“How will we look back on this?” he mused. “When we are old, and in our country places, and the bold lads of the new day are elbowing for power in the chancelleries? I wonder.” He shook his head. “I think I will wear leather breeches and allow myself to be laughed at in Stettin wool market, and sell two thalers cheaper to anyone who calls me ‘baron’.27 And you, Flashman—you will sit in your club in St James, and grow fat on port and your memories. But we will have lived, by God! We will have fought! We will have won! Is it not something to have moved great affairs, and shaped the course of time?”

No doubt I should have shared his enthusiasm, like Kraftstein, who was hanging on every word, and looking like a ruptured bullock. But all I could think to myself was, God, I wish John Gully had really set to work on you. What I said aloud was:

“Herr Bismarck, I am much moved. And now, with your permission, I intend to get as drunk as possible. Afterwards, tomorrow, I shall be at your service, since I can’t do anything else. But if I’m to shape the destiny of Europe, I’ll need a good skinful of liquor inside me to set me off. So will you kindly oblige me with the bottle, and a cigar, and as many dirty drinking songs as you and your friends can remember? And if this seems to you a coarse and pagan spirit in which to approach our glorious adventure for the Fatherland, well—you’ve made your preparations; let me now make mine.”

Chapter 7

As a result of the night’s excesses, which Bismarck didn’t discourage, I had a raging headache and a heaving stomach on the morning of my departure from Schönhausen. So I remember very little of it, which is no loss. For that matter my recollections of the journey north to Strackenz are hazy, too; I’ve travelled too far in my time to be anything but bored by it, and there was nothing to see that I recall except flat snowy fields, the occasional village, and bleak woodlands of bare black trees.

Rudi was full of spirits as usual, and de Gautet was his smooth, civil self, but I knew he wouldn’t forget or forgive that schlager-thrust in the guts. I hadn’t forgotten the two cuts I owed him, either, so we were even there. He never referred to our encounter, but now and then in the coach I would catch his dark eyes on me, and then they would slide away, looking anywhere but at me. He was one who wouldn’ be sorry of the excuse to draw a bead on my back if I tried to run for it.