"the control of private social intercourse abroad, and the influencing of dinner invitations, were not tasks for which high officers of State were selected nor public money for the payment of diplomatic representatives voted":
doubting, at the same time, "if the foreign archives of any other country than Germany could show a parallel to the incident."
The storm, notwithstanding, had a good effect, for it brought out in bold relief the immense regard and respect the overwhelming majority of his countrymen entertained for the chief architect of their Empire; and when Bismarck fell ill at Kissingen in 1893 the Emperor, subordinating his political animosities to the chivalrous instincts of his nature, telegraphed his sorrow to the patient and offered to lend him one of the royal castles for the purpose of his convalescence. Bismarck declined, but not ungratefully, and the way to a reconciliation was opened. Next year, 1894, Bismarck suffered from influenza, and when this time the Emperor sent an adjutant to Friedrichsruh to express his regret, invited him to attend the festivities on the forthcoming royal birthday, and sent along with the invitation a flask of Steinberger Cabinet from the imperial cellar in characteristic German proof of the sincerity of his feelings, the country was delighted. Bismarck accepted the invitation and doubtless drank the Steinberger; and the visit to Berlin followed in due time.
The reconciliation was completed amid sympathetic popular rejoicing. The Emperor sent his brother, Prince Henry, to bring the ex-Chancellor from the railway station to the palace, where the Emperor himself, surrounded by a brilliant staff, stood to welcome the guest. Bismarck spent the day at the palace with the Royal Family and was taken back to the railway station in the evening by the Emperor. A few days later the Emperor returned the visit at Friedrichsruh.
The quiet of the ex-Chancellor's last years was once unpleasantly affected by the Reichstag in 1895, at the instance of his parliamentary enemies, rejecting, to its everlasting discredit, a proposal for an official vote of congratulation to the ex-Chancellor on his eightieth birthday; but against this unpleasantness may be set his gratification at the receipt of a telegram from the Emperor expressing his "deepest indignation" at the rejection.