"This conversation," concludes Prince Hohenlohe, "between the Emperor and myself was told partly on the way to the lodge and partly on the way back. Between came the shooting; but there was no sport, as the Emperor took his stand in the dark under a tree on which was a cock that did not 'call.'"
The following further extracts from the Hohenlohe Memoirs are given rather with the object of showing the state of the political and social atmosphere in which the quarrel took place than as throwing any fresh light on its course. In June of the preceding year (1889) occurs an entry which registers the first signs of the coming storm. Prince Hohenlohe is telling of a visit he made in June to the Grand Duke of Baden, whom he found irritated by Bismarck's proposal, made in connection with the arrest of a Prussian police officer by the Swiss, to close the frontier against the canton Aargau. The Grand Duke, the Prince relates, quoted Herbert Bismarck as saying he "could not understand his father any longer and that people were beginning to believe he was not right in his head."
The next entry in the Journal is dated Strasburg, August 24th. It concerns another meeting with the Grand Duke, who now told him that Bismarck had changed his views and that these oscillations had puzzled the Emperor and at the same time heightened his self-consciousness; moreover, that the Emperor noticed that things were being kept back from him and was becoming suspicious. There had already been a collision between the Emperor and the Chancellor and the latter might have to go. What then? Probably the Emperor thought of conducting foreign policy himself--but that, added the Grand Duke, would be very dangerous.
The feeling at Court regarding Bismarck's fall is shown by a passage in the Memoirs about this time. It runs:
"At 1.30 p.m. dinner (at the palace) at which I sat between Stosch and Kameke. The former told me much about his own quarrel with Bismarck, and was as gay as a snow-king that he can now speak freely and that the great man is no longer to be feared. This comfortable sentiment is obvious here on all sides."
The anecdote still current in Berlin, that Bismarck actually threw an inkstand at the Emperor's head is reduced to its proper proportions by the following entry: