THE REMINISCENCES OF CARL SCHURZ
an entire stranger and who knew nothing of my discretion and sense of responsibility. As if we had been confidential chums all our lives, he gave me, with apparently the completest abandon and exuberant vivacity, inside views of the famous “conflict” period between the Crown and the Prussian Parliament when, seeing the war with Austria inevitably coming, he had, without legislative authorization, spent millions upon millions of the public funds upon the army in preparation for the great crisis; how the liberal majority of the chambers and an indignant public opinion, not recognizing the great object of national unification in view, had fiercely risen up against that arbitrary stretch of power; how the King himself had recoiled from such a breach of the constitution; how the King had apprehended a new revolution which might cost each of them his head—which might have become true if they had failed in the Austrian war—how then he had “desperately used his spurs to make the noble old horse clear the ditch and take the risk,” and how, the victory having been won, they were, on their return from the war, received by the people with the most jubilant declamations instead of having their heads cut off, which had pleased the old gentleman immensely and taught him a lesson as to his reckless Prime Minister.
It was not the cautious and conservative spirit of the King alone that he had occasionally to overcome. Still more was he clogged and not seldom exasperated by what he called the stupid old bureaucracy which he had to get out of its accustomed ruts whenever anything new and bold was to be done. He fairly bubbled over with humorous anecdotes, evidently relishing himself his droll descriptions of the antiquated “Geheimrath” (privy-counsellor) as he stared with his bleared eyes wide open, whenever anything unusual was proposed, seeing nothing but insuperable difficulties before him and then
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