 | People I have met, or, Pictures of society and people of mark, drawn under a thin veil of fiction |  |
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 attaché,
walked up and down before the glass in his rooms at the “Archduke
Charles,” the first hotel, as you know, if you have travelled,
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
mustache and whiskers. The crines ridentes (as Eneas Sylvius
Attilio had, for some days, been rather curious to know what
course of events would next occupy the diplomatic talents of his
master.
After a turn or two more, taken in silence, Count Anatole
stopped in the middle of the floor, and, eying 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 anything his master did or said.
He simply answered, “Si, signore.”
“Be so kind as to strip immediately, and dress yourself in that
travelling 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 pendant 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
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 postilion,
he found his way impeded by an overset carriage, from
which three or four servants were endeavoring to extract the body
of an old man, killed by the accident.
There was more attractive metal for the traveller, 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 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 masion 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
through which the lady musingly passed backward and forward
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.”
“Any why does he leave the gentleman with whom he came to
Vienna?”
“H est amoureue d'une Viennaise, madame,” answered the exvalet,
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 “pryed into
for breath,” whose snowy hands he had chafed and kissed when
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 memory. She
passed her hand over her eyes, and 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 Lichstenfels. The arms of E—
blazed on the panels, and the insouciants chassures leaned against
the marble columns of the portico, waiting for their master, and
speculating on the gaiety likely to ensue from the suite he was
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 flower pots, shutting the window to open it
again, changing the folds of the curtain not at all for the better,
and looking a stolen and fierce look at the unconscious visitor, 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 a silver tray trembling in his hand, the
Prince was rising to go. His face expressed delight, hope,
triumph—everything 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 passed, 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,
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 night, in all her unstudied, and surpassing
loveliness—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 had never known its name. She sprang to
her feet, and laid her hand upon the bell.
“Madame!” said Anatole, in a cold, proud tone.
She stayed her arm to listen.
“I leave you for ever.”
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 birthday 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 negotiation, 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 minion; 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 glittering 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
prime of his successful manhood, cool, polite, handsome, and
winning, gathered golden opinions by every word and look; the
young Duke of Reichstadt, the mild and gentle son of the 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 moralize 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—negotiating 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 recognized 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— recognized, 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
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.
| People I have met, or, Pictures of society and people of mark, drawn under a thin veil of fiction | |