Lay Down Your Arms 67

Lay Down Your Arms 67

The winter after Sylvia’s birth we spent at Vienna in perfect quiet.

Next spring we travelled to Italy. To travel and make acquaintance with

the world was indeed a part of our new programme of life. We were

independent and rich, and nothing hindered us from carrying it out.

Small children are a little troublesome in travelling; but if one can

take about a sufficient train of _bonnes_ and nurses, the thing can be

done. I had taken into my establishment an old servant who had once been

nurse to me and my sisters, and then had married an hotel steward, and

now was left a widow. This “Mistress Anna” was worthy of my fullest

confidence, and in her hands I could leave my little Sylvia at home with

perfect security, at any time when we--_i.e._, Frederick and I--left our

headquarters for several days on some excursion. Rudolf would have been

just as well seen after by Mr. Foster, his tutor; but it often happened

that we took the little eight-years-old boy with us.

 

Happy, happy times! Pity that I then neglected the red books so much! It

was exactly at this time that I might have entered so much that was

beautiful, interesting and gay; but I neglected it, and so the details

of that year have mostly faded out of my recollection, and it is only in

rough outline that I can now recall a picture of it.

 

In the _Protocol of Peace_ I did find an opportunity to make a

gratifying entry. This was a leading article signed B. Desmoulins, in

which the proposal was made to the French Government that it should put

itself at the head of the European states by giving them the example of

disarmament:--

 

In this way France will make herself sure of the alliance and of

the honest friendship of all states, which will then have ceased to

be afraid of France, while they would desire her sympathy. In this

way the general disarmament would commence spontaneously--the

principle of conquest would be given up for ever, and the

confederation of states would quite naturally form a Court of

International Law, which would be in a position to settle in the

way of arbitration all disputes which could never be decided by

war. In so acting, France would have gained over to her side the

only real and only lasting power--namely, right--and would have

opened for humanity, in the most glorious manner, a new era.

(_Opinion Nationale_, July 25, 1868.)

 

This article, of course, got no attention.

 

In the winter of 1868-69 we went back to Paris, and this time, for we

wished to make acquaintance with life, we plunged into the “Great

World”.

 

It was a rather tiring process; but yet for a time it was very pleasant.

In order to have some home, we had hired a small residence in the

quarter of the Champs Elysées, whither we also could sometimes invite in

turn our numerous acquaintance, by whom we were invited every day to a

party of some kind or other. Having been introduced by our ambassador at

the Court of the Tuilleries, we were invited for the whole winter to the

Mondays of the empress, and, besides this, the houses of all the

ambassadors were open to us, as well as the _salons_ of Princess

Mathilde, the Duchess of Mouchy, Queen Isabella of Spain, and so on. We

made the acquaintance also of many literary magnates, not of the

greatest, however, I mean Victor Hugo, as he was living in exile, but we

met Renan, Dumas _père et fils_, Octave Feuillet, George Sand, Arsène

Houssaye, and some others. At the house of the last named we also were

present at a masked ball. When the author of the _Grandes Dames_ gave

one of his Venetian _fêtes_ in his splendid little hotel, on the Avenue

Friedland, it was the custom that the real _grandes dames_ should go

there under the protection of their masks along with the “little

ladies,” well-known actresses and so forth, who were making their

diamonds and their wit sparkle here.

 

We were also very industrious visitors to the theatres. At least three

times a week we spent our evenings either at the Italian opera, where

Adelina Patti, just married to the Marquis de Caux, was enchanting the

audience, or at the _Theâtre Français_, or even at one of the little

boulevard theatres to see Hortense Schneider as the Grand Duchess of

Gerolstein, or some of the other celebrities of operetta or vaudeville.

 

It is wonderful, however, how, when one is once plunged into this whirl

of splendour and entertainments, this little “great world” appears to

one all of a sudden so terribly important; and the laws which prevail

therein of elegance and _chic_ (it was even then called _chic_) as

laying on one a kind of solemnly undertaken duty. To take at the theatre

a less distinguished place than a stage-box; to appear in the Bois with

a carriage whose equipage should not be faultless; to go to a court ball

without putting on a toilette of 2000 francs, “signed” by Worth; to sit

down to table (Madame la Baronne est servie), even if one had no guests,

without having the finest dishes and the choicest wines served by the

solemn _maître d’hôtel_ in person and several lackeys, all these would

have been serious offences. How easy, how very easy it becomes to one,

when one is caught up in the machinery of such an existence as this, to

spend all one’s thoughts and feelings on this business, which is really

devoid of all thought and feeling, and in doing this to forget to take

any part in the progress of the real world outside, I mean the universe,

or in the condition of one’s own world within, I mean domestic bliss.

This is what might perhaps have happened to me, but Frederick preserved

me from it. He was not the man to allow himself to be torn away and

smothered by the whirlpool of Parisian “high-life”. He did not forget,

in the world in which we were moving, either the universe or our own

hearth. An hour or two in the morning we still kept devoted to reading

and domestic life; and so we accomplished the great feat of enjoying

happiness even in the midst of pleasure.

 

For us Austrians there was much sympathy cherished at Paris. In

political conversations there was often a talk about a _Revanche de

Sadowa_, certainly in the sense that the injustice done to us two years

before was to be made good again--as if _anything of that sort_ could

make it _good_ again. If blows are only to be wiped out by fresh blows,

then surely the thing can never cease. It was just to my husband and me,

because he had been in the army and had served the campaign in Bohemia,

it was just to us that people thought they could say nothing more polite

or more agreeable than a hopeful allusion to the _Revanche de Sadowa_

which was in prospect, and which was already treated of as an historical

event which would assure the European equilibrium, and was itself

ensured by diplomatic arrangements. A slap to be administered to the

Prussians on the next opportunity was a necessity in the

school-discipline of the nations. Nothing tragical would come of the

matter, only enough to check the arrogance of certain folks. Perhaps

even the whip hanging up on the wall would be enough for this purpose;

but if that arrogant fellow should try any of his saucy tricks he had

received fair warning that it would come down upon him in the shape of

the _Revanche de Sadowa_.

 

We, of course, decisively put aside all such consolations. A former

misfortune was not to be conjured away by a fresh misfortune, nor an old

injustice to be atoned for by a new injustice. We assured our friends

that we wished for nothing, except that we might never see the present

peace broken again. This was also essentially the wish of Napoleon III.

We had so much intercourse with persons whose position was quite close

to the emperor, that we had plenty of opportunities of becoming

acquainted with his political views, as he gave utterance to them in his

confidential conversation. It was not only that he wished for peace at

the moment--he cherished the plan of proposing to the powers a general

disarmament. But, for the moment, he did not feel his own domestic

position in the country secure enough to carry this plan out. There was

great discontent boiling and seething among the populace; and in the

circle immediately surrounding the throne there was a party which

laboured to represent to him that his throne could only be rendered

secure by a successful foreign war--just a little triumphal promenade to

the Rhine, and the splendour and stability of the Napoleonic dynasty

were secured. _Il faut faire grand_, was the advice of his counsellors.

That the war, which was in prospect the year before on the Luxembourg

question, had come to nothing, and was displeasing to them; the

preparations on both sides had gone on so grandly, and then the matter

had been adjourned. But in the long run a fight between France and

Prussia was certainly inevitable. They were incessantly urging on

further in this direction. But only a feeble echo of these matters came

to us. One is accustomed to hear that sort of thing resounding in the

journals, as regularly as the breakers on the shore. There is no

occasion to fear a storm on that account. You listen quite tranquilly to

the band which is playing its lively airs on the beach--the breakers

form only a soft unheeded bass accompaniment to them.

 

This brilliant way of life, only too overburdened with pleasure, reached

its highest pitch in the spring months. At that time there were added

long drives in the Bois in open carriages, numerous picture exhibitions,

garden parties, horse-races, picnics, and with all this no fewer

theatres, or visits, or dinner or evening parties, than in the depth of

winter. We then began to long much for repose. In fact, this sort of

life has never its true attraction, except when some flirtation or love

affair is combined with it. Girls who are in search of a husband, women

who want a lover, or men who are in search of adventures, for these

every new _fête_, where it is possible they may meet the object of their

dream, possesses a new interest, but for Frederick and me? That I was

inflexibly true to my lord, that I never by a single glance gave any one

the occasion to approach me with any audacious hopes, I may say, without

any pride of virtue--it was a mere matter of course. Whether, under

different relations, I should also have resisted all the temptations to

which, in such a whirl of pleasure, pretty young ladies are exposed, is

more than I can say; but when one carries in one’s heart a love so deep

and so full of bliss as I felt for my Frederick, one is surely armed

against all danger. And as far as he was concerned, was he true to me? I

can only say, that I never felt any doubt about it.

 

When the summer had returned to the land, when the Grand Prix was over,

and the different members of society began to quit Paris, some to

Trouville or Dieppe, Biarritz or Vichy, others to Baden Baden, and a

third set to their châteaux, Princess Mathilde to St. Gratien, and the

court to Compiègne, then we were besieged with requests to select the

same destinations for travel, and with invitations to country-houses;

but we were decidedly indisposed to prolong the campaign of luxury and

pleasure which we had carried out in the winter, into a summer one also.

I did not wish to return at once to Grumitz. I feared too much the

reawakening of painful memories; besides, we should not have found there

the solitude we desired, on account of our numerous relations and

neighbours. So we chose once more for our resting-place a quiet corner

of Switzerland. We promised our friends in Paris that we would come back

next winter, and went on our summer tour with the joy of schoolboys going for their holidays.