — a thing, neverthe
less, very important in their respective positions.
The Count Hugo de Lerchenfeld, Minister of
Bavaria, does not resemble his Saxon colleague.

7& BERLIN SOCIETY.
He is a man still young, almost too young for the
important post he occupies. This post he ob
tained through the efforts of the Count Herbert de
Bismarck, with whom he was on terms of intimacy
at Vienna. The latter recommended him to his
father as a person likely to become a devoted
creature in every way. The Chancellor relied
upon the information given by his son, and when
the Bavarian Government (whose two last repre
sentatives at Berlin were almost expelled from it
as a sequel of famous stories), — when the Bavarian
Government, I say, asked the Prince who was the
person whom he desired to see accredited to the
Court of Prussia, the latter immediately desig
nated the Count Lerchenfeld, who has since un
derstood how to maintain himself in the good
graces of his formidable protector.
Personally the Count is very agreeable. He is
well bred, educated, has considerable wit, abun
dant tact, and as a man of» the world is charming
in social intercourse. He has travelled much,
and appropriated the brilliant features of all the
Countries he has visited, at the same time that he
has acquired some of their most dangerous faults.
He is ambitious, sometimes intriguing ; a man to
be careful of, for he has no convictions, no scru-

THE BUNDESRATH. 77
pies, except those which are contained in the
commandments of God and which existing laws
exact. He has not even vices : his heart is a
stone ; his passions are limited to that of his own
comfort ; he has never loved or hated anything
whatsoever ; he has simply made use of some,
utilized others, courted those of whom he had
need, and abandoned those who were no longer
necessary to him. He has never even been un
grateful, his nature being essentially one of those
which are ignorant of the meaning of the word
gratitude. He has confined himself to trying to
make some one water the path which he had to
travel, so as to have the dust laid, accepting this
service as a thing due to him. His devotion to
the person of the Chancellor is great ; but it is a
devotion due to the position of the Prince, not to
his individuality. M. de Lerchenfeld under
stands himself in politics, but mixes up in them
as little as possible ; he has too much regard for
his future career to compromise it by anything so
troublesome and useless as opinions other than
those that are exacted from his complaisance.
His motto ought to be, Pro me.
In spite of, or rather in consequence of, his
faults, he is a man who will always be happy,

78 BERLIN SOCIETY.
who will succeed in his career, who will be
found always amiable, and who, under cover
of his careless egotism, will make his way in
the world better than another embarrassed by a
load of passions, of convictions, of enthusiasm,
of all those sentimentalities, in fine, which our
practical nineteenth century has put out of
fashion. At the present time one has no success
unless he knows how to unite raillery with amia
bility, indifference at what is exacted of him with
the desire to succeed at all events. Now the
Count Lerchenfeld possesses this secret, and,
what is better still, he knows how to make use
of it.
Of the other members of the Bundesrath there
is nothing to say: they all resemble each other.
All of the same value, all are equally misused by
the Prince de Bismarck and treated with the same
indifference by the public.
A single one, the representative from Baden,
Baron de Turckheim, is the object of special
attentions on the part of the Emperor and the
royal family, on account of his august sovereign
the Grand Duchess Louisa de Bade, the only
daughter of King William.
The BarOn is a small man, very honest, very

THE BUNDESRATH. 79
quiet, very inoffensive, whose greatest fault con
sists in a violent antipathy against clean linen,
water, soap, and all those things in general which
savages know how to dispense with, but which
ordinarily are appreciated by civilized people.

80 BERLIN SOCIETY.

THE MINISTRY.
EIGHTH LETTER.
Like the Parliament, like the Bundesrath, the
Prussian Ministry represents a group politically
effaced. It is a little agglomeration of function
aries who for the public possess portfolios, but who
for M. de Bismarck are only superior employes,
having a little more responsibility than their
subordinates, and to whom he leaves a little less
initiative than to the simple chiefs of bureaux or
sections. Their rdle is submission ; their duty
consists in obeying the orders which they receive,
without ever discussing them. They are a little
more than domestics, and infinitely below the
position of confidants. They must not oppose
the Chancellor ; they are under obligation to de
fend him, to spare him all care ; and besides
they must be ready to submit to his remon
strances, and resigned at being dismissed the mo
ment that suits the master. In a word, they are
victims of absolute power; victims whom they do
not even take the pains to deck with flowers for

THE MINISTRY. 8 1
the sacrifice, for the Prince makes a mock at divi
nation over their remains. He executes them with
a blow of the axe, and shoves their bodies away
with his foot.
The first condition necessary for a minister in
Prussia consists in -knowing how to work without
hope of reward. The second is that of being
always ready to shoulder responsibilities which
one has not assumed. Besides that one must
have suppleness, be gifted with a certain amount
of intelligence, neither too large nor too small,
possess finesse, unembarrassed with scruples as to
profiting by the inexperience of others, and,
finally, direct and conduct one's self not accord
ing to his own ideas, but after those which are
born under the shadows of Wilhelmstrasse or in
the solitudes of Varzin. And, to sum up, one
must renounce completely his own individuality
and make a machine of himself, a machine in the
narrowest sense of the word, not ever daring to
forget, even when alone, that he is filling the rSle
of a pure mechanism.
One may conceive that it is not always easy
for M. de Bismarck to put his hand upon auxili
aries of this kind. Often he has believed he had
found them, but some revolt on their part has

82 BERLIN SOCIETY.
soon convinced him that if ambitious and imbe
cile people are numerous in this world, those
who want to follow their own ideas form a still
larger majority. He has been thus forced of late
to look for men whose social and pecuniary con
dition was so shattered that they would not have
the slightest inclination to evade his orders or de
terminations. In a word, he has striven to be
surrounded, not with co-laborers, but with ser
vants with striking livery but extinct heart. The
men who compose the present Prussian Ministry
are nothing but temporary partners, aspire to
playing no rSle, and make as little noise in their
bureaux as in the world, where they are seen but
rarely, and where they are scarcely recognized. A
single one among them, the Minister of War, en
joys a distinct personality ; he is an independent
member in this assembly of slaves, which does
not fail to irritate prodigiously the nerves of the
Chancellor; but the army is the sole institution
protected by the Emperor ; it is a sacred thing
which nobody, not even the Prince, has the right
to touch. The old sovereign, soldier at soul, has
always taken the part of the soldier; he has de
fended him, sustained him, covered him with his
imperial authority. Neither the cunning, nor the

THE MINISTRY. 83
astuteness, nor the direct attacks of M. de Bis
marck have had any success on this point ; the
Emperor has remained the sole master of his
army, and the Minister of War is responsible
only to the monarch himself for the decisions or
resolutions he takes. Naturally this post is very
difficult, on account of the false position resulting
from it. A cabinet mutually bound together
always extricates itself from embarrassment ; but
a ministry dependent in appearance upon its chief,
but in reality independent of him, always finds
itself in a painful and embarrassing position.
The Count de Roon understood very well how to
manage under these multiplied difficulties. When
he was in power, moreover, the authority and the
despotism of the Chancellor had not yet attained
their extreme limits. His successor, General
de Kameke, has already had a great deal to do to
sustain himself against the Prince, who, however,
has ended by compelling him to retire, after
long years of a quiet but implacable struggle.
General Bronsart de Schellendorff, the present
Minister of War, has been as yet too short a time
at his post to enable one to judge how he will
fulfil its duties. For this reason 1 will say but
little, save this : that when he was nominated there

84 BERLIN SOCIETY.
were rejoicings in a certain circle, indignation in
another, and some little astonishment everywhere ;
for the mass of the public, which founds its
opinion upon appearances, and which knows
nothing of what passes behind the scenes, ex
pected quite a different choice.
A nomination which has astonished nobody,
for example, was that of the Count Paul de Hatz-
feldt to the post of Secretary of State for Foreign
Affairs. They were prepared for it in advance,
and they were only surprised at the slowness with
which the matter was accomplished. This slow
ness, this delay in giving to the Count de Hatz-
feldt the title of the place whose functions he al
ready exercised, had its cause in a certain condi
tion of fortune of the new Minister, who, in debt
over his head, could not maintain his rank in a
becoming manner as long as he was in such grave
embarrassment in his circumstances. The Chan
cellor, who knew all these details, was the saving
angel of M. de Hatzfeldt, who was always num
bered among his favorites. He obtained from his
principal creditor, the banker Bleichroder, a prom
ise to refrain from pressing a part of his claims,
or at least that he would grant time before
putting them in execution; and in that way he

THE MINISTRY. 85
succeeded in assuring to the Count an existence,
if not exempt from pecuniary cares, at least free
from material obstacles and capable of being de
voted solely to the service of his master.
The Count de Hatzfeldt is one of those person
ages that are often met with among high officials ;
that is to say, one who, holding that the end jus
tifies the means, is very skilful in managing mat
ters from which he might derive a personal ad
vantage. He is neither good nor bad, although
refinedly corrupt, ambitious of fortune rather than
of glory, intelligent without being educated, in
tellectual without penetration, amiable by habit,
very agreeable as a man of the world, as a po
litical man noxious, even dangerous. He fills
his position in an admirable way : knows how to
receive ambassadors with a charming smile, dis
miss them with a gracious bow ; never allows him
self to utter an opinion ; pretends not to read the
journals, to dislike politics; and, while all the time
assuming innocence, tries to pass himself off as
very astute. At the bottom he deceives himself
more than he deceives others, for M. de Bis
marck, while permitting him to execute his plans,
does not do him the honor to confide to him his
intentions.

86 BERLIN SOCIETY.
The Count will never have, in the eyes of the
representatives of foreign countries, the authority
of his predecessor, M. de Biilow. They believe,
indeed, in his word, but they have no confidence
in his promises — perhaps because they divine that
he is not a man to respect them himself, still less
to keep them in opposition to his formidable
chief. He is, notwithstanding, generally liked in
society, where one does not trouble himself ordi
narily about the morality or antecedents of those
to whom one gives the hand, provided that they
have a recognized position. His frank bearing
often gives rise to a mistaken view of him, and
the natural easiness of his character has made him
many friends. As a public man he represents
nothing; as a private individual certain reserva
tions must be made, and he is only worthy funda
mentally of that ordinary sympathy which every
well-bred man inspires who converses ten minutes
agreeably. Count Paul was married to a very pretty wo
man, an American lady, from whom he is divorced,
and who is surrounded with numerous admirers.
Among these last it is not rare to see M. de Hatz
feldt himself, making his court with such perfect
ease that I have often taken upon, myself in

THE MINISTRY. %7
my romantic hours to wish him renewed suc
cess. There is nothing to say of the other Ministers,
for they do not represent any power, any opinion,
or even any, individuality whatever. They are
very active, each in his department ; and while
watching with extreme care the affairs which are
in their province, they do not mix up with any of
the great questions of general politics. With
these they interest themselves very little. They
are admirable bureaucrats, incapable of compro
mising the great work with which they are associ
ated, but equally incapable of directing it, of con
ducting it, or leading it to a successful termina
tion. They are only specialists, or rather utilite's.
But what will become of all these automatons
the day when the skilful hand that moves them
no longer bestows upon them that impulse which
they will be powerless to find in their own proper
movement ? The motive which has determined
the Chancellor to surround himself with what are
simply active nullities has its grandeur, for it has
permitted him to execute all his projects without
the least opposition ; iti has procured for the gen
eral soldiers of a blind obedience. But, on the
other hand, the tyranny of M. de Bismarck has

88 BERLIN SOCIETY.
had the disadvantage for Germany of destroying
all the men capable of replacing the Colossus to
whom it is to-day surrendered. The Prince is the
living embodiment of a system, of a policy, of a
government, of all which constitutes the life and
organism of a nation. The Colossus having dis
appeared, without doubt the Empire of Germany
will continue to exist ; but of that which sustained
it there will remain nothing but feet of clay.

THE POLITICS OF PRUSSIA. 89

THE POLITICS OF PRUSSIA.
NINTH LETTER.
In my character of an old diplomat, you antici
pate that I should speak to you of general poli
tics. Do not hope for any long developments upon
this subject ; I shall devote to it but a few pages.
The questions which touch upon diplomacy are
not of a kind that can be treated in a space as
restricted as the limits of a letter. Moreover, you
have not yet attained the age when one gets en
thusiastic over politics. It is a thing in which one
is interested later, at the time when life is cold and
clear as a maxim of La Rochefoucauld. You are
still at that moment when one sees only the fact
itself, without looking for the causes or the cir
cumstances, sometimes insignificant, which have
brought it about. You are, however, curious to
know my opinion upon an alliance between Prus
sia and Russia, or upon the intimate union which
seems to exist between the courts of Vienna and
of Berlin. I have not the leisure to dwell upon
the thousand little details which would prove to

90 BERLIN SOCIETY.
you that this union and this understanding are
not and never will be anything but expedients,
and that they remind one too much of the false
hoods which Frederick II. made use of, not, I con
fess, without success.
Before Frederick II., and already in the times of
the great Elector, the policy of Prussia had always
consisted in simulating friendships and striving to
make dupes. Thanks to this system, wisely con
ducted and ingeniously pursued, she succeeded,
little by little, or rather her princes have succeed
ed for her, in imposing herself upon surprised
Europe, and in forcing her to bow before the an
cient tributary of Poland. Remark, I pray you,
that this greatness has not been owing to the ef
forts or the valor of the country, but is simply
the work of some men who through many gener
ations have pursued the same object, and in whom
the entire nation is incarnated. The German in
general, the Prussian in particular, has a blind
faith in the energy of the house of Hohenzollern.
The nature of the German is calm, good at bot
tom, ferocious only by fits and starts, indolent,
apathetic, capable of perseverance, but not of ini
tiative. The Prussian carries to the highest point
the virtue of obedience, but he is ignorant of the

THE POLITICS OF PRUSSIA. 9 1
art of giving any other orders than are given to
him. He is born to be a soldier, has the enthusi
asm and ambition for it, loves to conquer, is
strangely avaricious of the property of others,
covets what he is lacking in, but will not confess
it. Not being able to appropriate to himself the
moral qualities for which he is ambitious, he has a
horror of them in the case of his neighbor, and for
that reason wishes absolutely to assimilate this
neighbor, hoping that some miracle of transfusion
will take place. The ideal of these convictions and
sympathies of the German people the reigning
house has thoroughly understood how to realize.
It has taken the word " conquer" for a motto, and
slowly, with premeditation, with energy, has ap
plied itself to satisfying that voracious appetite
which distinguishes the Teutonic race. This is
why, for more than a hundred years past, the pol
icy of Prussia has appeared so able, so consistent
in its object, and why it has been in reality so vari
able, uniting itself to those whom it should have
combated with as much facility as it combated
those with whom it ought to have united ; so de
void of prejudices, so exempt from prepossessions,
so completely indifferent to all system ; in fine, so
entirely egotistical. The Hohenzollerns would

92 BERLIN SOCIETY.
have considered the pursuit of an object such as
that followed up by Richelieu when wishing to
lower the house of Austria, as a weakness. Prus
sia has never understood power otherwise than as
founded upon great territorial possessions ; it has
always been ruled by envy, jealousy, vengeance ;
in a word, by the worst human sentiments. The
Hohenzollerns have always had the conviction
that they were raised up by God to aggrandize
the nation, whose instincts they have appeased
rather than elevated the character. Prussian pol
icy has always consisted in flattering, then in
abandoning and crushing, those who have had the
simplicity to believe in its protestations of friend
ship or of devotion. It understood how to lull
asleep the vigilance of France in 1866, acquire the
sympathies of Russia in 1870, conciliate England
at the Congress of Berlin, and attack Austria by
an alliance a year later. Its plan has never been
anything else than to embroil nations among
themselves or foment domestic difficulties by
which to profit.
It was thus that she rejoiced at the annexation
of Bosnia and Herzegovina by the house of Haps
burg, and that she contributed with all her power
to the creation of a Bulgaria, by the aid of which

THE POLITICS OF PRUSSIA. 93
it was possible for her to irritate the nerves ofthe
Cabinet of Saint Petersburg, and revive one day
the eternal question of the East. She wishes to
be mixed up with everything, hover over every
thing, but simply from egotism and never from
lofty ambition. She is intriguing, but formidable •
for she is not susceptible of any enthusiasm, is
inaccessible to pity, and bases her action upon
the coldest, the most exact, the most merciless
calculation. She is never more to be feared than
at the moment when she seems well disposed
toward her neighbors ; never to be so much mis
trusted as when protesting her love for peace.
Much has been said of the harmony which ex
isted between the courts of Prussia and of Rus
sia, and one has striven still harder to prove
that since the death of Alexander II. this har
mony and these pleasant relations have been very
much cooled. I believe that this view is false, so
far at least as concerns Russia, which, in spite of
the excited cries of certain journals, has not the
penetration to perceive the danger it runs. At
Berlin, on the contrary, they wish now to concili
ate the sympathies of Alexander III.; first, in or
der to prevent any good understanding between.
him and France, and, second, because it has been

94 BERLIN SOCIETY.
determined to urge him forward against Austria,
whom they are beginning to find troublesome. f
You will protest against it on reading this, but
if you observe events with care you will see that
I am right. For a long time there has existed a
secret rivalry between the Hohenzollerns and the
Hapsburgs. The first have already succeeded in
wresting from the second the diadem of Charle
magne and of Barbarossa; but they still are angry
with them for the retention of that imperial title
which they must share with them, and cannot
accustom themselves to that rival empire with
which they are obliged to reckon. Their dream
takes delight in the hope of driving back to Hun
gary the heirs of Maria Theresa and of absorb-
ing the Austrian provinces into the great German
country. This dream they will realize one day —
for they don't know what defeat is. Then they
will abandon Russia, who will have lent them her
aid unreflectingly, and will think themselves mas
ters of Europe and of the world until a coalition
of all the other powers arouses them from their
proud sleep; perhaps even then they will know
how to avoid new perils, for they are as crafty as
they are strong.
But, you will ask me, are there no means of ar-

THE POLITICS OF PRUSSIA. 95
resting the extension of the power which threat
ens all nations ? Alas ! my young friend, I do
not see any. In all times the barbarians have
triumphed, and brute force has always got the
better of intelligence, genius, mind, refinement, and,
in short, the charm of civilization. The old Roman
Empire itself was unable to repel the shock of
the Teutonic hordes. How then can you expect
that our present society could resist it ? To-day
fraternity is ignored ; they don't know how to
unite against danger. The only thing which
would be capable of distracting the attention of
Prussia would consist in abandoning to her Aus
tria, the object of her secret covetousness, on the
condition of restoring Alsace-Lorraine to France,
and allowing Russia to install herself at Con
stantinople ; but a Richelieu would be needed to
realize such a conception, and we have not even
a Mazarin in all Europe. England, moreover,
would always oppose such a project, and no one
is strong enough to shut her mouth. On the
other hand, France does play at present a suffi
ciently important political rdle to be able to weigh
in the European balance, and Russia does not
understand sufficiently its true interests to dis
pense with this consideration and conclude an

96 BERLIN SOCIETY.
alliance against the common enemy. I do not
see then in the future any obstacle to the contin
uation, nor even to the extension, of the power
of Germany, unless Providence should send it a
sovereign who will understand the true interests
of his country better than his predecessors have ;
who will apply himself to establishing his suprem
acy by a noble use of his powers, and who espe
cially will take into account that the largest and
most solid tree can still be thrown down by a
tempest if it stands alone and solitary, while it
runs less danger when it rises in a forest whose
friendly branches could protect it against the
storm. But I perceive that what I am telling
you are dreams, and I stop for fear that you will
mock at my gray hairs and my diplomatist visions.

M. DE WINDTHORST AND THE CATHOLICS. C>7

M. DE WINDTHORST AND THE CATHO
LICS.
TENTH LETTER.
I have already spoken of the leader and of the
party in my letter on the subject of the Reichs
tag : to-day I wish to give you a slight sketch of
the man as well of his adherents. M. de Windt-
horst is a personality as curious to study physi
cally as morally. His fine, intelligent and sym
pathetic physiognomy belongs to the number of
those which incrust themselves in the memory.
His almost microscopic figure is not, however, ri
diculous: his eyes sparkle with spirit, his exterior
is that of a person always in motion, always agi
tated, always on the look-out for some way to
make itself talked about. His voice, sweet and
sonorous at the same time, is admirably adapted
to sustain the contests of the tribune ; the ironi
cal note is the most developed in his language,
and his cutting sarcasms, cruelly premeditated,
know how to pierce the hardest of cuirasses. He
is one of the best orators of the Reichstag; his

98 BERLIN SOCIETY.
captivating eloquence is of the kind which moves
the masses and agitates them without their know
ing why themselves. If one analyzes in detail,
one discovers very quickly that M. de Windthorst
has only the oratorical art, and not that knowledge'
of things, that severe logic, which fortifies the rea
soning of M. de Bismarck. A speech of the
Catholic leader moves, however, but without con
vincing. The thought of the orator never goes
beyond the capacity of his audience ; he addresses
himself to its passions, arouses its evil instincts,
excites to hatred rather than tries to persuade
those who listen to him. The " Pearl of Meppen,"
as they have nicknamed M. de Windthorst, has an
immense ascendancy over the imagination of all
those who see in him a champion of oppressed
liberty : these enthusiasts do not suspect that un
der these fine phrases is concealed one of the most
autocratic characters in the world. This little
man, with such benevolent mien, such exquisite
politeness, with a spirit of such agreeable raillery,
is in reality one of those domineering natures
which can never resign themselves to the abdica
tion of power. Once minister of the King of
Hanover, M. de Windthorst was destined by the
very nature of things to belong to the party of

M. DE WINDTHORST AND THE CATHOLICS. 99
opposition, and to combat the Prussian Govern
ment without cessation or relaxation. His posi
tion as Catholic has permitted him to accentuate
this conflict, and to rally to himself many persons
who would have been unwilling to offer asylum
and support to a chief of the Guelph party. His
bold spirit very quickly acquired for him an undis
puted authority over all the Ultramontanes — for
the most part very ordinary people ; his marvel
lous address permitted him to conceal his plans
from them and not to allow them to suspect his
unbounded ambition.
M. de Windthorst would have long since be
come tired of his ungracious rdle if he had not
been overmastered by the secret desire to become
again minister. He dreamed of his own triumph
while all the time saying that he was working for
that of his friends. He had already made some
advances to the Chancellor, who, having need of
him and of his party, very graciously received
them. M. de Bismarck, who knows perfectly
what dependence he could place upon the aspira
tions of his spiritual adversary, has profited from
them quite often and always managed to have a
great service rendered by him in exchange for
some little concession. These two adversaries

IOO. BERLIN SOCIETY.
divine each other sometimes ; but the Prince has
generally the advantage in the daily contests in
which they are engaged, for he never loses his
coolness : besides, he is not, like M. de Windt
horst, embarrassed by his friends, who frequently
hamper the movements of the former counsellor
of King George.
It is difficult to direct a party, especially when
this party is dominated neither by the love of
country nor by that of liberty, nor even by ambi
tion. Catholic activity has for incentive only the
triumph of a principle, which it understands indif
ferently, moreover, but to which it clings as a
drowning man to a straw. It is evident that the
Catholic Church will never obtain in Prussia the
supremacy which it covets. It is, then, solely a
question of inventing a modus vivendi, which will
permit it to live in peace with the Protestant
State. But this object will never be attained
otherwise than by a direct accord between the
Court of Rome and the Cabinet of Berlin. This
accord — if the Chancellor succeeds in concluding
it — will strike with a mortal blow the party of the
Centre, which will through that action lose the
reason for its existence and all pretext for con
test. An understanding with the Vatican would

M. DE WINDTHORST AND THE CATHOLICS. IOI
be for M. de Bismarck a complete triumph, for he
would rid the government of its most ardent ene
mies, but he would create by it so great a number
of others, that it would be better for him to keep
those he has.
M. de Bismarck is perfectly aware of the
difficulty of this situation. As long as things
are in their present statu quo, it is always easy
for him to obtain a majority, either by alluring
the Ultramontanes with the promise of a con
cession, or by satisfying the Liberals by the
rigorous accomplishment and carrying into
execution of some clause of the May laws.
Once an arrangement concluded with the Vati
can, he would lose these two so convenient
means for the passage of his projects of law,
and besides, would find himself surrounded with
enemies, of whom some would accuse him of
having abandoned them, while others would-be
incensed at him for having removed their pre
text for war.
In fact, the Centre would be very unhappy if
it could no longer attack the government. It
is a party which is organized solely to fight; it
is not capable of following any other policy than
that of combat. If it were but half victorious

102 BERLIN SOCIETY.
it would soon disintegrate, and be scattered in
such a way that it would be no longer possible
to reconstruct itself at a given moment. The
narrow spirit which has at all times distinguished
the Ultramontanes renders them unfit for anything
else than for obstinacy. They do not know what
politics are, as far as they are based upon abstract
principle. They have a still more vague idea of
their application : all their force, all their efforts,
consist in a desperate opposition to all progress,
either in the domain of literature or that of
science and arts, or even in that which creates
every nation by civilizing it and freeing it from
prejudices which cramp it. One cannot love two
things at the same time ; and when one allows
himself to be absorbed by the church he always
ends by becoming indifferent to his country. The
Germans have reason to hate the Catholic party ;
and I am not astonished to see the anti-clerical
organs of France often applaud the clericals of
the Reichstag. For such is the blindness of the
Catholics that they would not hesitate to call
the foreigners to their aid if they believed that
by so doing they would render service to their
cause. M. de Windthorst, with his clear-sighted spirit,

M. DE WINDTHORST AND THE CATHOLICS. 103
is perfectly aware of this fanaticism, but exploits
it for his own particular use, and alone, perhaps,
among his adherents does not share the con
victions which he defends. These convictions
he tries without relaxation to strengthen among
his friends in order always to be able to dispose
of an army by the aid of which he can gently
lead M. de Bismarck to surrender. He does not
perceive that at this constant play — to give with
one hand what one withdraws with the other —
one ends by becoming discredited in the eyes of
the public, which observes all these manoeuvres,
and which after all represents opinion.
The Chancellor himself comprehends very well
the profit he draws from these little Parliamentary
scenes, and when they are lacking to him for
too long a time, he provokes them. He has
always made a system of putting his adversaries
at variance, and it is owing to these trickeries
that he has obtained his best successes. His
alliance, or even his friendship, always injures
those who accept it; so his last and sure method
of ridding himself of his enemies is to make them
believe that he experiences remorse for his past
conduct towards them.
The thing is easily observable — the Prince

104 BERLIN SOCIETY.
entertaining a sort of pride in not varying his
methods. The Catholic party has not known
how to anticipate or avoid this state of relations
with the Chancellor. Thus one could say that its
agony begins. The Ultramontanes rejoice at their
last successes. M. de Windthorst sees already
within his grasp the portfolio he covets' ; but the
future is there, and it will destroy, little by little,
these illusions, will overthrow these hopes, will
prove to all these ambitious deceived people
that when one has opposed to him an enemy
like M. de Bismarck, one must not at any price
temporize with him, but fight him always, con
tinually, without relaxation, cessation, or mercy,
to the very last, until one triumphs over him,
or until one is overthrown after having lost
everything save honor.

M. BEBEL AND THE SOCIALISTS. 105

M. BEBEL AND THE SOCIALISTS.
ELEVENTH letter.
It is not the Socialists that one can accuse
of bargaining with the enemy. Never has a
political party so well defended a desperate cause;
never a handful of men made proof of such
indomitable and such manly energy. The
Socialists in Germany are neither brothers, nor
Russian Nihilists, nor French Communists. They
have indeed affinities with them and resemblance
to them; they employ, it is true, the same
methods: but their object is different, and their
ideal, if I may thus express myself, reposes
upon quite different foundations. They are not
rebels: they are indignant people. They do not
rise against the superiority of one social caste
over another; they protest only against the
accumulation of power in despotic hands, and
against that of money in avaricious hands ; they
protest against that absolute disdain of the fate
of the poor classes with which M. de Bismarck-
governs. The most ferocious among them, those

Io6 BERLIN SOCIETY.
who proclaim loudly their doctrines of murder
and fire, have not reached this degree of exal
tation except by the force of suffering. The
German, as I have said to you many times, is
indifferent to all questions of government pro
vided he has his cabbage soup, and can eat it
quietly. What does the governmental form with
which he is oppressed matter to him? There
is then but a small number of individuals who
allow themselves to be moved by the miseries
of the people, by the hardness of the workman's
lot. It is this little number which composes the
Socialistic party, and which* has never succeeded
in gathering together very many adherents,
because of the mute passivity of those 'the
indigence of whom it takes to heart and whose
interests it defends with so much warmth.
Never will the Socialists succeed in becoming
popular. They have everything necessary to
attract the masses, but the soil upon which they
labor is still too virgin to be subjected to the
influence of their culture. The entire nation is
too brutalized by its hard military slavery to
admit even the thought that it can be delivered
from it. This is why there are only desperate
cases or vagabonds who join the Socialistic

M. BEBEL AND THE SOCIALISTS. 107
party, of which the chiefs alone are convinced
and enthusiastic for their cause.
In the Reichstag the position of the Socialists
is most painful. Everybody avoids them ; all
parties equally fear them. Their course has
remained none the less admirable in its logic,
and the persistence with which they follow up
their object. Although few in number, they
never bargain with anybody for their assistance
when it becomes a question of making a demon
stration in favor of that liberty to which they
have devoted themselves. They have known
how constantly to maintain an independence so
much the more remarkable, as it is a thing al
most unknown in German Parliamentary circles:
they have never made concessions to anybody,
and have disdained those which were demanded
of them. They have never compromised their
dignity, and have known how sometimes to
move their most obstinate adversaries by the
savage but sublime eloquence with which they
have demanded for everybody liberty, and for
¦the poor as for the rich the rights of citizens,
Their, formulas are evidently inapplicable, their
plan unrealizable, their aspirations unreasonable,
their appreciation even of human nature too

108 BERLIN SOCIETY.
exalted, for a society such as they dream of
could never exist with the vices, the covetous
ness, the meannesses, and the ambitions which
are the characteristics of poor mortals; but I
repeat it again, their ideal is divine, and approaches
that preached by Christ upon the mountain.
All that is gentle, mystic, in the German
. nature, is condensed in them : they have suc
ceeded in imagining to themselves that peace,
concord, happiness, are things possible in our
sad world, and that man has the right to make
use of everything — even of lead and fire — in
order to assure them and consolidate their
triumph. This conviction- is evidently an error; but it
communicates to those who profess it an ardor
similar to that which animated the soldiers of
Mahomet II. when the old Greek Empire fell
into their hands, and when Islam installed itself
as master at Constantinople. Socialism is a kind
of Koran likewise, but a Koran corrected and
adapted to the needs and aspirations of our time.
It is a religion in its way: it is even the only
one which science has not yet undermined in
the nineteenth century. It has its enthusiasts,
its fanatics, its priests, and even its martyrs,

M. BEBEL AND THE . SOCIALISTS. log
especially in Germany, where it has not its
source in evil sentiments. It is the product of
the natural poesy of a people whose ideal is
personified by the Gretchen of Goethe. Socialism,
as it is understood and professed in the country
of the immortal poet, would constitute a peril
of the gravest kind if it were met with in another
country personified in the same manner; but in
a nation incapable of enthusiasm, too calm to
be dominated by momentary impressions, not
susceptible of becoming heated by theories,
softened by words, or moved by sobs, it will
remain for a long time yet a chimera, which
will only be a danger for some exalted souls,
which are always shivered by contact with the
tranquillity and indifference of the nation in
general. This nation combats it now with all
its power, because it d.oes not comprehend it,
and because it imagines that the senseless decla
mations of M. Hasselman are the same thing
as the extreme but logical opinions of M. Bebel,
his friend apparently, his adversary in reality.
It is a remarkable figure — that of M. Bebel. Son
of a workman, a workman himself, he has only
succeeded to the' position which he actually occu
pies by force of perseverance, energy, and will.

IIO BERLIN SOCIETY.
He has educated himself, and by the sole power
of his talent has organized his party, given it a
direction, and finally disciplined it. He is a man
of conviction rather than an extremist. He is not
ferocious, and admits destruction only as a means,
without erecting it into a principle. He has no
hatred against the great of the earth ; but he wants
power to be accessible to all, not concentrated in
the hands of a few. He desires that this power
should be the recompense of talent, not the crown
ing of a glory bought by the blood of thousands
of victims. He admits no other superiority than
that of the mind, of intelligence and labor. He
dreams especially of the amelioration of the lot
of the working classes, and demands above every
thing else universal liberty — religious, social, ma
terial. He is an apostle, in a word, but not a
fanatic. A remarkable orator, his speech is per
suasive ; not like that of M. de Windthorst, by a
factitious eloquence of words well arranged and
grouped together, but by a convincing terseness,
by the truth itself, with which he paints the mis
eries of oppressed humanity, by the warmth he
shows in communicating his thought to his audi
ence, in making it share his opinions, and bringing
it to acknowledge the truth of his assertions. He

M. BEBEL AND THE SOCIALISTS. Ill
knows how to speak of poverty, of misery, of
vice, as a man who has observed these things close
at hand and who has suffered from them. He
knows how to melt those who listen to him, not
by factitious sufferings, but by real facts ; he com
pels tears, not for insignificant things, but for the
hardship of the people's existence, of the work
man, of him who fights, who toils, who struggles
against indigence and penury, and who will revolt
one day against all the filth, the dirt, the corrup
tion which surround him ; against that luxury, the
product of his toil ; against that gold amassed in
the vaults of the Jewish bankers, friends of M. de
Bismarck, by the aid of which grand seigneurs
wrest from him his daughters to make of them filles
de joie. Chat is what M. Bebel relates ; that is
what he points out to the attention of all, the
poor as well as the rich, the powerful as well as
the weak ; and that is what they will never pardon
him for; that is what makes them hunt him down
as a wild beast, and wage a desperate war against
him, and insist upon confounding him with those
who, quite as irreligious but less merciful than he,
wish to destroy a society which they have de
spaired of converting.
It is to this category that belongs M. Hasselman,

112 BERLIN SOCIETY.
who formerly was much talked about, and who
represents a. perfect type of a hardened desperado.
His speeches are from one end to the other pane
gyrics of murder and assassination. When the
law directed against the Socialists was presented
to the Reichstag for the second time, the violence
of his words contributed not a little to its passage.
Moreover, his friends themselves are quite aware
of the injury which his language and opinions do
their cause, and they were not at all dissatisfied
when events forced him to withdraw from the
parliamentary arena. For many people M.
• Hasselman represents Socialism entirely, and few
of them suspect that in Germany the majority of
its adherents are honest enthusiasts, as is M. Bebel,
with captivating speech — ideas falsified Jay a too
great love of justice and equality, by aspirations
impossible of realization in a positive age like
ours, by projects impossible of execution in an
epoch when a cimeter brandished in the air is not
sufficient to convert the world to the paradise of
Mahomet. » '

COUNT VON MOLTKE. I 13

THE COUNT VON MOLTKE— THE MAR
SHAL VON MANTEUFFEL— THE
GENERAL VON KAMEKE.
twelfth letter.
The Count von Moltke is a tall old man, thin
and lean, quite taciturn, very vigorous still for his
eighty years, with cold exterior, polished man
ners, awkward gestures, and on the whole rather
insignificant. In society he likes to efface himself,
being naturally very modest, and appears to suffer
from the homage and respect with which he is
surrounded. He rarely hazards an opinion in
public, and some grave circumstance or extra
ordinary event is necessary to decide him to
abandon his habitual reserve. He disdains the
world, as well as the judgments of the crowd ;
firmly convinced that the destinies of the people
depend upon those who govern them, he is of the
opinion that it is the governors alone who should
hold power in their hands, without ever initiating
the subalterns into their projects. He is not a
politician; he is a soldier, who wishes to enjoy

114 BERLIN SOCIETY.
as a soldier the fruits of his labors and profit
to the fullest extent made possible by his
victories. He is not ambitious, but avaricious
of the blood of his troops, and for that reason
desirous of the spoils of the enemy, in order to
render this enemy incapable of harm in con
sequence of their exhaustion. He has no pity
for those whom fate has arrayed against him ; he
pursues them with his vengeance, in order to take
away from them all inclination for future revolt
and retaliation. He does not like to have any
thing to do with an adversary whom he believes
formidable or whom he judges dangerous. It is
thus that he rejoiced at the death of General
Skobeleff, and allowed his satisfaction to be seen
on the occasion of that of Gambetta. He has a
sincere horror of war, although it is to that he
owes his present position ; but he finds when
once engaged that he must continue it to the end,
and tries to draw from it all advantages possible
by crushing his adversary. In general he is a man
inaccessible to all emotion ; his kindness, even,
is mechanical. All sentiment appears to him
weakness, of no value ; he loves nobody. He has
such a fear of being accused of allowing himself
to be influenced by anything else, than by a fact

COUNT VON MOL TKAE. 1 1 5
or a demonstration, that he ends by committing
real injustice. Although he has great influence,
he is not known to have any favorites or prote'ge's.
In a word, he is a recluse who lives shut up in his
egotism, and who detests being disturbed in his
tranquillity ; cold by nature, impassible, incapable
of doing good to anybody ; never having in the
course of a long life obliged anybody nor asked
anything of any one.
He is the greatest tactician of the age. This is a
recognized fact, which even his most bitter ene
mies have admitted ; but his is not a genius which
would have been capable of manifesting itself on
a great occasion without the aid of circumstances.
He was discovered by others: which was very
fortunate for Germany, for he would never have
been in a state to reveal himself, to have raised
himself to command by himself merely. It can
not be denied that he knows how to profit by the
opportunities which are offered to him ; but he is
a complete nullity in the ordinary course of ex
istence. People have been many times deceived
with respect to him. When he solicited per
mission to quit the Danish service to pass to that
of the Prussian army,- the Minister of War, in
making his report to the King upon this request,

Il6 BERLIN SOCIETY.
added this: "The departure of Captain von
Moltke will not be a great loss for the Danish
army." If the man who was of this opinion still
lives, he must make very strange reflections upon
his former perspicacity.
They attribute generally to the old Mashal a
great political influence. Nothing is more incor
rect. The Count von Moltke has never been oc
cupied with governmental affairs, and has never
even been consulted upon the subject. During
the war of 1 870 his advice was not followed ex
cept in a military point of view ; and if the Prince
de Bismarck has sometimes put him forward, it
has always been as a sort of lightning-conductor
to turn aside from his own head the maledictions
of his dupes or of his victims. The only function
in which he has exercised an immense power has
been that of chief-of-staff ; and here on many
occasions he has triumphed over the Chancellor
himself, who has never exercised his tyranny over
things pertaining to the army.
These two last years M. von Moltke has with
drawn more completely into his shell. Since he
has had for adjutant the Count de Waldersee he
occupies himself, but little -with the affairs of his
department, which, moreover, are beginning to

MARSHAL VON MANTEUFFEL. 1 17
become too burdensome for his age. Many times
already he has begged for his dismissal, but always
without success. He continues, then, to fill his
post ; he even supports sometimes by his voice
the laws which the government submits to the
Reichstag. Truth obliges me to add that these
occasions are rare, and only present themselves
when some cause almost desperate is in question.
If the Count von Moltke is a man of the sword,
the Marshal von Manteuffel is a man of the pen.
A diplomat rather than soldier, he is more apt at
politics than at war. He is an upright character,
upon whose assertions one may rely. He is de
voted to his King, to his country, but will not
prove that devotion by conduct which his enemies
can qualify as disloyal. His nature is energetic,
yet at the same time conciliatory. He will never
bargain with what he considers his duty, but will
try always to fulfil it in a way as little disagreeable
as possible for others. He is not a selfish man.
He is incapable of avenging himself of an injury
done to him personally, or even of a calumny of
which he has been the victim. His reputation is
without stain; the inflexibility of his principles so
well established that no one, not even the Chan
cellor, has tried to shake them. His position in

Il8 BERLIN SOCIETY.
Alsace-Lorraine is one of the most difficult ; it was
only after long hesitation that he decided to accept
it, not without having stipulated in advance that
he should be left full liberty to govern these
provinces after his own ideas and not according
to instructions received from Berlin. These con
ditions were not to the taste of M. de Bismarck,
who loves to rule everywhere, even where he has
nothing to do. He was, however, obliged to con
sent to it from necessity — a little also on account of
the Emperor, who was very desirous that this post
should be occupied by M. von Manteuffel.
The Marshal, moreover, made great efforts at
the beginning of his government not to wound
the sentiments of the governed. He often made
proof of all the tact of which a German is capable,
and many times he has striven to modify the vig-
rous measures of the government or avoid apply
ing them. He has had at all times an eye to
popularity, and through a blindness strange in
a man ordinarily so perspicacious has desired to
obtain it in Alsace-Lorraine. His relations with
M. de Bismarck are of the coolest. The Chancel
lor dislikes the Marshal for his loyal independence,
and the latter has a secret contempt for the du
plicity of the Prince, whose place he covets from

GENERAL VON KAMEKE. II9
the bottom of his heart. He would know how,
moreover, to fulfil its duties better perhaps than
his rival. M. von Manteuffel would not be sorry
to quit Strasburg, where he is not pleased, and
where he feels himself ill at ease, as an honest man
always is when he is condemned by the force of
events and circumstances to accomplish a task re
pugnant to his nature.
The General von Kameke, formerly Minister of
War, is an individual whom you will perhaps have
occasion to meet, and of whom it is necessary for
that reason that I should say a word. He is a lit
tle man, very active, very obliging, very amiable,
although ordinary, whose influence has always been
insignificant, whose best intentions have been
paralyzed and reduced to nothing by the hatred
borne him by the Chancellor. Between these two
personages has been waged for ten years a quiet
war, in which naturally M. von Kameke has been
vanquished. The Emperor liked him, however,
and was anxious to keep him ; but the General
ended by comprehending that his position was
impossible, and that his dignity even would be
affected if he persisted in remaining in a post
from which one more powerful than himself in
sisted upon seeing him depart. He retired then in

120 BERLIN SOCIETY.
time for himself, and now tries to forget the
troubles which he had to go through with. He is
a brave man and a good soldier, of moderate in
telligence, well-balanced mind, incapable of sur
rendering himself to any intrigue whatever, des
titute of sharpness, too honest to make his way
successfully in the world, and who during all the
time that he occupied the ministry strove to do
there the most good possible, for which they have
not been sufficiently grateful to him.

f A

THE PRINCELY FAMILIES. 121

THE PRINCELY FAMILIES.
thirteenth letter.
They are the only ones that still enjoy some
privileges. They are at Court the object of
special distinctions, which do not fail to excite
much envy and to be often disputed. In a country
where militarism reigns in such an absolute fash
ion as in Prussia, it is natural that one should not
see with favorable eye one caste dominating all
others, and enjoying a. rank refused to old gen
erals who have shed their blood for their country.
However, in spite of the secret and constant war
made upon them, the princely families have suc
ceeded in maintaining themselves in their rights.
The German pride has not yielded, and the me
diatized and other princes still have the precedence
over everybody at the Court receptions. Never
theless they have been obliged to resign them
selves to various encroachments upon their former
privileges ; such, for example, as the elevated rank
accorded by the Emperor to the chevaliers of the
order . of the Black Eagle. The ranking which

122 BERLIN SOCIETY.
gave to the chevaliers of the order the precedence
over the princes was the occasion of a frightful
scandal in the high society of Berlin. There were
cries, protestations. Many princesses refused in
vitations to a Court ball, and the tumult ended by
attaining such proportions that, to have peace
and satisfy at least the Serene Highnesses of his
Court, the Emperor decided that the wives of the
chevaliers of the Black Eagle should not share in
their husbands' honor. This compromise, which
satisfied nobody, still appeased the first tempest,
and since that time there reigns between the two
camps a kind of armed peace worse perhaps than
an openly declared war.
These absurdities will make you smile, without
doubt, but in Berlin they have an enormous im
portance. It is upon questions of precedence and
etiquette that modern life turns. To dispute
about rank is an occupation like any other, and
does not exceed the measure of certain intelli
gences. The nubmer of princely families established in
the capital is quite restricted. The majority of
the great houses sojourn there a few weeks, dur
ing the session of the House of Lords ; they leave
it as soon as the session closes.

THE PRINCELY FAMILIES. 1 23
But few of these families pass there the entire
winter ; still less have they there a house, or even
apartments ; and to those who go to some
expense for society, they can be counted upon
one's fingers.
In the first rank must be placed the Ratibors.
The Duke de Ratibor, President of the House of
Lords,is one of the greatest landholders of Silesia,
where he enjoys a great influence. He even, at the
time of the beginning of the Kulturkampf, played
a political rdle in consequence of the famous ad
dress presented to the Emperor by some Catholics
who rallied to the support of the so-called May
Laws. The Duke de Ratibor has also, they say,
been slightly touched by the Strousberg failure.
But so influential a man as he always succeeds in
getting out of a scrape, especially when his influ
ence and his vote might be of some use to his
government. It was in virtue and by force of this
axiom that the Duke succeeded in keeping afloat
when everybody else was drowned.
Personally, he is an amiable man, an accom
plished grand seigneur, as such not sinning by
top much mind, but intelligent nevertheless, and
knowing how to extricate himself from no matter

124 BERLIN SOCIETY.
what difficult situation. He has qualities which
seem contradictory, and proceed at the same time
from tact and brutality. There are in his charac
ter many gaps, especially in the domain of prin
ciples and convictions, but he knows perfectly
how fo cover up these deficiencies. He possesses
at Berlin a very handsome house, of which he
does the honors admirably, and where he gives
from time to time a ball, always brilliant, always
honored by the presence of the royal family, which
"treats him with especial consideration. The
Duchess, ne'e Princess of Fiirstenberg, is a woman
of such perfect merit that it is difficult to de
scribe her. Goodness, charity, benevolence —
nothing is lacking in her. She supports with
admirable resignation the thorns in her life, which
they say, nevertheless, are very sharp. Her whole
existence is consecrated to the good of her fel
lows, and if ever any one in this world was worthy
of the respect and veneration of all, it is surely
the Duchess of Ratibor.
Her sister, married to the Duke of Ujest, yields
nothing to her in point of virtue. As to the
Duke himself, his portrait can be soon drawn.
He is neither ambitious nor egotistical: he is
simply a man who has always sought to satisfy

THE PRINCELY FAMILIES. 1 25
his fancies, even if they cost him something be
sides money.
For some years he has been seen but rarely in
Berlin, where he never stays more than two or
three days. The Prince de Bismarck caresses him
while holding him in his power; the Emperor is
amiable to him (as he is in truth to everybody);
society receives him without welcoming him ; the
demi-monde appreciates him as one of its most
generous benefactors.
The Count Otto de Stolberg-Wernigerode,
chief of the earldom, formerly sovereign of that
name, is the most intelligent among the medi
atized princes who ornament the Court of Ber
lin. He has filled with tact many important
posts, and has even exercised for some months the
functions of Vice-Chancellor. He is a modest,
though active man, not* destitute of ambition,
loving his country sincerely, but who has been
unable, precisely by reason of these qualities, to
come to an understanding with M. de Bismarck,
and has been obliged to retire from public life.
He is incapable of contending against difficulties,
still less of conquering them. He is a character
easily discouraged, and who has had too little of
genuine cares in his life to have any well-devel-

126 BERLIN SOCIETY.
oped energy. When he saw his efforts fail he
did not have the courage to continue the battle,
and preferred to abandon the ground.
He lives almost all the year in his chateau of
Wernigerode, situated in the Harz Mountains,
and leads there an ostentatious life, surrounded
by all the luxury and all the ease which a fortune
quasi-royal could procure him. Berlin does not
often see him, and his house, the honors of which
are done by the Countess with much amiability,
remains closed.
The Count Otto de Stolberg will surely yet
play a rdle in the future, when the Chancellor is
no longer there to crush him ; and perhaps orte
will see in Prussia, thanks to him, a. Prime Minis*
ter honest in everything — even in politics.
I have already said a word to you, in one of
my previous letters, abomt the Prince de Hatz-
feldt-Trachenberg. He is an ambitious man, ca
pable of giving himself to the devil in order to
obtain no matter what sort of ministerial port
folio. He agitates, struggles, turns and returns,
in order to obtain this summum of his dreams ;.
and certainly, if he ever succeeds in reaching it,
he will have an attack of apoplexy caused by hap
piness. He is, moreover, a very brave fellow,

THE PRINCELY FAMILIES. 1 27
altogether inoffensive in spite of his mania ol
wishing to be somebody.
As to his wife, she is a very handsome person,
but at the same time the proudest creature that
ever wore a closed crown.
A prince colossally rich is the Prince de Pless
— a charming man, of upright character, ordinary
mind, benevolent nature, a nullity by himself, but
so well surrounded by his numerous material
advantages that his personality is effaced behind
them. He owns the finest house of the city,
which he has had the good taste to have con
structed by a French architect and workmen.
He gives there fites justly renowned for their
elegance. His wife joins to much goodness, even
wit, a stiffness which has procured her enemies
among people who have taken for pride what
with her was only timidity. She is a true grande
dame, and it would be well for Berlin that its
society should count a greater number of unions
such as that of the Prince and Princess of Pless.
The Princes Radziwill have in their time also
played their rdles in Berlin. At present their in
fluence has sensibly diminished in consequence
of the war made upon them by the Chancellor.
The actual chief of the family, the Prince An-

128 BERLIN SOCIETY.
toine, is an amiable man, who during all his life
has had the luck to please everybody, and who
certainly merits the good reputation he has en
joyed. A great favorite of fhe Emperor, he has
never abused the affection of his sovereign, and
has always contrived to remain outside of every
intrigue. In society he is appreciated and re
spected more than his wife.
She is a Frenchwoman, a grand-niece of Talley
rand, of whom one is reminded by the turn of
her mind, as well as by her constant adoration for
every rising sun, and by the disdain which she
professes for all those who are not favored by the
gifts of fortune. She is a friend of the Empress,
whom she knows how to amuse by the aid of
witty and animated stories, which, however, she
has the good taste not to point against others — a
matter which would be often easy for her.
By her sentiments, her preferences, her petti
ness, and her pride, the Princess Antoine Radzi
will is more German than French.
Her greatest fault is a constant preoccupation
about her rank and her position in society. She
is so absorbed in the thought of the regard which
is her due, that she totally forgets that which she
herself owes to others. Finally, she is a cold

THE PRINCELY FAMILIES. 1 29
woman, who loves power above everything, who
is convinced of her own perfection, to the point
of believing the most vulgar flattery. She is
often malicious without knowing it in her dis
position to seek on every occasion imperfection
in her neighbor.
It even happens to her sometimes to attack
her family, and her sister-in-law has often been
the object of her criticisms.
This sister-in-law is a Russian lady, still young.
She is pretty and elegant, but, like many of her
compatriots, affected, haughty, coquettish in head
rather in heart, jealous of the homage addressed
to her, but treating the men as if they were
destined only to serve for her amusement or
pastime. She loves nobody, and is not loved
herself. They assert, however, that she is intel
ligent, and her conversation is perhaps interesting,
but few people are capable of judging on this
last point, for she is extremely reserved, and
many think she is a nullity.
As to Prince Ferdinand Radziwill, cousin of the
Prince Antoine, he plays no rdle in society. He
is badly received at Court on account of his
political opinions. He is a deputy, and sits in the
Reichstag among the Poles, whose ideas he shares.

13° BERLIN SOCIETY.
His wife is an adorable person, loved 'by all who
know her on account of her goodness. She has
sometimes haughty caprices, which are easily par
doned her.
The Prince of Biron-Courlande, sole represen
tative of the family of that name, is still too
young to say anything about. As to his mother,
who for many years has occupied an important
place in Berlin society, she is a woman of much
mind, . an accomplished grande dame, who sins
only by her too great indulgence for all the slan
ders which are told her, and for the facility with
which she receives them. She is, however, in
spite of this little fault, an agreeable person, al
ways ready to repair the ill which her tongue has
done her neighbor. In society and at court she
is held in high esteem, and it is probable that she
will obtain the place of Grand Mistress which she
covets, and which she will fill admirably.
A more curious type is that of a certain old
prince whose name I have already forgotten, but
which you will easily recognize. He can be de
scribed in three words : he has the neck of a bull,
the look of a butcher, and tastes as little in har
mony as possible with his physical appearance.
He is possessed of an immense fortune, and is one

THE PRINCELY FAMILIES. I31
of the protege's of the Empress, for the reason
that he always bows to her very low without
opening his mouth. He is a great lover of the
chase, of divination, of good cheer, and of easy
women, whom his means permit to render more
easy still.
Some years since it happened to him to be a
party at a supper organized by some old beaux,
in honor of some celebrated equestrienne, in a
fashionable restaurant. The dinner finished so
gayly that the noise of it reached the ears of the
editor of a vile little Jewish journal, who hastened
the next day to inform his readers. The result
was a scandal, in consequence of which our hero
was obliged to have deferred to a year later the
investiture of the order of the Black Eagle, which
was to have been bestowed upon him some days
after the unfortunate supper. As a disgraced
courtier he went to do penance on his estate,
waiting for a pardon, which was not long in com
ing. Another exiled man was the Prince de Putbus,
who was obliged, in consequence of a reverse of
fortune, to suffer eclipse for several years from
the horizon of Berlin. He was the victim of the
dishonesty of others, rather than of his own prodi-

132 BERLIN SOCIETY.
gality. He was therefore seen to return with
pleasure, and an excellent reception was given to
him, as well as to his daughters, everywhere. He
has still a niece, who was formerly celebrated for
her beauty, her wit, and the number of her ad
mirers. Now all that is ended, and she has made herself
a recluse. She lives in absolute retirement, and is
no more seen in society. She is cloistered entirely
in a ravishing apartment arranged with exquisite
taste, where she remains absorbed in her recollec
tions of the past.
They are, they say, numerous enough to give
her plenty of distraction.

THE PRINCES OF FINANCE. 1 33

M. DE BLEICHRODER AND THE PRINCES
OF FINANCE.
FOURTEENTH LETTER.
LET us enter the regions of high finance. Be
lieve me, the thing is worth the trouble. You will
not regret the coup d'oeil that I will cast upon a
society which, while not being the highest, holds
this last under its most absolute dependence.
Berlin is not Paris. In the capital of the new
German Empire, as in Russia, they have still preju
dices which have for a long time disappeared in
France. Among these prejudices one must rank
a certain repugnance to giving the hand to a Jew
before a witness, or going to his house and receiv
ing him in your own. It is by design that I say
before a witness, for in the intimacy of a tdte-h-tite
all these little scruples vanish. There is not a
city in the whole world where the children of Is
rael are more repulsed by society and where this
society makes more use of them.
Whatever may be said, the German aristocracy
is not anti-Semitic. It presses even much too far

134 BERLIN SOCIETY.
i
its complaisance towards the sons of Moses. It
speculates with them in all the affairs of the
Bourse, and participates in the benefits of the
great public works ; but it surrounds itself with
mystery in doing all these things, and denies them
with effrontery on occasion. In general the Berlin
aristocracy tries to escape the responsibilities of its
conduct in the face of opinion by affecting a pro
found disdain for everything which is nearly or
remotely connected with finance or heavy banking
operations. The financiers are not ignorant of this their
fashion of playing the grand seigneur ; so they
take a malicious pleasure in despoiling them of
their fortune and putting them at their mercy.
The Jews are, moreover, all-powerful in Berlin ;
they aspire only to discredit the aristocracy, and
their journals make war upon them so much the
more cruel as it is sustained by the money of the
vanquished. As a general rule, you do not meet Jews in so
ciety, or very few of them. It is necessary, in
order to know them, that you should get intro
duced by the aid of your colleagues into the house
of one of the Icings of finance, whom the diploma
tists visit a good deal.

THE PRINCES OF FINANCE. 1 35
On their side the bankers do not make too
many efforts to attract the nobility to their
houses. They wait with patience for it to make
the first advances,, knowing well that gold is an
irresistible power. They come to them, then,
either for a subscription, or for some charitable
sale, or to borrow money from them.
All these little services are rendered by the
financiers with the same good grace. They only
ask in exchange from the obliged party or solici
tor his presence at a dinner or a ball, which is
very difficult to refuse.
The most celebrated of the bankers of Berlin
is M. de Bleichroder — von Bleichroder, as he pro
nounces it very loudly since he has obtained the
authorization to add the famous particle to his
name. This man is to-day a formidable power.
Before 1866 he was only a little Jew without im
portance. Little by little he has arrived, by the
force of energy and will, to the position which he
occupies to-day — that of the greatest snapper-up
of millions in Berlin.
Faithful friend, confidant, adulator, and passion
ate admirer of the Prince de Bismarck, he was the
first to divine the high destinies of the Chancellor.
He attached himself to his fortune with a persever-

13^ BERLIN SOCIETY.
ance and an obstinacy to which he certainly owes
a part of his present grandeur. Physically M.
de Bleichroder is a little old man of a very pro
nounced Israelitish type. He has long and curly
hair ; his heavy gray mustache covers insufficient
ly a mouth badly furnished, and joins a fringe
of gray beard. His face, at once smiling and sad,
breathes a singular melange of goodness and du
plicity. But what is most strange in this face
are two eyes extinguished behind blue glasses,
whose fixity clears up sometimes, and which
seem to be always watching you. Although he
is almost blind, in certain conditions of his eye
sight he still perceives vaguely the forms of the
persons who are before him. The greatest flattery
one could address him is to speak to him about
pictures and colors.
He dresses with care, and he can be met with
every day, supported by the arm of a secretary,
taking his walk in the Thiergarten. Since he has
become a widower, and infirmities apparent and
secret have overwhelmed him, he goes no longer
into society. Before the death of his wife he
could be seen in some official salon, and assist
ing her efforts to be received where they do
not wish to receive him. This banker is one of

THE PRINCES OF FINANCE. 137
the most intelligent men of our time ; his coup
d'oeil is marvellous in questions of politics and of
finance. He anticipates events before even the
circumstances which-are to provoke them are pro
duced. He knows how to take advantage of
everything, even of the most insignificant thing.
He has seen princes and states come to implore
his protection. He knows that a word from him
could enrich or ruin thousands of people. He has
the consciousness of a sovereignty greater than
that of certain kings. And yet he has not suffi
cient moral strength to overcome one weakness —
that of wishing to play at any price in the elegant
world another rdle than that of a sack of millions.
To be just, it is necessary to say that it was
especially Madame de Bleichroder who urged her
husband forward in this path. Since she died,
one no longer hears told about the great Jew
ish banker the number of ridiculous stories which
circulated formerly in Berlin.
It is thus that they narrate his attempts to be
admitted into other houses than where his charac
ter of English consul gave him the right of entrAe.
His perseverance in inviting persons of the grand
monde in spite of their refusal, the infinite com
plaisance which he displayed towards these per-

138 BERLIN SOCIETY.
sons, and which he carried to the point of never
inviting his confreres of finance to meet them,
had resulted at last very sadly. The society of
Berlin was divided into two camps, of which one
went to M. de Bleichroder's and made/un of him,
while the other made fun of him but did not go.
Alas, how many of the laughers have learned
at their expense that it is dangerous to treat with
levity such a personage !
M. de Bleichroder consents sometimes to swal
low an injury, but on the sole condition of biding
his time to avenge himself, were it only in offering
his pity accompanied with some thousands of
francs. If he would relate how many stars of high so
ciety are indebted to him for their brilliancy, how
many people he has saved from a false step,
drawn from the abyss — if he would tell all he
knows about this high society, they could make a
volume far more instructive than my counsels.
He is by nature generous, although generous in
his own way. He knows how to oblige his fellow,
but he experiences a diabolical pleasure in making
a great proud seigneur or a haughty noble lady
feel the weight of his benefits. He finds a par
ticular joy in humiliating them by means of an odi-

THE PRINCES OF FINANCE. 1 39
ous and coarse familiarity. He slaps the shoul
ders of the young man who comes to avow to him
a gambling debt, kisses the hand of the lady who
finds herself forced to confide to him her embar
rassment and ask his aid to pay her dressmaker.
M. de Bleichroder knows how to insinuate him
self into the minds the most prejudiced, and
pose as the Providence of those whom he has
sometimes contributed to ruin. He gives audi
ences precisely like a Minister. Often the Chan
cellor makes use of him to communicate to the
foreign press certain views with which he wishes
to see them inspired. The journalists hold M.
de Bleichroder in high esteem, perhaps because
they have often been deceived by him. The
diplomats come and dine with him and court
him. Everybody fears him, some affect to dis
dain him ; all those who lack money see him in
their dreams. Many obey him in spite of their
inward revolting. Very few are sufficiently calm
or sufficiently disinterested to judge him as he
deserves, and to consider him as an example of
the tours de force which can be accomplished, and
of the difficulties which can be surmounted, by
the race of Israel.
M. de Bleichroder has an associate named

140 BERLIN SOCIETY.
Schwabacher, married to a Dutch lady, the most
charming of women. Thanks to her, he has con
quered a part of society. This married couple
have introduced themselves by a back door, as it
were, into a certain number of houses, the major
ity foreign ; and it must be confessed that the
tact, the wit, and the manners of Madame
Schwabacher are not displaced by any means.
She gives fine balls, exquisite dinners, and at
least one does not at her house run the risk of
finding one's self in bad society, as happens at
those of other queens of her circle.
What is remarkable^ in these ladies is the ex
treme beauty of the majority, joined to a certain
polish, which, while not being the true, is yet
quite becoming. Their husbands, on the other
hand, represent the Israelitish type in all its
purity — hooked nose, projecting 'eyes, lisping
voice, with most of them a precocious stoutness.
Nothing is wanting to them, in fine — not even
the crooked fingers destined to draw in and draw
out the money of others. They have no talent
for conversation, so deeply are their faculties ab
sorbed by the thought of the millions they covet.
They are nevertheless curious types to study, and
I advise you not to neglect to do it.

THE PRINCES OF FINANCE. 141
However, do not launch out too quickly in
Berlin into the regions of high finance, and es
pecially do not abuse your opportunities. They
are people with -whom a young stranger in your
position might dine, but whom it is always neces
sary to keep at a distance.
You can make your court to the ladies, but
without forgetting that their manners are not
those of the grand monde, and that their prin
ciples even, with very rare exceptions, are solidly
established. Besides, their minds are much more
active and better developed than those of the
ladies of the highest rank, and their criticisms
upon these last are always amusing to listen to.
You who have a caustic wit will appreciate them
more and better than another.
I hope that you will not allow yo.urself to be
led to become the friend of a Berlin Jew. The
supremacy that the Israelitish race has obtained
in Germany is not precisely useful to that coun
try. Admitting that this power of the German
Jews may not be a great evil for us, I advise you
not to lose sight of the fact that such- an immense
accumulation of capital in the hands of a single
people might be very prejudicial to the others.

142 BERLIN SOCIETY.

THE COUNTESS DE SCHLEINITZ AND
WAGNERISM.
FIFTEENTH LETTER.
The Countess of Schleinitz is the best edu
cated and the most intelligent woman of Berlin.
Her mind is remarkable under every aspect. - She
interests herself in what touches science and the
arts, is a musician of the first order, understands
painting, adores literature, occupies herself with
politics, and has an interest in social problems.
She has no prepossessions or narrow prejudices
of any kind. In addition, she is an accomplished
woman of the world, in no respect a blue-stock
ing, knowing how to conceal her knowledge,
throw a discreet veil over her qualifications, kind-
hearted by nature, and also too much occupied
to have the time to backbite or suspect.
She goes but little into society, and confines
herself to receiving a small number of acquaint
ances and friends, composed principally of artists
and litterateurs, to whom she alone opens her
doors at Berlin, the rest of society disdaining in
general to admit into its salons " ce monde-la."

THE COUNTESS DE SCHLEINITZ. 143
Formerly Madame de Schleinitz received every
evening, but the Chancellor (who concerns him
self about everything, even things the most insig
nificant) was excited by the so-called opposition
which the Countess made.
He made her understand that it would be
better for her to discontinue her receptions. As
a consequence of this singular intervention, the
sole intellectual centre of Berlin was suppressed.
To-day Madame de Schleinitz continues her re
ceptions, but they are rarer and more select. She
has overcome the impetuosity of her character
that made her confide in the first-comer. She
always receives political men, but especially art
ists, writers — to be which is considered in society
as a crime. Fortunately, the Countess is too
noble-hearted to trouble herself with what may
be said. She looks for her pleasure where she can
find it; her mind could not be contented with the
tattle and gossip of idle society. She experiences
the imperious need of living with oeople capable
of understanding her, and whose intelligence
equals her own. Her house is a true republic :
one meets there painters, musicians, actors, jour
nalists, men of politics, grand seigneurs, and
women of the world. You do not there en-

144 BERLIN SOCIETY.
counter any pettiness of mind ; you have there
entire liberty to discuss, utter your opinions, put
forward your conceptions ; and you are always en
couraged by a gracious smile and by the exquisite
tact of the mistress of the house.
Her husband rarely appears at these reunions,
and leaves the Countess entire liberty. The Count
de Schleinitz, formerly Minister of Foreign Affairs,
to-day Minister of the House of the Emperor, is
a man of wit, already broken down by age and
sickness. One can say of him that he never keeps
silent or converses in an ordinary way. All is
gold in him. What especially distinguishes the
Count and Countess is their kindness and sincere
cordiality towards those with whom they are
brought in contact. Both are people of heart.
This explains, perhaps, why they have many
enemies. However, as nothing is perfect in this world,
the charming Countess has also a weak side, a
fault, or rather a false note in the harmony of her
personality. This fault consists in a passion —
shall I say a fanaticism? — for Wagner and his
music. It was she who made the composer the
fashion in Berlin ; she never speaks of him but
with religious respect ; and when he was living and,

WAGNERISM. 145
was with her, she contemplated him with a per
fect ecstasy.
To tell the truth, Madame de Schleinitz looks
upon Wagner as a god, and her enthusiasm reaches
such a degree of exaggeration, of paroxysm, that
it would become ridiculous if one did not say that
one must belong to his country in something.
When one is neither German in heart, in mind,
nor in tastes, he should have, nevertheless, a point
of attachment to the mother-country — were it
only the passion for noise.
The German character is completely embodied
in the music of Wagner. In the same way as M.
de Bismarck represents its practical side, Wagner
represents its artistic side. In all times the music
of a country is inspired by the turn of mind of its
inhabitants. Italian airs are for the most part
gay ; Slavic melodies melancholy ; the songs of
the Eastern nations plaintive ; German music is
strong, sonorous, inharmonious, energetic, imperi- »
ous, almost barbarous, just like the nation itself:
it wants to destroy every other kind, impose
over all ; and, a more characteristic symptom still,
it did not develop itself, nor make any proof of in-J
dividuality, until the moment when the nation
itself accomplished the same transformation.

I46 BERLIN SOCIETY.
Wagner is the Bismarck of music ; his work will
last as long as that of the Chancellor. Both the
one and the other respond to the needs and aspi
rations of their time and of their country ; both
the one and the other are the men of the moment,
the men who were necessary to a positive people,
who only dream of conquest, who disdain every
thing which is gentle and emotional, and for
whom Power and Noise are the sole divinities.
However, the success and the influence of the
Wagnerians are due in part to the fashion, that
supreme arbiter which even in Germany imposes
its law. At one time this fashion had degener
ated into infatuation. People went to hear the
Tannhduser, the Niebelungen, only because it was
chic to do it, and because high personages had set
the example. They applauded for the same
reason, without knowing too well if it were worth
the trouble ; and they imitated the devotional air
of the truly faithful in order not to appear impi
ous in their eyes, the same as one makes mechani
cally the sign of the cross when he is offered holy-
wafer in a church. The momentary triumph of
Wagn&r was in great part caused by the. noise
which his admirers made around his person.
One can easily predict that the Wagnerian fa-

WAGNERISM. 147
naticism will not spead abroad, and that even
among the compatriots of Wagner it will eventu
ally become restricted to a small number of
disciples. Already, since the death of the com
poser, the admiration for him has much dimin
ished, and those who undertook this summer the
pilgrimage to Baireuth have been sensibly less
numerous than they were last year. Soon the
sanctuary will be deserted, or visited only from
curiosity, as a Chinese pagoda or a Hindoo tem
ple. Is it not from curiosity that so many people
went to hear Parsifal? Very few undertook this
journey from love of the composer's work. In
the number of these last, however, it is proper
to cite the Countess of Schleinitz, who herself is
at least sincere in her blind admiration.
Do not imagine that in Germany all the Wag
nerians are as enthusiastic and absolute as the
Countess. One meets with all shades of them —
even moderate. Nevertheless I advise you
always to express your judgment upon the music
of the master with great reserve ; for in the pres
ence of a stranger every German will defend him
energetically, as something which belongs to him
and deriving its source from the very essence of
its national character. The'German loves Wag-

148 BERLIN SOCIETY.
ner, protects him to the utmost against all criti
cism, all reservation of praise.
He believes in doing this that he loves, protects,
and defends the German country ; he displays
thereby an ardor equal to that which he shows in
preserving its conquests and the supremacy which
it has acquired through M, de Bismarck, the
Wagner of politics.

THE GRAND MONDE IN BERLIN. 1 49
THE GRAND MONDE IN BERLIN.
SIXTEENTH LETTER.
IT is now time to give you a connected picture
of the society of Berlin, to initiate you into its
manners, its habits, its intercourse with foreigners,
to make you understand its weaknesses, its de
ficiencies, its bad — and I was almost going to say
its good — qualities.
The society of Berlin, my young friend, is not
a society like others. It does not possess our in
telligent scepticism. It is even destitute, as far
as concerns the higher classes, of the natural Ger
man honesty. It has a certain rusty, uncivilized
air which seems to date from the first ages of
history (I speak, it must be understood, of ques
tions of morality). It is absolutely unconscious
of its actions ; its manners are neither vicious nor
degenerated ; they are simply the manners of our
ancestors before the significant word convenances
had been coined.
In Berlin adultery flourishes like a plant in its
chosen soil ; it ripens in the light of day, displays,
,gathers, and enjoys its fruits without scruple.

ISO BERLIN SOCIETY.
The majority of the married women have or
dream of having a lover. Vice is not considered as
such, and virtue is among the number of things re
garded as useless. As to love, one meets with it
rarely. Liaisonsate formed accordingto the caprice
of the senses and by that instinct which throws a
pretty woman into the arms of a handsome man.
In society at Berlin they take and quit each other
according to their fancy. The needs of one's
amorous nature are satisfied with the same calm
as those of one's appetite. Gallantry is there a
thing unknown. A Lauzun or a Richelieu would
be there impossible. Everything there is done
brutally, without' poesy, without grace, without
that half-anxious, half-hypocritical preoccupation
which in other countries is at least an homage
rendered to virtue.
But this society, so little scrupulous about
what concerns its own morals, becomes of a rigid
severity when the morals of any other social circle
are in question. It observes the least transgres
sion, notes the least wavering, condemns actions
the most innocent, and suspects even one's secret
thoughts. The society of Berlin is united like a
Camorra. All those who do not make an integral
part of it are obliged to approve it and subscribe

THE GRAND MONDE IN BERLIN. 15 1
to its decrees, unless they would be put under its
ban. They have circulated about them the
most silly calumnies ; they are attacked in what
they hold most respected ; they are crushed in
what they hold most dear. It is a battle which
is waged against them, and where force and num?
bers must one day or other, triumph. For, what
is a singular thing, this society, which has no con
science of morality for itself, expects to force
others to virtue, and it has by a logical sentiment
of its own failure a hatred" of those who practise
the good and cultivate moral worth. When it
attacks them, it does it both from jealousy and in
order to deaden by the noise of its clamor the ac
cusing voice of the opinion which, without that,
perhaps would reach to itself.
Without exaggeration one might say that one
part of the society of Berlin passes its life in
watching the other. This is why it is impossible
to keep a secret in it. To give you an idea of the
tittle-tattle and gossip which are born and live
upon the banks of the Spree ls an impossible
thing. Suffice it fOr you to know that there they
know your income better than your banker, your
menu better than your cook, the number of per
sons whom you have received during the day

152 BERLIN SOCIETY.
better than your servants, and your thoughts
better than yourself. One lives there, in a word,
under a surveillance greater than that of the
police. So much concerning morals. As to the intel
lectual side, they do not even try to cultivate it.
In general the Berlinese lady of the highest class
does not read, work, or occupy herself. She
passes her life in babbling, dressing and undress
ing, and searching for some one to aid her in
every way in doing so. She has not two serious
ideas in her head, nor two honest thoughts in her
heart. Her preferences are vulgar, her influence
nothing. She lacks grace, education, tact, is
noisy, and aims, unfortunately for her, to imitate
the Frenchwoman in what the latter has of loud
ness. It is very difficult, if not impossible, to
make an elegante of Berlin converse, so little is
she au courant with what is going on, so much is
she absorbed by her own personal actions or by
the actions and doings of her rivals. She offers
no other resource to her admirers than that of
speaking to her of their desires.
This is the type of the eiegant,e, of fhe woman h
la mode, who makes fain or shine. At her side
/
one finds the domestic woman, who is too respect-

IHE GRAND MONDE IN BERLIN. 153
able for me to describe to you and, like happy
nations, has no history.
When the elegante grows old, as she has settled
nothing, learned nothing, when she can no
longer repair the irreparable ravages of time, she
becomes jealous of the successes of the young
women. She bites, she attacks, flays, scratches,
and brings into society a sour element which
adds wicked malevolence to the looseness of
morals. The men of the grand monde, likewise, do not
appear to me very interesting. Those who have
real worth are at the same time very reserved.
The old men even surpass the women in their
gossiping, and the young only know how to eat,
dance, and play. Their ideal is a supper after a
cotillon. The amount of dancing and eating in
Berlin is incredible. The officers in particular
bring to these two occupations an ardor greater
still, if possible, than that with which they are ani
mated upon the field of parade. A figure in a
contredanse is in their eyes a sacred thing, and a
supper an affair of state. They never say after a
soiree, "It was very gay" or "very tiresome last
night;" they say "good buffet" — "bad buffet."
But, you ask me, are there not then in Berlin

154 BERLIN SOCIETY.
some houses where one can pass agreeably an
hour or two ? No, indeed ; they do not exist — at
least for foreigners. In general, every one lives
for himself, nobody seeks to share his thoughts
with another, experiences no necessity of ex
changing his impressions, of communicating his
ideas upon men and things. Nobody finds any
pleasure (Madame de Schleinitz excepted, of
whom I have just spoken) in gathering together
people of wit around her. It is impossible in
Berlin to hold one's self au couraant with what is
going on in Europe. This city is in vain to-day
the centre of the political world : one hears there
less than anywhere else the events of the day dis
cussed. People vegetate there without interesting
themselves in anything whatever, and the whole
life is there so organized that it is very difficult
to learn what is going on elsewhere than at the
Court. There reigns a kind of terrorism over the
thoughts; one dares not speak there of what one
sees, still less remark to others what one fears.
Foreigners, while treated with much politeness,
are still always considered as intruders, and they
are made to feel this in a thousand ways as well
in society as in the clubs, the admittance to
which is often refused them.

THE GRAND MONDE IN BERLIN. 155
Among the diplomats themselves there are but
very few who have succeeded in entirely pleasing,
and they are those who have become entirely
Berlinized — that is to say, those who love the
dance, the can-cans, champagne and lobster-salad
after midnight.
The society of Berlin, in spite of its crotchets
and vices, is nevertheless interesting to study.
One can admire there a singular pride which is
never lacking in strength among a victorious
people. The Germans disdain other nations —
accuse them of all the faults which they have
themselves. Looseness of morals is one of their
most frequent reproaches ; and you see after
these few sketches that one can return the com
pliment. If they have not the lively spirit that
we and the French have, it is perhaps because
their intellectual luggage is even slighter.

IS6 BERLIN SOCIETY.
THE THREE SISTERS.
SEVENTEENTH LETTER.
TWENTY years ago they were young, pretty,
attractive: they had long auburn locks, wasp-1
like figures, transparent complexions ; in fine, all
the attributes of the Three Graces, and it was
thus they were called. To-day the auburn has
become of ashy blond, the teeth have acquired
a new brightness, the cheeks a borrowed fresh
ness, the lips a more brilliant carmine. The
waist is heavier, but its suppleness is replaced by
majesty. The name itself of the Three Graces
has changed, and given place to that of. the
Three Sisters.
These Three Sisters are the most important
persons of the society of Berlin. One of them is
a widow, still beautiful, very rich, very elegant.
I will not speak to you of her private conduct :
if she has had adventures, they are confounded
to-day under a general rubric of numerous and
brilliant successes. Moreover, what matters it
that one has been calumniated when one has be-

THE THREE SISTERS. 157
come Arsinoe? The beautiful widow is an artifi
cial woman in all her physical, and artful in her
moral person. She thinks of nothing beyond her
toilettes, her furniture, her duties, her weekly
soirees, and rarely of gallantry.
Her youngest sister has not renounced the
vanities of this world, probably because she has a
husband to whom she glories at the desires which
she provokes. She is the least well endowed
of the three sisters in point of intelligence ; as
a counterpoise she is the one with whom vanity
is the most developed. She is, like her sisters, a
person of order, of calculation, who has no pro
digality to reproach herself with, who commits
extravagances only for cosmetics, her toilette ;
in fine, for all that might perhaps be employed
under the title of eau defouvence. She loves to be
surrounded by admirers, and she attracts a great
number of them, especially among the young
men, whom she chooses by preference from the
ranks of the officers belonging to the finest regi
ments. The gardes du corps have her best sym
pathies. This cloud of young adorers, of pages
enchants her, because it gives her the illusion of
a second youth, and forms around her a sort of
court. She is, moreover, the queen of fashion.

158 BERLIN SOCIETY.
It is bon-ton to admire the Countess — have I al
ready told you that she is a Countess ? As to
myself, in the last days of my sojourn in Berlin I
had a sort of respect for the care she took to re
main beautiful. My feeling had something analo
gous to that which one experiences in presence
of an antique statue well preserved. The Count
ess, besides, is amiable. She smiles upon the
pretty women, knows how to dissimulate the
envy with which they inspire her, proclaims
loudly the interest which she bears to the ill-
favored : she consoles in their turn the wives
abandoned by their husbands, and the husbands
weary of the conjugal hearth. Her influence is
enormous. Never had a woman greater in the
domain of fashion. It is an absolute sover
eignty. The elder of these three ladies has importance
only because she is one of the three sisters. She
has neither the pretensions of her younger ones
nor their ordinary amiability. She is a woman en
dowed with an excellent heart, benevolent, noisy,
vulgar — a kind of type such as one meets with in
the novels of Paul de Kock. She takes offence
at nothing, never offends anybody, gives her
hand to everybody, takes life on its gayest side,

THE THREE SISTERS. 159
and spoils her eldest daughter by indulgence.
She has no pretensions to youth, has never had
any to beauty, avows the majority of her chil
dren, and keeps open house every evening. They
come there to play, smoke, dance, or flirt, as they
prefer: they can even find there commodious
easy-chairs to pass the night in.
Her salon is one of the most curious to study
as to its composition ; and if you ever happen to
introduce yourself there, I advise you to open
wide your eyes and ears. In Berhn the soirees
of Madame .... enjoy a reputation which, I am
obliged to say, is justified. Moreover, it would be
the same as to that everywhere ; for it is impos
sible to find in good society a house where one
can enjoy at the same time the advantages of a
club and the charms of a private house rendered
attractive by the presence of young women— or
women believing themselves to be still young.
In this salon they all rival each other in making
the men forget that they belong to a circle where
the women should be honored, and are worthy of
being so, and where it is customary to take off
their hats in their presence.
In it reigns the most complete liberty. The
moment the lamps are lit in the salon it begins to

160 BERLIN SOCIETY.
fill up. The" habitues arrive successively, who,
after having saluted the mistress of the house,
and often even before doing so, light their cigar
ettes, install themselves at a gaming-table, or
converse by twos upon a sofa. There is never
any general conversation, but much of a private
character. The happy couples pace the salons,
willingly stopping in those which are the most
deserted to admire occasionally the portrait of a
celebrated actress — a portrait which is one of the
ornaments of the sumptuous ^dwelling. The
glasses of beer circulate ; the young officers un
button their tuniques or their dolmans ; some of
them go so far as to tap the shoulders of the
house-girl, whom they all call by her first name.
Ease goes 'as far as recklessness, recklessness as
far as unbecomingness ; and the word " liberty,"
which they flourish as the key-note of the house,
might be replaced by another which the fre
quenters of the salon would find more easily than
I could. Look ! Upon this divan is seated a brunette,
beautiful still, with stiff but yet slender figure,
with widely expanded nostrils like that of a race
horse, with a complexion composed with exqui
site art, in harmony with the shade of her dress.

THE THREE SISTERS. l6l
This^ woman has a metallic look, her words brief
but full of decision ; one divines in her at first .
sight a cold heart, -and calculating instincts which
make women of marble. At her side a man with
blond whiskers, whose too large nose does not
spoil the handsome face, is leaning against a table.
For three years he has been coming there ; for
three years he has been looking at her. The
attitude is always the same, the look alone has
changed. At first the expression was submissive,
later it reflected adoration ; now one divines in it
lassitude. She obstinately persists in keeping
this last conquest, in enchaining this liberty
which wishes to reassert itself. How long will
the contest last and with whom will rest the vic
tory? The husband is playing at a distance and seems
indifferent to this drama. He has a flat and
stupid face. His function consists in surround
ing his wife with luxury. He has no ambition,
and enjoys life as a true Georges Dandin. Some
times an enigmatical smile passes over his face.
Does he take a melancholy pleasure in seeing
every morning goose-tracks deepening themselves
upon his wife's temples ?
Farther on, thrown back in an easy arm-chair

1 62 BERLIN SOCIETY.
a cup of tea at his side, is a man already ripe in
years, a diplomat : he is a minister, with an in
tellectual face, but irresolute expression. He is
absorbed in a most animated conversation with a
lady whose black dress is ornamented with orange
ribbons ; but I perceive that it is the beautiful
Countess of whom I have already spoken, who
this time has abandoned the army for diplomacy.
There, in an obscure corner, a young blond
creature, almost a child, with candid look, sym
pathetic face, is listening to a tall young man in
the uniform of the garde du corps.
These two are still at the preliminaries which
are called, in the language of the circle which I
have just described to you, " a Museum." This
word appears to you strange, and you ask me for •
an explanation. I have searched for one a long
time,* and I have found out that in a German
mind it signifies the poetic moment of love, the
time when they make verses — or cultivate the
Muse. Graceful pleasantry — essentially German.
The first time that I heard this word, I — who am
a man of the eighteenth century, and know the
German scientific manias — had the idea that this
museum depicted the phase of betrothal — em
bryonic phase of the human sentiments and the

THE THREE SISTERS. 1 63
psychological state of a love designed to be
classed, ticketed, and put as a glass jar in the
window of marriage.
To return to the salon of one of the Three
Sisters. . . : I cannot conceal from you that the
absolute sans-gdne which reigns there has done
injury to the society of Berlin, which is spoiled
there, as are the people of good education when
they agree to observe no longer the proprieties.
I have often remarked that good company be
comes the very worst- when it throws, off its
habitual reserve.
One is so well accustomed to pass his soirees in
a circle which one could characterize as " German
Bohemia," that the taste for good society is lost.
Youth no longer understands amusements mo
derated by decorum.^ It passes its time much
more agreeably with Madame de . . . . than any
where else.
The greatest injury caused by the Three
Sisters has been to kill absolutely respect for
women with the young men of the grand monde.
Although the Prussian may not be chivalrous by
nature, nevertheless it is only in the high spheres
of the capital that one sees the strange spectacle
of women of society treated as common girls and

164 BERLIN SOCIETY.
called la une telle ; manners are relaxed — they
have lost that polish, that refinement, which they
should have in the privileged classes. To meet
in Berlin with a good household, to see husbands
respected, wives honored, one must descend to
the inferior classes and introduce one's self into
the ranks of the bourgeoisie. There one meets
with honest souls, elevated intellects, people with
wholesome ideas and leading a life of usefulness.

M. STOECKER AND THE JEWISH QUESTION. 1 65

M. STOECKER AND THE JEWISH QUES
TION.
EIGHTEENTH LETTER.
Among the problems of its political and social
life which Germany must resolve, not the least
certainly is this formidable Jewish question,
which becomes from day to day more grave and
menacing. For some time past it has been
sought to be proved that the anti-Semitic agita
tion was factitious, that it had been artificially
excited: its importance has been attributed to
the efforts of Pastor Stoecker and his adherents,
and they have predicted for it an end as prompt
as it would be ignominious. I confess, to my
great regret, that I do not share this opinion: I
believe, on the contrary, that the hatred which
exists in Germany against the Jews, blind and
tenacious as it is, will only increase in proportion
as the influence and riches of the Israelitish fami
lies go on augmenting.
All men are more or less envious, and the
Germans surpass many other people in this re-

1 66 BERLIN SOCIETY.
spect. There is then nothing astonishing that
the Germans should manifest antipathy for a race
which little by little has supplanted it in all the
vital questions of the nation.
He who has not studied the Jews in Germany,
or in Berlin, can form no idea of what they absorb
and lay hold of.
In such an age as ours, when money is the only
power which is still respected, when the thirst for
riches is shown in all avowable and unavowable
ways, the Jews in Germany are the only ones
who have succeeded in conquering this power
and especially in preserving it.
Germany is not a country like England or
France, where everybody believes himself obliged
to work, where nobody is ashamed to put his
hand to the building up of his fortune.
In this land of prejudices, where no career save
that of arms is considered as honorable, where a
noble thinks himself by the very fact of his birth
condemned to idleness, the nobility has reached
little by little a poverty equalled only by its
pride. It suffers, however, by this material abase
ment, and for some years past has striven to
remedy it by equivocal means or by speculation
on the Bourse, for which they have need of a

M. STOECKER AND THE JEWISH QUESTION. 1 67
third person, who is always a Jewish banker or
broker. All Berlin, at the time of my departure, was
talking of a catastrophe that happened last year
to one of the most brilliant officers of the guard,
whose wife was one of the lionnes of elegant
society, and who was obliged to quit his regiment
in consequence of a money transaction in which
a Jew had engaged him.
The story made a great noise, because the
heroes were well-known people ; but how many
similar incidents remain secret ! How many have
the same beginning and the same ending, and
occur between the same persons to show the
hatred of the German nobility toward the Jewish
financial world ! What is with the greatest diffi
culty pardoned is to have been the dupe of the
man whom they wished to deceive. While cry
ing " Death to the Jews !" the German noble
hopes to share the spoils of the fortunate sons of
Israel, and recover the money which he has
lost. As to the people, its antipathy is explained by
the fact that it is constantly under the domina
tion of the Israelite, who has bought the fabrics
which furnish support to the workmen in the

1 68 BERLIN SOCIETY.
same way that he has seized the capital which
serves the pleasures of the rich.
What I have said of the higher German classes
is equally applicable to the lower. The nation
by itself is incapable of a spontaneous effort, it
knows no longer how to obey its impulses ; the
moral force is lacking ; it can neither invent, pro
duce, nor direct itself by its own initiative : it has
neither the commercial genius of the English, nor
the initiative faculty of the American, nor the
bustling energy of the French. It is made to
fight, to destroy, and, like its ancestors the Ger
mans, it is absolutely out of its power to replace
what it has destroyed.
It is a laborious people, persevering, but in
dolent as to everything in the shape of inven
tion, organization, combination of mind. The
German is an admirable instrument, a tool of the
best construction ; but he becomes remarkable
only in a restricted and definite domain. He
excels in executing, but is unfitted for conceiv
ing. He is a mere nothing, and even incapable,
in all questions pertaining to finance or to in
dustry ; the few exceptions to this rule only con
firm its generality.

M. STOECKER AND THE JEWISH QUESTION. 1 69
People like Borsig or Krupp are phenomena
which will not soon be reproduced.
Commerce itself, which might be accessible to
the bourgeois, is, like industry and banking, in the
hands of the Jews. They are then absolute mas
ters of the national activity, and one should not
be astonished that in moments of extraordi
nary excitement the Nobles, the Bourgeois, and
the People unite in cursing the Semitic tyran
ny. M. , de Bismarck is the only one who has ac
cepted frankly the aid of the Israelites without
any other reservation than that of obtaining from
this alliance the possibility of concluding in peace
his colossal work.
The Pastor Stoecker, against whom there has
been such an outcry, and against whose writings,
speeches, and opinions there has been such a loud
protest, is only the interpreter of the great major
ity of the German people.
The Pastor is not an isolated individual preach
ing in favor of the triumph of his personal ideas :
he is one of those figures in which are embodied
the whole soul of a nation; as was, for example,
the Duke de Guise during the League, Luther
among the Protestants, and Danton in the times

17 O BERLIN SOCIETY.
of the French Revolution. One may not share
his convictions, and may blame his savage en
ergy; but it is impossible for anybody who has
lived in Germany not to comprehend the reasons
which make of him the apostle of a party.
The English, who protest so vigorously against
the crusade undertaken by M. Stoecker, cannot
understand the causes of it. With .them, owing
to their commercial spirit as well as to their po
litical genius, the Jew has become an Englishman,
and ended by identifying himself with the inter
ests of his adopted country. It is the same in
France, where the Jew labors for the prosperity
of a nation which has become his own.
In Germany the case is very different. There
one -finds one's self solely in the presence of a
powerful material force, which has turned against
those even to whom it owes its development.
The Pastor Stoecker is not, then, a sectarian,
but a man who has comprehended the danger
impending over his country. Only he deceives
himself if he thinks he can repel this danger by
the expulsion of the Israelitish race.
It does not suffice to rid one's self of an evil :
one must know if he will not cause thereby a
worse one. Now I ask myself what will become

M. STOECKER AND THE JEWISH QUESTION. 17 1
of the -material greatness of Germany if the de
sires of M. Stoecker were suddenly realized.
The poor man would be very much embarrassed
at his victory. There is there a mechanism which
could not be broken with impunity.
An Edict of Nantes or a St. Bartholomew
against the Jews would be a calamity in Germany.
But it would not be the same if the Pastor
Stoecker would rely upon the principle of fighting
the Jews with their own weapons, of initiating
themselves in their commercial secrets, of contend
ing with them upon the same ground which they
work, and of disputing with them this power of
money, which they dispose of without control and
without limit to-day.
If in the management of his affairs the German
Jew has his meannesses, his servilities even, he
has known how, nevertheless, to preserve in his
general race character a sort of independence, in
face of the brutal force of the grenadiers of Frede
rick, which has not subdued him.
Seneca has said that a people always ends by
being punished for its faults by the excess even
of its good qualities. Germany is a striking ex
ample of the truth' of this axiom. It has tri
umphed until now over all its enemies, owing to

T72 BERLIN SOCIETY.
its faculty of passive obedience, its calm persever
ance, its proud force : it has overthrown all its for
eign adversaries ; but it is disarmed in the presence
of those whom it has installed at its hearth, who
live under the safeguard of its institutions and
laws. - It must lower its flag before them, recog
nize its powerlessness to annihilate the power and
influence of adversaries of whom it should make
allies, if it had the practical savoir faire of the
English and the spirit of assimilation of France.
But what I say to you here no German would
confess to, and the Pastor Stoecker least of all.
If you find the opportunity, I advise you to
make the acquaintance of this remarkable man —
one of the most distinguished minds in Germany.
In spite of his prejudices, and notwithstanding
that mystic piety which is met with so frequently
among Protestant pastors, he cannot fail to inter
est you by his coldly impassioned language.
The compact arguments of his close logic, the
violent asperity of his attacks, the sincere convic
tion with which he develops false theories, makes
of him a man incapable of compromising with his
conscience, which is rigid to austerity. He has
supported with a stoicism worthy of the ancients
the attacks without number of which he has been

M. STOECKER AND THE JEWISH QUESTION. 1 7 '3
the object, and with a proud disdain has returned
contempt for hate. His influence is greater than
one thinks outside of Germany, more extensive
perhaps than either he himself or his friends sus
pect. When one shall write the history of the first
twenty years of the Empire of Germany, M.
Stoecker cannot fail to occupy there a place as the
promoter of the anti-Semitic movement.

174 BERLIN SOCIETY.
THE DIPLOMATIC CORPS.
NINETEENTH LETTER.
The diplomatic corps plays in Berlin a con
siderable rdle, which is explained by the small
development of society there. In this city, im
mense in extent, the number of persons which it
is agreed to call the grand monde is so restricted
that it would be impossible for it to exist without
a foreign element. That alone explains the re
ception which is made to the diplomatic corps
in Berlin. They hope for it at balls, at soirees,
and the empressement is proportional to what can
be obtained from it in the way of dancing or eat
ing. As to the secretaries and attaches, they
please in proportion to their success in adapting
themselves to German manners. On the whole,
all the diplomats are treated as people of whom
one has need, and nothing more is accorded them
than corresponds with their usefulness.
The dean of the ambassadors is Lord Odo
Russell, to-day Lord Ampthill, representative of
her Britannic Majesty.
A man of much wit, of remarkable shrewdness

THE DIPLOMA T/C CORPS. 175
and exquisite tact, he has filled with distinction,
even with a certain eclat, many very difficult
posts; he is a diplomat of the old school, know
ing how to disguise his thoughts, divine those of
another, keep silent when necessary, and speak
when it is called for. For a long time charge d'
affaires at Rome, his intimacy with Cardinal
Alitonelli permitted him to acquire a pliancy,
wholly Italian, which is rarely met with in an
Englishman. Naturally very observing, he has
become still more so by experience ; he has
learned to weigh characters, discover their petti
ness, and make use of their meannesses and sus
ceptibilities. He never gives his true opinion upon
individuals or events. He has the prudence of a
serpent, while all the time appearing expansive ;
he serves his country better than those who
govern it ; he obeys tradition and is the servant
of no minister or ministry.
During the Congress of Berlin he effaced him
self in appearance, but secretly rendered the
greatest services to England, which the zeal of
Lord Beaconsfield would have compromised if he
had not found some one to moderate the impetu
osity and translate into diplomatic French the
two expressive phrases of Disraeli.

176 BERLIN SOCIETY.
Lord Ampthill is a great admirer of the Chan
cellor. Is he sincere or not in his enthusiasm?
That is impossible to affirm. Without being a
sphinx, this ambassador is nevertheless impene
trable ; with the most perfect amiability he turns
a conversation when he anticipates that it may
become dangerous, the same as he has the talent
to persuade you that he has chosen you for ffis
confidant after he has uttered a few common
places. Nobody can mystify or put on the wrong scent
a journalist better than he, and that in such a
skilful way that fhe poor reporter never fancies
that he has been made a dupe of.
In all the words of Lord Odo Russell may be
found the germ of a possible truth, which even
when it is not very true will never appear a false
hood. Of all the foreign diplomats accredited to the
Court of Berlin, he is the only one, I believe, who
has ever divined the designs of M. de Bismarck,
and who, judging him as this man of iron deserves,
has been able to maintain good relations with
him in spite of the constant collisions of their
respective politics.
The Chancellor appreciates the ambassador of

THE DIPLOMATIC CORPS. 177
England, and even fears him a little because he
feels himself divined by him. He is not ignorant
that Lord Ampthill, in spite of his apparent
amiability, preserves the English coolness, and
that he will not allow himself to be seduced by
flatteries nor blinded by protestations of friend
ship, that he will resist all attempt at corruption,
aftid that with imperturbable calmness he will un
ravel the promise which is made to him from
that which is intended to be kept.
While remaining an accomplished man of the
world, a courteous diplomat, he knows how to
demonstrate that he remains a statesman, made
to resist and pierce the most Machiavellian com
binations of M. de Bismarck's artifices.
He has married a daughter of Lord Clarendon.
Lady Ampthill, without having the intellect of
her husband, is nevertheless a woman of con
siderable mind, who tries to extend her knowl
edge and keep herself informed of the events of
the world. She is the ideal of an ambassadress.
She is a person made to shine, to receive, to en
tertain, with edat. One could not imagine her as
the wife of a simple private individual. It seems,
to see her, that she was born for the rdle she fills.
Very cold, she has a pride which she thinks is

178 BERLIN SOCIETY.
dignity ; very susceptible, she is capable of a
grudge against any one who will take into his
head to confound in her the woman of the world
with the ambassadress. Her conversation is full
of resources, but she is more amiable with those
who flatter than with those who honor her. She
loves to rule, to exercise inthe salons a sort of
royalty. She has perhaps been a little spoiled at
Berlin, but she shows herself thankful for it, for
nobody in the diplomatic corps does more, or
even as much, for society as the ambassadress of
England. Her fdtes, her dinners, are always
ordered in an admirable manner; and if she
aspires to be sovereign, it must be said that she
accepts with joy the obligations of royalty to
wards her subjects.
The ambassador of Austria and his wife make
a less grand figure at Berlin. The Count Sze-
chenyi, when one sees him for the first time, con
veys the idea of a very agreeable man. When
one gets better acquainted with him one discovers
that he is monotonous ; and when one knows him
still better, finds him tiresome, in consequence of
the numerous occasions on which he repeats him
self. He is one of those men who are quickly
exhausted, and with whom one perceives very

THE DIPLOMATIC CORPS. 179
soon that he must furnish almost everything in a
conversation. Nevertheless he knows how to
listen in an amiable way, and he is a precious
resource for the gossips. Nobody knows whether
he is a good or bad diplomat, never having had
anything to do but to maintain between the two
governments relations of friendship already es
tablished. He is a model of courtesy. If he
never divines a project of the Chancellor, on the
other hand he never seeks to oppose it. He
knows how to live in peace with everybody, and
will die with the conviction that he has contrib
uted to the great political work of his time. If
he had a larger fortune he would be perfect for
the post he occupies; unfortunately the econ
omies to which he is compelled have an influence
upon his temper, and he sometimes expresses a
little too loudly his regrets at the dearness of his
meagre receptions. His wife has the bad judg
ment to imitate him in that, and to initiate the
public in the embarrassments of her household.
She is, however, a kind and excellent person,
good, charming, obliging, but who is not adapted
to the situation in which she finds herself.
Before the present minister, France was repre
sented at Berlin by the Count de Saint-Vallier,

l8o BERLIN SOCIETY.
persona grata in certain circles, a bite noir in certain
others. He is a person very difficult to describe :
lithe as a reed, he has the appearance of one ;
slippery as an eel, cunning as a fox, he might
happen to fall, but always upon his feet. He is
the veritable homme de Montaigtie, tortuous and
versatile. Although his convictions are immovable, they
permit him to make compromises with the men
or things of which he has need. He thinks him
self often useful, while he is only ambitious. He
imagines himself working for his country, while
he is only working for himself. A man of con
siderable intelligence, he lacks sometimes modera
tion, and has not always the tact of perceiving
when he carries things too far.
As a diplomat he is very skilful and often per
spicacious, although it has happened to him to
allow himself to be deceived. He falls into a
trap when the trap is skilfully prepared and set
for his vanity. He loves to have his importance
conceded, and with this object he immediately
took care to be on good terms with the Chancel
lor. M. de Bismarck received him with so much
the more amiability as he was tired out with M.
de Gontaut-Biron.

THE DIPLOMATIC CORPS. ISI
The Count de Saint-Vallier, with marvellous
address, has understood how to profit by the
faults of his predecessor. He made it a point to
keep aloof from all the little intrigues in which
the protege of the Duke Decazes was involved ;
thanks to this prudent conduct, he has succeeded
in creating for himself a protector in the person
of the Chancellor and a friend in the Empress,
whom he has cleverly flattered by a true or pre
tended friendship for her lady of the Palace, the
Countess de Hacke. But by reason of his solici
tude for his personal position he has forgotten
somewhat the dignity of his rank of ambassador.
I believe that his dream was not to remain at
Berlin, but to become Minister of Foreign Affairs
in France. With this object he has constaritly
endeavored to run with the hare and hold with
the hounds and even with the wolf. He has often
condemned at Paris that which he approved at
Berlin, and vice versa. One should render him
this justice, that he has never been a party man ;
but it must also be confessed that he has con
stantly thought of his own interest.
He is capable of being a devoted friend, an ex
cellent adviser ; but in politics he is a disciple of
Talleyrand, one of those men who know how to

1 82 r BERLIN SOCIETY,
presage the fortune as well as the ruin of another
and draw from it for themselves a favorable ad
vantage. The ambassador of France was at
Berlin frankly detested by the old friends of M.
de Gontaut, and I know that all these people re
joiced at the news of the recall of M. de Saint-
Vallier. A minister whom I advise you to study, for he
is worth the trouble for you to conciliate, as he
is dangerous, is M. Sabouroff, representative of
his Majesty Alexander III.
A man of much intelligence, he confounds, es
pecially like M. de Saint-Vallier, the interests of
his own personality with those of his country.
He is an audacious man who recoils before noth
ing, who understands as well how to disengage
himself from friendship as to rid himself of an
enemy. He is one of those who find that the end
justifies the means. Owing to his perfect indif
ference for what he believes to be sensibility or
troublesome sentimentality, he will always main
tain himself upon the surface of the political
ocean. His ability is great, and his talents incontestable.
I suspect that his constant preoccupation is to
utilize them to the profit of his mission. He

THE DIPLOMATIC CORPS. 1 83
is rather a happy diplomatist than a states
man. He must have created for himself a very good
position at Berlin, and the Prince de Bismarck
himself is, I believe, very thankful that he occu
pies himself with gallantry more than with Rus
sian politics.
Personally M. Sabouroff is the most agreeable
man- of Berlin; he is an exquisite talker, an emi
nent archaeologist, of perfect taste, a great collector
of Greek antiquities, and consequently a .great
admirer of modern goddesses.
The Count de Launay, ambassador of the
King of Italy, and Sadullah-Bey, envoy of the
Sultan, do not deserve that I should give you a
very long description of them.
The former of these would be perhaps charm
ing if he'were not held in leading-strings by his
wife, whose ferocious jealousy freezes him in
society and interdicts him all expansion. Madame
de Launay, however, is not a fool ; but she is as
suspicious as she is intellectual. Unhappily she is
deaf, which renders almost impossible all con
versation with her. Perhaps Providence has
wished in that way to protect the victims whom
her terrible tongue would not have spared.

1 84 BERLIN SOCIETY.
The pair give now and then a ball, where it is
horribly warm, and where one as a compensation
is very badly refreshed. To this are confined
the receptions of the Count and Countess of
Launay. In any case these receptions surpass those of
their Turkish colleague, who sacrifices himself
even to drinking the wine of another, and inter
dicts himself from returning it in order not to
oblige his neighbor to transgress the law of the
Prophet. I'will not stop very long with the ministers and
envoys of the smaller or secondary powers. There
are only Spain and Portugal which deserve being
mentioned to you in detail.
M. Merry y Colon de Benomar, minister of
Spain, is a little old man, very ruddy, very coquet
tish, very attentive to the ladies, and especially
very proud of being descended through them
from Christopher Columbus. He has displayed
diplomatic talents in Morocco, and allowed it to
be seen that he could do the same in Europe. In
society he has an amusing style of conversation,
emphasized by his Spanish accent. Since his
marriage he has been accorded a little more im
portance than formerly, and the number of those

THE DIPLOMATIC CORPS. 1 85
who call him simply Monsieur Merry diminishes
every day.
His wife is a handsome, good, naive, and honest
creature who has but one sole ambition — that of
becoming an ambassadress: which she is very
nearly certain of, moreover.
Portugal has not for the present any minister
at Berlin, and is represented by a simple charge
d'affaires, M. de Soveral, who has the greatest
success with the ladies. He is very handsome —
too handsome— his bonnes fortunes have been the
greatest that a man, and especially a foreigner,
has had in Berlin society.
All the eUgantes have made it a point of honor
to become compromised by the brilliant Portu
guese. Not one of them, I believe, has perceived
that he has retailed to all the same song, and
from preference to the influential women in
society. He is not a bad man : he is the darling child of
the ladies, and consequently spoiled.
For a long time he was without a rival ; but the
advent of a brilliant Austrian military attache has
done him some injury with certain queens of
society. The Major de Steininger is much better adapted

1 86 BERLIN SOCIETY.
to please the ladies than M. de Soveral, because
he is distinction itself in person.
The minister of Greece is M. Rangabe, better
known by his literary works than by his political
achievements. As to the other marked personalities of the
diplomatic corps, they are so few in number that
the review of them will be very easy. France
has for counsellor to the embassy the Count d'Au
bigny, an amiable little man, intellectual as one
. is on the boulevard, and possessing at bottom the
Parisian bagou. He has for wife a woman some
what original, who does not lack intelligence, but
who, for fear of being common, has fallen into the
most complete rudeness.
Sir John Walsham, First Secretary of her Bri
tannic Majesty, is a long, lean, and thin personage,
a true son of Albion, and one of those function
aries who accomplish their daily task more by
routine than through ambition or love of work.
He will advance in his career by the hierarchical
way, and will retire from the political arena with
the title of Minister Plenipotentiary honestly
gained. His wife is a little person, playing the
ingenue, very affected, and very frivolous. A good
creature at bottom, but incapable of comprehend-

THE DIPLOMATIC CORPS. 1 87
ing the bearing of a word, or of anticipating the
consequences which might result from intemper
ance of language. She receives a great deal,
especially the diplomats, and minces her manners
still more than she receives. No more than her
husband is the wife in the odor of sanctity with
their ambassadress, who has too much intelligence
not to be impatient at prettinesses and affecta
tions which verge on the ridiculous.
An amiable, good, and charming person, al
though by far too berlinese, is Madame d'Arapoff,
wife of the First Secretary of the Russian em
bassy. From her twenty years' residence in
Berlin she has ended by adopting its tastes and
habits, and by loving it, if possible, more than her
native country: fortunately what she has not
assimilated is malevolence, a fault totally un
known to her. Madame Arapoff is one of those
women who are too absorbed by the world, visits,
purchases to make, robes to try on, to find the
time to occupy herself with others. Her life is a
perpetual fete. She adores society to such an
extent that she is incapable of seeing its triviality
and its faults. She has two adorable daughters,
of whom she is the youngest sister in youthful
ness of spirit. Very much petted in society, she

[58

BERUN SOCIETY.

is perhaps the only wife of a diplomat who has
succeeded in making herself completely accept
able in Berlin. Her countrywomen of the Russian
embassy do not like her and are jealous of her.
They say that the ambassador himself has not
disdained to associate himself with little intrigues
to have his First Secretary recalled.
I finish this letter, not having, as it appears to
me, forgotten any person of ¦ importance. You
will make yourself the selection of those whom
I have left in the shade or whom I have forgotten.

THE MIDDLE CLASS. 1 89

THE MIDDLE CLASS.
TWENTIETH LETTER. ,
IF the thing is possible, I advise you strongly
to try and introduce yourself into some middle-
class houses, or indeed into those belonging to
that little nobility which exists only in Germany,
and which by its habits, its manner of living, its
opinions even, approaches more nearly the mid
dle than the higher classes.
One must be just above all even towards his
rivals, and you would have but a false idea of
German society if you judged it after the speci
men offered by the elegant salons of Berlin.
When one wishes to get an idea of the public
opinion of a country, it is indispensable to ad
dress one's self to those who represent this
opinion. You will find these people at Berlin
only among the small rentiers, the employes of
the second order, the professors and the savants.
But I will occupy myself with these last in an
other letter. To-day I wish to conduct you into
one of those honest and quiet interiors where

19° - BERLIN SOCIETY.
one can see Germany such as it is before being
corrupted by the demoralization of the grand

Follow me, then ; and when we shall have re
turned from our pilgrimage you will smile, per
haps, at certain ridiculous things discovered on
the way, but you will not regret having under
taken it.
First of all you must climb two, often even
three flights of stairs, always very steep. If the
house belongs to the category of new construc
tions, the stairway will be of marble with a forged
iron baluster. If not, it will be of wood, but
always covered with a frightful carpet, which
changes its color at every story according to the
taste of the tenant upon whose floor he stops.
You ring: a girl in apron and white cap opens
the door* for you and informs you that the " Herr-
schaften" — translate the "seigneurs" — are at home.
After having laid aside your overcoat in a kind
of very narrow corridor where the gas burns all
day, and which takes the place of an anteroom,
you are introduced into a little salon where some
ten persons, or so, are seated upon small or large
chairs, ornamented with little guipure squares, an
obligatory decoration of German interiors. A

THE MIDDLE CLASS. I9I
single lamp lights up the entire apartment as well
as the persons there present. Do not forget that it
is half-past seven in the evening, the hour at which
civilized people sit down at table. At first sight
the salon in which you find yourself appears to
be the ugliest that you have ever seen in your
life. The ceiling is painted of a chocolate color,
ornamented with birds or with red or green land
scapes ; the walls are covered equally with a hor
rible velvet-green paper, of which some pictures
and photographs hung here and there serve only
to bring out more clearly the vulgarity.
An enormous porcelain stove fills a whole corner
of this room, of which the other is occupied by
the piano. An immense sofa, the table which we
have already mentioned, and the chairs arranged
symmetrically against the wall — such is the furni
ture of this so-called salon.
Upon the sofa a lady of a certain age is majes
tically seated : she listens to the compliments of
an infantry officer, who has the air of accomplish
ing a painful duty. Two or three women are
also enthroned upon easy chairs. One of them
is the mistress of the house, who takes possession
of you and presents you to the sovereign of the
sofa, saying in a sepulchral voice, as if over-

I92 BERLIN SOCIETY.
whelmed with the grandeur of the title which
she is about to pronounce: "Her Excellency
Madame the General de X . . . ." She does not
allow you to enter into a conversation with this
star, but she -continues to name to you "Madame
the Privy Councillor, Madame the Colonel," and
finally presents you to her daughter: "Das ist
mein Lischen" (That is my Lise). After that
you are free, and you ask yourself with terror
what is to become of you during the two mortal
hours which you must pass in this cage.
All these ladies have some knitting work in
their hands, and .appear absorbed in a conver
sation in which the price of meat and eggs
plays the principal rdle. They seem to be on a
. footing of strict ceremony one toward another,
and address each other by all their titles, without
forgetting, in any of their phrases, that of Ex
cellency or Very Gracious Lady. In despair, your
eyes wander to the table : you discover that it
is strewn with books, pamphlets, and papers. A
kind of light begins to break upon your mind.
Soon the mistress of the house proposes to you
fo go and smoke with the gentlemen. You ac
cept, and suddenly you find yourself, on entering
into another room, transported into another

THE MIDDLE CLASS. I93
world. All the men into whose society you fall
are educated, polite, well bred, although ignorant
of the little usages of the grand monde, occupied,
having all their work regulated, systematized, and
capable of judging soundly of the literary and
scientific movements of the times. They have
not the polish, the superficial varnish, of the high
society which gathers together in the palace of
Unter den Linden, and which makes the finest
ornament of the Thursdays of the Empress; they
do not know how to tie their cravat, and the
shape of their coat dates from the last years of
the Empire. They are ignorant of the little
tittle-tattle which circulates in the entourage of
the Emperor. They have a simple heart, timid
manners, but their intellectual faculties are well
developed, well poised;. it is a pleasure to con
verse with them, and one always derives some
profit from them. Remark that I make use of
the words " intellectual faculties," for as to poli
tics these people are as incapable of judging, and
as indifferent to them, as the people of the grand
monde. To return to our soiree. The time passes, the
minutes fly; while from being astonished you be
come interested. The door opens ; the little ser-

194 BERLIN SOCIETY.
vant announces the supper. The master of the
house offers his arm to her Excellency, you are
assigned to the Lady Colonel, and everybody
passes into the dining-room. The awkwardness
of the first moments has disappeared. You feel
yourself at your ease, and you forget by degrees
the little ridiculous peculiarities of your neigh
bors. The repast is of the most simple kind : a saddle
of deer, some salad and fruits, fresh or preserved
according to the season, compose the menu. The
guests eat with their knives, put their fingers in
the salt-cellar, lick their forks, wipe their mouths
with the back of their hands ; but you pardon
them these inconvenances out of gratitude for the
agreeable hours which they have made you pass.
When the dinner is ended they return to the
salon. The young girl to whom you have been
presented under the name of Lischen sits down
at the piano, and the evening ends as gayly as its
beginning had seemed to you solemn. At half-past
ten everybody prepares to depart ; the gas is al
ready extinguished on the stairway, and the ser
vant lights you out with a candle. One says good-
evening and promises to return, and her Excel
lency, her Privy-Counsellorship, and Madame the

THE MIDDLE CLASS. 1 95
Colonel go home on foot, neither more nor less
than the lieutenant who was so empresse around
their grandeur, and who was congratulating him
self at having economized the money which so
good a supper would have cost him.
A general rule : German society corrupted in
the highest ranks, demoralized in the lowest, can
be properly appreciated only when studied in its
middle class. However, even there, the same as
in the aristocracy, the inferiority of the women,
or, to speak more correctly, the way in which they
are relegated to their domestic occupations and
to the care of their clothing, strikes one stranegly
at first sight. In reality the enormous distance
which separates the bourgeoise from the grande
dame is in their morals. There, where the wife
of the small rentier, of the employe, or even of the
officer, will sacrifice herself to her family, to her
husband, to her children, will reduce expenses to
what is strictly necessary, will make of herself an
unpaid servant, and will bury her youth and
beauty in order to economize the price of the ed
ucation of her sons, the wife of a count or of a
baron, sometimes no richer than the first, will ex
act of her pretty face the means of shining in the
world, of eclipsing her rivals by her toilets, and

196 BERLIN SOCIETY.
under the name of little presents will receive in
reality the price of her honor. Frequent, then, if
you can, these bourgeois interiors : you will see
there the spectacle of a mother of a family worthy
of all respect in spite of her pettiness and comicali
ties; and you can, if you succeed in pvercoming
that spirit of raillery which prompts young men
to make sport of those whose habits and tastes
are not in accord with their own — you can, I say,
initiate yourself into the secrets of the life of
Germany that is educated, laborious, sincerely
convinced of the greatness of those who govern
it ; understanding nothing of the beauty of ma
terial things ; unable to suspect the pleasure of
being surrounded by objects which delight the
sight or the senses ; insensible to the beauty of a
picture or a statue ; careless of comfort, but capa
ble of weeping at the reading of beautiful poetry,
and of finding infinite enjoyment in seeing a
plant flourish and prosper, and hoping to be able,
as a relief after a day of calm, to run over the
pages of a treatise of Darwin or peruse the last
volume of Ranke. It is only the German of the
middle class who reads. If you enter a public
library, you will never find there anybody belong
ing to the highest ranks of society. The same

THE MIDDLE CLASS. 197
contrast exists between the officers of the elegant
regiments of the guard and those belonging to
the infantry and artillery. The first are grossly
ignorant, of a self-sufficiency beyond belief ; their
days are passed at the club, or in walking the
streets in order to gather there some potins ;
their nights are passed in dancing ; they are al
most more effeminate than the women, and in the
majority of cases more vain. The second, on the
contrary, are studious, modest, educated, but ap
preciated, alas ! by people for whom worldly pleas
ures are a sealed book.
This explains to you why men occupying some
sort of position, or worth something of themselves,
keep aloof from the society which, as a young
diplomat, you are obliged to frequent. Nowhere
more than in Germany, and more than in Berlin,
does there exist a greater difference between the
classes which constitute the nation. Everywhere
else a man of talent can rise out of the crowd,
scatter prejudices, and by the single power of his
genius make himself the equal of all. At Berlin
he might make himself useful, even indispensable ;
he will never succeed in being accepted as an
equal by those who in default of mind have an
cestors, which is not exactly the same thing.

198 BERLIN SOCIETY.
This barrier erected by pride has for result that
the men who would be the best adapted to ter
minate successfully the work of the consolidation
of the German Empire see themselves so driven
back upon themselves that they do not even at
tempt to set aside the barriers which separate them
from a world inferior in everything, but inacces
sible to them.
It is at the entrance to this world, as to that of
hell, that one must leave hope behind.

ARTISTS AND SAVANTS. 1 99
ARTISTS AND SAVANTS.
TWENTY-FIRST LETTER.
THERE are a great many artists and savants
in Berlin, but they constitute among themselves
a kind of coterie into which it is very difficult to
penetrate. In general they are not met with in
society, except at the house of the Princess
Imperial or in the salon of the Countess de
Schleinitz. The Princess Victoria, enthusiastic
for everything which touches upon the domain of
science, of literature and the arts, makes it a
duty to encourage the savants and the artists.
They are infinitely grateful to her for her intelli
gent protection. It is certain that since the
marriage of the heir to the Throne things belong
ing to the artistic domain have made an immense
progress. The Princess visits the expositions,
criticises and judges them, interests herself in
the acquisitions made by the museums, etc. A
few rare persons in society imitate her example.
The movement is still very restricted, but it is
none the less a step made in advance in a new
path.

200 BERLIN SOCIETY.
Unfortunately the grand monde through its
ignorance is incapable of acquiring a taste for the
things of the mind, and consequently of directing
artistic productions. The bourgeoisie has not
sufficient authority as opposed to the artists ; it
allows itself to be imposed upon by them ; in
place of pointing out to them their faults or
errors of taste, it accepts blindly and with
enthusiasm the decrees which they pass upon
themselves. The result of this state of things
is that the artists, having the choice completely
free, have founded a kind of national school, rely
ing upon the traditions of the Renaissance, and
which up to the present time has produced only
monstrosities. Nothing equals the conceit of a
German painter or sculptor, save perhaps that of
an officer of the gardes du corps. They imagine
they have conquered the domain of art, as much
so as the German armies have conquered the
provinces. Of an obstinacy without parallel in
their ideas, they wish to impose their interpreta
tions upon the entire universe.
Not having to do with an enlightened public,
they can give a free development to their extrava
gances, and little by little succeed in corrupting
entirely the taste of their compatriots. First of

ARTISTS AND SAVANTS. 201
all, what they condemn is the pleasure that one
experiences in looking at a pretty object, even if
its forms are not altogether correct, and they
declaim against everything which simply pleases
the eye. According to them everything ought to
be in a certain style, the old-German style — alt-
deutsch — which is nothing else than a frightful
caricature of the Renaissance. It is thus that their
houses are all gloomy, black, horribly furnished
with seats and armoires in carved wood, their walls
ornamented with pictures of the new school ; that
is to say, representing women in entravagant/ww,
with faded bouquet3 in their hands.
But I perceive that I am losing sight of my
subject, and am launching out into a digression
upon German taste instead of speaking to you
simply of the artists. I come back then to my
text, and describe to you the Professor Angeli.
Professor Angeli is from Vienna, and has nothing
to do here ; but he comes so often to Berlin, he is
so much patronized by the aristocratic society of
the city, that one might almost count him in the
number of its children. His great vogue dates
from the time when he made the portrait of the
Prince and Princess Imperial, who have moreover
bought his best works. Since this success, Pro-

202 BERLIN SOCIETY.
fessor Angeli has been the Benjamin of all the
salons, and like all Benjamins he has abused his
position. He is a man the most penetrated with
his own value of any man in the world. His
pride reaches phenomenal proportions ; he thinks
the entire universe created for his personal use.
He is responsible for his acts, for he can, on occa
sion when he is in presence of people not disposed
to tolerate this pride, be relatively modest. Un
fortunately that scarcely ever happens, and the
elegant ladies of Berlin submit blindly to the
caprices of Professor Angeli, which would not be
tolerated an instant in an attache or a secretary
of an embassy.
Professor Werner, whose picture of Congress
has had such a success, as well as that of the
Proclamation of the Empire at Versailles, is a
little, thin, slender man, with a cunning expres
sion, but who at least is not aggressive. That is
not saying that he has a small opinion of himself,
but he is not vain as the majority of his confreres,
and especially as the painter Lenbach, for ex
ample, whose head has been completely turned
by two or three bonnes fortunes with some wholly
or partially insane women.
The Count Ferdinand Harrach himself is a gen-

ARTISTS AND SAVANTS. 203
tleman-artist, an amateur painter, working for the
love of art, which does not prevent him from ex
acting very high prices for quite detestable pic
tures. Not so handsome as Mars, he has yet
made conquests, among others that of his very
pretty wife. A man of intelligence, he is, not
withstanding, so convinced of his superiority that
he does not disdain even to concede a little com
mon-sense to his neighbor. He is very amiable ;
but one divines, simply from his cunning smile,
how little esteem he has for those whom he deigns
to honor with his attention. He is one of the
most zealous apostles of the style alt-deutsch. The
Princess Royal finds without doubt that it is bet
ter to be deceived in art than not to cultivate it, and
it seems to her probable that the Count Ferdi
nand Harrach sets at least a good example ; she
honors him with her especial good graces, and
has even deigned to choose him for her cavalier
in her bal costume.
The most remarkable, in point of intellect,
among the artists whom you will have occasion to
meet is, without dispute, the Professor Gustave
Richter, the first portrait-painter whom Germany
possesses to-day. This one has neither arrogance
nor false ostentation. He knows his value, but

204 BERLIN SOCIETY.
has not the pretension of surpassing the rest of
humanity by his talent or his genius. He is the
only German artist that can be classed in the
category of superior men ; he married a daughter
of Meyerbeer, and the wife as well as the husband
are deserving that you should attach yourself to
them, and that you should not neglect the oppor
tunity to visit them.
I will not speak to you of the other painters or
sculptors who dispute with each other the good
graces of Berlin ; it suffices that I have pointed
Out to you the principal ones, among whom I was
almost forgetting to mention the sculptor Begas,
a man of much talent, and whose wife is celebrated
for her beauty. ,
The fdtes which the artistic world of Berlin
gives are amusing for whomsoever desires to be
edified by human vanity, for nothing is com
parable to the contempt with which the German
artists speak of those who do not share their ideas
or their tastes.
As to the savants and litterateurs, there are
some remarkable ones in Berlin. Without speak
ing to you of Mommsen, of Ranke, of Helmholtz,
almost all the professors of the University are
people of the greatest merit and of the highest

ARTISTS AND SAVANTS. 205
worth, who labor for the sake of labor, to advance
the cause of science, or to clear up the still dark
points of history ; not for the triumph of their
theories or of their personal opinions. These
courageous pioneers of progress merit our most
thorough respect and sincerest admiration, for they
are the only ones of their country who are not
blinded by false ideas of national glory, who ad
mit the worth of all the peoples of the earth, and
who above the new German Empire, its armies,
its conquests, its sovereign, and its all-powerful
Minister, see something more grand, more noble
still for them, and more sublime, for it is the only
one here below that the Eternal has created in
his image — humanity.

2o6 BERLIN SOCIETY.

THE PRESS AND THE JOURNALS.
TWENTY-SECOND LETTER.
Germany is one of the countries where the
press plays a rdle disproportioned to the influ
ence it exercises. Among the quantity of daily
papers which flood the pavement of Berlin,
scarcely two or more than three can be found
which exercise a certain power over the mind' of
the masses, and even they are of a quite inferior
order ; as, for example, the Klein Journal, a piti
ful imitation of the Petit Journal, and the Tage
blatt of Berlin, which must not be confounded
with the Deutsch Tageblatt. These two gazettes
are the organs of German humbug and of Jewish
arrogance. They are read everywhere by the
servants and by the grand monde,Awho equally
discover in them something to satisfy their love
for sensational news.
It often happens that these sheets are obliged
to retract their own affirmations ; but the public
rarely reads the retraction, and circulates on the
contrary with pleasure stories always false. As

THE PRESS AND THE JOURNALS. 207
to the journals, they are especially read abroad,
where one has the naivete to believe that they
represent the opinion for which they combat.
There is nothing of the kind, however, save two
or three sheets in the style of the Germania, the
organ of the Clericals, and the Kreuz Zeitung, the
mouthpiece of the Conservatives.
The German press is entirely either in the hands
of the Jewish bankers or dependent on the govern
ment, which inspires in turn the Post, the Nord
deutsche and the National Zeitung, and even
sometimes the Gazette de Cologne, according as
the choice of one or the other of these sheets
appears to it favorable to its interests, and accord
ing as it appears to it that one or the other will
allow itself the most easily to be contradicted.
In questions regarding the press, the same as in
all others, the Prince de Bismarck has his plan.
When he wishes to be edified upon the effect
which some news or other may produce on the
world, he has it immediately printed, taking good
care to accentuate it after the so-called shade of
the organ chosen by him. After the whole of
Europe has been excited and agitated by it, and
the foreign press has taken it up with more or
less noise, and the result wished for by the Chan?

208 BERLIN SOCIETY.
cellor is obtained, he has it contradicted by an
official note of the Norddeutsche. And the good
soul then criticises audaciously the perversity of
those who dare to suspect an independent journal
of having intimate relations with the govern
ment. The Norddeutsche A llgemeine Zeitung, or North-
German Gazette, is the only sheet which the Min
ister of Foreign Affairs continually feeds. Yet it
denies it every moment. When the ambassador
of a foreign power comes to complain at the
Wilhelmstrasse of an article particularly venom
ous against his country, they immediately make
him a thousand excuses for it, while all the time
alleging their ignorance of the said article, and
they promise to address to the guilty party a
reprimand ; then the next day, without denying
the affirmations of the previous day, the Nord
deutsche publishes an entrefilet designed to
appease the wrath excited by it. Besides, this
journal serves as diapason for all the- others,
which regulate their tone by it and rarely dis
pute its assertions.
The editors are only there for form's sake. All
the political articles are well and nicely fabricated
at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, and submitted,

THE PRESS AND THE fO URN 'ALS. 20g
at least as to the principal ones, to the prelimi
nary examination of the Chancellor.
When M. de Bismarck has need to have intro
duced into a certain quarter an opinion which
would not be in its place in the Norddeutsche,
and which would not have sufficient authority in
one of his other organs, he chooses the Post, a
so-called honest, conservative, and independent
journal of the integrity of whose principles many
bourgeois are convinced. The aid of the Post is
especially invoked when the Chancellor wishes to
conciliate the sympathies of the grand seigneurs
pietistes, subscribers to the Gazette de la Croix,
and of that sacred world which has constantly
before its eyes the nightmare of social revolution.
The assertions of the Post are more rarely con
tradicted than those of any other journal, It is
the olive-branch to reconcile, when that becomes
necessary, the government with the adherents of
the party of the Cross.
As to the National Zeitung, the organ of
Lasker and of the National Liberals, it formerly
vigorously sustained the government in its con
test against the Catholics. Since the party which
it represents has fallen out with the Chancellor,
the National Zeitung has appeared equally em-

2IO BERLIN SOCIETY.
broiled with him. But this sheet has still lean
ings towards its ancient ally when it becomes a
question of combating the common enemy, cleri
calism ; and the Chancellor makes use of it with
out scruple when he wishes to conciliate the
enemies of the party of M. de Windthorst.
The Journal, considered as being unfavorably
regarded in high places, could without danger be
contradicted and even censured if the sudden
change of tactics of M. de Bismarck should render
the contradiction and censure necessary.
As to the Gazette de Cologne, it is the advanced
sentinel of the Chancellor. It is charged espe
cially to observe the foreign powers, to un
veil their ambitious projects, to expose their
dissensions, the embarrassment of their finances,
and the so-called strength of their armies. It is
the Gazette, also, which has for special mission to
arouse the German patriotism, awaken the na
tional pride, and give the last clarion signal for
the hour of battle.
Published outside of Berlin, passing for the best-
informed sheet of Germany, as it is one of the
richest, keeping everywhere correspondents send
ing more or less fantastic stories, the Gazette de
Cologne is reputed abroad to he an independent

THE PRESS AND THE JOURNALS. 211
journal, although passionate in its opinions and of
extreme violence in its hatreds.
Few people suspect that its information comes
to it in a straight line from the cabinet of M. de
Bismarck, who takes advantage of the high posi
tion occupied by this journal to excite the bad
feelings of its compatriots, irritate the foreign
press, provoke its wrath and then reproach it
for it.
Thus, as one sees, the Prince de Bismarck has
everywhere and always many strings to his bow,
and plays with the press as with everything else.
He manages in the same way the foreign cor
respondents, who say, speak, and send only what
pleases the Chancellor : those who are corrupt
obey, those who are independent are circum
vented, those who are hostile are deceived. M.
de Bismarck knows also how to reduce the foreign
correspondents by a sort of hunger which chases
them out of the truth, as the wolves out of the
woods. Then having nothing to put their pens
to, they manufacture, like the Russian journalists,
improbable news, or, like the Times, they are re
duced to counting the balls and the dinners of
Lord Ampthill.
Among the journals really free from all species

212 BERLIN SOCIETY.
of connection and compromise with the govern
ment, two only merit special mention, the Kreuz
Zeitung, or Gazette de la Croix, and the Germania.
The first is patronized by the societe elegante,
which finds in it very minute descriptions of all
the fdtes of the Court, and which announces its
births, marriages, and deaths. The fact of being
a subscriber to the Kreuz Zeitung constitutes of
itself alone a patent of respectability. It is an
arch-honest, an arch-Protestant and arch-tiresome
sheet. Its saint is Luther, its hero is the Pastor
Kogel, its enemies are those for whom the word
progress is not an abominable word. A hundred
years behindhand, the Kreuz Zeitungwzs formerly
liked by M. de Bismarck. It pushes its scruples,
as to the veracity of the news which it gives, so
far as to publish them only when they have re
ceived the consecration of time and have passed
into the domain of ancient history.
It is perpetually at war with the Germania, the
Catholicism of which it holds in abomination.
This latter sheet, more Catholic than the Pope,
distinguishes itself especially by its passionate ar
dor for all sorts of polemics and by the asperity
it brings into all kinds of discussions. Tact, is a
quality which is wholly unknown to it, and Chris-

THE PRESS AND THE JOURNALS. 213
tian gentleness is entirely foreign to it. " Religion
without charity," ought to be its motto.
I will not speak to you of the Fremdenblatt, a
journal almost entirely devoted to stupid gossip.
It shares with the Berliner Tageblatt, of which I
have already said a word, the favors of the officers
and the ladies of Berlin, who will both find there
after a ball the description of their toilettes and
the names of their danseuses. In general all the
papers devoted to the recital of the miscellaneous
news and scandals of the grande monde, enjoy an
immense vogue in elegant society. The journal
ists who are its owners profit by this state of
things either to increase the number of their sub
scribers by serving up to them every morning a
fresh bit of gossip, or to extract money from the
dupes whom they threaten to compromise by the
disclosure of certain incidents of their private
life. This kind of blackmail gave occasion, not long
since, to a scandalous suit in which figured an ex-
officer, the bearer of an aristocratic name and
allied to the best families of the country.' But for
once that the thing has been exposed, how great
is the number of victims who have submitted to
their fate without complaining, and who have paid

214 BERLIN SOCIETY.
dearly for a silence which they judged indispensa
ble t o their social position !
The journal perhaps the most read in Berlin,
among those of this category, is the Boersen Cou
rier (Courier of the Bourse). The organ of the
theatre and ofthe stockjobbers, it is a sheet whose
editors are continually in prison. One reads there
narrations at one time bitterly true, at another
cruelly false. The opinions of this journal are of
no value on any other subject than that of money.

THE DUPES OF THE CHANCELLOR. 215
THE DUPES OF THE CHANCELLOR.
TWENTY-THIRD LETTER.
I MUST not forget to speak to you of a certain
class of individuals, some examples of whom you
will have occasion to meet, and whom I can char
acterize only by the name of the crows of the
Chancellor, in recollection of pur friend La Fon
taine. They are people more or less intelligent,
always pliable and adroit, often insinuating,
whose manners and education leave nothing to be
desired, and, who, devoured by an unbounded
ambition, have made themselves the slaves of the
Prince de Bismarck, to whom they serve, often
without suspecting it, as — what shall I say?
Spies is a term too energetic ; infamous is weak ;
let us say, then, that they are people who by de
votion to their own person have imposed upon
themselves the task of dissipating the sleepless
ness of their powerful protector by means of
stories upon the events of the day, and upon the
actions and doings of different persons whose
political opinions are feared in high places.
Without having the taste for those fairy-tales

2l6 BERLIN SOCIETY.
like the Sultan in the " Thousand and One Nights,"
the Chancellor loves to be distracted by anecdote:;.
He loves still more to possess some lost souls not
avowed as such ; his scent of a true-bred hunter
enables him soon to discover them, and he im
mediately sets about attracting them to him, per
suading them that they have spirit, talents — all
sorts of good qualities, in fine ; and, a thing more
important, giving them the assurance that they
enjoy his entire confidence. In a word, it hap
pens that M. de Bismarck makes himself a fox to
seduce some little crows, to whom he gives cheese
in place of taking it from them.
It is rare that this cheese is of the. best quality ;
but a humble gruyere eaten in company of a
prince is often preferable to a slice of Cheshire de
voured in solitude. Starting from this principle,
many persons make desperate efforts to obtain a
bit of the first ; but, alas ! this bit resembles the
fatal fruit of the tree of good and evil. It makes
you lose your head. Once that you have tasted
it, one belongs no longer to himself ; one becomes
ambitious, cruel, cowardly; one sacrifices every
thing, honor, feelings, to the desire of being in
the greatest favor, to the pride of being approved
by the master who owns you.

THE DUPES OF THE CHANCELLOR. 21 7
The compacts concluded between M. de Bis
marck and the auxiliaries of whom he makes use
secretly are never anything else than merely
understood ; often even the persons who have
signed them are in ignorance of the engagement
which binds them. They know only that the
Chancellor finds them of value ; that he invites
them to Varzin ; that he admits them into his in
timacy ; makes them converse ; interests himself
in their views; that, in fine, for one reason or
another their career takes an extraordinary flight
and develops itself in a manner particularly favor
able to their interests. They ignore, these honest
people, or feign to ignore, the influence of the
particular beneficent genius to whom they owe
their rapid advancement ; but at each new proof
of the favors which Providence accords them they
go and make a visit to the Chancellor, who re
ceives them with open arms, congratulates them,
and repeats to them : " I am very happy that
they appreciate at last a man of your merit."
Among the individuals thus appreciated, two or
three are in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs ;
Others, military or civil, wander about in society,
where they are admirably received, and where
few people suspect the rdle which they are playing.

2l8 BERLIN SOCIETY.
You yourself, fully apprised as you may be,
will have a great deal of difficulty to distinguish
therr, and the greater part of the time you will
fall into the trap laid for you by their amia
bility, always exquisite, and their politeness, su
perior by far to that of Germans in general.
However, the presence of these living tele
phones constitutes none the less a serious danger
of existence in Berlin ; for the slightest sincere
word escaped in confidence may perhaps be re
peated to the one criticised, and assume by the very
fact that it is repeated an importance that was
not intended. Do not talk, then, of politics dur
ing your stay in Berlin ; or if you do so, praise
everybody and everything, even and especially
what you disapprove.
Strive to avoid every hazardous expression ;
confine yourself to the most vulgar common
places ; recollect that not only the walls but even
the air has ears ; and that, in our age of progress,
one can, by the aid of telephones, hear at Pots
dam what is said at Berlin. I will not cite to you
the names of the persons who appear to have
entered into the category which I have just de
scribed. To what good to unvail their incognito ?
To what good especially to take from them their

. THE DUPES OF THE CHANCELLOR. 2IQ
illusions? — to tell them that it is not their merit
but their usefulness to which they owe the pro
tection of the Chancellor, and that there will
arrive a moment when, this being no longer ne
cessary, they will fall back into obscurity, from
which a mind less adroit than that of M. de Bis
marck would never have striven to draw them ?
Only I will repeat to you again and always : Be
on your guard, be on your guard ; be still more
so with young men who speak very well all
languages ; who. have travelled much, and possess
a certain quantity of foreign decorations ; are
polite with the diplomats (that is a grave sign),
very attentive to the ladies, well received at
Court, sought for in society, and going but little
to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs. Besides these
unavowed gentlemen, the Chancellor has still
other proteges — these avowed and perfectly avow-
able. Such is, for example, M. Lindau, brother
of Paul Lindau the* writer, whom you must
have already met. He has a fine head, having
all the distinctive characteristics of the Jewish
race — energy, shrewdness, a mind well tempered,
a judgment sound and strong, an extreme facility
in the management of his pen, and an ambition
to rise by the aid of his own merits.

220 BERLIN SOCIETY.
Very well received by the Princess Imperial, M.
Rudolph Lindau merits the sympathies accorded
him by the heiress to the throne. He is one of
the best employes of the Ministry of Foreign
Affairs, and has succeeded until now in avoid
ing the disgrace of the deus ex machind of his de
partment. He is seen but little in society, where
he is received with a certain disdain on account of
his Israelitish origin. A charming talker, you
will find him nevertheless much more reserved
than when abroad, for in Berlin everybody fears
a false interpretation of their thoughts. I doubt
for this very reason that he will encourage you to
visit him ; however, it will be for you a useful
and profitable acquaintance. Do not count, how
ever, upon his being able to furnish you with any
information : he is of an extreme avarice upon
this point. I regret much on your account the
absence from Berlin of M. de Radowitz. He is
one of the most curious types that I know.
Shrewd, adroit, pliant, intellectual, knowing how
to adapt himself to all situations, to lie with im
perturbable coolness when necessary, to flatter
opportunely, contradict in time, approve when
there is occasion, he has, with all his good quali
ties, a fault — that of an impetuosity of character

THE DUPES OF- THE CHANCELLOR. 221
sometimes dangerous for a diplomat, for it could
carry him beyond his object, and in any case
create a fear in his employer's mind that he
would not execute to the letter and in the
same spirit the instructions which he received.
He is, besides, vain, and does not know how to
repress an amour-propre too accessible to flattery.
He surrenders easily his secret to those who know
how to praise him judiciously for being its depos
itary. Very passionate in his enthusiasm for the
Chancellor, very zealous for his profession, he
allows himself to be drawn sometimes into lapses
of tact, and forgets that, if Germany has the right
to be proud, its representatives are in duty bound
not to be insolent. Such as he is, however, one
can consider M. de Radowitz, if not as one of the
best, as one of the most skilful and most amiable
diplomatic agents which Prussia possesses. He
is reproached often among his colleagues with
being a blunderer, but in certain cases that might
be a good trait, and it is often a fortunate thing,
in the changing and brusque policy pursued by
M. de Bismarck, to have a representative that
may be disavowed.
Often, when one seeks for or desires a war,
people capable of provoking it, like M. de Rado-

222 BERLIN SOCIETY.
witz, become precious auxiliaries. As to the
present, he is at Constantinople, to replace the
Count Paul de Hatzfeldt, and probably also to
annoy Russia, and grate upon the nerves of its
charge d'affaires, M. de Nelidoff, who, they say,
is extremely susceptible.
I do not know how M. de Radowitz supports
his retirement upon the banks of the Bosphorus ;
but what I am sure of is, that he finds himself in
his element in the midst of intrigues of all sorts
in which Oriental politics move and the unfor
tunate Commander of the Faithful struggles.
To set people by the ears, to reconcile them
afterwards, to have one's hands kissed by friends
and enemies, is a trade which suits under all as
pects the sons of the Radowitz, the friend of the
mystic Frederick William IV., whom Saint Rene
Taillandier has so well depicted for us in his fine
book, " Ten Years of the German Empire."
I will only mention in passing, among the pro
teges of the Prince de Bismarck, M. de Busch, the
author of the famous work upon the Chancellor
which made so much noise two or three years
ago. This one is a friend whom one disavbws ;
whom one allows to act, as it were, because it can
not be prevented ; whom one disapproves and

THE DUPES OF THE CHANCELLOR. 223
blames for the inconvenance of his revelations.
One must know the Chancellor very little, and
take very badly into account the power of which
he disposes, to admit for a single moment that
M. de Busch would have dared to publish his
book without having preliminarily submitted the
integral text to M. de Bismarck, and obtained
from him the necessary permission.
The Prince likes quite well this kind of indis
cretion, which permits him to make known indi
rectly to the public the hidden phases of his char
acter, as well as certain opinions that he could not
express elsewhere than in intimate social inter
course. The publication of the work Fiirst Bis
marck und seine Leute was a species of recom
pense accorded by the Chancellor to a man who
had been useful to him, and to whom he had
granted, in the guise of a salary, the right to de
scribe his daily habits. M. de Bismarck under
stands too well the people governed by Caesarism
not to know that they must be amused either by
giving them, under some form or other, bread and
games, or by offering to their curious avidity the
spectacle of the private life of a great man.
I recapitulate. In order to understand Ger
many well and observe it with profit, one must

224 BERLIN SOCIETY.
study it, comprehend it, and judge it at that mo
ment of its history in which it seems to have as
similated its conquests, and in which a near fu
ture may direct it in new paths.
One asks one's self in effect, to-day, what will
happen when the old Emperor, his all-powerful
Minister, the Moltkes, the Manteuffels, those men
of another age fallen upon the full nineteenth
century, shall have disappeared ; when in their
place will be found a king who has been able, with
out his contributing to it, to try the experiment
of a military and absolute government, but to
whom his situation, his leisure, his labors, his
travels, the nationality even of his wife, and, they
say, of her tastes, have given quite a different
character, and perhaps the determination to gov
ern Germany in a liberal sense. What obstacles
will he find in the traditions of a system which
has made Germany imperial ? what resistance in
an army organized for conquest ? in a bourgeoisie
not yet qualified to assume power? in a demora
lized press ? in disorganized parties? What aid
could be brought him by ambitious personalities
incapable of assuming responsibilities to which
they have been for so long a time unaccustomed ?
Through all these so unfavorable elements, the

THE DUPES OF THE CHANCELLOR. 225
socialism of which M. de Bismarck has enlarged
the spring, and which he is himself powerless to
dam up, threatens to rise higher every day. Then
one can predict that the situation of the successor
of an Emperor constantly victorious will be diffi
cult and perhaps inextricable. Could he find in
the army itself the spirit of sacrifice which would
permit him to. reduce it? Would he find in the
public functionaries, disused to submission, the
necessary instruction which great reforms require ?
Is the same generation which has seen everywhere
the triumph of material force, with its injustices
and hostilities, made to precipitate itself with ar
dor In the open paths of moral force and justice?
To direct into such paths a nation so little pre
pared to follow them is needed a prince of a
bold spirit and generous aspirations, a firm hand,
indifferent to temporary popularity, but knowing
that history can give in its assizes, at the side of
a conqueror, an equal place to a great legislator.

THE END.

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