“Surely I should ask you?” says he, with a thin smile. “I have not seen the…lady, since that evening.”

“No? Well, well. I haven’t seen a great deal of her lately myself.” I was prepared to be pleasant, and let bygones be bygones, if he was. He stood, smiling with his mouth, considering me.

“Do you know,” says he at length, “I feel sure I have seen you before, but I cannot think where. That is unusual, for I have an excellent memory. No, not in England. Have you ever been in Germany, perhaps?”

I said I hadn’t.

“Oh, well, it is of no interest,” says he coolly, meaning that I was of no interest, and turned away from me.

I hadn’t liked him before, but from that moment I hated Bismarck, and decided that if ever the chance came to do him a dirty turn, I wouldn’t let it slip past me.

Tom had said he was full of bounce, and at supper that night we got a good dose of it. It was very free and easy company, as you can imagine, with no women present, and we ate and drank and shouted across the table to our heart’s content, getting pretty drunk and nobody minding his manners much. Bismarck ate like a horse and drank tremendously, although it didn’t seem to show on him; he didn’t say much during the meal, but when the port went round he began to enter the conversation, and before long he was dominating it.

I’ll say this for him, he wasn’t an easy man to ignore. You would have thought that a foreigner would have kept mum and watched and listened, but not he. His style was to ask a question, get an answer, and then deliver judgement—for instance, he says to Tom, what was the hunting like, and Tom remarking that it was pretty fair, Bismarck said he looked forward to trying it, although he doubted if chasing a fox could hold a candle to the boar-hunting he had done in Germany. Since he was a guest, no one pulled his leg, although there were a few odd looks and laughs, but he sailed on, lecturing us about how splendid German hunting was, and how damned good at it he was, and what a treat we were missing, not having wild pigs in England.

When he had done, and there was one of those silences, Speed broke it by remarking that I had done some boar-hunting in Afghanistan; the fellows seemed to be looking to me to take the talk away from Bismarck, but before I had the chance he demanded:

“In Afghanistan? In what capacity were you there, Captain Flashman?”