knew. His business instinct, dominant even here, made him issue this statement as an extra edition of his paper, that soon flooded the streets of the excited metropolis. Eager buyers fairly tore it out of the hands of the newsboys.

But though his hands were stained with blood and practically everyone knew it, he was still hypnotized by Rossi. Filipelli must vanish. The police, controlled by irresolute chiefs who feared the anger of those above them, let him escape. Dodging from place to place, he lost touch with the metropolis. He was not aware that an outraged public had at last torn the coverings from villainy in high places. He let himself be received by provincial pre

fects and passed on to their neighbors. An order for his arrest was pursuing him by telegraph, and quickly overtook him; but heedless Filipelli, the 'Bold Boy' whom all had feared, had a great hotel in the Riviera, already closed for the season, opened for him. He ventured to show himself on the beach at Nervi. Even now he did not fear the police. Old comrades recognized him there, and pointed him out. Thereupon the police had to take action. Filipelli sought to escape in a boat, with a detachable motor, still possessed of the idea that the authorities were not really hunting for him in earnest. Only when the handcuffs were finally snapped on his wrists did he realize the true situation, and exclaimed: 'I am lost.'

LATE in the autumn of 1885 Prince Bismarck expressed a wish that my father, who was President of the Bimetallic League, should come and talk to him about bimetallism; so on October 16 he started for Germany, taking my sister and me with him for a month's holiday abroad.

On the way I got my first lesson as to the value of an official démenti, for we found in the Times for that morning the following notice: 'We are authorized to contradict the report that Mr. Henry Hucks Gibbs has had an interview with Prince Bismarck.' This had been inserted without my father's knowledge, and it was just barely in

time to be verbally true! It was probably inserted by the German Embassy, for when my father reached the station at Friedrichsruh he was given a message from Bismarck suggesting that he should come under an assumed name, as there would be another guest at luncheon. The Prince was, I think, the author of the saying that he never believed anything till it had been officially denied!

At Hamburg we found a telegram from Bismarck saying that he had ordered that the eleven-o'clock express should stop at Friedrichsruh next morning; so, leaving my sister at Hamburg, we went by that train and, shin

ing with the reflected glory of the great man, we were seen into a reserved > compartment by many bowing officials. My father expected an interview of about an hour, and I intended to remain at the station till he came back, but when we reached our destination E we found Bismarck's son-in-law, Count Ranzau, waiting on the platform, and he kindly pressed me to come up to the house. I refused, thinking that I should be very much in the way, and Ranzau said, ‘Ah, I see, you want a proper invitation from the Princess; you are quite right, I will go and get it!'

Accordingly he and my father drove off to the house, which was only about three hundred yards from the station, and very soon he came back with the 'proper invitation' and all was well. He took me straight to the library, and as I went in he announced me as 'the prodigal son.' Bismarck was at the end of a long room, and I can see him now, tremendous figure, very tall and very large, standing up and laughing at the introduction and holding out his hand, with his two great Danish hounds, one on each side of him.

a

He was most kind and friendly, and just as I came in he was expatiating to my father on the determination of the French to fight in 1870 with or without reason, and above all to crow!

At twelve o'clock we had a large and long meal, including smoked goose and other delights. My father sat next Princess Bismarck, who was very pleasant but not able to speak much English, and after luncheon, when the cigars were handed round, he asked her whether she minded his smoking, on which Bismarck roared out, 'Why, she smokes herself!' This was in 1885, when it was very unusual for a lady to smoke, so a vigorous effort was made by his daughter to induce him to behave properly; but he took no notice of her repeated and reproachful cries of

'Father! she does n't! Father!' and shouted, 'She does, she does, in her bedroom she does!' It turned out that the poor lady suffered from asthma, and smoked medicated cigarettes to relieve it.

Besides the family there was Herr Lindau from the Foreign Office at Berlin, who was evidently quite at home and possibly held some official position with the Chancellor. He spoke English excellently and told me that he sometimes wrote articles for Blackwood's. There was also, as we had been warned, another visitor besides ourselves. We understood that he was the Oberpräsident of a province, and he left before luncheon was over. Bismarck seemed much annoyed with him, and told us that he had insisted on coming, but had really nothing to say which he could not have written on half a sheet of note-paper, and had only come in order to be able to say that he had dined with the Chancellor.

'You will understand,' Bismarck added, 'that in everything but name I am King of Germany, but I have not all the privileges of a King and I cannot simply say I am not disposed to receive so-and-so.' It appeared, however, that even the most pressing visitors sometimes failed to get in, for Bismarck told us the following story:

'A man called and sent in word that he wanted to see me, and I said that he could n't. He then sent in to say that he must see me, and I said that he should n't; and he sent in a third time to say that if he did not see me he should go and hang himself on one of the trees, and I told the servant to find a rope and lend it to him!'

As we sat down to luncheon I asked Countess Ranzau whether the bread that lay between us was hers or mine, and she said that she never ate bread, and added, with rather embarrassing frankness, 'You see, I am very fat and

you are very thin, and between us we should just about make two ordinary people.'

The Prince was interesting about the estate at Friedrichsruh:

'It was given me,' he said, 'by the King my master' - that was his constant phrase for the old Emperor William. He gave it to me after the Franco-German War, and chose this particular place as his gift because he knew my love for trees. There are 25,000 acres, and as I cannot spend my revenues I am able to keep it all in good condition.'

He offered to take us for a drive in the woods in the afternoon, and when my father said that we ought to be going they pressed us to stay till after dinner, and told us that an express would be passing through the station between nine and ten, and that they would order it to be stopped and take us back to Hamburg.

Then we were taken up to rest for an hour, each in a separate sitting-room, but as soon as their backs were turned I joined my father in his room, as I felt an urgent need to crow to somebody over this entirely unexpected and amazingly interesting experience.

When the time came for our drive, what they called a Pomeranian mist was falling and Bismarck made us each put on one of his light greatcoats; I hope they reached his heels, for on us they trailed and we had to hold them up when we got out, as we did from time to time, to look at one of his favorite trees. There were two carriages; Ranzau and Lindau came in the second with me, and in the first Bismarck and my father had their bimetallic talk, and the latter told me afterward that he was greatly impressed with Bismarck's full and accurate knowledge of this complicated subject in all its bearings.

During luncheon and dinner, and

indeed all through the day, Bismarck talked freely about personages and politics both English and European Whenever he mentioned the old Em peror, he spoke with respect and, I think, with affection. The Crown H Prince and Princess were not mentioned, but we asked what sort of man young Prince William was, and Bismarck said that he was 'a nice young man, a very nice young man.' It would seem that he had in 1885 no prevision of the day so very near at hand when the 'very nice young man' would succeed to the throne and soon afterward come to the conclusion that there was not room Unter den Linden for a young Emperor and a very clever old man who could speak of himself as 'in all but name King of Germany.'

Bismarck mentioned Queen Victoria with deference, and he talked of Beaconsfield with admiration and affection. He told us that he had three houses, and that in each of his three libraries he had a picture of Lord Beaconsfield.

He spoke as if he despised and disliked Gladstone, and talked of his 'extraordinary follies' in Sudan and blamed him for the death of General Gordon.

Of Chamberlain he said, 'I do not like your Mr. Chamberlain, and now that my son Herbert has sent me a photograph of him I have formed a worse opinion of him than ever, he looks so impertinent. I wish Dilke had come to the front instead.'

He asked my father what we in England thought of his action about the Caroline Islands, and what he called the 'foolish fuss' with Spain, and my father said that it was thought to have been very clever, and Bismarck laughed and said, 'I think it was, especially my asking the Pope to arbitrate, and the more so because his decision is of no importance to me whatever.' There had been an article, I think, in the

pectator, a week or two before, sugesting that Bismarck had got up the hole trouble in order to give himself he opportunity of making a friendly esture to the Pope.

He also spoke of the Bulgarian roubles, and I remember how he humped on the table with his great ist and said, 'I shall not allow these etty tribes to disturb the peace; I vant peace, and it is not to be borne hat some two million sheep-stealing uffians should disturb the millions of Europe it is impertinence.' Probably he was the one man in the world who could have said that tremendous 'I shall not allow' without being guilty of empty boasting.

The frankness or apparent frankness of his talk was surprising, but it was a cynical saying of his that it was just as cheap to tell the truth as to tell lies, and quite as effective, for the truth is never believed in diplomacy. Another saying of his which impressed me, though I do not remember the context, was 'In matters of national policy I never put down my right foot till I know where I am going to put my left; that is a lesson which I learned in my youth in the Pomeranian marshes.'

At dinner we each had, I think, seven wine-glasses and at least one tumbler, and I drank nothing but water! My host noticed and deplored this, and though he courteously tolerated it he could not refrain from a slight outburst against what he called the temperance craze in England, and against the fanatical attacks on moderate drinking. It is recorded of him that at one time he did his moderate drinking in large glasses of champagne and porter mixed, and that once Moltke gave him a sort of punch made of champagne, hot tea, and sherry.

After dinner we all went into the drawing-room, and there everyone shook hands and we wished each other

a blessing on the meal an old German custom, they told us. Then we sat down, and all the Germans, including the ladies, drank beer. Princess Bismarck brought us some of her husband's big cigars and lighted them for us, and the big man himself smoked a pipe three feet long with a very large china bowl. He spoke with regret of the good time when he used to be able to smoke large cigars all day long, lighting the first as soon as he woke up and before he got out of bed; but the doctor had forbidden cigars, and all smoking, till after dinner, and then allowed only four pipes. 'So,' said Bismarck, ‘I sent for the largest pipe I could buy.' 'Yes,' said his daughter, ‘and if I don't watch you very closely you have five of them instead of four.'

Bismarck was in great spirits all the evening, laughing and talking and chaffing everybody. He wanted to know whether I was married, and said that as a clergyman of the Church of England I ought to be; both he and the Princess quoted passages from the Vicar of Wakefield in support of that view; it was surprising to hear him pouring out the Vicar of Wakefield as if he knew the whole book by heart. He told us that it was always the first English book which a German was set to read. My father said that his sons were idle about getting married, and I answered that if only he had forbidden us to marry we should probably have done it long ago; on which Bismarck said, 'Ah! I see it is a case of obstination in the family: your father will have his way with me about bimetallism and you are obstinate with him - father and son!'

'Obstination' was one of the very few mistakes I heard him make, for his command of the English language was remarkable. His accent was not bad and his vocabulary was very good. One other little verbal slip he made when a

dish of mince and eggs was being handed round and he pressed my father to take an egg, on the ground that he would find it 'very convenient' with the mince. Many things might be truly said of a soft poached egg in that position, but 'convenient' is not, I think, one of them.

A reference to David Copperfield by Countess Ranzau amused us. She had a little boy sitting on her lap, and I asked her if she had a daughter. 'No,' she said, 'but before this little boy was born I made up my mind that it would be a little girl; but it was a boy, and "Betsey Trotwood" never came!'

Bismarck's two great hounds never left him except when he went to see the Emperor. The elder of the two sat staring at us for some time and then walked solemnly across the room, licked our hands, and walked back to her master. He was much interested and said that he had never known her make friendly advances to a stranger before. They were, he said, inclined to be savage, and no one, not even a member of his own family, dared touch them unless he first gave an order to the dog. They slept in his room, and when his wife and daughter came in to say good-night to him after he was in bed. the great dog always got up from its sleeping-place and stood by the bed to protect him. He also told us that he Jiked to go out at night for a walk in the dark, and that the two dogs were better protection for him than a guard of soldiers.

In the course of the evening he sent for a large English dictionary, and announced that he was going to prove to my father that he did not know his own language. It was lucky that he did not select me for the experiment, for he found a quantity of dictionary words most of which I had never heard, but my father, who had a remarkably

retentive memory, and had been correcting the proofs of the Oxford Dictionary for years, told Bismarck what all the words meant and all about them. At the end of twenty minutes Bismarck shut the book up with a slam and said, 'I give you my word you are the first man I ever met who knew his own language, and I have done this to almost every foreigner who has spent any time in my house.'

He complained very much of the growing habit of printing German books in the Roman alphabet; he said that he could only read them with difficulty, and that when they were printed in the German alphabet he could run his eye over the page and tell at a glance whether he wanted to read it or not, while in the other alphabet he had to read every word to find out whether they were worth reading.

Soon after nine o'clock we left, and Bismarck gave us each a signed photograph and asked us each to send him two photographs, one for him and one for the Princess.

Ranzau and Lindau came to the station to see us off, and the latter told me that latterly Bismarck had refused to receive even Germans if he could possibly avoid it, and that foreigners were as a rule absolutely barred; also that with the exception of Beaconsfield and a few personal friends he had not at any time been willing to receive Englishmen, and that it was almost certain that there were not five living Englishmen to whom he had given his photograph. Lindau was, I think, unfeignedly surprised at the great friendliness with which we had been entertained and at the length of time that Bismarck had kept us with him. Bismarck was, I suppose, at that time the most interesting personality in the world, and we were undeniably fortunate.