"I would do my country a worse disservice if I let my enemies ride roughshod over the United States," Blaine growled.
"But, Your Excellency, how by weapons can you keep them from doing this?" Schlieffen asked. "They have on every front defeated you."
"Not in Montana, by jingo!" Blaine exclaimed with savage pleasure.
"Oh, yes-the battle after the cease-fire," Schlieffen said. The U.S. press shouted that fight to the skies. Putting what the U.S. papers said together with what came from Canada and London by way of Berlin, the military attache gathered that the U.S. and British had tried to impale themselves on each other's guns, and the British had succeeded.
"That shows what we can do when we set our minds to it," Blaine declared.
"Yes, Your Excellency-but what of all the fights before the cease-fire? What of all the fights that made you for the cease-fire ask?" Schlieffen said.
Blaine looked as if he hated him. He probably did. Schlieffen bore the hatred of an American with indifference only slightly tinged by regret; it was not as if that could matter to him in any important way. The president of the United States said, "I did what I had to do to still public outcry. That having been accomplished, I am now obliged to seek the best possible peace for my country."
Schlieffen thought of Talleyrand, battling for France at the Congress of Vienna after Napoleon's overthrow-and gaining concessions, too, despite the weakness of his position. Then he thought again. Talleyrand was a gifted diplomat, something the Americans, despite their many abilities, had yet to produce.
"If only we were not so alone in the world," Blaine said querulously. "If only every nation's hand were not raised against us."
"That is not so," Kurd von Schlozer said. "Throughout this unfortunate time, Mr. President, the hand of Germany has been outstretched in friendship and in the search for peace."
"Sir, you are right about that, and I beg your pardon," Blaine replied. " Germany has done everything a good neighbor can do. But Germany, though she is a good neighbor, is not a near neighbor. All the nearest neighbors of the United States have joined together in oppressing us."
As you should have anticipated, Schlieffen thought. As you should have prepared for. But that was water over the dam now. Aloud, he said, "Your Excellency, General Rosecrans and I have about this talked. Germany is not your near neighbor, no. But Germany is to France a near neighbor, a nearest neighbor. France is now your enemy. France has our enemy been, and is likely our enemy again to be. Two lands with the same enemy can find it good to be friends."
He watched Blaine. Slowly, the president of the United States nodded. "Rosecrans has mentioned these conversations to me," he said. "For all their history, the United States have steered clear of entangling foreign alliances." Rosecrans had used that phrase, too; it seemed deeply engrained in the minds of all U.S. leaders. Blaine might almost have been quoting Scripture.
"Your Excellency, the Confederate States have had foreign allies," Kurd von Schlozer said. "The United States have not. When you and they have quarreled, who has had the better of it?"
Blaine 's mouth puckered. His cheeks tautened against the bone on which they lay. "I do take the point, Your Excellency." And then, instead of merely saying he took it, he looked to take it in truth. "When you fought the French, you beat them like a drum. The last time we beat anyone like a drum, it was the Mexicans: not much of a foe, and a long time ago."
"Perhaps, then, you will to Berlin send officers to learn our ways," Schlieffen said. "Perhaps also your minister to my country will speak with Chancellor Bismarck to see in what other ways we can work together to help us both."
"Perhaps we will," Blaine said. "Perhaps he can. It might be worth exploring, at any rate. If nothing comes of it, we are no worse off."
Schlieffen and Schlozer glanced at each other. Schlieffen knew fellow officers who were avid fishermen. They would go on at endless, boring length about the feel of a trout or a pike nibbling the hook as it decided whether to take the bait. There sat James G. Blaine, closely examining a wiggling worm.
"The enemy of my enemy is-or can be-my friend," Schlieffen murmured. Blaine nodded again. He might not bite here and now, but Schlieffen thought he would bite. Nothing else in the pool in which the United States swam looked like food, that was certain.
"May we now return to the matter of the cease-fire and the peace which is to come after it?" Schlozer said. Schlieffen wished the German minister had not been so direct; he was liable to make Blaine swim away.
And, sure enough, the president of the United States scowled. "The Confederates hold us in contempt," he said sullenly, "and the British aim to rob us of land they yielded by treaty forty years ago. How can I surrender part of my own home state to those arrogant robbers and pirates?"
"Your Excellency, I feel your pain," Schlozer said. "But, for now, what choice have you?"
"Even Prussia, for a time, yielded against Napoleon," Schlieffen added.
Blaine did not answer. After a couple of silent minutes, the two Germans rose and left the reception hall.
Chapter 18
The cab drew to a halt by the edge of the sidewalk. The Chicago street was so narrow, it still blocked traffic. Behind it, the fellow atop a four-horse wagon full of sacks of cement bellowed angrily. So did a man in a houndstooth sack suit whizzing past on an ordinary. The cab driver said, "That's sixty-five cents, pal. Pay up, so I can get the hell out of here."
Abraham Lincoln gave him a half dollar and a quarter and descended without waiting for change. No sooner had his feet touched the ground than the cab rolled off, escaping the abuse that had been raining down on it.
This was a Chicago very different from the elegant, spacious North Side neighborhood in which Robert lived. People packed the streets. Lincoln had the feeling that, were those streets three times wider, they would still have been packed. One shop built from cheap bricks stood jammed by another. All of them were gaudily painted, advertising the cloth or shoes or hats or cheese or dry goods or sausages or pocket watches or eyeglasses sold within. Most had signs in the window proclaiming enormous savings if only the customer laid down his money now. FIRE SALE! GOING OUT OF BUSINESS! SHOP EARLY FOR CHRISTMAS!
Capitalism at its rawest, Lincoln thought unhappily. The weather was raw, too, a wind with winter in it. Hannibal Hamlin, who, being from Maine, knew all about winter, had called a wind like this a lazy wind, because it blew right through you instead of bothering to go around. Lincoln pulled his overcoat tighter about him; he felt the cold more now than he had in his younger days. The wind blew through the coat, too.
He looked around. There, a couple of doors down, advertising itself like all its neighbors, stood the frowzy, soot-stained office of the Chicago Weekly Worker. Lincoln hurried to the doorway and went inside. A blast of heat greeted him. Because the winters in Chicago were so ferocious, the means deployed against them were likewise powerful. He hastily unbuttoned his coat. Sweat started on his forehead.
A bald man in an apron and a visor who was carrying a case of type looked up at the jangle of the bell over the door. "What do you wan-"' he began, his English German-accented. Then he recognized who was visiting the newspaper, and came within an inch of dropping the case and scattering thousands of pieces of type all over the floor. "What do you want, Mr. Lincoln?" he managed on his second try. The type metal rattled in its squares, but did not escape.