in
iron. We think the more precious metal will beat him when the broader
conflict comes. But such an adversary is not to be underrated. I do not
underrate him: and certainly not he me. Had he been born with the gifts
of patience and a fluent tongue, and not a petty noble, he might have
been for the people, as knowing them the greater power. He sees that
their knowledge of their power must eventually come to them. In the
meantime his party is forcible enough to assure him he is not fighting
a losing game at present: and he is, no doubt, by lineage and his
traditions monarchical. He is curiously simple, not really cynical. His
apparent cynicism is sheer irritability. His contemptuous phrases are
directed against obstacles: against things, persons, nations that oppose
him or cannot serve his turn against his king, if his king is restive;
but he respects his king: against your friends' country, because there
is no fixing it to a line of policy, and it seems to have collapsed; but
he likes that country the best in Europe after his own. He is nearest to
contempt in his treatment of his dupes and tools, who are dropped out of
his mind when he has quite squeezed them for his occasion; to be taken
up again when they are of use to him. Hence he will have no following.
But let me die to-morrow, the party I have created survives. In him
you see the dam, in me the stream. Judge, then, which of them gains
the future!--admitting that, in the present he may beat me. He is a
Prussian, stoutly defined from a German, and yet again a German stoutly
defined from our borderers: and that completes him. He has as little
the idea of humanity as the sword of our Hermann, the cannon-ball of
our Frederick. Observe him. What an eye he has! I watched it as we were
talking: and he has, I repeat, imagination; he can project his mind in
front of him as far as his reasoning on the possible allows: and that
eye of his flashes; and not only flashes, you see it hurling a bolt; it
gives me the picture of a Balearic slinger about to whizz the stone for
that eye looks far, and is hard, and is dead certain of its mark-within
his practical compass, as I have said. I see farther, and I fancy I
proved to him that I am not a dreamer. In my opinion, when we cross our
swords I stand a fair chance of not being worsted. We shall: you shrink?
Figuratively, my darling have no fear! Combative as we may be, both of
us, we are now grave seniors, we have serious business: a p