he ought not to mention." He was struck by the "ogre-like form" and pleased by the contrasting voice, "which is sweet and gentle." But the effect of Bismarck's fundamental conceptions upon his subtly civilized Semitic mind was that of something elementary, crude, barbaric. With an exquisite shade of sarcasm, he hints, just hints, at this effect, to his queen. For he knows that in the veins of his "adored" sovereign runs, after all, the same Teutonic blood, beating to the same barbaric rhythm. Had she not, in order to quicken the cooler blood of her dear Lord Beaconsfield in the months preceding the Congress—had she not written to him with her own royal hand that, if she were a man, "she would like to go and give those Russians such a beating!" He was her minister to do her good pleasure. And so, with a merciless diplomatic craft, which is the full intellectual "equivalent" of war, he gave those Russians "such a beating." He added Cyprus to her Crown. He played for her, with an intimate consciousness of its absurdity, the great game, which, along with shooting pheasants and horse racing, still delights the rude imaginations of these occidentals!
His action was, as Bismarck had predicted that it would be, popular—immensely popular. Der alte Jude was rewarded by a grateful sovereign with an English earldom. He now took a place of eminence and splendor in that order which his radical spokesman in "Sybil" had declared "stands before Europe the most gorgeous of existing spectacles,"
