We can well understand how delighted Herr von Thadden was with his
pupil. "With Bismarck I naturally will not attempt to measure myself,"
he writes; "in the last debates he has again said many admirable
things"; and in another letter, "I am quite enthusiastic for Otto
Bismarck." It was more important that the King felt as if these words
had been spoken out of his own heart.

Among his opponents, too, he had made his mark; they were never tired of
repeating well-worn jests about the medieval opinions which he had
sucked in with his mother's milk.

At the close of the session, he returned to Pomerania with fresh
laurels; he was now looked upon as the rising hope of the stern and
unbending Tories. His marriage took place in August, and the young Hans
Kleist, a cousin of the bride, as he proposed the bridegroom's health,
foretold that in their friend had arisen a new Otto of Saxony who would
do for his country all that his namesake had done eight hundred years
before. Careless words spoken half in jest, which thirty years later
Kleist, then Over-President of the province, recalled when he proposed
the bridegroom's health at the marriage of Bismarck's eldest daughter.
The forecast had been more than fulfilled, but fulfilled at the cost of
many an early friendship; and all the glory of later years could never
quite repay the happy confidence and intimacy of those younger days.

Followed by the good wishes of all their friends, Bismarck and his young
wife started on their wedding tour, which took them through Austria to
Italy. At Venice he came across the King of Prussia, who took the
opportunity to have more than one conversation with the man who had
distinguished himself in the States General. At the beginning of the