With difficulty could he bring himself even to systematic work on the memoirs he proposed to leave.

Old age set its mark on him: his beard had become white; he could no longer, as in former days, ride and walk through the woods near his house.

His interest in public affairs never flagged, and especially he watched with unceasing vigilance every move in the diplomatic world; his mind and spirit were still unbroken when a sudden return of his old malady overtook him, and on the last day of July, 1898, he died at Friedrichsruh.
He lies buried, not among his ancestors and kinsfolk near the old house at Schoenhausen, nor in the Imperial city where his work had been done; but in a solitary tomb at Friedrichsruh to which, with scanty state and hasty ceremony, his body had been borne.
FOOTNOTES: [Footnote 1: There seems no authority for the statement that the Bismarcks had sprung from a noble Bohemian family.] [Footnote 2: It is to this visit that a well-known anecdote refers; having landed at Hull one Sunday morning, he was walking along the streets whistling, when a chance acquaintance of the voyage asked him to desist.

Disgusted, he left the town.

The story, as generally told, says that he went to Edinburgh; we can have no doubt that Scarborough was meant.] [Footnote 3: _Life of Herr v.