Arthur found a comfortable position on the bench, crossed his legs, and smoked a cigarette, ordering in a Prussian officer’s tone: "Listen to my command! About face! Target: the bench on the avenue! Quick march!"
He heard the sound of footsteps clumping, and just after Arthur had taken two puffs of his cigarette, he saw Bismarck jogging appear at the entrance of the avenue.
Bismarck stopped in front of Arthur and reported loudly: "Your Excellency, Otto von Bismarck from the second year of the University of Gottingen Law School reporting to you!"
Arthur tilted his head, signaling him to sit down.
Bismarck hadn’t settled yet, but saw Arthur take out a tobacco box from his coat pocket, flip it open with a flick to reveal the tobacco inside: "Want so?"
Bismarck replied seriously: "I don’t smoke."
"Really?"
"Really."
As soon as Bismarck finished speaking, Arthur reached for his pocket, startling the young man as he hurriedly covered his pocket and asked, "What are you doing?"
Arthur gave him a glance, leisurely pulled out a red-and-black oak pipe from the pocket: "I knew it. Who are you pretending to be inexperienced with?"
Bismarck, without a blush or a heartbeat, snatched back the pipe and poured a bit of tobacco from Arthur’s box: "I just learned recently."
Arthur watched him skillfully light the pipe, watched him take a deep puff of smoke, and took this opportunity to ask: "What did you learn from today’s event?"
"Cough cough cough!" Bismarck couldn’t catch his breath, almost choked by the smoke, took out a handkerchief to wipe his snot and tears, and said: "You can’t just drop a line like that out of the blue every ti, it’s bad for health."
Arthur stretched lazily: "How about it? This is the diplomat you dream of, the diplomatic work you envy to death, doesn’t it seem less noble than you imagined? Discussing others’ privacy behind their backs, digging up others’ dark past, and seizing chances to report on others. To be honest, we diplomats do this every day, and it’s essentially the sa as student union work."
"Diplomat? You’re a diplomat? Weren’t you a policeman?" Bismarck had just thought this unorthodox academic director was sowhat unreliable, but upon hearing he was a diplomat, Arthur’s status imdiately beca more significant in Bismarck’s eyes.
"That’s right." Arthur leaned on the bench: "Precisely because I was so outstanding in the police work that I got transferred to the Foreign Office, and later on, even the Foreign Office couldn’t handle , so I got sent to the University of Gottingen to deal with you little brats."
Bismarck, hearing his tone, looked utterly disbelieving: "You are even better at boasting than I am. How long has it been since you graduated from school, and you’ve done so much work in just a few short years? I rember you were still a Natural Philosophy researcher, weren’t you?"
"Natural Philosophy is a hobby, I can even play the piano, Parisians call ’the Liszt from London’, a nickna given by Heine."
"You? The Liszt from London?" Bismarck was about to mock him, but before he could speak, he realized: "Wait! Why would Heine give you a nickna? Aren’t you a London cop?"
Arthur rubbed his fingers in front of Bismarck: "If you had enough of this stuff, that fellow Heinrich would say anything for you. I’ve always considered him the most outstanding student Gottingen has seen in the past decade, not just for praising his poetry talent, but for comnding his quality of choosing the right master."
Arriving at this point, Arthur stood up, clasped his hands behind, and slowly paced before Bismarck: "Otto, do you think, as a second-year student with a scholarship, a likely outstanding graduate to get a recomndation letter, a student leader of the Gestapo, do you need to disclose the conversation I just had with Mr. Schneider?"
Bismarck, hearing this, simply took a puff of his pipe, looked at Arthur with a blank face: "Sorry, Your Excellency, what conversation are you referring to again?"
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