71

Prince Otto V. Bismarck receives his final and his one glorious decoration; and here we leave him, his fame secure among Germany’s immortals.

The game is now all but played out. The last phase is to be the noblest expression.

[256]

In his prime, Bismarck was of massive proportions in mind and body; but of his moral nature both friends and enemies had often been in doubt for many years. Now, even that was revealed to be in concord with his herculean bulk.

The old glory passed from him, like a dream. He committed his soul to his God; and he heard again voices of Nature that had been inaudible to him, during his many years of intriguing diplomacy.

These voices spoke to him of the vanity and emptiness of human life, of the worthless baubles for which men exchange all they have, that is to say, their immortal gift of time, which soon passes away and is no more.

The musings of the Prince on the follies, inconsistencies and ambitions of life conspire to create a heroic figure like King Solomon. All is vanity! The conqueror of a continent has so declared. He had held the world in his hand, and had found that the sphere is hollow.

So go the fates of men.

The great Prince Bismarck has now become as a beggar at the city’s gates.

Over his grand spectacle of human pomp and power, contrasted with his final self-abnegation, shining forth we see the heights and depths of human life; but in this case the end was greater than the beginning; the defeat than the victory; the downfall than the glory; and the disillusion than the dream.

Prince Bismarck in his long career as friend and confidant of the kings of this earth, had been honored with forty-eight orders of distinction. It is needless to mention them all, but they included the Iron Cross and the Order of Merit, the one entitling him to sit with kings, the other to command an army corps.

But the greatest decoration of all was the one he now wore, his high tide of glory gone.

It is the Decoration of the Order of the Disillusioned, bestowed upon himself by his own soul.

Soon or late, prince or pauper, and you and I, wear this Order as at last we sit and wonder at the years gone by.[257]

Let us silently pass on, leaving Bismarck here, in the one solemn moment of his life; when he attains to real grandeur, stamps himself as greater than when he sat before kings.

For now he possesses his own soul, in peace.

And in this last picture, the end is greater than the beginning; the defeat than the victory; the downfall than the glory; and the disillusion than the dream.

His final consolation was the Book of Job; and he read therein these strange and solemn words:

What is my strength, that I should hopeand what is mine end, that I should prolong my life?

Is my strength the strength of stones, or is my flesh of brass?

So am I made to possess months of vanity, and wearisome nights are appointed to me.

When I lie down, I say, when shall I arise, and the night be goneand I am full of tossings to and fro, unto the dawning of the day.

My days are swifter than a weaver’s shuttle, and are spent without hope.

Yea, man is born unto trouble, as the sparks fly upward. I would seek unto God and unto God would I commit my cause;

Which doeth great things and unsearchable; marvelous things without number;

Who giveth rain upon the earth, and sendeth waters upon the fields;

To set up on high those that be low; that those which mourn may be exalted to safety.

He disappointeth the devices of the crafty, so that their hands cannot perform their enterprise.

Behold happy is the man whom God correcteth; therefore despise not thou the chastening of the Almighty;

For he maketh sore and bindeth up; he woundeth and his hands make whole.

He shall deliver thee in six troubles; yea, in seven there shall be no evil touch thee.

In famine, he shall redeem thee from death; and in war from the power of the sword ... neither shalt thou be afraid of d[258]estruction when it cometh.
72

“As One Asleep”

On July 30, 1898, just before midnight, Otto Edward Leopold von Bismarck, Prince of Lauenburg and former Imperial Chancellor of the German Empire, died peacefully in the old homestead of his ancestors.

The immediate cause of death was congestion of the lungs.

“Ich danke Dir, mein Kind,” were his last words, addressed to his daughter, who had stooped to wipe the moisture from his pale brow.

As late as the day he died, he had read the newspapers and talked politics.

His final remarks were on the relations of Germany and Russ............