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.

Following Bismarck’s lead, both of them had dropped the pretence of calling me “highness”—Bersonin’s “theory”, as Bismarck had called it, being well enough in my training period, I suppose, but now considered unnecessary. But they lost no chance of lecturing me on such subjects as the geography of Strackenz, the ceremonial forms of its court, and the details of the wedding ceremony. I suppose I took it all in, for there was nothing else to do, but it has all gone now.

We were three days on the road, and the last afternoon of the journey took us deep into forest country, all ghostly and silent under the show. It was very beautiful and solemn, with never a soul to be seen along the rough track winding among the trees, until about four in the afternoon we stopped in a little clearing where a small but stood, with thin smoke wreathing up from its chimney into the steely sky.