“Shall we leave these vapourings?” he broke in harshly. “You know something of what I am, and I know exactly what you are—a brutal, lecherous ruffian. Yes, but with certain abilities, which you will use as I direct.”

“What the devil is it you want, curse you? What use can I possibly be to you?”

“That is better. Give him a brandy, Kraftstein, and a cigar. Now then, Mr Flashman, you will listen to me, and what I tell you will never be repeated—never, as you love your life.”

As I think back on it now, it is still difficult to believe that it happened—that I really sat in that long room, with a glass and a cigar, while that cold, masterful man who was to be the greatest statesman of his age, outlined to me the amazing plan which was to be the first, small stepping-stone in his great career. It was mad, incredible nonsense, but it is true. Bismarck then was nothing—in the political sense, anyway. But he had dreamed his dreams (as Lola had told me years before) and now he was setting about in that cold. German certainty, to make them realities. Strange, isn’t it, that without me he could not have begun as he did? He needed the lecherous, brutal ruffian (an incomplete description, but Bismarck always was a great one for half-truths).

“Let me begin by asking you a question,” says he. “What do you know of Schleswig and Holstein?”

“Never even met ’em,” says I. Rudi laughed aloud, and de Gautet gave his sidelong smile.

Bismarck didn’t show any amusement. “They are states,” he said, “not persons. I shall tell you about them.”

And he began to explain what historians call “the Schleswig-Holstein question.” I won’t bore you with it here, because even diplomats agree that it is the most infernally complex affair that ever bedevilled European politics. Nobody has ever got to the bottom of it—indeed, Palmerston once said that only three people understood it: one was Pam himself, and he had forgotten it, another was a famous statesman, and he was dead, and the third was a German professor, and he had gone mad thinking about it. So there. But the nub was that the two states, which lay directly between Denmark and the German Confederacy, were nominally ruled by the King of Denmark, although most of the inhabitants were Germans. Both Germany and Denmark claimed Schleswig and Holstein, and the people living there were forever arguing about who they should belong to.

That, then, was the famous question25—and of course, Bismarck knew the answer.

“It is beyond dispute,” says he, “that these two states are German by right. It has become of the first import that they should be German in fact.”

I couldn’t see what the devil this had to do with me, and said so.

“Be silent, and listen,” he snarled. “You will see very soon. Now, answer me: in the intervals between your drinking and whoring and hunting, do you take any interest in politics?”