BISMARCK
"The next morning, very early, I left Kissingen, rushed along the Rhine to Cologne, through Belgium to Bruxelles, and the day following arrived at Wimereux."
The foregoing letters, to my wife and my niece, Norah, do not contain any reference to an incident which occurred on the second day I visited the Prince, before we sat down to breakfast. Some of the letters may have disappeared; the first eight pages of the one written to Norah are gone. I may have felt some little delicacy in relating a scene which, at the time, may have been more or less wounding to my amour propre—a sentiment which weakens with age, and, in my own case, has almost entirely faded away. This incident, or really scene, remains almost undimmed in my memory. It was so unusual and so startling, that it has been deeply imprinted upon the tissue of my mind, and nothing will ever efface it.
When I arrived at the Schloss, I was shown up to the long, large salon, with great windows at each end—the one in front opening upon a balcony facing the street and court, the other overlooking a stretch of gardens and park, in the direction of the baths where the Prince was then taking the cure.
The door at which I entered led me into the front part of the room. At first no one seemed to be in the room; but on looking at the window, heavily shaded with curtains, at the far end, there appeared the dark contour of a slight and frail woman, motionless and expectant. I understood. It was the Princess, watching and waiting for the Prince, the great and powerful man who was stricken in spirit and in body.
All was deathly still. I stood riveted to the floor, lest
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