Too weak to stand alone, they were also too weak to be quite honest, and attempted to gain by cunning a position which they could not maintain by other means.

This was the city in which Bismarck was to serve his diplomatic apprenticeship.
Two extracts from letters to his wife give the best picture of his personal character at this time: "On Saturday I drove with Rochow to Ruedesheim; there I took a boat and rowed out on the Rhine, and bathed in the moonlight--only nose and eyes above the water, and floated down to the Rat Tower at Bingen, where the wicked Bishop met his end.
It is something strangely dreamlike to lie in the water in the quiet, warm light, gently carried along by the stream; to look at the sky with the moon and stars above one, and, on either side, to see the wooded mountain-tops and castle parapets in the moonlight, and to hear nothing but the gentle rippling of one's own motion.

I should like a swim like this every evening.

Then I drank some very good wine, and sat long talking with Lynar on the balcony, with the Rhine beneath us.

My little Testament and the starry heavens brought us on Christian topics, and I long shook at the Rousseau-like virtue of his soul." "Yesterday I was at Wiesbaden, and with a feeling of melancholy revisited the scenes of former folly.