Antonia Pruet’s “La Prince de Bismarck”
Madame Jesse, the owner of the hotel occupied by Bismarck, returned to Versailles on Sunday, March 5. She was welcomed home by Bismarck himself. As though proud of the state in which she left the house which had sheltered him, he conducted Madame Jesse through the rooms of the ground and first floors. They were all so dirty that it was found necessary afterward to scrape the floors, yet Bismarck bragged to Mme. Jesse of the care that had been taken. “You see, Madame, what pains I have taken to have your hotel respected. I have even respected your guinea-hens. They annoyed me not a little, I can tell you. at least have liked to eat their eggs, and they wouldn’t oblige me with an egg, even. Well, in spite of this they are there; come and see them.”
So saying, he calls the gardner’s wife, and gives orders for the immediate exhibition of the guinea-hens.
“But you ate them eight days ago.” expostulates the gardener’s wife.
Bismarck is not the man to lose countenance for such a trifle. He had forgotten this detail, that is all, and he pursues his role of suave, even obsequious, gentleman. Let us continue.
In one of the ground-floor rooms Mme. Jesse had noticed the absence of a marble clock ornamented with a statuette in bronze representing Satan wrapped in his wings and in meditation. This clock had been carried into Bismarck’s working room. Arriving there he said to Mme. Jesse: “Here is the clock you were speaking of just now, Madame. You see it hasn’t disappeared. Ah, how Thiers detested that clock! He couldn’t bear to look at it, and he was forever grumbling: The devil, the cursed devil! The peace was signed in front of that
clock. Thiers doesn’t love it.”
“And you, Count?”
“Pretty, very artistic—are you much attached
to it?”
Yes, Count?”
And the conversation on the subject went no further.
However, Bismarck didn’t renounce his desire for the clock. He conducted Mme. Jesse as far as the Boulevard de la Reine, bareheaded and affecting the most polished manners. But Mme. Jesse nod only gone a few hundred steps when she was overtaken by two horsemen, one of whom dismounted and said to her: “Madame, this clock of which you were talking with Herr Bismarck—it would be a great pleasure for as to make him a present of it. His Excellency would like to take it home with him as a souvenir. Will you sell it to us. Whatever price you ask, provided It is not a million [this was added with a smile] we are ready to pay.” Mme. Jesse refused to sell, and walked to the cars.
The little narrative doesn’t end here, however. Efforts are mode by the Chancellors Secretaries to persuade Mme. Jesse to sell this historical clock. She proves firm, and, the day of his leaving Versailles, Bismarck hands the gardener’s wife, with forty francs for repairs, a sheet of paper, on which he had written his address at Berlin. “If Mme. Jesse changes her mind.” he said, here Is my address.”
Chicago Daily Tribune, Chicago, IL, January 7, 1877