It is interesting to study, in the confidential letters to Malvina, the state of mind of M. de Bismarck during these years 1859-1860. At the commencement of hostilities, and evidently despairing of seeing his government adopt the line of conduct which he had not ceased to recommend, he left his post, went to Moscow to visit the Kremlin, passed an agreeable day in a villa, so much more agreeable "when one has the feeling of being sheltered from the telegraph." The news of a great battle fought in Lombardy (Magenta) caused him, nevertheless, to return to St. Petersburg. "Perhaps there will be something for the diplomats to do." At St. Petersburg, he learns of the strange desire at Berlin of interceding for Austria, of mobilizing the federal armies, and from it he conceived the greatest apprehensions for his country. He became ill. A very grave case of hepatitis endangered his life seriously. "They covered my body with innumerable cupping glasses large as saucers, with mustard poultices and quantities of blisters, and I was already half way to a better world when I began to convince my doctors that my nerves were disordered by eight years of griefs and excitement without intermission (the eight years of Frankfort!), and that by continuing to weaken me, they would lead me into typhoid fever or imbecility. My good constitution ended by conquering, thanks, above all, to several dozen bottles of good wine."
His good disposition did not the less remain dull and morose, and two months later he avowed that he would not have been sorry to have ended his life then. Austria was vanquished, it is true; she had lost two great battles and one of the richest provinces; but Prussia had not drawn any material, palpable advantage from this disaster of the Hapsburg, and the cavalier of the Mark was not the man to cherish, like his friend Alexander Mikhaïlovitch, a purely Platonic hatred. He consoled himself, however, by the thought that the peace of Villafranca was only a truce: "to wish in the present state of affairs to seriously reconcile Austria with France, is to labor at the squaring of the circle." "I shall endeavor," he wrote at the approach of autumn, 1859, "to cower in my bear-skin, and to bury myself in the snow; in the thaw of next May, I will see what remains of me and our affairs; if too little I shall definitely settle with politics." The following month of May brought grave events; the annexation of Savoy became the signal for the greatest distrust in Europe, of which we have spoken above: but the cabinet of Berlin persisted in its ancient course, and the prince regent had, in July, an interview with the Emperor Francis Joseph at Toeplitz. "I learn," wrote the representative of Prussia at the court of St. Petersburg with undisguised spite, "that we have been shaved at Toeplitz, splendidly shaved; we have let ourselves be taken in by the Viennese good nature. And all that for nothing, not even the smallest plate of lentils." At last, in the month of October, after Castelfidardo and the conquest of the kingdom of Naples, the cabinet of Berlin addressed an energetic note to M. de Cavour, on the bearing of the House of Savoy on the Italian peninsula. The note established that "it is solely in the legal manner of reforms, and in respecting the existing rights, that a regular government is allowed to realize the legitimate wishes of nations," and closes by the following passage: "Called to express ourselves on the acts and principles of the Sardinian government, we can only deplore them profoundly, and we believe that we are fulfilling a rigorous duty by expressing in the most explicit and formal manner our disapprobation, both of those principles and of the application which has been thought could be made of them." One can imagine what bad humor such _naïvetés_ would cause to the future destroyer of the _Bund_, to the future spoliator of Denmark, of Hanover, and so many other states. He again thought of leaving the career; he resolved in any case to "cling to the situation of an observer," as regards the monstrous policy which was pursued at Berlin. He is perfectly astonished at the scandal which is caused on the banks of the Spree by the publication of the posthumous journal of M. de Varnhagen, a journal full of piquant revelations concerning the court of Prussia. "Why be so indignant. Is it not taken from life? Varnhagen is vain and _méchant_, but who is not? Does it not all depend on the manner in which nature has ripened our lives? According to what we have suffered from the bites of worms, from dampness, or from the sun, behold us sweet, sour, or rotten."