30 MAY 1874, Page 1
Prince Bismarck and the Pope are both said to be
ill, but as nobody ever tells the precise truth about either, it is difficult to form even a conjectural opinion. According to the most vraisent- blant view, the German Chancellor has had a relapse which his physicians do not like, and for which they are keeping him away from the baths he was about to visit ; while the Pope has had an attack of the Roman fever, slight, but sufficient at his age to make exposure to the air dangerous. It is quite possible, how- ever, that both are ill on purpose, and still more possible that physicians' orders of precaution have been exaggerated into ill- nesses. The death of either would set Europe in commotion, but statesmen and potentates do not die just when journalists conceive that the world is dull.
