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The German Classics of the Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, Volume 10 - Prince Otto Von Bismarck, Count Helmuth Von Moltke, Ferdinand Lassalle by Unknown
page 20 of 603 (03%)
more than all the problems of international politics.

His humor, also, was entirely of the German stamp. It was boisterous,
rollicking, aggressive, unsparing--of himself as little as of
others--cynic, immoderate, but never without a touch of good-nature.
His satire was often crushing, never venomous. His wit was racy and
exuberant never equivocal. Whether he describes his _vis-à-vis_ at a
hotel table, his Excellency So-and-So, as "one of those figures which
appear to one when he has the nightmare--a fat frog without legs, who
opens his mouth as wide as his shoulders, like a carpet-bag, for each
bit, so that I am obliged to hold tight on by the table from
giddiness"; whether he characterizes his colleagues at the Frankfort
Bundestag as "mere caricatures of periwig diplomatists, who at once
put on their official visage if I merely beg of them a light to my
cigar, and who study their words and looks with Regensburg care when
they ask for the key of the lavatory"; whether he sums up his
impression of the excited, emotional manner in which Jules Favre
pleaded with him for the peace terms in the words, "He evidently took
me for a public meeting"; whether he declined to look at the statue
erected to him at Cologne, because he "didn't care to see himself
fossilized"; whether he spoke of the unprecedented popular ovations
given to him at his final departure from Berlin as a "first-class
funeral"--there are always the same childlike directness, the same
naïve impulsiveness, the same bantering earnestness, the same sublime
contempt for sham and hypocrisy.

And what man has been more truthful in intellectual and religious
matters? He, the man of iron will, of ferocious temper, was at the
same time the coolest reasoner, the most unbiased thinker. He
willingly submitted to the judgment of experts, he cheerfully
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