He took the opportunity of having some conversation with both the Emperor and his Ministers.
He required rest and change after the prolonged anxieties of the two years; at no place did he find it so well as in the south of France: "It seems like a dream to be here again," he writes to his wife.
"I am already quite well, and would be quite cheerful if I only knew that all was well with you.

The life I lead at Berlin is a kind of penal servitude, when I think of my independent life abroad." Seabathing, expeditions across the frontier, and sport passed three weeks.

"I have not for a long time found myself in such comfortable conditions, and yet the evil habit of work has rooted itself so deeply in my nature, that I feel some disquiet of conscience at my laziness.

I almost long for the Wilhelmstrasse, at least if my dear ones were there." On the 25th he left "dear Biarritz" for Paris, where he found plenty of politics awaiting him; here he had another of those interviews with Napoleon and his Ministers on which so much depended, and then he went back to his labours at Berlin.
At that time he was not prepared to break with Austria, and he still hoped that some peaceful means of acquisition might be found, as he wrote some months later to Goltz, "We have not got all the good we can from the Austrian alliance." Prussia had the distinct advantage that she was more truly in possession of the Duchies than Austria.

This possession would more and more guarantee its own continuance; it was improbable that any Power would undertake an offensive war to expel her.
On the whole, therefore, Bismarck seems to have wished for the present to leave things as they were; gradually to increase the hold of Prussia on the Duchies, and wait until they fell of themselves into his hands.
In pursuit of this policy it was necessary, however, to expel all other claimants, and this could not be done without the consent of Austria; this produced a cause of friction between the two great Powers which made it impossible to maintain the co-dominium.
There were in Holstein the Confederate troops who had gone there a year ago and had never been withdrawn; Augustenburg was still living at Kiel with his phantom Court; and then there were the Austrian soldiers, Prussia's own allies.