“I am thoroughly tired of my life here,” he writes in May, 1853, to his wife from Berlin, “and long for the day of my departure.  I find the intrigues of the House immeasurably shallow and undignified; if one always lives among them, one deceives oneself and considers them something wonderful.  When I come here from Frankfort and see them as they really are, I feel like a sober man who has fallen among drunkards.  There is something very demoralising in the air of the Chambers; it makes the best people vain without their knowing it.”

So quickly has he outgrown his feelings of a year ago:  then it was the intrigues of diplomatists that had seemed to him useless and demoralising.  Now it was Parliamentary debates; in the opinion he formed at this time he never wavered.

His distaste for Parliamentary life was probably increased by an event which took place about this time.  As so often before in the course of debate he had a sharp passage of words with Vincke; the latter referred contemptuously to Bismarck’s diplomatic achievements.  “All I know of them is the famous lighted cigar.”

Bismarck answered with some angry words and at the close of the sitting sent a challenge.  Four days later a duel with pistols took place—­the only one he ever fought.  Neither was injured.  It seems that Vincke, who had the first shot, seeing that Bismarck (who had received the sacrament the night before) was praying, missed on purpose; Bismarck then shot into the air.

For these reasons he did not stand for re-election when the Chamber was dissolved in 1852, although the King was very much displeased with his determination.  He was shortly afterwards appointed member of the newly constituted House of Lords, but though he occasionally voted, as in duty bound, for Government measures, he never spoke; he was not to be heard again in the Parliament until he appeared there as President of the Ministry.  He was glad to be freed from a tie which had interfered with his duties at Frankfort; to these he devoted himself with an extraordinary energy; all his old repugnance to official life had disappeared; he did not confine himself to the mere routine of his duties, or to carrying out the instructions sent to him from Berlin.

His power of work was marvellous:  there passed through his hands a constant series of most important and complicated negotiations; up to this time he had no experience or practice in sedentary literary work, now he seems to go out of the way to make fresh labours for himself.  He writes long and careful despatches to his Minister on matters of general policy; some of them so carefully thought out and so clearly expressed that they may still be looked on as models.  He is entirely free from that circumlocution and involved style which makes so much diplomatic correspondence almost worthless.  His arguments are always clear, complete, concise.  He used to work long into the night, and then, when in the early morning the post to Berlin had gone, he would mount his horse and ride out into the country.  It was in these years that he formed those habits to which the breakdown of his health in later years was due; but now his physical and intellectual vigour seemed inexhaustible.