statesmanship, and never
has intrigue played so large a part in the history of Europe as during
the years 1850-1870. Half the small States who were represented at
Frankfort had ambitions beyond their powers; they liked to play their
part in the politics of Europe. Too weak to stand alone, they were also
too weak to be quite honest, and attempted to gain by cunning a position
which they could not maintain by other means. This was the city in which
Bismarck was to serve his diplomatic apprenticeship.

Two extracts from letters to his wife give the best picture of his
personal character at this time:

"On Saturday I drove with Rochow to Ruedesheim; there I took a
boat and rowed out on the Rhine, and bathed in the
moonlight--only nose and eyes above the water, and floated down
to the Rat Tower at Bingen, where the wicked Bishop met his end.
It is something strangely dreamlike to lie in the water in the
quiet, warm light, gently carried along by the stream; to look at
the sky with the moon and stars above one, and, on either side,
to see the wooded mountain-tops and castle parapets in the
moonlight, and to hear nothing but the gentle rippling of one's
own motion. I should like a swim like this every evening. Then I
drank some very good wine, and sat long talking with Lynar on the
balcony, with the Rhine beneath us. My little Testament and the
starry heavens brought us on Christian topics, and I long shook
at the Rousseau-like virtue of his soul."

"Yesterday I was at Wiesbaden, and with a feeling of melancholy
revisited the scenes of former folly. May it please God to fill
with His clear and strong wine this vessel in which the champagne
of twenty-one years foamed so uselessly.... I do not understand
how a man who reflects on himself, and still knows, and will
know, nothing of God, can endure his life for contempt and
weariness. I do not know how I endured this in old days; if, as
then, I were to live without God, thee, and the children, I do
not know why I should not put life aside like a dirty shirt; and
yet most of my acquaintances live thus."

Now let us see what he thinks of his new duties:

"Our intercourse here is at best nothing but a mutual suspicion
and espionage; if only there was anything to spy out and to hide!
It is pure trifles with which they worry themselves, and I find
these diplomatists with their airs of confidence and their petty
fussiness