And as I began later to kiss her again and excite her, she cried, "I am drained of feeling there, dear; but kiss my breasts, for they burn and throb, and my lips, for I love you."
As we went out two hours later we met the forester's daughter with a girl friend who took Laura in with sidelong appraising glance.
Whenever I think of Laura and the great days we spent together, the superb verses of Baudelaire come back to me:
The night grew deep between us like a pall, And in the dark I guessed your shining eyes, And drank your breath, O Sweet, O Honey-gall!
Your little feet slept on me sister-wise, The night grew deep between us like a pall.
I can call back the days desirable,
And live all bliss again between your knees, For where else can I find that magic spell Save in your heart and in your Mysteries, I can call back the days desirable.
CHAPTER V
The period that began in 1890 was memorable for many reasons: Sir Richard Burton, one of the greatest of Englishmen, whom I have elsewhere compared with Sir Walter Raleigh, died in October at Trieste, and left life poorer to some of us. Stanley, another explorer, was married to Miss Dorothy Tennant, and almost immediately hideous stories of cruelties perpetrated on the African natives during his last expedition shocked the conscience of England. When they said that Miss Tennant, who was a very charming girl, was going to marry the lion of the season, I said it seemed to me true: "She was about to marry the king of beasts," for Stanley was to me always a force without a conscience. Browning died in December, 1889, and Tennyson a couple of years later. Parnell, too, came to the crisis of his fate about this time, and in France, Renan's death left a sad gap.
But the event that marked the time and gave supreme significance to it was the dismissal of Bismarck. His fall in 1890 shook the world. For nearly thirty years, from 1862 on, Bismarck had dominated Europe. Few remember his beginnings, though he himself has told how.
When I first came into office, the king showed me his written abdication. I had first of all to re-establish the royal power, for it was shaken and shattered. I was successful. Yet I am not an absolutist. There is always danger in one-man government. Parliamentary opinion and a free press are necessary to a satisfactory monarchial system…
Universal suffrage was the spirit of the Frankfort Parliament. I adopted it in the Constitution of the North German Confederation and afterwards of the Empire, because it was necessary to counteract the Austrian influence, and it was my aim, therefore, to satisfy all classes.
Bismarck's judgments of his imperial masters are curiously characteristic: while in their service, he spoke well of them. On his tomb Bismarck directed that there should appear these words:
Here rests Prince Bismarck
Born 1st April, 1815
Died — A faithful German Servant of Emperor William the First
He wrote: "The old Emperor William was not a great statesman but a man of sound judgment and a perfect gentleman. He was true to those who worked with him. I was deeply attached to him. The Emperor Frederick, too, was a noble man-a sharp sword, so to speak, with a short blade." But after Bismarck died in 1898 and his Memoirs by Busch were published, we got the other side. As he said himself: "I lack altogether the bump of veneration for my fellow men." And so we find what Bismarck really thought of Emperor William the First: "When anything important was going on, he usually began by taking the wrong road, but in the end he always allowed himself to be put straight again… His knowledge of affairs was limited and he was slow in comprehending anything new."
Bismarck found it hard to conceal his contempt for the Crown Prince Frederick. It even comes out in spiteful little outbursts such as this: "The Crown Prince, like all mediocrities, likes copying, and other occupations of the same sort, such as sealing letters, etc."
And finally Bismarck's opinion of the Kaiser who dismissed him was written in vitriol even before the final break:
I cannot stand him (Wilhelm the Second) much longer. He wants even to know whom I see, and has spies set to watch those who come in and go out of my office… It comes of an overestimate of himself, and of his inexperience of affairs, that can lead to no good. He is much too conceited: he is simply longing with his whole heart to be rid of me. in order that he may govern alone (with his own genius), and be able to cover himself with glory. He does not want the old mentor any longer, but only docile tools. But I cannot make genuflections nor crouch under the table like a dog. He wants to break with Russia, and yet he has not the courage to demand the increase of the army from the Liberals in the Reichstag.
It is interesting to read that in a letter to the Chancellor, the Crown Prince Frederick at Portofino described his eldest son as "inexperienced, extremely boastful and self-conceited."
Bismarck's opinions of his masters are to my mind not only self-revealing but true, and his contemptuous condemnation of Wilhelm the Second has been justified by the result.
Like most of the leading men of the nineteenth century, like Tennyson and Hugo, Gladstone, Salisbury and Parnell, Bismarck was a convinced believer, not only in God and divine providence, but also in a life after death; he even believed in apparitions, ghosts, and supernatural signs.
In 1866, just before the war between Prussia and Austria, Bismarck, according to Busch, had been exceedingly cast down: when he was shot at five times and wasn't even grazed, he took it as a sign of divine approbation and was immediately lifted into the happiest humor.
One must think of what Bismarck accomplished even though handicapped by brainless masters! In 1866 he beat Austria and made Prussia the first military power in Europe. He welded many German states into one on the anvil of war, and after 1870 he developed the industries of his people in the most unexpected and successful ways. I have already related how he had profited by the socialist teachings of Lassalle, how in fifty ways he had fostered industry so that every one felt an added incentive to labor and a sure understanding that an extra effort would lead on to fortune. Considering that he was born and bred an outrageous individualist in an aristocratic tradition and yet created a new record as a social reformer, one can only wonder at the profound morality which led him always towards justice. He knew instinctively, as Lincoln knew, that "labor is the superior of capital and deserves much the higher consideration."
His fall was treated excellently in the English press. Punch had a famous cartoon on it entitled, "Dropping the Pilot."
But Bismarck was not so great a man, in my opinion, as Sir Richard Burton: in force of character, in daring and in strength, they were not unlike; but Burton had a wider intelligence, a larger mind, and a richer generosity and kindliness of nature.
To me the difference between the fates of Bismarck and Burton gives rise to many reflections. For thirty years Bismarck had supreme power and made Germany the first state in Europe — I had almost said in the world; but England denied Burton almost everything. Although he had served the foreign office with extraordinary ability, they refused him even the usual retiring pension.
In my last visit to him in Trieste, I couldn't help asking him how it came about, why the English authorities were so down on him, and he said smiling, "You will laugh if I tell you. I think I blundered in my first talk with Lord Salisbury.
He called me 'Burton'; his familiarity encouraged me, and I spoke to him as 'Salisbury.' I saw him wince, and he went back immediately to 'Mr. Burton,' but out of cheek or perversity I kept up the 'Salisbury.' He was so ignorant; he didn't know where Mombassa was; and the idea that I had brought back treaties handing over the whole of Central Africa to Britain merely filled him with dismay. He kept repeating, 'dreadful responsibility — dreadful'; he was in reality, I believe, a very nice old lady." I could not help laughing.