ANECDOTAL RECOLLECTIONS
OF THE
CONGRESS OF VIENNA

Francis I, Emperor of Austria.

ANECDOTAL RECOLLECTIONS
OF THE
CONGRESS OF VIENNA

BY THE
COMTE A. DE LA GARDE-CHAMBONAS

WITH
INTRODUCTION AND NOTES BY THE
COMTE FLEURY

Translated
BY THE AUTHOR OF
‘AN ENGLISHMAN IN PARIS’

WITH PORTRAITS

LONDON
CHAPMAN & HALL, LIMITED
1902

Edinburgh: T. and A. Constable, (late) Printers to Her Majesty

CONTENTS

PORTRAITS

BIOGRAPHICAL NOTICE OF THE COMTE AUGUSTE DE LA GARDE-CHAMBONAS

Auguste-Louis-Charles de La Garde,[1] a man of letters and a poet of some repute in his time, was born in Paris in 1783. The following is a copy of his certificate of baptism:—

The child’s mother died in giving it birth. The father only survived the beloved young wife for a little while, and feeling his end to be near, confided the orphan to the head of his family, the Marquis de Chambonas (Scipion-Charles-Victor Auguste de La Garde), camp-marshal (equivalent to the present grade of general of brigade), and subsequently a minister of Louis XVI.[3]

M. de Chambonas took charge of the infant, looking upon it as a second son, and treating it with the most constant affection. Consequently in all his works, and in his Unpublished Notes, Auguste de La Garde always refers by the name of ‘father’ to the relative who had replaced his dead parents.[4]

During his early childhood, he was often entrusted to his godmother, Mme. de Villers.[5] She was the friend of Mme. Bernard, the wife of the Lyons banker, whose daughter was to attain such great celebrity under the name of Mme. Récamier. Brought up together, as it were, these two children conceived for each other a sincere affection, which neither time nor distance ever cooled. When, on his return from foreign parts, Auguste de La Garde came to Paris in 1801, he at once took up his abode at Mme. Récamier’s, who, moreover, gave him the support so necessary to the youthful wanderer who possessed no resources of his own. Hence, it will cause no surprise to meet in the Recollections of the Congress of Vienna with pages breathing a profound sense of gratitude to Mme. Récamier.

Young La Garde began his studies under the guidance of the Abbé B——, after which he was sent to the College of Sens. (His ‘father’ had been governor of the town in 1789, and its mayor in 1791.) M. de Chambonas, after having commanded the 17th division of the army of Paris for a very short time, was called to the ministry of Foreign Affairs, the 17th June 1792, to replace Dumouriez, who had resigned. His stay there was also very short. Having been denounced publicly in the Legislative Assembly for having withheld information with regard to the movements of the Prussian troops, and becoming more and more suspect every day, he quickly abandoned the post.

On the 10th August he was among those who endeavoured to defend the Tuileries, and was even left for dead on the spot. It was only towards the end of 1792 that M. de Chambonas made up his mind to quit Paris. He did not cross the frontier, but managed to reach Sens; where, in safe hiding, he succeeded in spending unmolested the years of the Reign of Terror. He had taken with him his son, who subsequently married Mlle. de la Vernade, at Sens (and who was the grandfather of the present Marquis de Chambonas), and also his adopted son.

How did the erewhile minister of Louis XVI. succeed in passing unmolested through the Terror? It seems almost incredible. This was one of the exceptions the particulars of which have been traced by memoirs that have recently come to light.[6]

During the Directory, in fact, M. de Chambonas floated absolutely to the top, and at one time there was talk of sending him to Spain as ambassador. The plan fell through, and after the coup d’état on the 18th Fructidor (4th September 1797), M. de Chambonas, considering himself no longer safe, hurriedly left Paris to avoid arrest.

Behold our wanderers at Hamburg, and afterwards in Sweden and Denmark. Auguste de La Garde in his somewhat florid style will tell us many amusing anecdotes; on the other hand, the bombardment of Copenhagen by the English fleet in 1801 affected him sadly.

A few months later, the lad of eighteen is sent to France by M. de Chambonas in order to obtain the removal of the sender’s name from the list of émigrés—he had been considered as such while he was in hiding at Sens—and to claim the estates the nation had confiscated. Auguste de La Garde is hospitably received by Mme. Récamier, who, while bestirring herself in behalf of the ‘father,’ takes the son in hand with regard to his education. Through her influence, La Harpe assists him with his counsels, and the best professors direct his further studies. As for the property the restitution of which is claimed by his ‘father,’ by that time established in England, all idea of it had to be abandoned; and young La Garde himself, his mind precociously ripened by his exile, was compelled to look to his own independent future.[7]

His personal charm, his natural gifts, and, in short, the useful connections he rapidly made for himself, soon procured him employment and a start in life. At the outset, he obtained through the goodwill of Prince Eugène missions to Italy, to Marmont in Dalmatia, to the Court of King Joseph at Naples, and finally to Rome, where he was cordially received by Lucien Bonaparte and his family. The pages, whether in his Recollections of the Congress of Vienna or in his Unpublished Notes, referring to his primary benefactors, go far to exonerate him from the charge of ingratitude, for he lavishes upon those benefactors all the ornaments of his rhetoric; at any rate, nearly all, for the greater part of the acknowledgment of his indebtedness goes mainly to Field-Marshal Prince de Ligne, who was his protector, his beneficent and ... very useful relative, a member of the Chambonas family, having, as we already stated, married a Princesse de Ligne.

La Garde first met with the Prince de Ligne in the Eternal City. He soon became a familiar visitor to the octogenarian prince, who, like the generous Mæcenas that he was, gave him a pressing invitation to come and settle near him in Vienna. The young fellow was too sensible to make light of an offer insuring material welfare and a regular existence after years of uncertainty. He, therefore, settled in Vienna near to his benefactor, yielding for the matter of that to the spell exercised over every one by that very superior specimen of manhood, and requiting his kindness with an affectionate veneration increasing as time went on. The whole of the first part of the Recollections attests a boundless gratitude; and if on the one hand that work constitutes the brightest ornament of our author’s literary crown, it constitutes on the other the most complete panegyric of the prince who had become ‘his idol.’

From Vienna, the Comte de La Garde passed into Russia, where he met with a cordial welcome from the elegant society of St. Petersburg. In 1810 he published there a volume of poems, which obtained a most signal success. Subsequently invited to Poland by the Comte Félix Potocki, and treated with the most generous hospitality, he was enabled to devote himself to numerous literary works; and as a mark of gratitude to his hosts, he translated into French Trembecki’s poem dedicated to the cherished wife of Comte Félix, the celebrated Sophie Potocka.

The Recollections of the Congress of Vienna contains frequent references to the ‘superb Sophie,’ who was born in the Fanariote quarter in Constantinople, and whose singular career was solely owing to her beauty. She married in the first place the Comte de Witt (of the family of the Dutch Great State-Councillor, whose descendants had entered the service of Russia). The Comte de Witt enticed her away from a secretary of the French Embassy in Constantinople; Comte Félix Potocki, in his turn, eloped with her while she was Comtesse de Witt, and married her, thanks to an amicable arrangement nullifying the first marriage. Comtesse Sophie, celebrated throughout Europe—her loveliness had even compelled admiration from the Court circle at Versailles—lived on a regal footing on her estate of Tulczim, and dispensed her hospitality to the French émigrés in a manner calculated to dazzle many of them. The Mémoires of General Comte de Rochechouart and the present Recollections are specially interesting on the subject. The success of the poem, ‘Sophiowka,’ was such as to gain for its adapter the honorary membership respectively of the Academies of Warsaw, Cracow, Munich, London, and Naples.

The Comte de La Garde was to receive another flattering testimonial in Poland, many years later, on the occasion of the appearance of his poem on the ‘Funérailles de Kosciusko’ (Treuttel & Wurtz: Paris, 1830). Its several editions by no means exhausted its success; the senate of the republic of Cracow conferred upon him the Polish citizenship, while the kings of Bavaria, Prussia, and Saxony complimented him by autograph letters.

La Garde was the author of a great number of songs; and the most renowned composers of the period competed for the honour of setting them to music. Many of these romances were dedicated to Queen Hortense, whose acquaintance he made at Augsburg in 1819. This led to his collaboration in ‘Loi d’Exil,’ and ‘Partant pour la Syrie’—the latter of which became the national hymn during the Second Empire. In 1853, there appeared L’Album artistique de la Reine Hortense, a much prized collection of the then unpublished songs of the Comte de La Garde, with their music by the queen, and charming reproductions of tiny paintings, which were also her work.[8]

This was the last time the name of the Comte de La Garde appeared in print. A short time afterwards his wandering life came to an end in Paris, which during the latter years of his life he inhabited alternately with Angers. He had adopted as his motto: ‘My life is a battle’; he could have added, ‘and a never-ending journey’; for his constitutional restlessness prevented him from settling permanently, no matter where. He never married. The few documents he left behind, including some momentoes, represented the whole of his property, and went to his cousin, M. de La Garde, Marquis de Chambonas.

In addition to the afore-mentioned works and the present one, Recollections of the Congress of Vienna, which originally appeared in Paris in 1820 (?), M. de la Garde was the author of the following: Une traduction de Dmitry Donskoy (Moscow, 1811); Coup d’œil sur le Royaume de Pologne (Varsovie, 1818); Coup d’œil sur Alexander-Bad (Bavière, 1819); Laure Bourg: roman dédié au Roi de Bavière (Munich, 1820); Les Monuments grecs de la Sicile (Munich, 1820); Traduction des Mélodies de Thomas Moore (Londres, 1826); Voyage dans quelques parties de l’Europe (Londres, 1828); Brighton, Voyage en Angleterre, (1830); Tableau de Bruxelles (prose et vers), dédié à la Reine; Projet pour la formation d’une Colonie belge à la Nouvelle Zélande, etc.

In all those works, and notably in the most important, namely: Brighton, and Souvenirs du Congrès de Vienne, M. de La Garde shows himself to be endowed with the faculty of observation and with tact. Unfortunately his matchless kindliness prevents his criticisms from departing from the laudatory gamut.

We must not look in these Recollections for important revelations concerning the diplomatic conferences which engaged the attention of the whole of Europe in 1815; we shall only meet with delightful anecdotes and portraits of grandes dames and illustrious personages. There will be many silhouettes of figures that have been forgotten since, but which, while they belonged to this world, were worthy of notice. To appreciate them we should bring to the perusal of this volume the quality which presided at its composition: namely, the kindliness of an observant man of the world.

Since their appearance in 1820, these Recollections had been absolutely forgotten. It seemed to us and to M. le Marquis de Chambonas La Garde, to whom we owe the principal facts of this notice, that the chapters were worthy of being resuscitated. Though we have omitted from these Recollections some dissertations more or less obsolete, which would be of no interest to-day, we have throughout respected the style and the ideas of the author; only adding to his narrative the necessary notes on the principal personages of the action.

FLEURY.

ANECDOTAL RECOLLECTIONS

INTRODUCTORY CHAPTER

Introduction—A Glance at the Congress—Arrival of the Sovereigns—The First Night in Vienna.

The Congress of Vienna, considered as a political gathering, has not lacked historians, but they were so intent upon recording its phases of high diplomacy as to have bestowed no thought upon its piquant and lighter social features.

No doubt they feared that triviality of detail might impair the general effect of so imposing a picture, and they were satisfied with reproducing and judging results, without caring to retrace the diverse and animated scenes where these results were obtained. Nevertheless, it would have been curious to go more or less deeply into the personal lives of the actors called upon to settle the future interests of Europe. At the Vienna Congress, hearts hitherto closed, nay, wholly inaccessible, to the observation of the outer world, were often laid open. Amidst the confusion of all ranks, their most transient movements revealed themselves, and lent themselves to being watched, as if taken off their guard in the irresistible whirl of uninterrupted pleasures.

Doubtless, at no time of the world’s history had more grave and complex interests been discussed amidst so many fêtes. A kingdom was cut into bits or enlarged at a ball: an indemnity was granted in the course of a dinner; a constitution was planned during a hunt; now and again a cleverly-placed word or a happy and pertinent remark cemented a treaty the conclusion of which, under different circumstances, would probably have been achieved only with difficulty, and by dint of many conferences and much correspondence. Acrimonious discussions and ‘dry-as-dust’ statements were replaced for the time being, as if by magic, by the most polite forms in any and every transaction; and also by the promptitude which is a still more important form of politeness, unfortunately too neglected.

The Congress had assumed the character of a grand fête in honour of the general pacification. Ostensibly it was a feast of rest after the storm, but, curiously enough, it offered a programme providing for life in its most varied movements. Doubtless, the forgathering of those sovereigns, ministers, and generals who for nearly a quarter of a century had been the actors in a grand drama supposed to have run its course, besides the pomp and circumstance of the unique scene itself, showed plainly enough that they were there to decide the destinies of nations. The mind, dominated by the gravity of the questions at issue, could not altogether escape from the serious thoughts now and again obtruding themselves: but immediately afterwards the sounds of universal rejoicing brought a welcome diversion. Everyone was engrossed with pleasure. The love-passion also hovered over this assembly of kings, and had the effect of prolonging a state of abandonment and a neglect of affairs, both really inconceivable when taken in conjunction with upheavals the shock of which was still felt, and immediately before a thunderbolt which was soon to produce a singular awakening. The people themselves, apparently forgetting that when their rulers are at play, the subjects are doomed to pay in a short time the bills of such royal follies, seemed to be grateful for foibles that drew their masters down to their level.

Meanwhile, the man of Titanic catastrophes is not far distant. Napoleon steps forth to spread fire and flame once more; to make an end of all those dreams, and to invest with a wholly different aspect those voluptuous scenes, the diversity of which could not even save their participants from the weariness of satiety.[9]

I arrived in Vienna towards the end of September 1814, when the Congress, though it had been announced for several months, was not yet officially opened. The fêtes had, however, already commenced. In the abstract of the proceedings, it had been said that the conferences would be of very short duration. Business according to some, pleasure according to others, and probably both these causes combined, decided things otherwise. Several weeks, several months, went by without the question of dissolution being broached. Negotiating as from brother to brother, in a manner that would have rejoiced the heart of Catherine the Great, the sovereigns amicably and without the least hurry arranged ‘their little affairs’; they gave one the impression of wishing to realise the philosophic dream of the Abbé de Saint-Pierre.[10]

The number of strangers attracted to Vienna by the Congress was estimated at close upon a hundred thousand. It ought to be said that for this memorable gathering no other city would have answered so well. Vienna is in reality the centre of Europe; at that time it was its capital. A Viennese who had happened to leave the city a few months before would have had some difficulty in identifying himself and his familiar surroundings amidst that new, gilded, and titled population which crowded the place at the time of the Congress. All the sovereigns of the North had come thither; the West and the East had sent their most notable representatives. The Emperor Alexander, still young and brilliant; the Empress Elizabeth, with her winning though somewhat melancholy grace, and the Grand-Duke Constantine represented Russia. Behind these were grouped a mass of ministers, princes, and generals, especially conspicuous among them the Comtes de Nesselrode, Capo d’Istria, Pozzo di Borgo, and Stackelberg, all of whom were marked out from that hour to play important parts in the political debates of Europe. These statesmen must be passed over in silence. I must not be equally silent with regard to the friends whom I met once more, and who during my wanderings in Germany, Poland, and Russia, had entertained me with such cordial affection. There was Tettenborn, as devoted and warm-hearted after many years of separation as if we had never parted; the Comte de Witt, the Prince Koslowski, both of whom were to die prematurely; and Alexander Ypsilanti, fervent and generous as of old, and fated to meet with such a cruel end in the prisons of Montgatz and of Theresienstadt.

The King of Prussia was accompanied by the Princes Guillaume and Auguste. Baron de Humboldt[11] and the Prince d’Hardemberg presided at his councils. The beautiful queen who in the negotiations of 1807 employed in vain all her seductive grace and resources of mind against the will of Napoleon, was no more.

The King of Denmark, Frédéric VI., the son of the ill-fated Caroline Mathilde,[12] also repaired to the Congress, which, luckily for him, he was enabled to leave without his modest possessions having aroused the cupidity of this or that ambitious neighbour.

The Kings of Bavaria and Würtemberg, the Dukes of Saxe-Coburg, Hesse-Darmstadt, and Hesse-Cassel—in short, all the heads and princes of the reigning houses of Germany—were there. They also wished to take part in the political festival, and were anxious to know how the supreme tribunal would trim and shape the borders of their small States.

The King of Saxony, so ardently worshipped by his subjects, had at that time retired into Prussia, while the Allied Armies occupied his kingdom. That excellent prince, whom Napoleon called ‘le plus honnête homme qui ait occupé le trône,’[13] was only represented at the Congress by his plenipotentiaries.

The representatives of France were the Duc de Dalberg, the Comte Alexis de Noailles, M. de la Tour-du-Pin, and the Prince de Talleyrand. The last-named maintained his high reputation with great dignity under difficult circumstances, and perhaps conspicuous justice has never been done to him. The English plenipotentiaries were Lords Clancarty and Stewart, and Viscount Castlereagh.

Among these notable men it would be ingratitude on my part not to name the Prince de Ligne, of whom frequent mention will be made in these Recollections; and the reigning Landgrave of Hesse-Homburg [1814]. A brave soldier, the latter prince earned his grade of field-marshal on the battlefield itself, and moreover proved his talent as a remarkable administrator by promoting in many ways the happiness of his subjects.

The whole of this royal company met in the capital of Austria with a hospitality worthy of it, and worthy also of that memorable gathering. The Kings of Würtemberg and Denmark arrived before any of the others. The Emperor Franz proceeded as far as Schönbrunn to welcome each of them. The interview between those princes was exceedingly cordial, and free from diplomatic reserve; but the ceremony which by its pomp and splendour was evidently intended to crown the series of wonders of the Congress was the solemn entry of Emperor Alexander and the King of Prussia.

Numerous detachments of guards of honour had been posted on the routes these two monarchs were to traverse. The whole of the garrison was under arms at the approaches to and within the capital. The emperor, attended by his grand officers of state, both military and civil, the archdukes, and other princes of the blood, proceeded for some distance to meet his hosts. The meeting took place on the left bank of the Danube, at the further extremity of the Tabor bridge. There was an exchange of most affectionate and apparently most sincere greetings, and the three rulers held each other’s hands for a long while.

An immense crowd lined the banks of the stream, and rent the air with cheers. Undoubtedly it was a sight as remarkable as it was unheard-of, that gathering of sovereigns tried by severe misfortune for twenty years, and who, having vanquished him who had been for such a long time victorious, seemed astonished at a triumph so dearly bought, so unexpectedly obtained.

The three monarchs, in full-dress uniforms, meanwhile mounted their horses and rode slowly on amidst the booming of the artillery. The infinite number of generals, belonging to all the nations of Europe, riding behind them, their brilliant costumes glittering in the sun, the joyous cries of the crowds, the clanging of the bells of all the steeples, the air resounding with the firing of the cannon, the sight of that population frantically hailing the return of peace—in fact, the whole scene, even the cordial demeanour of those sovereigns, constituted the most imposing and eloquent spectacle.

The welcome to the Empress of Russia on the following day was marked by a ceremonial of a less grandiose but more graceful nature. The Empress of Austria, surrounded by the whole of her Court, went to meet her a long distance out of the capital. A short time after she started, the two emperors proceeded in the same direction, and the two processions joined hands, as it were, close to the church of Maria-Brunn. An open calèche was in waiting to convey the empresses; their august husbands took their seats with them. A detachment of the Hungarian Guards, another of Uhlans, and a great number of pages made up the escort. The carriage, on reaching the outer gates of the court, was met by young girls dressed in white, offering baskets of flowers. A dense crowd lined the avenues leading to the palace, and everybody admired the spontaneous cordiality, the good-will altogether without etiquette, lighting up the faces of all those grand personages, so little adapted to manifestations of equality.

From that moment Vienna assumed an aspect which was as bright as it was animated. Numberless magnificent carriages traversed the city in all directions, and, in consequence of the restricted size of the capital, constantly reappeared. Most of them were preceded by those agile forerunners, in their brilliant liveries, who are no longer to be seen anywhere except in Vienna, and who, swinging their large silver-knobbed canes, seemed to fly in front of the horses. The promenades and squares teemed with soldiers of all grades, dressed in the varied uniforms of all the European armies. Added to these were the swarms of the servants of the aristocracy in their gorgeous liveries, and the people crowding at all points of vantage to catch a momentary glimpse of the military, sovereign, and diplomatic celebrities constantly shifting within the permanent frame of the varying picture. Then, when night came, the theatres, the cafés, the public resorts were filled with animated crowds, apparently bent on pleasure only, while sumptuous carriages rolled hither and thither, lighted up by torches borne by footmen perched behind, or still preceded by runners, who had, however, exchanged their canes for flambeaux. In almost every big thoroughfare there was the sound of musical instruments discoursing joyous tunes. Noise and bustle everywhere.

Such, for over five months, was the picture represented by the city, a picture of which only a poor idea can be conveyed by my feeble attempts to reproduce some of its features.

The immense number of strangers had soon invaded every available hotel and private lodging. Many notabilities were obliged to take up their quarters in the outskirts. Prices ruled exorbitantly high; in order to judge of this I need only state that the rent of Lord Castlereagh’s apartments was £500 per month—an unheard-of price in Vienna. It was calculated that if the Congress lasted only four months, the value of many houses would be paid to their proprietors in rent. I should, perhaps, have been deprived of witnessing a scene which only a chain of extraordinary circumstances could have brought about, and which probably will not be renewed for many centuries to come; but my intimate friend, Mr. Julius Griffiths, who had lived in Vienna for several years, had anticipated my coming, and in his magnificent residence on the Jaeger-Zeill, I found all the comfort which he had transported thither from his own country; both the word and the condition of things it represented being little known throughout the rest of Europe.

Mr. Julius Griffiths, who ranks among the best educated of Englishmen, has made himself widely known in the world of letters by works of acknowledged merit. He has travelled all over the globe, and deserves to be proclaimed the greatest traveller of his time. His social qualities and his lofty sentiments have conferred the greatest honour on the English character outside his native country. His friendship has been for many years the source of my sweetest happiness. I am enabled to confess with gratitude that he was instrumental in convincing me of the mendacity of the precept, ‘not to try one’s friends if one wishes to keep them.’

The thing I stood most in need of, after the first greetings of such a sincere friend, was rest and quietude; hence, at the moment I did not in the least resemble the ‘inquisitorial traveller’ mentioned by Sterne, and I retired to enjoy that rest, most intensely conscious of the delight of having reached port. In spite of this, sleep failed to come. Too many thoughts came crowding in upon me; my mind was divided between the pleasure of meeting once more with so dear a friend and others scarcely less precious to me, and the hope of being a witness of a scene which hitherto was without a precedent. Were I possessed of the talent with which Dupaty has described his ‘Première nuit à Rome,’ I should endeavour to paint the stirring emotions of this ‘first night’ in Vienna.

A volume of Shakespeare lay close at hand; I opened it at random and read: ‘You who have not seen those feasts, you have lost the sight of what is most brilliant of earthly glory. Those perfectly magnificent scenes surpassed all that the imagination can invent. Each day outvied the previous one, each morrow shamed the pomp of its eve. One day those demi-gods on earth resplendent with precious stones and silken stuffs; the next the same pomp more oriental than the orient itself. You should have seen each world-ruler dazzling like a statue wrought of gold; and the courtiers resplendent like their masters; and those dames so delicate and so slight bend beneath the twofold burden of their pride and their ornaments; those sovereigns, stars of like magnitude, mingle their rays by their presence. No calumnious tongue dared wag, no eye that was not dazzled by those sights. You should have witnessed also the tournament and the heralds of arms, and the prowess of chivalry displayed. The old history of our story-tellers has ceased to be fabulous. Yes, henceforth I shall believe all that those story-tellers have told us.’[14]

Those lines from an immortal poet, I read again and again; and swayed by those powerful impressions, I owed to them the conception of noting down my recollections, convinced that in times to come, i.e. at a period to which I looked forward courageously, I should be delighted to refer to them as the sole food for my thoughts.

CHAPTER I

The Prince de Ligne—His Wit and his Urbanity—Robinson Crusoe—The Masked Ball and Rout—Sovereigns in Dominos—The Emperor of Russia and the Prince Eugène—Kings and Princes—Zibin—General Tettenborn—A Glance at his Military Career—Grand Military Fête in Honour of Peace—The Footing of Intimacy of the Sovereigns at the Congress—The Imperial Palace—Death of Queen Maria Carolina of Naples—Emperor Alexander—Anecdotes—Sovereign Gifts—Politics and Diplomacy—The Grand Rout—The Waltz.

Speaking of the Great Wall of China, the famous Dr. Johnson said somewhere that the grandson of a man who had caught a mere glimpse of it might still be proud of the opportunity vouchsafed to his grandsire. The exaggeration, Oriental like its subject, might strike me as excusable if the drift of it were applied, not to a monument capable of standing the test of ages, but to one of those men who appear at long intervals, or in connection with events that change the face of the world. Personally, I may confess to remaining more or less proud of my presence at the Congress of Vienna, and of having been privileged to see the many celebrities that forgathered there. But the most gratifying recollection, and also the one dearest to my heart, is that of the goodwill incessantly shown to me by the Prince de Ligne. For over two months I had the happiness of being admitted to his greatest intimacy, seeing him every day and at all hours, gathering from his lips the clever sentences and spontaneous sallies which he so lavishly dispensed. To-day, after many years, the indelible impression of his personality tends to reanimate my recollections, and lends life to the scenes I am endeavouring to reproduce.

The Prince de Ligne[15] was then in his eightieth year; in spite of this there is no exaggeration in saying that he had remained young. He had preserved the amiable character and the fascinating urbanity which had lent so much charm to his society. Hence the title of ‘the last of French knights’ was unanimously accorded to him.

At that period all the strangers, whether most celebrated in virtue of their rank or of their mental qualities, nay, the sovereigns themselves, made it a point, as it were, to show their reverence for him. He was still possessed of that freshness of imagination and inexhaustible, exquisite gaiety which had always distinguished him. His humour, kindly withal, though somewhat satirical, was principally directed at the really strange aspect the Congress began to assume, pleasure being seemingly the most important business. Amidst this general intoxication, amidst this uninterrupted series of entertainments, banquets, and balls, it was certainly not the least curious and interesting contrast to behold the imposing figure of the old marshal, occupying no official position, yet eagerly welcomed everywhere, and often painting the situation by an epigram, by a clever and pertinent remark, which went the round in no time.

The French were above all most eager for his society, and, in their turn, could reckon on the most cordial welcome. His journey to the French Court a few years previous to the Revolution had left the most heartfelt recollections; and his letters to the Marquise de Coigny[16] at that period show in every line his regret at being compelled to live away from a country and a people that had inspired him with such an ardent sympathy. In a word, the Prince de Ligne belonged to France both by the nature of his worth and by the quality of his mind.

My family having the honour of being allied to that of the Prince, he presented me on my first visit to Vienna in 1807 at the Court and everywhere as his cousin. From that moment until his death, his courtesy and goodwill never failed me at any succeeding visit. I was never tired of listening to him, and especially when his thoughts reverted to bygone times, which he had so long and so closely observed. He took delight in improving my mind with the treasures of his own, and in enlightening my youthful inexperience with the counsels and fruits of his own observation. Hence, to speak of the Prince de Ligne is simply, on my part, the acquittal of a debt. As a matter of course, my first call was due to him, and on the morrow of my arrival I made my way to his home.

‘You are just in time to see great doings,’ he said. ‘The whole of Europe is in Vienna. The tissue of politics is embroidered with fêtes, and inasmuch as at your age one is fond of joyous gatherings, balls, and pleasure, I can assure you beforehand of a series of them, because the Congress does not march to its goal; it dances. It is a royal mob. From all sides there are cries of peace, justice, equilibrium, indemnity; the last word being the new contribution of the Prince de Bénévent to the diplomatic vocabulary. Heaven alone knows who shall reduce this chaos to some semblance of order, and provide dams for the torrent of various pretensions. As for me, I am only a well-meaning and friendly spectator of the show. I shall claim nothing, unless it be a hat to replace the one I am wearing out in saluting the sovereigns I meet at every street-corner. Nevertheless, in spite of Robinson Crusoe,[17] a general and lasting peace will no doubt be concluded, for a feeling of concord has at length united the nations which were so long inimical towards each other. Their most illustrious representatives are already setting the example of it. We shall witness a thing hitherto unheard of: pleasure will bring in its wake peace, instead of strife.’

After this, he started asking me, with all the impetuosity of youth, a series of questions with reference to Paris, my travels, and my own plans, until he was interrupted by his servant informing him that his carriage was at the door.

‘You’ll come and dine with me to-morrow,’ he said; ‘and then we’ll go to the grand rout and ball. You’ll see the most practical common-sense of Europe wearing the motley of folly. When there I’ll explain to you in a few moments the curiosities of that grand piece of living tapestry composed of the most notable personages.’

The prince had kept to his habit of dining early: it was four o’clock when I reached his pretty house on the Bastion. It contained but one room on each story, hence he called it jocularly his ‘perch.’ His friends knew it by the name of ‘L’hôtel de Ligne.’ Shortly after my arrival he sat down to dinner, surrounded by his charming family.[18] Candidly speaking, the repast, like the well-known suppers of Madame de Maintenon, when she was still Widow Scarron, stood in need of the magic of his conversation to make up for its more than scanty fare. And although he himself ate nearly all the little dishes that were served, his guests were so thoroughly engrossed and delighted as to be rendered oblivious of the unsubstantial nature of the entertainment—until the end of it.

In the drawing-room we found some visitors; they were strangers of distinction, who, called to Vienna from every coign and nook of Europe, had craved an introduction to this living marvel of the previous century. Their number also contained several ‘lion-hunters,’ obtruding their presence from sheer curiosity, and for the sake of being enabled to say: ‘I have seen the Prince de Ligne,’ or else for the purpose of ‘rubbing minds with him,’ by carefully picking up his anecdotes and his sallies, which they afterwards hawked about, considerably disfigured, among their own sets.

Having quickly paid his voluntary toll in the shape of some witty or polite remark to each of those groups, he left them, as if his task had been fulfilled, and came up to his grandson, the Comte de Clary, with whom I happened to be chatting. ‘I remember,’ he said, ‘having begun one of my letters to Jean-Jacques Rousseau with a—“As you do not care, Monsieur, either for demonstrative people or for demonstrations....” A few notes couched in similar terms would not be out of place among some of the notable people here this evening; but they are so inflated with their own merit as to be unable to decipher their own addresses. And as, moreover, they are most obstinate and difficult to shake off, let us go and have a look at others where there will be a little more elbow-room. The ball is waiting for us. Come along, my lads, I’ll give you a lesson in taking your leave in French fashion.’ And this man, extraordinary in every relation of life, flitting away with the light step of a mere youth, suited the action to the word and positively ran to his carriage, laughing all the while at the boyish trick and at the disappointment of all those insipid talkers who merely courted his society to make him listen to their vapid utterances. It was nine o’clock when we reached the imperial palace, better known as the Hofburg.

That ancient residence had been specially chosen for those ingenious momons, character-masques in which the incognito of the domino often lent itself to political combinations in themselves masterpieces of intrigue and conception. The principal hall was magnificently lighted up, and running around it, there was a circular gallery giving access to huge rooms arranged for supper. On seats, disposed like an amphitheatre, there were crowds of ladies, some of whom merely wore dominos, while the majority represented this or that character. It would be difficult to imagine a scene more dazzling than this gathering of women, all young and beautiful, and each attired in a style most becoming to her beauty. All the centuries of the past, all the regions of the inhabited globe seemed to have appointed to meet in that graceful circle.

Several orchestras executed at regular intervals valses and polonaises: in adjoining galleries or rooms minuets were danced with particularly Teutonic gravity, which feature did not constitute the least comic part of the picture.

The prince had spoken the truth. Vienna at that time presented an abridged panorama of Europe, and the rout was an abridged panorama of Vienna. There could be no more curious spectacle than those masked or non-masked people, among whom, absolutely lost in the crowd, and practically defying identification, circulated all the sovereigns at that moment participating in the Congress.

The prince had a story or anecdote about each. ‘There goes Emperor Alexander. The man on whose arm he is leaning is Prince Eugène Beauharnais, for whom he has a sincere affection. When Eugène arrived here with his father-in-law, the King of Bavaria, the Court hesitated about the rank to be accorded to him. The emperor spoke so positively on the subject as to secure for Eugène all the honours due to his generous character. Alexander, as you are aware, is worthy of inspiring and of extending the deepest friendship.

‘Do you know the tall and noble-looking personage whom that beautiful Neapolitan girl is holding round the waist? It is the King of Prussia, whose gravity appears in no wise disturbed by the fact. For all that the clever mask may be an empress, on the other hand it is quite on the cards that she is merely a grisette who has been smuggled in.

‘That colossus in the black domino, which neither disguises nor decreases his stature, is the King of Würtemberg.[19] The man close to him is his son, the Crown Prince. His love for the Duchesse d’Oldenbourg, Emperor Alexander’s sister, is the cause of his stay at the Congress, rather than a concern for the grave interests which one day will be his. It is a romantic story, the dénouement of which we may witness before long.

‘The two young fellows who just brushed past us are the Crown Prince of Bavaria and his brother, Prince Charles.[20] The latter’s face would dispute the palm with that of Antinous. The crowd of people of different kind and garb who are disporting themselves, in every sense of the word, are, some, reigning princes, others archdukes, others again grand dignitaries of this or that empire. For, except a few Englishmen, easily picked out by their careful dress, I do not think there is a single personage here without a “handle” to his name.

‘This room in particular only represents a picture of pleasure, my dear boy....’

The moment the prince left me to myself I began to wander about, and if I had made a series of appointments, I could not have met with more acquaintances hailing from Naples to St. Petersburg, and from Stockholm to Constantinople. The variety of costume and languages was truly astonishing. It was like a bazaar of all the nations of the world. Honestly, I felt that for the first time in my life I was experiencing the intoxication of a masked ball. My brain seemed to reel under the spell of the incessant music, the secrecy of disguise, the atmosphere of mystery by which it was surrounded, the general state of incognito, the uncurbed and boundless gaiety, the force of circumstances, and the irresistible seductiveness of the picture before me. I feel certain that older and stronger heads than mine would have proved equally weak.

In a short time I had quite a group of friends around me.

Taking advantage of a moment when the Prince de Ligne was less hemmed in, I begged of him not to worry about me for that evening, and flung myself headlong into the whirl of gaiety, freedom from care, and happiness, which seemed the normal condition of this extraordinary gathering.

By and by I met with more friends, and between us we ‘improved the shining hours’ preceding the supper, when we sat down, about a score in all, to wind up the joyous evening. As a matter of course, during the first part of the repast I was plied with questions about my doings since we had met, and I was scarcely less eager to question the questioners. This or that one from whom I parted as a sub-lieutenant had become a general; another who was an attaché when last I saw him was now himself ambassador, and the majority were covered with orders, conferred for their courage or their talent. And amidst the general animation produced by the champagne, they took to recounting, ‘harum-scarum’ fashion, the happy circumstances to which they owed their rapid promotion.

Among those rapid and brilliant careers there was, however, none that caused me greater surprise than that of Zibin. In 1812, when, yielding to a desire for travel, I quitted Moscow to visit the Crimea, Ukraine, and Turkey,[21] Zibin had been my companion. In that long course across the steppes of Russia, his constant gaiety and his clever sallies did much to beguile the tedium of the journey, and to revive my courage. Eighteen months had scarcely gone by since our return from Tauris and our parting at Tulczim, he to follow Countess Potocka to St. Petersburg, I to make my way to the Duc de Richelieu at Odessa, and thence to Constantinople. At that period, Zibin had not joined the army; in spite of this, he was now a lieutenant-colonel, aide-de-camp to General Ojarowski, and on his breast glittered several orders.

Zibin had not been in St. Petersburg many days without becoming aware that an idle life in society would not be conducive either to consideration or glory; hence, he changed his civilian clothes for the uniform of a non-commissioned officer of hussars. At the beginning of the campaign he was made an ensign; a short time afterwards he got his company. One day, his general commanded him to make a reconnaissance with fifty Cossacks in order to bring back some malingerers. At a couple of miles distance from the encampment, Zibin notices a black mass hidden among the reeds. They turn out to be guns left by the enemy before retreating. There were sixteen of them. The troops dismount, the horses are put to the gun-carriages, and a few hours later Captain Zibin returns in possession of a small but complete artillery park, practically fished out of the marshes.

The Emperor was not far away, and Zibin himself was instructed to convey the particulars of his capture. Alexander read the report, and, giving the young hussar the credit of a success solely due to chance, conferred upon him there and then the rank of major, at the same time taking from his own breast the Cross of St. George and fastening it into the buttonhole of the freshly promoted officer. The rest was mainly the natural consequence of this first piece of luck: new orders were added to that one, and as it never rains but it pours, Zibin, during the many leisure hours in camp, had gambled, and won not less than four hundred thousand roubles. The Prince de Ligne was not far wrong in saying that glory was a courtesan who gets hold of you when you least expect it.

Towards the end of the evening another lucky chance made me run up against my excellent friend, General Tettenborn. ‘We have got a good deal to tell each other,’ he said. ‘It’s of no use starting here. Let us go and dine to-morrow by ourselves at the Augarten; it is the only means of not being interrupted.’

Naturally, I accepted, and Tettenborn was punctual to the minute.

‘Though as a rule, the Viennese restaurateurs do not give you a good dinner,’ he began, ‘I happen to have been in their good books here for many years, and Yan has promised to do his best.’ And in fact, quantity made up for quality. When we got to the dessert, and some Tokay was put before us, my friend at once began his interesting story.

‘Since I saw you last, the events of my life have followed each other in as quick a succession as the circumstances that gave them birth. You are aware of my having accompanied Prince Schwartzenberg on his mission to Paris. I was still there when the King of Rome was born, and I was selected to carry the news to our emperor.’

‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘and I read in all the newspapers that you made that journey of three hundred and twenty leagues [about nine hundred and sixty miles] in four days and a half.’

‘That’s easily explained. As far as Strasburg, I had the race-horses of the prince, and from the Austrian frontier I had the horses of his brother, Prince Joseph, from stage to stage, as far as Vienna.

‘I’ll spare you the particulars of my stay in Paris. It was a perfect whirl of excitement from beginning to end. Society was the brilliant reflex of the astounding prosperity of France, of her numerous victories, and her enthusiasm for everything pertaining to art. Our Austrian legation met with a specially cordial welcome. It was a succession of entertainments similar to those you are seeing here, but with different capitals for their locale. After having accompanied Prince Schwartzenberg a second time, but on that occasion to St. Petersburg, I exchanged the delightful life of society and drawing-rooms for that of the barracks of my regiment, then quartered at Buda. The transition could not have been more startling if I had retired into a Trappist monastery, when suddenly the whole of Europe breathed fire and flame.

‘I was thirty-four years old, and although the first days of my youth were not idly spent, chance has done more for me during the latter period than I had reason to expect. My mind was soon made up. I decided to go to the spot where the fire raged most fiercely, to embark upon a life so entirely at variance with my former habits. I was living with Baron de ——, a friend of my childhood, who was a major in my regiment, and who like myself was calculating the few chances of rapid promotion in the Austrian service.

‘“This,” I said to him one morning, “is a unique opportunity to provide for the future. Let us go to the Russians and offer them our swords as partisans. This bids fair to be an easy and lucrative campaign, likely to lead to many things by its quickly succeeding phases. Besides, it is sometimes sweet to embark in adventures, and to trust everything to fate. As for me, I have made up my mind to go. Will you, too, come?”[22]

‘The decision of a moment in one’s life often shapes the rest of it. My friend hesitated and left me to go alone. Alas, his regrets proved too much for him.’[23]

‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘I know he regretted it. The regret was intensified by the news of your success, which the papers published in all its detail. He practically lost his head over it, for on no other theory can one account for his suicide, which, curiously enough, happened while I was at Pesth, on my return from Constantinople. He blew out his brains in a room next to my own at the inn where I was staying, and I was told that despair and tardy regret had led him to commit the deed.’

‘No one has regretted this more than I,’ said Tettenborn, ‘for he was a devoted friend as well as a distinguished officer. I have not the least doubt that circumstances would have served him as well as they did me, but one must go with the tide in order that the tide may carry you. When I reached the Russian headquarters, I received orders to raise a regiment. That was soon done, and they gave me the command of it. Three months after I left Buda, I was a general, and empowered to grant commissions equal in grade to that which I held when I turned my back upon my garrison. The papers, perhaps, informed you how I got hold of the private chest of Napoleon. A part of that immense loot came to my share. An attempt to take Berlin by surprise, though it failed, brought my name to the front. At the head of four regiments of cavalry, of two squadrons of hussars, and of an equal number of dragoons, with only two pieces of artillery, I marched on Hamburg. After several engagements, the city surrendered on the 18th March 1813. The inhabitants received me with the greatest enthusiasm, and I was, as others had been before me, the hero of the hour. When appointed military governor of the place, I rescinded the severe orders Marshal Davoust had deemed fit to impose. The grateful Hamburgers conferred upon me the freedom of their city, and sent me the document to that effect in a magnificent golden casket.

‘Events have marched very rapidly, and by their side strode glory and rewards. I have had most of the military orders bestowed upon me, and now the allied sovereigns have still further shown their good-will by presenting me with an estate consisting of two convents in Westphalia, the rent-roll of which will certainly amount to no less than forty thousand florins. Those various bits of success have had the happy result of reducing my affairs to something like order; and, inasmuch as there comes in every man’s life a period for settling down, I, my friend, am going to get married. I simply worship my future wife. There are no regrets about the past, there is no fear about the future, and as far as I can foresee, I’ll let fate take care henceforth of my existence. And albeit the dénouement may appear somewhat abrupt to you, you will admit, I feel certain, that the story promises to be none the less happy.’

‘At which happiness, my dear general, all your friends will rejoice.’

The narrative, which I have abridged here, was, however, recounted at much greater length, and in yielding to the fascination of this cordial and confidential talk we had let the time slip by, and the clock struck nine when we reached the Carlenthor theatre. The performance consisted of Haydn’s celebrated oratorio ‘The Creation.’ The house, lighted up by countless wax candles, and the private boxes sumptuously draped, presented a magnificent sight. Several of these boxes had been set apart for the sovereigns, others were filled with the members of the Corps Diplomatique. As for the floor of the house (le parterre), it was crowded to such an extent with people blazing with orders that it might safely have been described as a parterre of knights, just as the floor of the theatre at Erfurt had been called a parterre of kings and princes. ‘In the presence of such a number of ribands,’ said Tettenborn, ‘it would be hazardous to conclude that they are all due to merit.’

‘Signal distinctions, my dear general,’ I replied, ‘are like the Pyramids; only two species can attain them, reptiles and eagles.’

‘I’ll be with you to-morrow at ten,’ said General Tettenborn when we parted, ‘and we’ll go together to the grand military fête in honour of the peace. Before laying down their arms, the sovereigns wish to offer their thanks to Providence for the great favours vouchsafed to them.’

Sharp to the minute, like an Austrian Rittmeister (cavalry-captain), Tettenborn was at my door. It was a bright and mild October morning, and shortly afterwards we were galloping towards the gentle slope between the New and the Burg Gates. On our way we fell in with some acquaintances, attracted thither, like myself, by curiosity. Tettenborn wore his general’s brilliant uniform; a profusion of military orders on his breast certainly attested the kindness of Dame Fortune, but also her discrimination in having favoured him. Immediately on our reaching the ground, he was obliged to leave us in order to join the suite of Emperor Alexander, but I remained surrounded by friends, and advantageously placed to observe all the particulars of that beautiful function. Although in an essentially military epoch similar solemnities had often been seen, I doubt if that one was ever equalled with regard to its ensemble and its majestic pomp. The war, the terrible struggle the relentlessness and duration of which had astounded the world, was just at an end. The glory-compelling giant was, if not vanquished, at any rate overcome by numbers; and the intoxication and the enthusiasm consequent upon the success were sufficient to prove the strength of the adversary and the unexpected joy of the triumph.

Several battalions of infantry, many regiments of cavalry, among others the Schwartzenberg Uhlans, and the cuirassiers of the Grand-Duke Constantine, the brother of Alexander and the sometime Viceroy of Poland, were massed on an immense field. All these troops wore most brilliant uniforms.

The sovereigns came on the ground on horseback, and the soldiery formed a huge double square, in the centre of which stood a vast tent, or rather a temple erected in honour of the general pacification. The columns supporting the structure were decorated with panoplies of arms, and with standards fluttering in the breeze. The lawn immediately around was strewn with flowers and foliage. In the middle of the tent there was an altar covered with rich cloths, and set out with all the ornaments of the Roman Catholic ritual, magnificently chased, either in gold or silver. Countless wax tapers shed their light, somewhat subdued by the rays of the sun standing brilliantly in the sky. Red Damascus carpets covered the steps of the altar.

Shortly afterwards there was a long string of open court carriages, each drawn by four horses, and containing the empresses, queens, and archduchesses, who on alighting seated themselves in velvet-covered chairs. When everybody had taken up the position assigned to them—the crowd of military, courtiers, equerries and pages constituting a matchless spectacle—the venerable Archbishop of Vienna, who, notwithstanding his great age, had insisted upon officiating, performed High Mass. Practically the whole of the Vienna population had repaired to the spot to enjoy the spectacle.

At the moment of blessing the Bread and the Wine, the guns thundered forth a salute to the God of Hosts. Simultaneously, all those warriors, princes, kings, soldiers, and generals fell on their knees, prostrating themselves before Him in whose hands rests victory or defeat. The feeling of reverence had evidently communicated itself to the huge mass of spectators, who spontaneously bared their heads and also knelt in the dust. The cannons became once more silent, and their thunder was succeeded by a solemn hush, amidst which the high priest of the Lord raised the sign of the Redemption, and turned towards the army to confer the supreme benediction. The religious ceremony was at an end. Amidst the clanking of swords and the rattling of muskets, the huge gathering rose to its feet; and then a choir intoned in German the hymn of peace, which was accompanied by an orchestra of wind instruments. Without any pre-meditation the strains were taken up by the voices of the numberless spectators. No human ear ever heard anything more imposing than this spontaneous and harmonic praise of peace and the glory of the Highest. That hymn of gratitude and adoration rising upon the air amidst the smoking incense, the thunder of the artillery, the ringing of the bells of all the churches; the princes surrounded by their resplendent staffs, the multi-coloured uniforms, the arms, glittering breastplates, and sombre bronze of the cannons lighted up by the brilliant sun; the white-haired priest blessing from before his altar the prostrate crowd; the mingling of the symbols of war and peace—constituted a unique picture not likely to be seen again, and which no painter’s brush, however powerful, could adequately reproduce. It constituted a poetical and sublime sight, baffling description.

After the religious ceremony, the sovereigns and all the princesses took up a position on a knoll near the Burg Gate, the troops marched past, the Grand-Duke Constantine and the other princes at the head of their own regiments. The air rang; with unanimous cheers and wishes for the consolidation of peace, that first and foremost necessity of peoples. Such, sketched in brief, was the fête invested with a particular character and fitting in so well with the series of magnificent pageants and dazzling entertainments. The Austrian Court, in fact, dispensed the hospitality of its capital to its guests with truly fabulous pomp. Memory almost fails to recall, for the purpose of recording, all the brilliant details. The imagination is virtually powerless to reconstruct the dazzling splendour of the picture as a whole.

To beguile the leisure of those kings who, it would be thought, ought to have been surfeited with the counterfeits of battles, twenty thousand picked grenadiers had been quartered at Vienna. There was, moreover, the announcement of a camp to be formed of sixty thousand troops with a view of having grand manœuvres. The superb ‘nobiliary guards’ had been considerably increased by the joining of young men belonging to the most distinguished families of the monarchy. The whole of the troops had been provided with new uniforms: there was an evident desire to remove all traces of warfare, so as not to sadden those participating in the feasts and entertainments exclusively designed to celebrate peace and to promote pleasure.

All the stud farms of Germany had been requested to send their most magnificent horses. The grand dignitaries of the crown held ‘open house’ each day for the eminent personages of the suites of the various sovereigns. The Court had invited the Paris Opera dancers of both sexes to come to Vienna; and the Austrian Imperial Company had also been reinforced. The most celebrated actors of Germany had likewise been ‘commanded,’ and they appeared in new pieces, appropriate to the universal rejoicing, and calculated to prevent that joy from getting fagged.

Emperor Franz had thrown open his palace to his illustrious guests. At a rough calculation, the imperial residence held, at that particular moment, two emperors, a similar number of empresses, four kings, one queen, two heirs to thrones (one royal, the other imperial), two grand-duchesses, and three princes. The young family of the emperor had to be relegated to Schönbrunn. Attracted by the novelty of all this, an immense crowd surrounded the palace at all hours, eager to catch a glimpse of the members of a gathering unique in the annals of history.

The Viennese seemed justly proud of having had their city selected for the holding of these grandiose states-general. In fact, the forgathering in the self-same capital of the first powers of Europe constituted one of the most extraordinary events of all the ages. The Congresses of Münster, of Ryswick, and Utrecht had only been plenipotentiary conferences. One had to go back for three centuries, as far as 1515, to find a similar assembly of crowned heads, when in that same city of Vienna Maximilian had entertained the Kings of Hungary, Bohemia, and Poland. And it was remembered that the presence of these monarchs had been attended with the most salutary results to the grandeur of Germany.

In order to convey an idea of the expenses of the Austrian Court, it will suffice to say that the imperial table cost fifty thousand florins per day. This was keeping ‘open table’ with a vengeance. Hence, it is not surprising that the extraordinary expenses of the fêtes of the Congress, during the five months of its duration, amounted to forty millions of francs. It remains to be asked whether the purport of that great gathering, and the gravity of the circumstances, justified such joyous lavishness immediately after the termination of a war which had lasted for a quarter of a century and which seemed to have dried up the sources of wealth and of pleasure?

If we add to the expenses of the Court those of more than seven hundred envoys, we may get something like an accurate idea of the extraordinary consumption of all things in Vienna, and of the immense quantity of money put into circulation. In fact, the influx of strangers was such as to increase the prices of all commodities, and especially of wood for fuel, to an incredible degree. As a consequence, the Austrian Government was obliged to grant supplementary salaries to all its employés.

In the long run, the imagination was at fault in projecting new entertainments for each day: banquets, concerts, shooting parties, masked balls and musical rides. Following the example of the head of their noble family, the princes of the House of Austria had distributed among themselves the various parts of hosts, in order to entertain their company of illustrious guests with becoming pomp and dignity. There was such a dread of an interruption of those pleasures as to prevent the Court from going into mourning for Queen Maria-Caroline of Naples.[24] It should be said, though, that this last daughter of Maria-Theresa ended her life before the arrival of the sovereigns. To save appearances, they avoided notifying her demise officially, lest the sombre hues of mourning should cast a sad note on gatherings devoted exclusively to joy and freedom from care.

The intercourse of the sovereigns was marked by a condition of unparalleled intimacy. They vied in showing reciprocal friendliness, attentions, and in anticipating each other’s wishes. Not a day went by without interviews conducted with a cordial frankness worthy of the age of chivalry. Were they bent upon disproving all that had been said about the want of mutual understanding, the ambitious views, the motives of personal interest which generally distinguish a congress of crowned heads? Or did they yield to the novelty and charm of a mode of living and a feeling of brotherhood contrasting so forcibly with the frigid etiquette of their Courts?

In order to avoid the restraint of a rigorous ceremonial and of questions of precedence, it had been arranged between them that age alone should decide points of priority in everything, at their entering and leaving apartments, at the promenades on horseback, and in their carriage drives. The decision, it was said, was due to the initiative of Emperor Alexander. The following are the ranks as they were settled according to age:—

1. The King of Würtemberg, born in 1754.
2. The King of Bavaria, born in 1756.
3. The King of Denmark, born in 1768.
4. The Emperor of Austria, born in 1768.
5. The King of Prussia, born in 1770.
6. The Emperor of Russia, born in 1777.

This precedence was, however, only observed in the pleasure parties. As for the official deliberations of the Congress, the sovereigns did not attend any.

One of their first acts of courtesy was the reciprocal bestowal of the badges and stars of their Orders. Those various decorations of all shapes and denominations became a positive puzzle, for besides a long list of the saints of the calendar, there were some of the strangest names, like the Elephant, the Phœnix, the Black, Red, and White Eagles, the Sword, the Star, the Lion, the Fleece, the Bath, etc. This exchange was the prelude to others somewhat more important, such as the presents of kingdoms, provinces, or a certain number of inhabitants. One of the ceremonies of that kind most frequently referred to was the investment by Lord Castlereagh, on behalf of his sovereign, of the Emperor of Austria with the Order of the Garter. The Prince de Ligne, who was one of the eyewitnesses, told me that this solemnity was conducted with much pomp and circumstance. Sir Isaac Heard, Garter Principal King of Arms, came expressly from London. It was he who invested the Emperor with the dress of the Order, and attached that much coveted insignia; after which Lord Castlereagh presented the latest recipient with the statutes of the Order. As a fit acknowledgment of the courtesy, the Emperor conferred on the Prince Regent and the Duke of York, his brother, the rank of field-marshal.

After having exhausted the series of their decorations, the sovereigns began bestowing upon each other the colonelcies of the various regiments of their armies. When the honour had been bestowed, the recipient made it a point of appearing almost immediately in the uniform of his regiment. Models were produced in hot haste, for it was essential that not a button should be wanting. Tailors, escorted by favourite aides-de-camp, immediately reconnoitred the ground, called upon the possessors of those precious regimentals, and took note of the minutest details in connection with them; after which the work commenced—a pacific labour, notwithstanding its bellicose appearance, to be terminated by the production of a complete dress from the spur of the boot to the obligatory plume of feathers.

In accordance with these prescriptions, the Emperor of Austria conferred upon his ‘good brother’ the Emperor of Russia, the Hiller Regiment, and upon the Crown Prince of Würtemberg that of the Blankenstein Hussars. Alexander returned the compliment by the bestowal of one of his regiments of the Russian Imperial Guards; and to show the importance he attached to the gift he had received, he desired personally to present his new soldiers with their standard. This standard had been magnificently embroidered by the Empress of Austria. It displayed the words: ‘Indissoluble Union between the Emperors Alexander and Franz.’ The regiment was drawn up in battle order on one of the lawns of the Prater; a great crowd had gathered to witness the ceremony, and Alexander, after receiving the colour from the hands of the Empress of Austria, advanced towards the troops and presented it. ‘Soldiers,’ he said, ‘remember that it is your duty to die in defence of this and in defence of your Emperor and of your colonel, Alexander of Russia.’ It will be easily understood that words like these from the lips of the Czar, who at that period was as handsome as he was chivalrous, were calculated to arouse the enthusiasm of the soldiers to whom they were addressed and of the numerous spectators privileged to listen to them.

On the morning after this ceremony Alexander went on foot to Field-Marshal Prince de Schwartzenberg’s, dressed in his new regimentals, the only decoration on his breast being the metal cross of the Military Order of the Austrian Army. To please General Hiller, his new titular chief, he made him a present of ten thousand florins, and in addition sent a thousand florins to each of his officers.

The habits of the sovereigns were those of private individuals. It was evident that they were only too pleased to shake off the burden of etiquette. Very often the Emperor of Austria and the King of Prussia were to be seen strolling about the streets arm-in-arm and dressed in mufti. Emperor Alexander similarly often took walks with Prince Eugène.

They paid each other visits and prepared surprises for one another like cordial friends of old standing; in a word, royal good-fellowship reigned throughout. On Emperor Franz’s fête-day[25] Emperor Alexander and the King of Prussia bethought themselves of surprising him as he left his bed, and made him a present, the one of a dressing-gown lined with Russian sable, the other of a handsome silver basin and ewer of exquisite workmanship and made in Berlin. The accounts of those cordially intimate scenes found their way to the public and formed the subject of general conversation.

Foremost among those sovereigns shone the King of Bavaria, the King of Denmark, and the Emperor of Russia: the first in virtue of his kindness, the second in virtue of his brilliant and subtle repartees, the third in virtue of his courtesy and affable manners. Of all the foreign princes, Frederick[26] was the most assiduous visitor to the monuments and public institutions of the capital; and wherever he went, he left traces of his liberality. As for Alexander, he never missed an opportunity of showing the delightful grace of manner which at that time won all hearts.

During a promenade on horseback in the Prater, the Emperor of Austria, wishing to dismount for a moment, looked round in vain for some one of his suite, from which he had got separated by the crowd. Alexander, guessing his intention, nimbly jumped off his horse and held out his hand to his fellow-sovereign, just as on a memorable occasion the Great Frederick held the stirrup of Joseph II. As a matter of course, the little scene drew unanimous cheers from all sides, showing the appreciation of the crowd for the gracious impromptu.

On another occasion, at a review, a number of people pressed around Alexander, eager to catch a glimpse of his face. A countryman seemed even more anxious than the rest, trying to elbow his way through the serried mass. Alexander caught sight of him. ‘Friend,’ he said, ‘you wished to see the Emperor of Russia; now you can say that you have spoken to him.’

To the foreign visitors, an easy life like this, constantly enhanced by entertainments, really constituted a delightful existence. In order fitly to celebrate that memorable gathering, Vienna appeared determined to increase the programme of recreations it generally afforded. Situated in the centre of Southern Germany, the city provided, as it were, an oasis of delightful calm and ‘happy-go-lucky’ leisure amidst the grave, scientific, and philosophical occupations of the neighbouring countries. Wholly given up to the pleasure of the senses, its existence was composed of fêtes, banquets, dances, and above all, music. It had pressed into its service as an auxiliary that excellent wine of Hungary, calculated to give an extra zest to rejoicings of all kinds. Thus provided, it glided smoothly on, allowing itself to be governed with the gentle impassiveness bred of material satisfaction.

Strangers are generally well treated in Vienna. The inhabitants are cordially hospitable; the authorities conciliatory and frank. In return for this, strangers are only asked to abstain from speaking or acting against the Government. On those conditions the welcome never fails; but woe to the stranger who transgresses those laws of prudence. He immediately gets a little note inviting him to present himself next morning before the magistrate entrusted with the police supervision of the capital. In the sweetest tones imaginable he receives a hint of his passport ‘not being quite in order’ and that by this time the business which brought him to the city must be terminated. In vain does he remonstrate, and protest his loyalty to all constituted authorities. In vain does he insist upon his simple wish to enjoy the sweet life of the capital. It is all ineffectual, he is bound to depart.

This, at normal periods, is the method of the Vienna police. It is, however, easy to understand that at the time of the Congress, and amid so many questions of intense interest, it would have been difficult to prevent political speculation and conversation. Fortunately, the Austrian Government found a powerful auxiliary in the general pursuit of pleasure. In reality, little or no attention was paid to diplomatic discussions. With the exception of some idlers or journalists who had selected the Graben for their meeting-place and rostrum, society was engrossed with the pleasures of the fête of the hour, or with preparations for that of the next day.

Count Nesselrode.

The utmost secrecy was observed with regard to the deliberations taking place at the official residence of the Chancellor of State. M. de Metternich presided at these. His colleagues had wished to bestow that honour upon him in recognition of the gracious hospitality accorded to them. It had been agreed, however, that the chairmanship implied no supremacy in favour of the Austrian crown. The plenipotentiaries were: for Russia, the Comte de Nesselrode[27] and the Baron de Stein; for France, the Prince de Talleyrand and the Duc de Dalberg; for Prussia, the Prince d’Hardemberg; for Austria, M. de Metternich; for Würtemberg, the Comte de Wintzingerode; for Bavaria, the Prince de Wrède; for Spain, the Chevalier de Labrador; for Portugal, the Duc de Palmella; for Sicily, the Commandeur Alvaro Ruffo; and for Naples, the Duc de Campochiaro. What happened at those most secret sittings of these famous diplomatists? It is not my province to speculate upon the subject; it belongs to posterity to appreciate the grave results.

Meanwhile the sovereigns generally spent their mornings in reviewing the troops at parades, and at shooting-parties, either at the Prater or at this or that royal demesne. On the other hand, they forgathered every day for an hour before dinner, and were supposed to discuss the subjects that had occupied the attention of their plenipotentiaries. The carping outside world maintained, however, that politics were the thing least talked of in that august Olympian assembly, and that the announcement of a forthcoming pleasure party more often than not monopolised the conversation. Business was ousted and the gods became simple mortals.

Of all the entertainments at the Austrian Court, the most brilliant were unquestionably the grand routs at the Imperial Palace. Thanks to the Prince de Ligne, I was privileged to see the smaller masked rout on the occasion of the arrival of the Emperor of Russia and the King of Prussia. At the latter kind of reception, the sovereigns either wore masks or remained nominally incognito by other means. At the grand routs, on the contrary, they appeared in all their brilliancy and displaying all their orders, while the princesses blazed with diamonds.

I was unable to witness the first of those grand routs, hence I became most anxious not to miss the second. The excellent Prince de Ligne once more undertook to introduce me and to be my guide; and together we made our way to the Burg. The sovereigns had as yet not made their appearance. I had therefore ample time to feast my eyes upon the unique sight before me, which after many years I still consider the most dazzling ensemble I ever saw, in the matchless splendour of its decorations, the richness and variety of the dresses, and the illustrious conditions of the personages. To the grand hall had been added two adjacent smaller ones, connected by a gallery. The hall originally set apart for the smaller routs had also been thrown open. Finally, the Imperial Riding-school, a masterpiece of architecture, had been transformed into a ball-room. To enumerate all the particulars of the interior decorations would be practically an impossible task. The staircases and the galleries were positively covered with a profusion of flowers and plants, the latter of the rarest description. The principal drawing-room was reached by an avenue of orange-trees; immense candelabra, holding wax tapers and placed between the boxes, lustres, with thousands of crystal drops, shed a fantastic light amidst the foliage of those splendid trees, throwing into relief their branches and blossoms. The small hall was decorated with huge baskets of flowers, the blending of whose colours invested the whole with the appearance of a fairy garden. The hangings were of some silk material of the purest white, set off by silver ornaments. The seats were upholstered in velvet and gold. From seven to eight thousand wax tapers shed a light more brilliant than that of day. Finally, the strains of several bands heightened the effect of that marvellous spectacle.

In the riding-school a platform had been prepared for the sovereigns. It was decorated with panoplies and standards, and, as in the grand hall, its hangings were of white silk fringed with silver.

The diversity of uniforms, the profusion of orders and decorations were, however, as nothing to the gathering of charming women. If it was true that at the particular moment Europe was represented at Vienna by her celebrities in every walk of life, it was equally certain that female beauty had not been excluded in deference to fame. Never did a city hold within its walls as many remarkable women as did the capital of Austria during the six months of the Congress.

Suddenly there was a blast of trumpets; the sovereigns made their entrance conducting the empresses, queens, and archduchesses. After having made the round of the hall amidst general acclamations, they proceeded to the riding-school and took their seats on the platform. In the first row there were the Empresses of Austria and Russia, the Queen of Bavaria and the Grande-Duchesse d’Oldenbourg, the well-beloved sister of Alexander, whose likeness to Alexander was so striking. Then came the Archduchess Beatrice, Grand-Duchess of Saxe-Weimar.

The seats on the right and left were occupied by the galaxy of women who at that moment disputed the palm of beauty and elegance with each other: the Princesse de la Tour et Taxis, the Comtesse de Bernsdorff, the Princesse de Hesse-Philippstal, in all the splendour of her imposing and statuesque loveliness; her two daughters, bidding fair to rival their mother; the Comtesse d’Apponyi, tall and lithe, with most expressive eyes; the Princesses Sapieha and Lichtenstein, whose beauty was of a more regular and gentler cast; the Comtesse Cohari, the Princesses Paul Esterhazy and Bagration; the daughters of Admiral Sidney Smith;[28] the Comtesse Zamoyska, née Czartoryska, tall, fair, with a skin of dazzling whiteness, who in herself virtually represented every kind of Polish female beauty. There were many more whose names and portraits will often recur in these Recollections.

Meanwhile, to the sound of inspiriting dance strains, there entered a group of masked children in fancy dress, who performed a Venetian pantomime, followed by an extensive ballet. The expressive attitudes, the varied evolutions and steps of those youthful performers seemed to afford great enjoyment to the illustrious spectators.

After the departure of the sovereigns the bands struck up a series of waltz tunes, and immediately an electric current seemed to run through the immense gathering. Germany is the country that gave birth to the waltz; it is there, and above all in Vienna, that, thanks to the musical ear of the inhabitants, that dance has acquired all the charm inherent in it. It is there that one ought to watch the apparently whirl-like course, though in reality regulated by the beat of the music, in which the man sustains and carries away his companion, while she yields to the spell with a vague expression of happiness tending to enhance her beauty. It is difficult to conceive elsewhere the fascination of the waltz. As soon as its strains rise upon the air, the features relax, the eyes become animated, and a thrill of delight runs through the company. The graceful gyrations of the dancers, at first somewhat confused, gradually assume accurately timed movements, while the spectators whom age condemns to immobility beat time and rhythm, mentally joining in the pleasure which is bodily denied to them.

The pen fails to reproduce that enchanting scene of beauteous women covered with flowers and diamonds, yielding to the irresistible strains of the harmony, and being carried away in the strong arms of their partners until sheer fatigue compelled them to pause. The pen fails to reproduce the magnificent sight, to which daylight streaming through the windows put an end.

CHAPTER II

The Drawing-rooms of the Comtesse de Fuchs—The Prince Philip of Hesse-Homburg—George Sinclair—The Announcement of a Military Tournament—The Comtesse Edmond de Périgord—General Comte de Witt—Letters of Recommendation—The Princesse Pauline—The Poet-functionary and Fouché.

Among the most distinguished women of Austrian society was the Comtesse Laure de Fuchs, of whom the numerous visitors to Vienna during the Congress have preserved the most delightful recollection. Graceful and witty, she conveyed the highest idea in her own person of the courtesy of her country. Foreigners considered it a signal honour to be admitted to her receptions. In 1808 and 1812, I, and the few Frenchmen who were in Vienna at this period, met with the most cordial welcome on her part. Among those who composed her most intimate circle, all the members of which were friends, special mention ought to be made of the Comtesse Pletemberg, her sister, the wife of the reigning comte of that name; the Duchesses de Sagan and d’Exerenza, and Madame Edmond de Périgord,[29] a niece, by marriage, of Prince de Talleyrand. They were all three born Princesses de Courlande, and were called the Three Graces. In addition to these, there were the Chanoinesse Kinski, belonging to one of the most illustrious families of Hungary; the Duc de Dalberg, one of the French plenipotentiaries; Marshal Walmoden, the three Comtes de Pahlen,[30] the Prince Philip of Hesse-Homburg, the Prince Paul Esterhazy, subsequently Austrian ambassador to the Court of St. James; the Prince Eugène de Beauharnais, the Russian general Comte de Witt,[31] M. de Gentz,[32] the secretary of the Congress, and the intimate friend of M. de Metternich; General Nostiltz, the clever man of letters; Varnhagen (von Ense), the poet Carpani, Doctor Koreff, the Baron d’Ompteda, former minister of Westphalia at Vienna, whom the fall of his sovereign had left without an embassy, and who attended this great diplomatic Sanhedrim as a simple amateur.

A sweet and gentle animation pervaded those gatherings, which were never interrupted by irritating political discussions. With her charming grace, the countess imposed on all her friends a law of mutual intimacy; consequently, they unanimously bestowed on her the title of their queen, a title she had accepted, and which she bore with a kind of serious dignity.

Her family as well as the number of her friends had increased during my absence from Vienna. The former were growing into beautiful beings, the latter, of whom she gave me some short biographical sketches, were as devoted as ever. Fortune, thanks to the rapidly succeeding events of the last few years, had forgotten none of them. All had become generals, ambassadors, or ministers.

The one to whom I felt most attracted was the Prince of Hesse-Homburg, then occupying a rank far distant from his exalted position of to-day. Parity of age, of tastes and of ideas drew me towards him. Like many of the princes of German sovereign houses, his fame was solely due to himself.

Having joined the army at fifteen, he became a prisoner of the French in one of the first wars of the Revolution, and was taken to Paris, where he was confined in the Luxembourg. He had the luck to have his life spared. Some time afterwards there was an exchange of prisoners, and he resumed his military career. All his grades were conferred upon him for distinguished services in the field, and at the period of which I am treating he was numbered among the most meritorious generals of the Austrian army.

When, subsequently, he became a field-marshal, he was sent to the Emperor of Russia, during the latter’s campaign against the Turks in 1828. To-day (1820) as Landgrave of Hesse-Homburg, Prince Philip is respected and worshipped by his subjects, whose happiness is his foremost thought.

Mme. de Fuchs asked me if I had seen anything more of George Sinclair, the young Englishman whose adventure with the Emperor Napoleon had at first drawn attention to him in Vienna, a few days before the battle of Jena. Mr. George Sinclair, who was on his way to Austria, was arrested by French scouts, and taken to headquarters on the suspicion of being a spy.

‘Whence came you, and whither are you going?’ asked the Emperor in a tone which foreshadowed a death-sentence. Sinclair, who spoke French with great facility, answered as briefly. ‘I have come from the University of Jena, and am going to Vienna, where letters and orders from my father, Sir John Sinclair, are awaiting me.’

‘Sir John Sinclair who has written frequently on agricultural questions?‘[33]

‘Yes, sire.’

The Emperor said a few words to Duroc, and continued his interrogatory in a kindlier tone. Mr. Sinclair, who was barely eighteen, was exceedingly well versed in geography and history. His conversation fairly astonished Napoleon, who, after talking with him for a couple of hours, ordered Duroc to give him an escort as far as the outposts, and to let him resume his journey. It was altogether an unexpected favour, and wholly due to his own worth.

I had practically lost sight of him altogether, but I knew that after a journey through Italy he had entered Parliament, where he had become one of the followers of his friend Sir Francis Burdett, and had gained a brilliant reputation as a speaker in the Opposition.

Two events of a wholly different order occupied people’s minds at that moment: the future destiny of the kingdom of Saxony, and the announcement of a musical ride, a fête of knightly prowess which was contemplated from the very first days of the Congress, and was to take place in the Imperial Riding-school. Saxony came in for a scant part of the conversation, but the preparations for the tournament were discussed at great length. It was to be one of the most magnificent entertainments hitherto projected, and there were frequent consultations of the printed and engraved descriptions of the famous carrousels of Louis XIV., which were to be eclipsed in splendour.

The Comtesse Edmond de Périgord, one of the twenty-four ladies who were to preside at the fête, told us that the dresses which were being prepared for it would surpass in richness everything that had been handed down concerning the elegance and the splendour of the Court ladies of the Grand Monarque.

‘I really believe that we shall be able to display all the pearls and diamonds of Hungary, Bohemia, and Austria combined,’ she said. ‘There is not a relative or friend of these ladies whose jewel-case has not been laid under contribution; and this or that heirloom in the way of precious stones, which has not seen the light of day for a century, will glitter on the dress of one of us.’

‘As for the knights,’ said the young Comte de Woyna, ‘in default of gorgeous dresses, they’ll certainly have magnificent horses. You’ll behold them go through evolutions and dance minuets with as much grace as the most nimble gentlemen of the Court.’

After this there was some animated conversation about the colours of the different quadrilles, and the supposed skill of the champions. Mottoes were quoted, and the ladies tried to get at their hidden meaning. The excellent King of Saxony and his states were absolutely forgotten; their cause had to make way for the more important discussion.

On leaving Mme. de Fuchs’s, I caught sight on the Graben of General Comte de Witt—a piece of luck, for the meeting reminded me of those happy and delightful days I had spent in Ukraine, at the hospitable and magnificent domain of Tulczim, the home of the Comtesse Potocka, the comte’s mother.

The only son of the first marriage of his handsome mother with General Comte de Witt, the descendant of the Grand Referendary of Holland, Comte de Witt’s military career was as rapid as it was brilliant. A soldier from his childhood, he was a colonel at sixteen, and at eighteen commanded one of the most splendid regiments in Europe, namely, the cuirassiers of the Empress. The campaigns of the last three years had given him excellent opportunities of distinguishing himself. In six weeks he had raised and equipped at his own cost, and on his mother’s property, four regiments of Cossacks, which he had taken to the Emperor, who made him a lieutenant-general, and entrusted him with the organisation of the military colonies. In 1828, in the war against the Turks, he re-entered the service and commanded the army of reserve. After the Peace of Varna, there was every prospect of his happiness, when death removed him unexpectedly and at an early age.

Comte de Witt had married the Princesse Josephine Lubomirska, one of the most distinguished women of Europe. Charming and graceful, her quick and well-read intellect only equalled by her inexhaustible kindness—such was the portrait of the Comtesse de Witt traced by all those who had the privilege of coming in contact with her.

Mme. de Fuchs had kept up the habit of supping, a habit so dear to our fathers, and the disappearance of which is so much regretted by those who are fond of joyous, frank, and unrestrained conversation, inspired by the gaiety of the moment.

At one of those gatherings I had been placed close to the Comte de Witt.

That same morning I had had a strange visit. I was just stepping out of bed when told that a young Frenchman wished to speak to me. The caller turns out to be a man of good appearance, who presents me with a small parcel he is carrying. ‘This,’ he says, ‘is a letter M. Rey, the advocate with whom you dined at M. de Bondy’s, the Prefect at Lyons, has asked me to hand you.’ While I motion him to be seated I open the epistle, in which M. Rey, after the usual greetings, asks me, supposing I should be in Vienna, to interest myself for the bearer, M. Cast ... in order to get him some employment.

‘By the date of the letter, monsieur, you must have left Lyons some time.’

‘Yes,’ replies the visitor, ‘having the whole of the world thrown open to me to choose a habitat, I made my way to the present one on foot.’

‘You have no doubt other recommendations?’

‘None whatever.’

‘Allow me to compliment you on your courage. To do three hundred leagues on foot simply on the strength of a letter from a person whom I have only seen once, and without even the certainty of finding me—assuredly you ought to succeed! In spite of this, I can give you but little hope. If you came to the Congress to claim a kingdom, a province, an indemnity, you would probably be listened to, but a post for a Frenchman in the Austrian States—that, I am afraid, will be a difficult thing to get. Nevertheless, I will do all I can for you. What have you done up to the present?’

‘I have served in the Guards of Honour.’

‘What sort of post have you in view?’

‘I am not at all particular. I can be a secretary, or pretty well fill any kind of post, whether it be civil or military.’

‘You are certainly determined to make the best of things,’ I could not help saying, for that particular aptitude for making the foot fit the boot in a cheerful and intelligent way is unquestionably French. I felt decidedly interested in my young compatriot, and I asked him to give me a few days to look round for him. Meanwhile I took his address, though with considerable doubt about the final result of his bold journey.

At supper the conversation happened to turn on the sudden resolutions and the unhoped-for and unexpected bits of daring that often determine a man’s whole existence. As a matter of course, instances were quoted, and notably that of General Tettenborn, who, in something like four months had worked his way from major to general-in-chief.

‘I could mention a trait of courage and a reliance on luck which, save for the favourable results to come, is worth all those we have mentioned.’

On being questioned, I told them all about my visitor of that morning, about his economical journey with nothing at the end of it but a simple letter of introduction, and about the coincidence of his reaching Vienna but a couple of days after my own arrival. The Comte de Witt had listened very attentively.

‘Your young man’s courage is worthy of consideration,’ he said, ‘and inasmuch as he has been in the Guards of Honour, he is probably at home on horseback. Send him to me to-morrow morning; I’ll find him something to do.’

I thanked the comte; then, turning to the other guests: ‘This is my countryman’s second step on the road of chance in one day,’ I said, ‘You’ll admit that if a letter of recommendation is often addressed at random, it now and again happens to get into the hands of Dame Fortune.’

‘Yes,’ remarked the young Comte de Saint-Marsan, ‘a letter of recommendation sometimes constitutes a whole fortune. Would you like to have an instance of this?’

And without further ado he told us with his habitual grace and sprightliness the following anecdote in connection with a period which already seemed far removed from us in the past, although the actors had scarcely left the stage.

‘A young Parisian poet,’ began Marsan, ‘named Dubois, who was probably as poor in wit as he was in money, had exhausted all his faculties in singing the powers that were without getting the smallest favour. As a forlorn hope, he addressed an ode to Princesse Pauline, the favourite sister of Napoleon. In his poetical confusion, and without reflecting upon the fate of Racine when the latter presented to Louis XIV. his Memoir on the Wretched Condition of Peoples, Dubois mingled with his praises of the princess counsels to Mars, embroidered on a philanthropic dream of universal peace. The greatest effects are often due to the most trivial causes. It so happened that one of the princess’s waiting-maids was a distant relative of the poet, and she seized a favourable opportunity of presenting the epistle to her highness, who only read the rhymes of “Pauline” and “divine,” recurring at almost every strophe, and promised her influence to the author of such beautiful and kind sentiments. “But where is he?” asked Princesse Pauline. “There,” said the relative, pointing to the ante-chamber. “In that case let him come in,” remarked the princess, and in less time than it takes to tell, the poet enters the perfumed boudoir of Pauline, and finds himself tête-à-tête with his future Providence. “Well, what can I do for you?” asked the princess, after having listened to the usual compliments. “If Madame by her influence could get me some small post in this or that government office, I should for ever be grateful to her.” “A letter of recommendation to Fouché may do the thing. Not later than yesterday he said that I never asked for any favours. I’ll put him to the test. Do you think that this would suit you?” Naturally the poet replied that such a letter could not fail in its effect, and that it would make him the happiest of mortals. Handsome Pauline Borghese immediately opened her escritoire, and being in one of the happy moods when sentences shape themselves on paper, in her petition to his Grace of Otranto she spoke of M. Dubois as a man of superior gifts, apt at many things, and in whom she took the greatest interest.

‘An hour afterwards the protégé was at the door of the dispenser of favours, but being unknown to the ushers, and not specially recommended to them, it may easily be imagined that he got no further than the ministerial ante-chamber, and that he was obliged to remit his letter to the hands of those who did not care a jot. As a matter of course, it was flung with many others into the basket set apart for such epistles, which as often as not went straight from the receptacle into the stove of the ante-chamber. Nevertheless, when Fouché returned that evening from the Council of Ministers, and the basket was, as usual, set in front of him, by the merest accident his eye fell on the paper displaying the imperial arms. Naturally, he opened it at once, read it from the first line to the last, and immediately ordered four gendarmes to accompany his carriage at nine in the morning. Among his entourage it was taken for granted that he was proceeding to Saint-Cloud for some communication of great importance; hence the surprise of his servants was intense when they were ordered to take him to a mean street in the neighbourhood of the Halles. It was there that our favourite of the Muses had established his aerial quarters on the sixth floor.

‘There was neither porter nor number to the entrance of that residence, and inquiries had to be made of the baker of the quarter as to the domicile of M. Dubois, a man of letters.

‘“There is,” answered the baker’s wife, “a person of that name, very poor, who inhabits an attic in the place. I do not know whether he is a public scribe, but he owes me two quarters’ rent.”

‘And issuing from her shop, she begins to bawl out the name at the top of her voice. The poor poet puts his head out of the window of his garret, and espying below a carriage escorted by gendarmes, comes there and then to the conclusion that the boldness of his remarks with regard to a universal peace has been badly received by Jupiter the Thunderer, and that they have come to arrest him in order to make him expiate his audacity at Bicêtre.

‘Prompted by his fear only, Dubois considers it most prudent to hide under his bed. Fouché, receiving no answer to the summons of the baker’s wife, makes up his mind to mount the six flights. A courtier does not stop at that when it becomes a question of proving his zeal to those in power. It would want the facetious genius of Beaumarchais or Lesage, or the comic talent of Potier, to paint the originality of the scene, and of the Minister finally discovering the protégé under the worm-eaten wooden structure that served him as a couch. Hence I abridge the particulars. Fouché reassures Dubois, and induces him to come forth from his improvised hiding-place. Regardless of the poet’s very profound négligé, he places him by his side in the carriage, which takes its way to the Ministry, where luncheon is soon served.

‘“What would you like to be, M. Dubois?” asks his Excellency in the interval between a dish of cutlets à la Soubise, made short work of by the famished poet, and a salmis de perdreaux equally appreciated, at any rate ocularly. “Now tell me what can I do for you?”

‘“I’ll be whatever your Excellency likes; and I shall be grateful for any kind of post.”

‘“Well, would you like to go to the island of Elba? I can give you the appointment of commissary general of police.”

‘“I’ll go to the end of the world in order to please your Excellency,” replies the poet, not quite sure whether for the last hour or so he has been awake or dreaming.

‘“Very well then, I’ll go and make out your nomination, and you’ll start to-morrow. On reaching Porto-Ferrajo you’ll find further instructions. Meanwhile take this on account of your stipend.” Saying which, Fouché presses a roll of napoleons into the poet’s hand. The latter’s luggage was the reverse of voluminous; it would have filled a big snuff-box, and did not take long to pack. Dubois engaged a place in the diligence, and, in imitation of the awakened sleeper, departed, like Sancho, for his island, which he reached without any further adventures.

‘It so happened that at that identical moment, two competitors were endeavouring to get the concession of the iron-ore mines of the island of Elba, the yield of which is very considerable. The new commissary-general of police seemed to enjoy immense credit in Paris. He was entrusted with an important charge in the administration of the island, and each of the competitors tried to secure his goodwill. One of these offered him an interest in his enterprise in return for his influence. The new functionary, who perceived himself to be on the high road to fortune, took particular care not to refuse the offer. He promised everything, and wrote to Paris whatever the speculator directed. Whether it was sheer accident or his recommendation that finally procured the concession for his partner will, perhaps, never be known, but the merit of it was attributed to the child of the Muses. He was, however, sharp enough to be aware of his utter ignorance with regard to the working of mines in no way connected with those of Parnassus, and sold his interest in them for three hundred thousand francs, which with equal good sense he invested in government securities, thus making his newly acquired wealth safe against all vicissitudes.

‘Meanwhile the Princesse Borghese went to Bagnères to take the waters, and it was some time before Fouché met with her at the Tuileries.

‘“I trust your Highness is pleased with the manner in which I have been able to provide for your protégé;” said the minister. “What protégé, M. le Duc?” answered Pauline. “I am afraid I do not understand.” “But, madame, I mean M. Dubois.” “M. Dubois? I don’t think I know any one of that name.” “Does not your Highness recollect a letter sent to me about three months ago, most pressingly recommending a M. Dubois, a man of letters, in whom your Highness took the greatest interest?” “One moment,” said the princess, and then a smile overspread her beautiful features. “My protégé, M. le Duc, was a poor poet, a relative of one of my maids, who sent me an ode. What have you done with him? Have you given him a stool in one of your departments?”

‘The minister, nettled at having been duped in that way, took particular care to suppress the fact of his having made a grand functionary of Dubois. Unfortunately, Fouché’s friends at Court got wind of the thing, and there was an end of the secret. Napoleon himself was vastly amused at it, and bantered his minister, whose habits, as every one knows, were not of the bantering kind.

‘Naturally, Dubois’s order of recall was despatched with the same promptitude as that for his departure. Our poet fell from his commissaryship-general as Sancho had fallen from the governorship of his island, and become a nonentity as before. But the three hundred thousand francs had been paid to him and properly invested, and on his return to Paris, he was enabled to pursue in peace his cultivation of the Muses, and we may be sure did not lack for parasites to applaud his verses and share his dinners, which were amply defrayed by the iron-mines of Elba.’

Thus far the narrative of the Comte de Marsan, to whom I leave the responsibility for the story, although I have no doubt of its veracity, for Fouché, the Terrorist of old, was an excellent courtier.

M. Cast***‘s progress on the road to fortune was not as rapid as that, yet sufficiently rapid for him to look back with satisfaction on his pluck, as exemplified in his journey to Vienna. His interview with Comte de Witt resulted in his appointment as his secretary. He came to tell me of his wonderful piece of luck, and that same night went to the Leopoldstadt theatre and was arrested by the police, who in Vienna were very severe with foreigners. He showed fight, received several blows, was bound hand and foot, and flung into a cell pending inquiry. When brought before a magistrate next morning, he referred to his new patron, the Comte de Witt, belonging to the suite of the Emperor of Russia, and on the deposition of the general, was set at liberty. Not being provided with a passport, he would, had this happened one day earlier, have been taken as a vagrant to the Austrian frontier.

Subsequently, I was told by the Abbé Chalenton, the tutor of the young Polignacs, that M. Cast***, having accompanied the Comte de Witt to Russia, married at Tulczim a Dutch girl of excellent birth, with an income of two thousand Dutch ducats, and on that occasion the abbé, at that time the tutor of Comtesse Potocka’s children, gave the bride away. M. Cast*** returned afterwards to Lyons in a different condition from that in which he had left it three years previously.

The moral of all this is that, thanks to a plucky resolve, he also had his share in the good things which were going at the Congress of Vienna. Who after this shall deny the workings of chance on our destinies and the usefulness of letters of introduction?

CHAPTER III

Reception at M. de Talleyrand’s—His attitude at the Congress—The Duc de Dalberg—The Duc de Richelieu—Mme. Edmond de Périgord—M. Pozzo di Borgo—Parallel between the Prince de Ligne and M. de Talleyrand—A Monster Concert.

Since my arrival in Vienna, I had given myself up so wholly to the pleasure of meeting with old friends that I had only been able to pay a ‘duty’ call at the French Legation. Although several friends, among others MM. Boigne de Faye and Achille Rouen, formed part of it in different capacities, I had not been able to have a confidential chat with any. I had begun sincerely to regret having missed the opportunity of going to M. de Talleyrand’s receptions, when he divined my wishes, and with his well-known and exquisite courtesy sent me an invitation to dinner. As may be imagined, I did not fail to respond to it, impatient as I was to observe from near at hand a man whom I had not seen since my early manhood, and who had been so largely mixed up with the chief events of the time. It is a memorable thing in a man’s life to be able to approach closely to an actor who has played a principal part on the world’s stage. It makes an impression which only ceases with life or with the loss of memory. I reached the embassy early, and from M. Rouen’s private apartments made my way to the reception-rooms. There was no one there but M. de Talleyrand, the Duc de Dalberg, and Madame Edmond de Périgord, whom I had already met at Mme. de Fuchs’s. The prince bade me welcome with the exquisite grace which had become a second nature to him, and taking hold of my hand with the kindliness reminiscent of a bygone period, he said: ‘I had to come to Vienna, then, Monsieur, in order to have the pleasure of seeing you at my home?’ I may have been mistaken, but at that moment he certainly belied the axiom so long ascribed to him, namely: That words were given to man to enable him to disguise his thought. Without awaiting my answer, which, judging from my embarrassed look, he fancied would not be quickly forthcoming, he presented me to the Duc de Dalberg with a few flattering and gracious words.

I had not seen M. de Talleyrand since 1806; but I was struck once more with the intellectual subtlety of the look, the imperturbable calm of the features, the demeanour of the pre-eminent man whom I, in common with all those forgathered in Vienna, considered the foremost diplomatist of his time. There were also the same grave and deep tone of voice, the same easy and natural manners, the same ingrained familiarity with the usages of the best society—a belated reflex, as it were, of a state of things which existed no longer, and of which one beheld in him one of the last representatives. In that room, and face to face with such a man, one could not help yielding to an irresistible feeling of timidity and awe.

The panegyric of the French plenipotentiaries at the Congress is practically contained in their names; nevertheless, M. de Talleyrand, in particular, seemed to dominate that illustrious assembly by the charm of his mind and the ascendency of his genius. Always the same, he treated diplomacy as he treated it formerly in his drawing-room in Paris and at Neuilly. Yet, France’s rôle was rendered not less difficult by the circumstances from without than by the confusion from within. Hedged, as it were, by numberless obstacles, the inevitable consequences of a new organisation, and of the little harmony such an organisation is likely to command, France was virtually incapable of showing any virile disposition. It was an open secret that such a display was beyond the power and beyond the will of her government. The great European states, the arbiters of the Congress, proceeded with a common accord of which hitherto there had been no instance in diplomatic annals. It seemed as if nothing could either break or detach a single link of the chain. Hence, the representatives of France were bound to make up, either by the resources of their genius or by talent of the first order, for the obstacles opposed to them by a quadruple alliance applying to the deliberations the whole weight of its actual importance and of its unassailable union.

The force he could not look for from his government, M. de Talleyrand found in himself; for it is no exaggeration to say that the whole of the French mission at the Congress seemed personified in him, whatever may have been the merit of his colleagues and the consideration attached to their personality. With the marvellous intuition which was the particular dower of his intellect, and which seemed not only to foresee events but to dominate them, he soon recovered the position belonging to France. Admitted to the directing committee, composed of the four great Powers, he completely changed its ideas and its tendency. ‘I bring to you more than you possess, I bring to you the idea of “right.”’ He divided those Powers, hitherto so united; he, as it were, raised the spectre of a disproportionately aggrandised Russian weight on the rest of Europe, and the necessity of edging her back to the north. He caused Austria and England to share that conviction. Hence, Emperor Alexander, who under the influence and in the drawing-room of M. de Talleyrand had, six months previously, decided upon the restoration of the House of Bourbon, saw, not without annoyance, his projects stopped by the representative of a state which owed its existence to him. ‘Talleyrand enacts the part here of Louis XIV.’s minister,’ he said more than once with a show of bad humour.

I have no intention of enumerating the labours of M. de Talleyrand at the Congress of Vienna, or the important acts in which he took a part. Still less do I intend to trace a portrait of that celebrated man. Apart from the consideration that such a task would entail infinite developments, M. de Talleyrand henceforth belongs to history; and history alone, with inflexible truth, can describe and make known one of the most historical personages of modern times. But, having been an eyewitness at that trying period of his often successful efforts at raising and reinstating the nation which he represented, I find it difficult to resist the temptation to record the vivid impression produced by his imperturbable calm, his attitude, and the whole of his personality.

It has been said often, and with considerable truth, that at no period did Talleyrand appear more conspicuously great than at the moment of France’s disasters in 1814. I had seen him eight years previously as Minister of France, then all-powerful, and dictating his laws to the whole of Continental Europe. At Vienna, as the plenipotentiary of a vanquished people, he was the same man, and as absolutely confident of himself. There was the same noble dignity, perhaps with an additional shade of pride, the same confidence essential to the representative of a nation which though vanquished was necessary to the maintenance of the European equilibrium—of a nation which might gather strength from the very consciousness of her defeat. His demeanour was, in one word, the most eloquent expression of the grandeur of our country. In watching the look which adverse fortune had been unable to disturb, the impassiveness which nothing could disconcert, one could not but feel that this man had still behind him a strong and powerful nation.

Just as his high renown, and the authority attached to his name and experience, made themselves felt in the deliberations of European politics, so did his noble manners, the manners of the grand seigneur, and his urbanity stamp his private receptions and his daily life with a character of gravity wholly in harmony with his diplomatic rôle. At no moment in Vienna did he deviate from the habits contracted in Paris and in the century that lay behind. Every morning while he was dressing, visitors were admitted, and often during the operation of shaving and attending to his hair by his valet, discussions of the utmost gravity, though in the guise of mere talk, were engaged in. I have frequently seen him in his drawing-room seated on a couch by the side of the beautiful Comtesse Edmond de Perigord, and surrounded by bearers of the most eminent political names, the ministers of the victorious Powers, who, standing, conversed with him, or rather listened, as to the lessons of a teacher. In our century, M, de Talleyrand is perhaps the only man who constantly obtained such a triumph.

M. le Duc de Dalberg was well worthy of figuring by the side of M. de Talleyrand. Sprung from one of the oldest and noblest families of Germany, he contributed powerfully on the 31st March to the resolution which brought back the Bourbons to the throne; at the same time, he had pronounced in favour of constitutional measures calculated to reassure public opinion, and to make France rally to the restored régime. Sharing the views and wishes of M. de Talleyrand at the time of the Restoration, the same bond of union drew them together at the Congress. The heartfelt aim of both was to restore to France the rank of which her misfortunes had deprived her among the Powers.[34]

M. de Talleyrand, before proceeding to Vienna, had drawn up his own instructions. It was said on excellent authority that he strictly adhered to them, and that the various phases of the negotiations had been foreseen and indicated by him with marvellous sagacity. What is not generally known is the existence of two different sets of private correspondence addressed to Paris by the French plenipotentiaries; one, partly from the pen of and edited by M. de la Besnadière, and exclusively anecdotal, was sent to King Louis XVIII. M. de Talleyrand positively besprinkled it with those witty and original sallies, those subtle and profound remarks, characteristic of him. The other, exclusively political and principally indited by the Duc de Dalberg, went straight to the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.[35]

On the day in question, there were few guests to dinner at M. de Talleyrand’s. This afforded me the opportunity of observing more attentively and of listening more carefully: each figure of such a picture could be studied separately and with greater advantage.

In addition to the members of the French Mission, there were only a few strangers, namely, the Comte Razumowski, General Pozzo di Borgo, and the Duc de Richelieu. When I parted from the last at Odessa in 1812, he was in a position most trying to a governor-general.[36] The plague was ravaging his provinces of the Chersonese and the Taurida, and it required all his energy to get rid of such an importunate visitor. In those cruel circumstances he displayed the most admirable courage.

My questions followed each other most rapidly, as my pleasure at seeing him again was great. I was seated between him and M. de la Besnadière, and we went back with great interest to the days of our past dangers; we chatted about the ravages of the plague as sailors preserved from shipwreck would have spoken of the hidden rocks on which their craft might have gone to pieces.

All those who have known the Duc de Richelieu are aware of the sincere friendship he was apt to inspire. Few men in their public capacity have shown a nobler character, and in their eminent functions a stricter disinterestedness. The esteem of all parties was his reward.

It is to him Russia owes, in the founding of Odessa, one of her most precious commercial centres. Up to that period, the duke was only distinguished for his military exploits. Having been sent to the shores of the Black Sea by Emperor Alexander, who understood all the importance of the site, Richelieu displayed in his fresh sphere of activity the greatest talent, from an administrative standpoint. In a few years, a harbour without life, and a few houses without tenants, were replaced by an accessible and spacious port and a rich and elegant town. The loyalty of his character contributed to draw around him merchants and colonisers. In spite of the plague and of the suspension of all commercial operations, Odessa, under his firm and enlightened administration, instead of declining, increased each day in prosperity. At present it is one of the most important points of the East.

Thereafter, M. de Richelieu passed from the government of the Taurida to that of his own country. He hesitated for a long while before assuming a burden he fancied to be beyond his strength, and only yielded at the repeated instances of Emperor Alexander. Obliged, in virtue of his office, to sign the disastrous treaties of 1815, he bore with patriotic fortitude their odious consequences. Students of history will remember his efforts at the Congress of Aix-la-Chapelle (1818), and the happy results which crowned them. History may not, perhaps, acquiesce in his sufficient knowledge of the men and places which he had governed, but she will always refer with grateful remembrance to his sterling virtues and his exalted patriotism.

The conversation became general, and followed the direction given to it by the personages, interesting in so many respects, taking part in it. M. Pozzo di Borgo, whom I saw on that occasion for the first time, seemed to me to unite the finesse, the liveliness of intellect, and the imagination of his countrymen. An avowed enemy of Bonaparte since the beginning of his career, he had never disguised his joy at the latter’s fall. In a few words he summed up all the causes which were inevitably to lead to the acceleration of that great catastrophe.[37]

At that time a simple general of infantry in the Russian service, M. Pozzo di Borgo never deviated from the line of conduct which led him subsequently to exercise such a great influence on the destinies of Europe. Born in Corsica, and deputy for the island in the Legislative Assembly, he held the same ardent opinions which had made him conspicuous in his own country. It was he who in July 1792 induced the Assembly to declare war against the German Emperor. After the revolution of August 10th, his name was found mentioned in the papers of Louis XVI. A fellow-deputy for Corsica, one of the commissaries entrusted with the examination of those papers, informed him, it was said, of the danger he might be running, and prevailed upon him to leave Paris. On his return to Corsica, he changed his colours. Resolved to support the designs for rendering the island independent, he joined the party of Paoli, and in 1793, the Convention summoned him, as well as the general, to its bar, to account for his conduct. Neither obeyed the summons: the English army occupied the island, and M. Pozzo di Borgo was appointed president of the Council of State under Eliot, who was raised to the dignity of viceroy. Nevertheless, during his tenure of office there arose so many complaints against him that Eliot advised him to retire, at the request of Paoli, who had become afraid of the number of enemies his protégé had managed to array against himself. M. Pozzo di Borgo then went to London, where he was employed by the government in the secret diplomatic service. The British Government itself subsequently admitted that, thanks to the influence of Prince Czartoryski, Pozzo di Borgo had passed into the secret political service of Russia. The same good fortune that attended him in his political functions remained by his side on the battlefield: he obtained rapid promotion, and at Leipzig he fought as major-general under the orders of another Frenchman, to-day King of Sweden.[38] It was Pozzo di Borgo who in 1814 settled the question of the Allied Powers marching upon Paris, and who in their deliberations removed all apprehension on the subject. Every one remembers the dignities with which he was subsequently invested, and the various phases of his political career. Already at the Congress he was credited with a sentence which he never denied, and which laid bare his thoughts. ‘France,’ he said, ‘is a seething saucepan; whatever comes out of it ought to be flung back into it.’ M. Pozzo di Borgo’s conversation did not lack piquancy; nevertheless, it did not take long to find out that the learning he somewhat ostentatiously displayed was neither solid nor extensive, nor profound. He had a mania for quoting, but not the talent of varying his quotations. For instance, at M. de Talleyrand’s, he supported an argument by a passage from Dante, a phrase of Tacitus, and shreds from English orators. M. de la Besnadière told me that every one of those citations had already done duty two days previously at the Prince de Hardenberg’s.

When we went into the drawing-room, a good many distinguished personages were already there. In fact, to see this forgathering of the majority of the members of the Corps Diplomatique grouping themselves around M. de Talleyrand, the supposition would have been pardonable that his residence was the locale of the Congress.

Mme. la Comtesse de Périgord received her relative’s guests with a charming grace. Her brilliant and playful intellect tempered from time to time the gravity of the political matter gliding into the conversation. There was, however, this difference: under M. de Talleyrand’s roof the discussion was ever serious, and never deviated from its aim; while in the other drawing-rooms of Vienna, politics were treated as an accessory, and in an airy fashion, during the rare intervals not devoted to pleasure.

On the evening in question, Saxony was once more the subject of the conversation. Louis XVIII. had declared himself strongly opposed to the maintenance of Frederick-Augustus on its throne. He wished that prince to be punished with the loss of his kingdom for his faithful support of Napoleon. The utmost Louis would concede was the restricted sovereignty of Frederick-Augustus over some small patch of territory on the left bank of the Rhine. The execution of that plan would have involved the incorporation of the whole of the Saxon States with Prussia. The latter Power claimed them energetically as a compensation guaranteed to it by the Treaty of Kalisch. Alexander, who at that time was nursing the idea of a kingdom of Poland comprising the Polish provinces that had formerly lapsed to Prussia, had pronounced in favour of that incorporation. Austria, however, looked askance at this scheme of aggrandisement, while the minor German princes were positively afraid of such a spoliation, which seemed to them the precursor of their destruction. M. de Talleyrand, on the other hand, sided with Saxony, sustaining its rights on every possible opportunity with as much dignity as healthy logic.

There was a very lively discussion between Lord Castlereagh[39] and the French envoys. England at that time, though having no direct interest in the question, seemed inclined to favour Prussia’s pretensions. A few months later, there was a reversal of her policy. But however interesting King Frederick-Augustus’s cause might be to me personally, it seemed to me that the atmosphere in which I had hitherto lived at Vienna excluded all political affairs, and I had drawn aside with the Duc de Richelieu. He gave me some particulars of the brilliant military career of his nephew, the Comte de Rochechouart, with whom I had spent so many happy moments at Odessa;[40] and then talked to me about the handsome Mme. Davidoff,[41] and of her famous friend Mme. la Comtesse Potocka. Surrounded by all that was most brilliant and accomplished in European civilisation, our thoughts yet went back to the deserts of the Yeddisen, and when we returned to the group of diplomatists, the prince had vanquished the grand sophist, and equity had scored a triumph over arbitrariness.

Although M. de Talleyrand was both in bearing and in temperament naturally cold and indifferent, his great reputation and his uncontested merit caused him to be assiduously courted. That apparent coldness, in fact, still further enhanced the special marks of his interest or of his affection. The words falling from his lips, a benevolent smile, a sign of approval—in short, everything emanating from him was calculated to fascinate. His was the flexible intellect which without effort and without pedantry can, on notable occasions, show itself the master of the situation, and which, in more familiar intercourse, knows how to lend itself with inimitable grace to the lightest banter. Full justice has never been done to his goodness of heart. He repaid hatred and slander by clever sallies; he never emphasised or paraded the services he rendered; and in general his kind actions were performed with such simplicity as to make him easily lose the recollection of them.[42]

At that period I often tried to establish a parallel between the two men who, even in that gathering of so many illustrious people, powerfully attracted and captivated everybody’s attention, namely, the Prince de Ligne and M. de Talleyrand. Both, having lived in contact with the celebrities of the eighteenth century, seemed to have been bequeathed to the new generation as models and ornaments; both were representatives, though in different styles, of that witty society—the one of its lighter and more sparkling phase, the other of its easy, graceful, and noble phase; both had the secret of pleasing by the charm of intellect: the first was more brilliant, the second more profound. M. de Talleyrand seemed born, as it were, to captivate his fellow-men by the strength of an ever-direct and luminous reason; the Prince de Ligne fascinated and dazzled them by the sparkle of an inexhaustible imagination: the latter bringing to bear upon the different branches of literature the subtlety, sparkle, and gracefulness of the habitué of Courts; the former dominating over the most important concerns with the easy calm of a grand seigneur and the imperturbable moderation of a superior intellect; the one and the other lavishly scattering around them clever sentences, happy sallies, original and piquant traits, graver and more individual in the case of the statesman, more spontaneous and brilliant in the case of the soldier:—both, in fine, animated with the sympathetic benevolence which is the appanage of the well-born man, and which was more contained with the first and more expansive with the second. ‘Happy ought the man to be who finds himself placed near the Prince de Ligne in the morning, and in the evening near M. de Talleyrand,’ I said to myself. ‘If the one be apt to enlighten his mind by the lessons of a long experience and a succession of true pictures, the other may purify his taste by the never-failing tact, the judicious observation which takes in everything, and the magic charm of a conversation which has the faculty of subjugating listeners even where it fails in convincing them.’

The reception on the evening in question did not last as long as usual, Mme. de Périgord, like the majority of us, being due at the Burg, to attend a monster concert. Nothing, it was said, could convey a better idea of the marvellous results of the practice of music in Vienna. We left the prince engaged in his game of whist, in which he indulged every night with a particular fondness and with superior skill, and made our way to the Imperial Palace.

In one of the vastest halls, that of the States, there were a hundred pianos on which professors and amateurs performed a concert. Salieri, the composer of the Danaïdes, was the conductor of that gigantic orchestra. To tell the truth, however, save for the general scene, which in all these fêtes was always dazzling, that matchless charivari, in spite of the superior talent of the maestro directing it, was more like a huge display of strength and skill than a concert of good taste. This new surprise was, nevertheless, such as might have been expected from a committee appointed by the Court. To justify the confidence placed in it, it had ransacked its imagination for something unforeseen and unprecedented, something altogether out of the ordinary. It had succeeded to perfection.

CHAPTER IV

The Prince de Ligne’s Study—A Swimming Exploit—Travelling by Post—A Reminiscence of Mme. de Staël—Schönbrunn—The Son of Napoleon—His Portrait—Mme. de Montesquiou—Anecdotes—Isabey—The Manœuvring-Ground—The People’s Fête at Augarten.

When I went to pay my daily visit to the prince, he was still in bed, and I made my way to his library, where they had placed his couch. The room in which a famous man spends the greater part of his time is always interesting. The signs of his particular tastes are everywhere; the special character of his genius reveals itself in the smallest details; and the objects surrounding him supply food for our curiosity or attract our attention. With his books and manuscripts scattered here, there, and everywhere, the Prince de Ligne gave one the impression of a general in his tent among the trophies of his victories and the weapons worn in everyday life.

Abusing somewhat the licence accorded to poets, with whom ‘a beautiful disorder’ is accounted an artistic effect, the prince lived amidst a kind of litter which was not altogether devoid of gracefulness. Here, Rousseau and Montesquieu lying open beside a batch of love-letters; there, scraps of paper covered with verses close to a couple of military volumes of Archduke Charles; further on, letters just begun, and poems and works of strategy in a similarly initial condition. An admirable amalgam of the grand seigneur, the soldier, and the man of wit, the Prince de Ligne presented a type the like of which we shall not see again; now captivating the most distinguished women by the charms of a most brilliant conversation, then astounding the most consummate generals by the justness of his conceptions; and again delighting the greatest intellects by the subtlety and the truth of his comments.

He had a writing-desk before him when I came in. His intellect, aglow with a wholly youthful imagination, just as his heart was aglow with kindness, seemed to live against time; hence, no day ever passed without his throwing on to paper some judicious or playful, some brilliant or profound remarks, such as those with which his conversation was studded.

‘I’m going to Schönbrunn to-day,’ he said, ‘and I should like you to accompany me. I am performing ad honores the office of introducer to the little duke who was born a king. I only want to finish this chapter on the events of the moment, and then I am at your disposal.

‘I’m throwing my thoughts on to paper anyhow lest they should escape my memory,’ he added. ‘The grand picture we constantly have before us has the faculty of inspiring me; I fancy that amidst all these delirious joys a thought may now and again strike me which in days to come will either give pleasure or be productive of some good. Though yielding to this whirl of phantasms, I have not ceased to observe. Though an actor in the piece which is being played, I consider the whole of what is passing around me a simple kick in an ant-hill.’

Saying which he resumed writing. All of a sudden, being apparently in want of a reference of some kind, he looked up. ‘Be kind enough to give me that manuscript volume on the third shelf.’ I got up, but uncertain which volume to take, I hesitated for a moment. Thereupon he jumped out of bed and hauled himself up by the cornice of the bookcase, got hold of the book, and was back again between the sheets in less time than it takes to tell; I looking on in sheer surprise at the agility of a man of his years. ‘The fact is,’ he said, ‘I have been most nimble all my life, and my nimbleness has been exceedingly useful. During that kind of fairy journey when I accompanied the great Catherine to the Taurida, the imperial yacht was doubling the promontory of Parthenizza, where, according to tradition, the Temple of Iphigenia formerly stood. We were discussing the greater or lesser probability of that tradition, when Catherine, stretching forth her arms towards the coast, said: “Prince de Ligne, I’ll bestow upon you that contested territory.” No sooner had the words dropped from her lips than I was in the water, in full uniform, my hat on my head, and in a few moments I stood on terra firma. “Majesty,” I cried, drawing my sword, “I am taking possession.” Since then that Taurida rock is named after me, and I keep the land.

‘This, my young friend, shows that bodily agility may be attended with excellent results, and that there is nothing in life like prompt resolution. A few years before the outbreak of the Revolution, I happened to be in Paris. In the happiness of the hour, and with the carelessness of youth, I had committed a few excesses; I had, moreover, forgotten the state of my finances, and my purse was as empty of coin as my heart was full of joy and my mind of illusion. Nevertheless, I was expected in Brussels the next day to dine with the archduchess-governess of the Southern Netherlands. A total stranger in the vast city, I felt sorely embarrassed. I was on terms of intimate friendship with Prince Max, the present King of Bavaria, at that time a colonel in the French service.[43] You are aware of his generous and devoted disposition. During the whole of his life he was willing to share with his friends whatever he possessed. Naturally I went to him, but our excellent Max was not at that period a king, and had no minister of finances to direct and to take care of his savings. It just happened that his purse was as light as mine. What was to be done? A post-boy is the most inexorable of men, and at each stage he comes pitilessly, though hat in hand, to claim his salary. I was told that my cousin, the Duc d’Aremberg, much more sober in conduct, was starting that same evening for Brussels. I immediately made up my mind what to do. “I shall be there before him,” I said; and without a moment’s delay I transformed myself into a forerunner, and, booted and spurred, presented myself at the posting-office. I told them to give me a horse, and set off at a gallop to the next stage to order relays. In that way I performed the journey to Brussels, always a few minutes in advance of him, and seeing to the providing of his horses all along the route. My cousin, who had not despatched a forerunner, was unable to make out the providential arrangement to which was due the promptitude that thus shortened his journey. At his arrival I told him the ruse, at which we both laughed heartily, and thanks to which I managed to dine with the archduchess.’

While talking, he had dressed himself. When he had finished putting on his uniform of colonel of trabans, and had hung half-a-dozen grand crosses and ribands of various orders upon his breast, he suddenly stopped.

‘If illusion could provide me to-day with its mirror,’ he said, ‘how gladly would I exchange all this splendour for the simple dress of an ensign in my father’s regiment! I was only sixteen when I donned that dress for the first time; I imagined then that at thirty one must be very old. Time changes everything. To-day, at eighty, I think myself still young, although some cavillers say that I am too young. It does not matter, I am doing all I can to prove that I am still young enough. After all, my career has been a happy one, and neither remorse nor ambition, nor jealousy has troubled its course. I have steered my barque pretty evenly, and until I enter that of Charon I shall continue to fancy myself, in spite of those who insist upon considering me as old.’

Even while bantering himself in that way, there was a charm about his words of which it is difficult to convey an idea. I kept telling him that age had glided off him without leaving a mark, and that time honoured him by forgetting him. He believed my words, and his handsome face was lighted up with happiness.

On going downstairs we found some of the savants who constantly worried him, and his features lost their happy expression, although he managed to dismiss the intruders with a few polite remarks, and went on his way. ‘How I detest those savants of verbosity, those gatherers of clever sayings, those walking dictionaries, whose sole stock-in-trade in the matter of genius is their memory! The best book to study is the world itself, but that book will always be a closed one to them,’ he said.

In a few moments we were rumbling in the direction of Schönbrunn. Unfortunately, the prince’s carriage did not deserve the compliment I had just addressed to the prince himself. It was impossible to believe that the vehicle had ever been young, and its springs piteously cried out to be exchanged for a set more elastic and in keeping with the requirements of our own time. I can still picture the cumbrous, grey conveyance drawn by two bony white horses. The panels displayed the prince’s scutcheon, surmounted by the motto of the House of Egmont, whence the prince sprung:

‘Quô res cumque cadunt, semper stat linea recta.’

Behind this ancient coach stood a kind of footman, an old Turk, six feet high, a present from Prince Potemkin at the assault of Ismaël, and who bore the name of the conquered town. The marshal, however, had the art of abridging distances, just as he had the art of supplying the scantiness of his dinner-entertainments, by his conversation. The journey of nearly an hour seemed very short, and it was with some surprise that I beheld the gates of the imperial country-seat.

Schönbrunn, the building of which was begun by the princes of the House of Austria, was the object of Maria-Theresa’s particular affection. It was she who completed it, and, in order to accelerate the work, part of it was done by torchlight. The castle is delightfully situated on the right bank of the Wien. The majestic ensemble of its architecture proclaims it at once to be a royal residence. The gardens, nobly and most gracefully planned, interspersed with sheets of limpid water skilfully disposed, planted with trees of the most luxuriant vegetation, and studded with most precious marble and bronze statuary, harmonise most imposingly with the magnificence of the palace itself. The park is alive with deer of all kinds, the peaceful tenants of those beautiful spots, and they, as it were, seem to invite the approach of the visitors. Every day and at all hours these glades and avenues are open to the public. Numberless carriages and horsemen are constantly there. The park is surrounded by pleasaunces, the inmates of which in the milder season are the eye-witnesses of a succession of fêtes and rejoicings. The sound of those rejoicings pierces the walls of the imperial habitation, and adds by its animation to the charms of the noble pile.

The apartments of the palace are spacious and furnished with exquisite taste. There are several rooms entirely draped with black: they have remained in that condition since the death of Maria-Theresa’s husband. A small study is decorated with drawings by the various archduchesses. This is the room where Napoleon, during his sojourn at Schönbrunn, retired to work. It is there he beheld for the first time the portrait of Marie-Louise, and perhaps conceived the idea of a union which had such an influence on his destiny.[44]

A staircase leads from that room into the garden. On a wooded height stands a charming pavilion built by Maria-Theresa, and called ‘La Gloriette’; that elegant structure of fairy-like design, composed of arcades, colonnades, and trophies, bounds the vista and constitutes one of the most delightful pieces of decorative architecture. It is at the same time a palace and a triumphal arch. It is reached by a double staircase. The view from the principal drawing-room defies description: there are immense masses of green as far as the eye can reach, and at the horizon are the city of Vienna, the course of the Danube, and finally the high mountains whose outlines constitute the background of the magnificent landscape. It is difficult to imagine a more splendid panorama.

The greenhouses of Schönbrunn are perhaps the most beautiful in Europe. They contain precious samples of the vegetation of the universe. It was there that Emperor Francis, who had a particular liking for botanical pursuits, himself attended to the rarest plants.

Maria Louisa, Archduchess of Austria.

Not far from there is the zoological collection, disposed in a circle around a pavilion forming the centre, as it were, of the various sheltered enclosures for the animals. Each species has its habitat and its garden, with the plants and trees proper to the country of its birth. There, though prisoners, the animals apparently enjoy their liberty.

Close to the castle there was a small railed-off plot, carefully tended, which was the garden of the son of Napoleon. It was there that the young prince cultivated the flowers which each morning he gathered into bouquets for his mother[45] and his governess.

While crossing the courts, which are very spacious, the prince pointed out the spot where, while Napoleon was inspecting some troops, a young fanatic attempted to kill him about the time of the battle of Wagram. If a crime of that nature is calculated to inspire anything but a feeling of indignation, that young fellow might have been pitied in virtue of the courage and fortitude he showed at the moment of his death.

It was in those courts that, at the same period, Napoleon gave orders to his ordnance-officer, the Prince de Salm, to put through its drill a regiment of the Germanic Confederation, and to give the command in German. The Viennese came down in shoals, this little amenity on the part of the victor having made them forget that their capital was in the hands of the enemy.

In the hall a French servant, still wearing the Napoleonic livery, came towards us. He knew the marshal, and immediately went to inform Mme. de Montesquiou of his arrival.

‘I trust we’ll not have to wait,’ said my companion, ‘for, as I have told you, I am almost like the Comte de Ségur of Schönbrunn.’ He alluded to the position of grand-master of the ceremonies that nobleman, whom he had known at the Court of Catherine, had occupied near the person of Napoleon.

A few moments later Mme. de Montesquiou came to apologise for being unable to introduce us immediately. ‘The little prince,’ she said, ‘is sitting for his portrait to Isabey, which is intended for the Empress Marie-Louise. As he is very fond of the marshal, the sight of him would only make him restless. I’ll see that the sitting is as short as possible.’

‘You know what happened at my first visit?’ remarked the prince, after Mme. de Montesquiou had left us. ‘When they told the child that Marshal Prince de Ligne had come to see him, he exclaimed: “Is it one of the marshals who deserted papa? Don’t let him come in.” They had a good deal of trouble in making him understand that France is not the only country where they have marshals.’

A short while afterwards Mme. de Montesquiou took us to the apartments. When young Napoleon caught sight of the Prince de Ligne he slid off his chair, and flung himself into the arms of the old soldier. He was indeed as handsome a child as one could wish to see, and the likeness to his ancestress Maria-Theresa was positively striking. The cherub-like shape of his face, the dazzling whiteness of the skin, the eyes full of fire, and the pretty fair curls drooping on his shoulders, made up one of the most graceful models ever offered to Isabey. He was dressed in a richly embroidered uniform of hussars, and wore on his dolman the star of the Legion of Honour, ‘Bon jour, monsieur,’ said the little lad, ‘I like the French very much.’

Remembering the words of Rousseau to the effect that people do not like to be questioned, and least of all children, I stooped down and kissed him.

The son of Napoleon is no more; pitiless Death cut short at twenty-two a life begun on a throne; and at the moment when the brilliant qualities of the prince bade fair to make that life illustrious, and when his noble sentiments had begun to win all hearts. Everything connected with this offspring of so much glory, a victim from his cradle of a fatal and unprecedented destiny, only presents itself to the memory with a deep respect mingled with a tender pity.

His intellect was quick and precocious; all his words struck the listener by their justness. Both his memory and his faculty for acquiring knowledge were astounding; he learned German in a short time, and after that spoke it with the same ease as French. His character was firm, and his resolutions, only arrived at after serious reflection, were unshakable; his slightest movements were stamped with grace; his gestures, when he wished to emphasise his words, were already grave and solemn. His liking for the science of warfare showed itself both in his eyes and in his speech. ‘I want to be a soldier,’ he said, ‘I’ll lead the charge.’ They suggested that bayonets might oppose his progress. ‘But surely,’ was the answer, ‘I’ll have a sword to put aside the bayonets.’ His curiosity with regard to the history of his father was extreme; the Emperor, his grandfather, convinced that truth must constitute the basis of every education, and notably that of a prince, determined not to leave him in ignorance upon any subject.[46] The child listened eagerly to the story of a life which, in the space of twenty years, seemed to have exceeded the measure of both belief and of history. The exuberance of his joys, his impatience at being baulked of his wishes and of all opposition to his will, were those of a child, while his intense anxiety to learn, his habitual calm and reflection, attested a more advanced age. Everything in him led to the belief in the theory of hereditary genius.

His instinct, as is well known, showed itself under memorable circumstances. On the 29th March, 1814, when the Empress Marie-Louise abandoned the Tuileries for Rambouillet, and when they wished to take the child to his mother, who was waiting for him, he opposed a stout resistance to being removed; shouted that they were betraying his papa, and refused to stir. Mme. de Montesquiou’s moral influence over the lad was brought to bear in vain; she only succeeded by force, and even then she had to promise to bring him back soon. The poor lad guessed, as it were, that he would never more behold the Tuileries.

His quickness of intellect showed itself in everything connected with his illustrious and ill-fated sire. On the day before our visit, the English commodore, Sir Neil Campbell, who accompanied Napoleon to Elba, was presented to his son. ‘Are you not pleased, prince, to see this gentleman, who left your father only a few days ago?’ asked Mme, de Montesquiou, presenting the officer. ‘Yes,’ was the answer, ‘I am pleased.’ Then, putting his finger to his lips, he added, ‘But we must not say so.’

The commodore took the child into his arms. ‘Your papa has told me to kiss you for him,’ he said, suiting the action to the word, after which he gently put him down. The child had a German top in his hands. He flung it down with such force as to break it to pieces. ‘Poor papa!’ he gasped, bursting into tears.[47]

What were the thoughts that moved him, and how, at his tender age, could he grasp the whole extent of the ambiguous and false position of the son of Napoleon being a prisoner, as it were, in the Austrian palace of Schönbrunn!

With regard to the loss of the sovereignty bestowed upon him at his birth, he expressed himself with a melancholy and touching resignation. ‘I see very well that I am no longer a king,’ he repeated during his journey from Rambouillet to Vienna; ‘I have no longer any pages.’[48] The Prince de Ligne having shown him some medals struck on the occasion of his birth, he remarked, ‘I remember them; they were made when I was king.’

This plucky resignation, which was the most conspicuous trait of his character, abided with him up to his last moments. When, at the age of twenty-two, undermined by a most painful malady, he was dying at that same palace of Schönbrunn, and beheld Death advancing slowly but surely, he, handsome, young, talented, and the offspring of a great man, talked of his impending end with those surrounding him, taking, as it were, a cruel pleasure in dispelling all the illusions of hope.

We stepped up to Isabey, who had just put the finishing touches to the portrait of the young prince. It was a striking likeness, and, in common with all his works, pervaded by an exquisite grace. It was the identical picture he presented to Napoleon on the latter’s return from Elba in the following year. ‘What I like best in this portrait is its wonderful resemblance to that of Joseph II. when he was a child, which was given to me by Maria-Theresa. After all, this resemblance to a great man is a happy augury for the future.’