Yet the war still hangs fire. The truth is that
every power is anxious to shift the responsibility of the fast blow to the other, and some of them are still behind-hand with their preparations. In Prussia Count Bismarck has gained a certain prestige and tem- porary whiff of popularity through the characteristic courage and audacity with which he met an attempt on his life by a stepson of the German republican and exile Karl Blind. On Monday evening this young fanatic attempted the Count's life in the prin- cipal street of Berlin, the Unger den Linden, with a revolver. With the usual nervousness of assassins he fired two shots ineffectually, when the Count turned and seized him, and three more shots went, off, still without injuring the Minister. When at length apprehended and lodged in prison, the fanatic succeeded in wounding himself mortally in the throat with the blades of a pocket knife, and he died in the hospital during the night. Count Bismarck got a serenade for his nerve, and has seized the opportunity to obtain a Royal decree for the dissolution of the Chamber, in the hope that the next may be better affected to his policy and person.
