236 DER HAUSMEIER 
complaint you utter in your letter I must strongly protest! Heissaidtohave 
turned away the hearts from their parents of your three eldest children. 
What the two others have to say for themselves, I do not know, but for 
my part I simply but firmly and with a clear conscience am able to answer: 
‚No!‘ He never dared and I never should have allowed him to talk about 
you or dear Papa in my presence! But if you mean to allude to the possi- 
bility of any tending a hand to the overthrow of the then allmighty 
Chancellor in the days of dear Papa’s Reign, I quite openly confess, that 
I was dead against it and for a very good reason. The death of Grandpapa 
had so fatally upset and even unnerved the country, that it was quite out 
of its mind; and in a state of hysterics. In this state it looked at Bismarck, 
notat usasthe sole transmitter and keeper ofthe old tradition — it was 
wholly wrong and was his own crafty doing — but it was a fact! Had Papa 
and I with him sent Bismarck home, then such a storm would have broken 
lose against him and you, that we would have simply been powerless to 
stay it and you would have embittered poor Papas last days, spoilt the 
splendid, ineffaceable figure he had in his People’s eye and — fancy — 
endangered your stay with us, yes perhaps made it impossible. For the 
moment Bismarck was the Master of the situation and the Empire! And 
the house of Hohenzollern was nowhere! Had we only even tried to touch 
him, the whole of the German Princes — I was secretly informed of this — 
would have arisen like one man and would have made us take back the 
Chancellor, to whom we and especially later I would have been delivered 
over bound hand and foot! The situation was simply impossible. I from 
that moment perfectly understood the terrible task, you then did not 
foresee, which Heaven had shaped for me; the task of rescuing the Crown 
from the overwhelming shadow of its minister, to set the person of the 
Monarch in the first raw at ‚his‘ place, to save the honour and the future of 
our House from the corrupting influence ofthe Great Stealer of our People’s 
hearts and to make ‚him‘ atone for what he harmed Papa, you and even 
Grandpapa! Appalling enough for a young man of30! to have to begin a 
reign with, after such a glorious one, having just passed! I however felt 
what was my duty and thank God He helped me. Without him I was lost. 
When the strife waxed hot and Bismarck began his most daring tricks 
against me, not recoiling before even High Treason, I sent a message to 
him saying: it seemed to me as if he was riding into the lists against the 
House of Hohenzollern for his own family; if it were so I warned him, 
that this was useless as in that case he must be the loser. The reply was 
what I had expected, and I felled him stretching him in the sand, for the 
sake of my Crown and our House! Now since that terrible year I had to 
bear up with the storm of Germany’s feelings and the vilest tricks of the