 | Inklings of adventure |  |
LOVE AND DIPLOMACY.
For I am like a boy that hath found money—
Afraid I dream still.”
Ford or Webster.
It was on a fine September evening, within my time,
(and I am not, I trust, too old to be loved,) that Count
Anatole L—, of the impertinent and particularly useless
profession of attache, walked up and down before the
glass in his rooms at the “Archduke Charles,” the first
hotel, as you know, if you have traveled, in the green-belted
and fair city of Vienna. The brass ring was
still swinging on the end of the bell-rope, and, in a respectful
attitude at the door, stood the just-summoned
Signor Attilio, valet and privy councillor to one of the
handsomest coxcombs errant through the world. Signor
Attilio was a Tyrolese, and, like his master was
very handsome.
Count Anatole had been idling away three golden
summer months in the Tyrol, for the sole purpose, as
far as mortal eyes could see, of disguising his fine
Phidian features in a callow moustache and whiskers.
The crines ridentes (as Eneas Sylvius has it) being now
in a condition beyond improvement, Signor Attilio had
for some days been rather curious to know what course
his master.
After a turn or two more, taken in silence, Count
Anatole stopped in the middle of the floor, and eyeing
the well-made Tyrolese from head to foot, begged to
know if he wore at the present moment his most becoming
breeches, jacket, and beaver.
Attilio was never astonished at any thing his master
did or said. He simply answered, “Si Signore.”
“Be so kind as to strip immediately, and dress yourself
in that traveling suit lying on the sofa.”
As the green, gold-corded jacket, knee-breeches,
buckles, and stockings, were laid aside, Count Anatole
threw off his dressing-gown, and commenced encasing
his handsome proportions in the cast-off habiliments.
He then put on the conical, slouch-rimmed hat, with
the tall eagle's feather stuck jauntily on the side and the
two rich tassels pendent over his left eye, and, the toilet
of the valet being completed at the same moment, they
stood looking at one another with perfect gravity—
rather transformed, but each apparently quite at home
in his new character.
“You look very like a gentleman, Attilio,” said the
Count.
“Your Excellency has caught to admiration, l'aria
del paese,” complimented back again the sometime
Tyrolese.
“Attilio!”
“Signore?”
“Do you remember the lady in the forest of Friuli?”
Attilio began to have a glimmering of things. Some
three months before, the Count was dashing on at a
rapid post-pace, through a deep wood in the mountains
which head in the Adriatic. A sudden pull-up at a
turning in the road nearly threw him from his britska,
and looking out at the “anima di porco!” of the postillion,
he found his way impeded by an overset carriage, from
the body of an old man, killed by the accident.
There was more attractive metal for the traveler,
however, in the shape of a young and beautiful woman,
leaning, pale and faint, against a tree, and apparently
about to sink to the ground, unassisted. To bring a
hat full of water from the nearest brook, and receive
her falling head on his shoulder, was the work of a
thought. She had fainted quite away, and taking her,
like a child, into his arms, he placed her on a bank by
the road-side, bathed her forehead and lips, and chafed
her small white hands, till his heart, with all the distress
of the scene, was quite mad with her perfect
beauty.
Animation at last began to return, and as the flush
was stealing into her lips, another carriage drove up
with servants in the same livery, and Count Anatole,
thoroughly bewildered in his new dream, mechanically
assisted them in getting their living mistress and dead
master into it, and until they were fairly out of sight, it
had never occurred to him that he might possibly wish
to know the name and condition of the fairest piece of
work he had ever seen from the hands of his Maker.
An hour before, he had doubled his bono mano to the
postilion, and was driving on to Vienna as if to sit at a
new Congress. Now, he stood leaning against the
tree, at the foot of which the grass and wild flowers
showed the print of a new-made pressure, and the
postilion cracked his whip, and Attilio reminded him
of the hour he was losing, in vain.
He remounted after a while; but the order was to
go back to the last post-house.
Three or four months at a solitary albergo in the
neighborhood of this adventure, passed by the Count in
scouring the country on horseback in every direction,
and by his servant in very particular ennui, brings up
the story nearly to where the scene opens.
“I have seen her!” said the Count.
Attilio only lifted up his eyebrows.
“She is here, in Vienna!”
“Felice lei!” murmured Attilio.
“She is the Princess Leichstenfels, and, by the death
of that old man, a widow.”
“Veramente?” responded the valet, with a rising inflexion;
for he knew his master and French morals
too well not to foresee a damper in the possibility of
matrimony.
“Veramente!” gravely echoed the Count. “And
now, listen, The Princess lives in close retirement.
An old friend or two, and a tried servant, are the only
persons who see her. You are to contrive to see this
servant to-morrow, corrupt him to leave her, and recommend
me in his place, and then you are to take
him as your courier to Paris; whence, if I calculate
well, you will return to me before long, with important
despatches. Do you understand me?”
“Signor, si!”
In the small boudoir of a maison de plaisance, belonging
to the noble family of Leichstenfels, sat the widowed
mistress of one of the oldest titles and finest estates
of Austria. The light from a single long window
opening down to the floor and leading out upon a terrace
of flowers, was subdued by a heavy crimson curtain,
looped partially away, a pastille lamp was sending
up from its porphyry pedestal a thin and just perceptible
curl of smoke, through which the lady musingly
passed backwards and forwards one of her slender fingers,
and, on a table near, lay a sheet of black-edged
paper, crossed by a small silver pen, and scrawled over
irregularly with devices and disconnected words, the
work evidently of a fit of the most absolute and listless
idleness.
The door opened, and a servant in mourning livery
stood before the lady.
“I have thought over your request, Wilhelm,” she
said. “I had become accustomed to your services,
and regret to lose you; but I should regret more to
stand in the way of your interest. You have my permission.”
Wilhelm expressed his thanks with an effort that
showed he had not obeyed the call of Mammon without
regret, and requested leave to introduce the person
he had proposed as his successor.
“Of what country is he?”
“Tyrolese, your Excellency.”
“And why does he leave the gentleman with whom
he came to Vienna?”
“Il est amoureux d'une Viennaise, madame,” answered
the ex-valet, resorting to French to express what he
considered a delicate circumstance.
“Pauvre enfant!” said the Princess, with a sigh that
partook as much of envy as of pity; let him come in!”
And the Count Anatole, as the sweet accents reached
his ear, stepped over the threshold, and in the coarse
but gay dress of the Tyrol, stood in the presence of her
whose dewy temples he had bathed in the forest, whose
lips he had almost “pried into for breath,” whose
snowy hands he had chafed and kissed when the senses
had deserted their celestial organs—the angel of his
perpetual dream, the lady of his wild and uncontrollable,
but respectful and honorable love.
The Princess looked carelessly up as he approached,
but her eyes seemed arrested in passing over his features.
It was but momentary. She resumed her occupation
of winding her taper fingers in the smoke
curls of the incense-lamp, and with half a sigh, as if
she had repelled a pleasing thought, she leaned back
in the silken fauteuil, and asked the new comer his
name.
“Anatole, your Excellency.”
The voice again seemed to stir something in her
was for a moment lost in thought.
“Anatole,” she said (Oh, how the sound of his own
name, murmured in that voice of music, thrilled through
the fiery veins of the disguised lover!) “Anatole, I
receive you into my service. Wilhelm will inform you
of your duties, and—I have a fancy for the dress of the
Tyrol—you may wear it instead of my livery, if you
will.”
And with one stolen and warm gaze from under his
drooping eyelids, and heart and lips on fire, as he
thanked her for her condescension, the new retainer
took his leave.
Month after month passed on—to Count Anatole in
a bewildering dream of ever deepening passion. It was
upon a soft and amorous morning of April, that a dashing
equipage stood at the door of the proud palace of
Leichstenfels. The arms of E— blazed on the
panels, and the insouciants chasseurs leaned against the
marble columns of the portico, waiting for their master,
and speculating on the gaiety likely to ensue from the
suit he was prosecuting within. How could a Prince
of E— be supposed to sue in vain?
The disguised footman had ushered the gay and
handsome nobleman to his mistress's presence. After
re-arranging a family of very well-arranged flowerpots,
shutting the window to open it again, changing
the folds of the curtains not at all for the better, and
looking a stolen and fierce look at the unconscious
visiter, he could find no longer an apology for remaining
in the room. He shut the door after him in a tempest
of jealousy.
“Did your Excellency ring?” said he, opening
the door again, after a few minutes of intolerable torture;
The Prince was on his knees at her feet!
“No, Anatole; but you may bring me a glass of
water.”
As he entered with the silver tray trembling in his
hand, the Prince was rising to go. His face expressed
delight, hope, triumph—every thing that could madden
the soul of the irritated lover. After waiting on his
rival to his carriage, he returned to his mistress, and
receiving the glass upon the tray, was about leaving
the room in silence, when the Princess called to him.
In all this lapse of time it is not to be supposed that
Count Anatole played merely his footman's part. His
respectful and elegant demeanor, the propriety of his
language, and that deep devotedness of manner which
wins a woman more than all things else, soon gained
upon the confidence of the Princess; and before a
week was past she found that she was happier when he
stood behind her chair, and gave him, with some self-denial,
those frequent permissions of absence from the
palace which she supposed he asked to prosecute the
amour disclosed to her on his introduction to her service.
As time flew on, she attributed his earnestness
and occasional warmth of manner to gratitude; and,
without reasoning much on her feelings, gave herself
up to the indulgence of a degree of interest in him
which would have alarmed a woman more skilled in the
knowledge of the heart. Married from a convent,
however, to an old man who had secluded her from
the world, the voice of the passionate Count in the
forest of Friuli was the first sound of love that had ever
entered her ears. She knew not why it was that the
tones of her new footman, and now and then a look of
his eyes, as he leaned over to assist her at table troubled
her memory like a trace of a long lost dream.
But, oh, what moments had been his in these fleeting
months! Admitted to her presence in her most
unguarded hours—seeing her at morning, at noon, at
for ever near her, and with the world shut out,—her
rich hair blowing with the lightest breeze across his
fingers in his assiduous service—her dark full eyes, unconscious
of an observer, filling with unrepressed tears,
or glowing with pleasure over some tale of love—her
exquisite form flung upon a couch, or bending over
flowers, or moving about the room in all its native and
untrammelled grace—and her voice, tender, most tender
to him, though she knew it not, and her eyes, herself
unaware, ever following him in his loitering attendance---and
he, the while, losing never a glance nor a
motion, but treasuring all up in his heart with the avarice
of a miser---what, in common life, though it were
the life of fortune's most favored child, could compare
with it for bliss?
Pale and agitated, the Count turned back at the call
of his mistress, and stood waiting her pleasure.
“Anatole!”
“Madame!”
The answer was so low and deep it startled even
himself.
She motioned him to come nearer. She had sunk
upon the sofa, and as he stood at her feet she leaned
forward, buried her hands and arms in the long curls
which, in her retirement, she allowed to float luxuriantly
over her shoulders, and sobbed aloud. Overcome
and forgetful of all but the distress of the lovely
creature before him, the Count dropped upon the cushion
on which rested the small foot in its mourning slipper,
and taking her hand, pressed it suddenly and fervently
to his lips.
The reality broke upon her! She was beloved---
but by whom? A menial! and the appalling answer
drove all the blood of her proud race in a torrent upon
her heart, sweeping away all affection as if her nature
and laid her hand upon the bell.
“Madame!” said Anatole, in a cold proud tone.
She stayed her arm to listen.
“I leave you forever.”
And again, with the quick revulsion of youth and
passion, her woman's heart rose within her, and she
buried her face in her hands, and dropped her head in
utter abandonment on her bosom.
It was the birth-day of the Emperor, and the courtly
nobles of Austria were rolling out from the capital to offer
their congratulations at the royal palace of Schoenbrunn.
In addition to the usual attractions of the
scene, the drawing-room was to be graced by the first
public appearance of a new ambassador, whose reputed
personal beauty, and the talents he had displayed in a
late secret negociation, had set the whole court, from
the Queen of Hungary to the youngest dame d'honneur,
in a flame of curiosity.
To the Prince E------ there was another reason for
writing the day in red letters. The Princess Leichstenfels,
by an express message from the Empress, was
to throw aside her widow's weeds, and appear once
more to the admiring world. She had yielded to the
summons, but it was to be her last day of splendor.
Her heart and hand were plighted to her Tyrolese
menial, and the brightest and loveliest ornament of the
Court of Austria, when the ceremonies of the day were
over, was to lay aside the costly bauble from her shoulder,
and the glistening tiara from her brow, and forget
rank and fortune as the wife of his bosom!
The dazzling hours flew on. The plain and kind
old Emperor welcomed and smiled upon all. The
wily Metternich, in the crime of his successful manhood,
cool, polite, handsome, and winning, gathered
golden opinions by every word and look; the young
struck eagle of St. Helena, surrounded and caressed
by a continual cordon of admiring women, seemed forgetful
that Opportunity and Expectation awaited him,
like two angels with their wings outspread; and haughty
nobles and their haughtier dames, statesmen, scholars,
soldiers, and priests, crowded upon each other's heels,
and mixed together in that doubtful podrida, which
goes by the name of pleasure. I could moralise here
had I time!
The Princess of Leichstenfels had gone through the
ceremony of presentation, and had heard the murmur
of admiration, drawn by her beauty from all lips. Dizzy
with the scene, and with a bosom full of painful and
conflicting emotions, she had accepted the proffered
arm of Prince E— to breathe a fresher air upon the
terrace. They stood near a window, and he was pointing
out to his fair but inattentive companion the various
characters as they passed within.
“I must contrive,” said the Prince, “to show you
the new Envoy. Oh! you have not heard of him.
Beautiful as Narcissus, modest as Pastor Corydon, clever
as the prime minister himself, this paragon of diplomatists
has been here in disguise these three months,
negociating about—Metternich and the devil knows
what—but rewarded at last with an ambassador's star,
and---but here he is; Princess Leichstenfels, permit
me to present ------”
She heard no more. A glance from the diamond
star on his breast, to the Hephæstion mouth and keen
dark eye of Count Anatole, revealed to her the mystery
of months. And as she leaned against the window
for support, the hand that sustained her in the Forest of
Friuli, and the same thrilling voice, in almost the same
never-forgotten cadence, offered his impassioned sympathy
and aid, and she recognised and remembered all.
I must go back so far as to inform you, that Count
Anatole, on the morning of this memorable day, had
sacrificed a silky, but prurient moustache, and a pair
of the very sauciest dark whiskers out of Coventry.
Whether the Prince E------ recognised in the new Envoy,
the lady's gentleman who so inopportunely broke
in upon his tender avowal, I am not prepared to say. I
only know (for I was there) that the Princess Leichstenfels
was wedded to the new ambassador in the
“leafy month of June,” and the Prince E------, unfortunately
prevented by illness from attending the nuptials,
lost a very handsome opportunity of singing with
effect,
Whether the enamored ambassadress prefers her
husband in his new character, I am equally uncertain;
though, from much knowledge of German Courts and
a little of human nature, I think she will be happy if at
some future day she would not willingly exchange her
proud Envoy for the devoted Tyrolese, and does not
sigh that she can no more bring him to her feet with a
pull of a silken string.
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