Reception at Madame de Fuchs’s--Prince Philippe d’Hesse-Hombourg
--The Journalists and Newsmongers of Vienna--The French
Village in Germany--Prince Eugène--Recollection of the
Consulate--Tribulations of M. Denville--Mme. Récamier--
The Return of the _Émigré_--Childhood’s Friend, or the Magic of
a Name--Ball at Lord Stewart’s--Alexander proclaimed King
of Poland--The Prince Czartoryski--Confidence of the Poles
--Count Arthur Potocki--The Revolutions of Poland--Slavery
--Vandar--Ivan, or the Polish Serf.
At one of the _soirées_ at the Comtesse de Fuchs’s, the whole of the
coterie had gathered round her--for she also had her coterie. In
default of diplomatic treaties, her grace and friendship constituted
its bond. The conversation had turned on some news which, it was said,
had leaked out from the high deliberations of the Congress.
They were asking Prince Philippe d’Hesse-Hombourg if the fate of his
family’s Landgravate had been fixed, either by the decisions on the
Graben or by those of the more serious Congress.
‘Nothing as yet has transpired,’ he answered, ‘but it is generally
expected that the Principality will receive a slight increase.’
Thereupon he gave us some particulars as to the origin of his house,
one of the most illustrious in Germany, both in virtue of its age and
of its alliances; though he himself had probably no idea of being one
day called upon to play the part of its ruler.
‘The Principality of Hesse-Hombourg,’ he said, ‘presents one of the
most curious freaks of modern times. It is a small colony of French
Huguenots, which settled there at the time of the Revocation of the
Edict of Nantes. The Landgraf Frederick cordially welcomed those
unhappy victims of their king’s intolerance. He gave them land to till,
and sold his silver to come to their aid. They founded a village to
which they gave the name Friedrichsdorf. The most curious thing is
that for more than a hundred years they have preserved, without the
slightest alteration, the language, the manners, the costume, in fact
everything connected with their country and their century. It is a kind
of republic, governed by their minister. Isolated in their valley in
the centre of Germany, these men, though practically at the door of
their country, appear to have had no part or parcel in the great events
that have just been accomplished. They have simply ignored the French
Revolution, or if not that, have heard little or nothing of it. Though
French at heart by habits, traditions, and origin, they no longer think
of the country which in days gone by expelled their fathers.’
‘In my travels,’ I said, ‘I likewise found a similar colony, but one
that pushed further on than the other. It carried its household gods as
far as Macarief in Russia, It, also, preserved the language and customs
of its time, without even omitting the voluminous wig which everybody
knows.’
I had drawn close to Prince Eugène. Most cruelly upset by the events in
course of completion, he, as it were, instinctively turned to the past.
His memory striding, so to speak, across the decade of Empire, went
back with a sort of melancholy regret to the period of the Consulate,
which to him was a period of happiness, for it had been that of hope.
In truth, those four years constituted a remarkable period; everything
seemed eager for a new birth, to emerge altered, if not purified, from
the confusion into which the saturnalia of the Directorate had plunged
it. At that moment nothing had acquired any stability, but those who
had eyes to see perceived well enough that they were advancing with
giant steps towards a social regeneration. There was a general, an
irresistible, yielding to pleasure. It was not the licence which had
preceded it; it was like the distant and expiring sound of that licence
assuming a regular cadence day after day. Lavishness was extreme; gold
seemed, as it were, to flow; military and administrative fortunes had
been made so rapidly as to leave people virtually in doubt as to the
real price which had been paid for them. Numberless _émigrés_ setting
foot once more in their country, and finding their property practically
unimpaired, made up by constant enjoyment for the cruel privations
they had experienced in an alien land; others, happy to have escaped
either that or proscription, followed suit, and freely scattered
their fortunes, which they had been within an ace of losing for ever.
Finally, as if everything conspired to the glorifying of that period,
consider this further: that it counted, perhaps, the largest number of
celebrated beauties. Not that chance had absolutely provided a most
remarkable type of woman, but gold flung about by handfuls brought to
the fore women who, if they had remained in an obscure position, would
have probably passed unperceived; placed on pedestals, they borrowed
from the world by which they were surrounded part of the brilliancy
which dazzled the beholder. We reviewed all the joys of that remarkable
period, and we naturally came to the recollection of the woman who was
_the queen then_--Mme. Récamier. It was at her house that forgathered
the best society of the time, and all that Paris held in the way of
illustrious strangers. In her seemed incarnated the elegance and
pomp of the moment. Prince Eugène had often been a guest at those
receptions, which Europe has not yet forgotten.
‘That period,’ I said to the prince, ‘will always remain stamped on
my memory, not only in virtue of the brilliance of its fêtes or the
glamour of our military glory, but in virtue of a circumstance which
formed an epoch in my existence. You know, prince, there are moments
when fortune, weary as it were of taking you for its play-ball,
suddenly lifts you from the depths of despair to the heaven of glory.
At that time I had a very curious experience.’
‘Which is the circumstance?’ promptly exclaimed the Comtesse Laura.
‘You must tell us.’
‘It is a very long episode; nevertheless, if you will grant me your
attention for a while, I will obey.
* * * * *
The most unforeseen resolutions are often due to the most trifling
causes: it was perhaps one word, a single word, which decided my
future. Everybody knows the awkwardness of those pet names that one
gives to children, which continue up to a time when what was once
pretty and graceful becomes intensely ridiculous. It was formerly
the fashion in France, as it was here, and for the matter of that
everywhere, to confer upon the very young that second baptism of
friendship. Of course it seems the most natural thing in the world
to do to-day what we did yesterday. Consequently, in Paris as in
Vienna, they called tall, grown-up men, Fanfan, Dédé, Lolo, and other
sobriquets, very sweet, but utterly unsuited to the men themselves.
I ought to be a good special pleader of that cause, for I also have
been called by one of those pet names, and I made a fine thing of it
by remembering it on one of the most eventful days of my life. Yes,
that rather ridiculous name was for me a talisman worth all the charms
of the fairies. Napoleon had overthrown the contemned government of
the Directorate. Sufficiently strong to be merciful, he allowed all
those who had abandoned their country in order to save their heads to
come back again. I had just left my ‘father’ in Amsterdam, he having
resolved to send me to Paris in order to see his business man, and to
find resources which were absolutely lacking in the alien land. He
confided me to one of our countrymen, M. Clément, whose acquaintance
we had made in Holland, and who was going back to France. We started
together for Paris. We took up our quarters at the Hôtel de Paris in
the Rue Coquillière. M. Clément found letters from his family, who
had a few days previously left for Dijon, bidding him to follow them
instantly. On leaving me, he entrusted me to the care of the manager,
M. Chandeau, a pastry-cook by trade, who was willing to keep me there,
though my appearance by no means promised a profitable customer, or
even one able to settle a little bill. Nevertheless, I had a modest
room on the fifth floor at a rental of twelve francs per month, and
as for my meals, I arranged them very much in accordance with the
slenderness of my purse. I prefer not to dwell upon this more than
precarious existence.
Nevertheless, at the first going off, I thoroughly felt the
intoxication of being once more in my native land. I had saluted Paris
with the enthusiasm that causes the sailor to shout ‘Land, land!’ after
a long absence. I was very young, but I had lived a good deal in a few
years. Storms and hurricanes, privation and struggle, even hair-breadth
escapes from death--I had known them all. And yet it seemed to me that
as recently as the night before I had wandered under the chestnut-trees
of the Tuileries, and in the galleries of the Palais-Royal, where I
now found myself after a three years’ exile. I was very excited while
traversing the Passages, the Places, the bridges, and I ran along them
quickly as if in deadly fear of their escaping me once more. I looked
at the Seine as if she were an old friend, and still everything was new
to me, everything touched a chord of tenderness--even the discordant
cries of the itinerant vendors with whom the streets of Paris swarmed.
I felt as if I were taking possession of it once more. At sixteen there
seems to be such a very long future before one. All that is probable
seems possible. One feels unconsciously that by the right of one’s
youth the command of the world must devolve upon one. The awakening
from this dream was indeed very sombre.
I began by calling upon the business people whose addresses my ‘father’
had given me. Some were absent, others pretended to have lost all
recollection of us. I took care not to call upon my school-fellows in
order to arouse their pity, for I remembered the words Colville had
constantly repeated to me at Hamburg: ‘Try to dispense with everything
rather than ask a service of the man whom you consider your best
friend.’ Consequently, as a rule, I ascended to my perch dead with
fatigue, and not at all disposed to say with Pope ‘Whatever is, is
right.’ It is true that I got some sympathy from our poor servant,
Marie, to dispel the dejection plainly visible on my face. The
excellent creature always chose stories calculated to make my blood
curdle. ‘A few months ago,’ she said to me, ‘a young and handsome
boy, named Denville, lived in this very room. From morn to night he
wrote--he was a savant--and then, in order to get a little recreation,
he sang, accompanying himself on the guitar. Besides being a savant he
was an artist. All this was very well, but though he spent very little,
the poor boy never settled his bill, and during the seven months he
lodged at the hotel no one had ever seen the colour of his money. He
promised well enough, but he wrote in vain to his family, who lived in
Rheims. There is none so deaf as those who won’t hear, and not a cent
came from Champagne. There are some very hard-hearted parents--very
hard-hearted indeed. And that’s why the young fellow so often repeated
that no parent comes up to a louis d’or, and that the staunchest friend
is the pawnshop.
‘M. Chandeau, furious at getting nothing but promises, lost patience,
and only waited a favourable opportunity to cease being made a dupe
of, as he said. One evening, when M. Denville had gone downstairs
in dressing-gown and slippers to buy some trifling thing at the
stationer’s opposite, M. Chandeau promptly mounted the stairs, put a
padlock on the door, and practically sequestrated in that way the
whole of his lodger’s luggage. When the latter came back, purchase in
hand, he found on the landing his pitiless creditor, telling him to
seek shelter elsewhere.
‘It’s inhuman, isn’t it, monsieur, to send one’s debtor away like
that, practically naked? Prayers, promises, threats were not of the
slightest use. The young fellow was obliged to make the best of it, to
go down into the street, to promenade up and down like a ghost, with
the additional chance of perishing with cold, for it was the middle
of November. It struck ten o’clock, and the shops began to close. The
poor young man did not know where to look for a shelter, the only hope
of such presenting itself to him being the arch of a bridge, or the
guard-room of a military post. When he got as far as the Point St.
Eustache he was accosted by a poor woman--a working woman--who, touched
by the story of his deplorable situation, took him to her room, gave
him some supper, and kept him like this for a month, sharing everything
with him. But the most surprising part of the story is the end. The
lover of this poor girl was the servant of a general. The general was
looking out for a secretary. The servant was sufficiently interested in
this protégé of Providence to share his clothes with him, just as the
poor girl had shared her crust of bread, after which he presented M.
Denville to his master. The general took a fancy to M. Denville’s face,
and engaged him, and took him to the army in Italy, in which he was to
command a division.
‘You must know, monsieur, that everybody who goes to Italy and doesn’t
happen to be killed, comes back rich. That’s what happened to M.
Denville. On his return, he was absolutely bursting with gold. He paid
everything he owed to M. Chandeau. Better still, he bought, exactly
opposite the hotel, a little mercer’s shop to make a present to the
young girl who had so charitably picked him up.’
As may easily be imagined, that kind of picture did not give a
particularly agreeable tinge to my dreams. This great man, expelled
from the room that I was living in, and promenading down below in the
street in white, grasping his roll of paper, appeared to me like the
statue of the Commander to Don Juan. In my anxiety I now and again
substituted the face and figure of my landlord, holding in one hand
his little bill, and the padlock in the other. I no longer slept, and
I scarcely ate. The mind was killing the body, and I was certainly
getting the worst of this terrible struggle, of which I failed to see
the end.
I had been to the Hôtel Choiseul, which had been inhabited by my
family, and had been transformed into an auction-mart. I wandered
through its rooms, every one of which was crowded with furniture and
goods offered to the highest bidder. (Subsequently, part of the Opéra
was built on the site.) Alas, throughout my wandering I did not find a
stick that belonged to us; even the porter had changed, and, however
improbable and romantic it may seem, my only friend of old was Castor,
the poor watch-dog, who still occupied his kennel. Pricking up his ears
and wagging his tail, Castor licked my hands when I began to stroke him.
Perhaps Castor’s friendliness directed my thoughts to the old friends
of my family. Among them I had heard M. Récamier cited as the richest
banker of his time, and his wife as the foremost woman of fashion.
I knew Mme. Récamier before her marriage, and when she first came
to Paris. When we both were children our parents lived in the same
house. Our games and our studies were often interrupted by the scenes
of the Revolution. I remembered the incidents of those first years
most vividly; but would she remember them? I had lost sight of her
completely during those six years so crowded with events. A kind of
false shame kept me back. I could not make up my mind to go and see
her, amidst all her opulence, in a condition bordering so closely
upon a state of poverty as mine. The days went by meanwhile, and I had
practically exhausted my last resources. In vain had I tried to borrow
money on the portrait of Louis XVI., the last gift of the ill-fated
prince to my ‘father,’ his faithful and devoted minister. What interest
had those money-changers in a prince who was only great by his virtues,
and who already belonged to history?
I informed my ‘father’ of my position; told him of my various
unsuccessful attempts, and asked him for fresh instructions. I received
in reply a letter dated from Holland. He told me to remain for a little
longer in Paris, but if I did not succeed, to come back to Amsterdam,
where M. Vandenberg, the landlord of our inn, would procure me the
means to join him, my ‘father,’ in England, whither important affairs
compelled him to proceed immediately.
I shall never forget the night I spent after that letter. There are
situations too painful for description, griefs that may be conceived,
but cannot be expressed. I already beheld myself without the slightest
resources in Paris; without a mother, without relations or friends, and
like those who seek but do not find, who cry and who are made sport of,
who would fain attach themselves to some one, and are despised. I was
told to start for Amsterdam. How could I? I could imagine what it must
have cost my ‘father’ to write that letter. Perhaps he believed that
experience had already given me the wisdom which, as a rule, only comes
with years, and that the journey of a thousand leagues which I had made
with him had taught me to vanquish obstacles. On that occasion, though,
I was not alone: his courage sustained mine. In the present instance,
his absence left me no other support than the future and God.
My sleep was disturbed and agitated; it was not rest, it was simply the
temporary forgetfulness of my trouble. I was looking forward to the
cruel struggle with the world; I beheld myself flung amidst the crowd
to dispute for a crust of bread with the rest of mankind. The days went
by like centuries, for if it be true, as the Prince de Ligne said,
that happiness has wings, misfortune has legs of lead. Poor misguided
creatures that we are! at fifteen we fancy that we have exhausted fate;
at the slightest storm we bend our heads and say, ‘There’s no longer
any hope.’ And at sixty we still go on hoping.
One resolution came from all those conflicting ideas. It was high time;
for I no longer saw the faintest chance of staving off the crisis, or
of temporising with M. Chandeau, whose face became more sour every day.
I resolved to go to Mme. Récamier, whom I knew to be at her country
house at Clichy-la-Garenne. I made up my mind to go and implore her
help, as one implores that of an angel from heaven when everything on
earth has failed.
One fine May morning, I started from the Rue Coquillière for Clichy. On
my way, I tried to screw my courage to the sticking-point by recalling
the happy times of my early youth, and in the conjuring up of those
pictures, the image of Mme. Récamier, who had been the companion of my
liveliest joys and of my short-lived griefs, re-appeared continually.
Recalling, one by one, the proofs of her genuine affection, always
so lavishly bestowed, I dismissed all fear that her immense fortune,
her high social position, would cause her to deny the friend of her
childhood, coming to her homeless, proscribed, and unhappy.
When I had reached the barrier which majestically dominates Paris,
I continued my route between some sparse and poverty-stricken sheds
across the fields. I little dreamt that in a comparatively few years
there would arise on the spot a pretty town of fifteen thousand
inhabitants, with its cafés, its baths, and its theatre, that would
dispute with Passy the advantages of being the Tibur of the literary
men and artists of Paris, frightened at the hubbub of the city. At the
other side of the hill which I had slowly mounted, the soft and gently
sloping greensward landed me in the Avenue de Clichy. I felt as light
of heart under those century-old trees as if I were returning to the
paternal manor after a morning’s sport, but at the sight of the gate of
the mansion, my assurance forsook me.
Will she receive me? Will she recognise me? My blood, overheated by my
rapid march, froze in my veins at the question. I should probably have
turned back, but for the knowledge that to advance was the only chance
of finding an asylum.
When I got to the porter’s lodge I pulled the chain, producing but a
faint tinkling of the bell. It had, nevertheless, been heard, for a
voice from inside told Laurette to open the gate. ‘Laurette,’ I said
to myself; ‘that name, no doubt, belongs to a young girl, and the
sympathy between our ages will probably get me a favourable reception.’
The illusion vanished almost immediately, and I should have been the
first to laugh at my blunder if at that moment my poor heart had
been at all susceptible to any kind of joy. Instead of the little
Laurette I expected--namely, a kind of _opéra-comique_ shepherdess,
with a beflowered and beribboned crook--I beheld an old peasant woman,
wrinkled and bent down with years. Laurette was dressed in a black and
white striped kirtle, and her crook was represented by the ponderous
key of the gate. In answer to my inquiries, she pointed to the door
of the hall; but her second reply convinced me that she was deaf, for
she kept gently shaking her head and softly slapping her ears with her
fore-finger.
Trembling and uncertain, I stood rooted to the spot, dreading to
advance; for it is a cruel thing to come to a friend’s door in the
guise of a suppliant. But the massive gate had turned on its hinges and
closed once more while Laurette re-entered her pavilion, and I was thus
compelled to advance.
Hence, I took my courage in both hands and slowly crossed the court,
still further slackening my pace in ascending the steps of the ancient
residence of the Ducs de Lévis, both fearing and dreading to reach
the top. I rang the bell, and in answer a servant appeared. Doffing
my tri-cornered hat, considerably too big for me, with that air of
humility which renders the man down on his luck so awkward, I asked
him, in a voice which I tried in vain to steady, if I might see Mme.
Récamier. From the way in which he began to ‘take stock’ of me, I
imagined that he was in the habit of seeing many needy creatures steer
for this haven, and that, naturally, he classed me among the crowd of
the wretched which each day solicited the inexhaustible charity of his
mistress. ‘I’ll see if madame is at home,’ he said; ‘but what name
shall I say?’ I gave him mine, and, apparently satisfied on that point,
he bade me take a seat. A few moments passed, and Joseph--that was the
name of the domestic--did not return. Devoured with anxiety, I rose
from the seat, which offered no rest, and strode up and down the large
hall, paved with marble and hung with sombre portraits, paintings of
another age, worn out like the past, forgotten like the past, and on
the faces of which I tried in vain to catch a favourable smile.
Every one knows with what minute attention a man coming to ask a favour
scans the spot where he awaits his fate. At last Joseph came back;
but it was no longer the semi-benevolent face that welcomed me on my
entrance.
‘Madame is very sorry not to be able to see you to-day, monsieur. Not
having the honour of your acquaintance, she would ask you to write to
her about the motive of your visit.’
‘Not know me!’ my lips painfully murmured, stupefied. I felt like
one suddenly blinded. Everything in this world seemed to fail me at
once--the present, the future, friendship, and my courage withal.
Tears, but badly hidden by the brim of my hat, coursed down my cheeks.
At sixteen one does still shed tears. One has not acquired the courage
which is only learned in the school of adversity.
Though distressed beyond measure at my own weakness, I could not
make up my mind to leave the place. In fact, by that same wonderful
process of the imagination which in a few moments of sleep shows
you a long series of diverse objects, my imagination pictured to me
spontaneously the steep and winding staircase leading to the attics
of the Hôtel de Calais, and my relentless landlord waiting there, my
bill in his hand, in order to bar further progress, as he had barred
it to my expelled predecessor. There was more than this, however. Some
horrid words had in reality fallen upon my ear. Juliet, the friend and
companion of my infancy, no longer remembered even my name. During
this mental colloquy, Joseph, rigid, motionless, constantly watching
a curtain in the hall, showed but too plainly his impatience to close
the door upon me for ever. In spite of his looks, I did not budge. I
felt it impossible to abandon my last hope. All at once, by one of
the spontaneous inspirations often due to desperate positions, it
flashed upon me that during my infancy I bore only a pet name, and that
Mme. Récamier never called me by any other. That was enough. Tightly
grasping Joseph’s arm, I exclaimed:
‘Please, monsieur, go back to Mme. Récamier, and tell her that it’s
Lolo who has come back from Sweden, who begs of her to see him for one
moment.’
To judge by Joseph’s face at this new request, I felt certain that
he considered me bereft of my senses. The man was, no doubt, asking
himself what possible connection there could possibly be between Lolo,
Sweden, and his mistress. Consequently, he did not seem disposed to
attempt this new message, but I begged so hard that finally he decided
in my favour, just as one grants to a patient whose physician has
given him up the last whim from which he expects his cure.
Behold me alone once more, striding up and down the huge hall, not
even trying to restrain my fears now that there is no stranger to
witness them, and recommending myself to that Providence which hovered
over our vessel in the storm-tossed Baltic, which had protected me at
Copenhagen, and from Whom at that moment I seemed to request a miracle
not less decisive than any of the former to which I owed my life.
‘It often takes no more than a minute to settle a man’s destiny,’ says
an Arab poet, just as it suffices for one ray of light from heaven to
disperse a cloud. At the most exciting part of my mental soliloquy I
heard in the distance a concert of feminine voices shouting in all
keys. One, however, dominated the rest; and such a voice! That of
the heavenly spirits painted by Milton never made a more charming
impression. I recognised it at once. Then, immediately afterwards, the
door was flung open, and Mme. Récamier, surrounded by three young girls
as beautiful as herself, rushed towards me, crying, ‘My friend, my poor
Lolo, so it’s you!’ and her eyes, fixed on mine, grew moist, while
the most grateful and refreshing tears I ever shed in my life coursed
freely down my cheeks. ‘Yes, it is I,’ I said.
This, ladies, is one of the chapters in my chequered life. You wished
to hear it, and fashion alone must be the excuse for telling it.
This little story wound up the evening.
* * * * *
Next day the majority of us met once more at a fête the dazzling
pomp of which did not come up to the more intimate happiness of
the small circle at the Comtesse de Fuchs’s. Lord Stewart, the
English ambassador, gave a grand ball at the magnificent Stahremberg
mansion, his residence, to celebrate the birthday of his sovereign.
Nothing had been neglected to make the entertainment worthy of the
memorable circumstances, and of the power represented by his lordship.
Lord Stewart displayed a magnificence--or, to speak correctly, a
profusion--of which few fêtes offered an example. His excellency,
however, who loved to be eccentric in everything, and whose
eccentricities were not always successful, had hit upon the idea to
add to his invitation a courteous injunction to come to his ball in
the costume of the time of Elizabeth. His countrymen understood him
easily enough, and they were numerous in Vienna. The remainder of the
guests had not complied with the request, but those who had adopted
the costume were sufficiently numerous to produce a very remarkable
effect. As to his excellency himself, he wore his uniform of colonel
of hussars, the scarlet of which was covered with embroideries, and a
great number of orders, civil and military, to such a degree as to have
led one easily to mistake him for a living book of heraldry. Save for
that singularity the ball was like any other: a great many sovereigns,
princes, ‘grandes dames,’ political celebrities; a marvellous supper; a
charming lottery of English trifles, which a lady dressed exactly like
Queen Elizabeth distributed to the guests. After which we danced until
daylight, a proceeding becoming rarer and rarer every day in Vienna,
where the Court balls were seldom prolonged beyond midnight.
While all this was going on, the uncertainties of the Polish question
had ceased. The result of the conferences of the Congress, which both
Europe and Vienna awaited with equal impatience, was at last known.
Alexander had been proclaimed King of Poland. During four months this
had been the exclusive aim of his thoughts. His efforts, the ability
of his ministers, the profound correctness of their views, had been
crowned with success. The Duchy of Warsaw and the handsomest part of
the Polish territory were definitely incorporated with his empire.
The gate of the West was open to him. Among the various phases of
that negotiation, two things could not fail to strike the mind--the
clever diplomacy of the Russian Government, and the confidence of the
Poles. When the fall of Napoleon dispelled the last hopes of the Poles,
they instinctively turned their regard towards Alexander. Persuaded
that he would restore to them their ancient position, that he would
reconstitute in Poland an independent kingdom, they transferred to
him their affection and their hopes. Neither the recollections of the
past nor the lessons of history, nor the warnings of some sagacious
minds had succeeded in opening their eyes. Alexander and his ministry,
it should be said, had carefully exploited that disposition. A great
parade was made of moderation. The most seductive promises were
lavished on the Polish nation. Their dreams of independence, their
ideas of a free constitution, were constantly flattered. The Russian
officers in Poland received orders to show the utmost deference
to the civil and military authorities. Finally, in the month of
September 1814, even before Alexander crossed Poland to appear at the
Congress, when General Krazinski entered Warsaw with his division, the
Field-Marshal Barclay de Tolly at the head of his staff had been the
first to congratulate him. The most cordial union apparently existed
between the generals of the two nations.
But from the first conferences of the plenipotentiaries, and in spite
of the protestations of the czar in favour of the Polish nation,
Alexander’s system of aggrandisement was soon discovered.
In vain did the King of Prussia, in close agreement with him, support
all his demands. The Congress resisted a long while before giving its
assent. France, Austria, and England opposed an absolute refusal.
We have already seen how Alexander declared one day that he would
maintain, arms in hand, his pretensions regarding the freedom of
Poland. Finally, thoroughly tired out, the Congress gave way, and the
country of the Jagellons and the Sobieskis was united to Russia. The
decision had scarcely been made public when Alexander announced it to
the government of Warsaw. In an autograph letter to Comte Ostrowski,
President of the Senate, the czar expressed himself as follows:
‘In assuming the title of King of Poland, I desire to satisfy the wish
of the nation. The Kingdom of Poland will be united to the empire
by the bonds of its own constitution. If the supreme interest of a
general peace has made it impossible for all the Poles to be united
under one sceptre, I have made it a point to soften the rigours of that
separation, and to secure for them everywhere a peaceful enjoyment of
their nationality.’
Faithful to his system, Alexander shouted very loudly from the
house-tops the word ‘nationality’ at the very moment when was
accomplished and consecrated the division which was to make havoc
of the word itself. Among the Polish notabilities in Vienna who had
defended the cause with most intelligence and courage, one must
mention in the first rank the Prince Adam Czartoryski. The passionate
defender of the independence of his country, he for one moment fostered
the illusion of having found the regenerator in Alexander. When the
emperor, during his voyage from Russia to Vienna, stopped at Pulawi,
the residence of this ancient family, the princess-dowager, her two
sons, Adam and Constantine; her two daughters, the Princesse de
Würtemberg and the Comtesse Zamoyska, had prepared the most brilliant
reception. In their eyes it was Alexander whose hand was to raise
their country from its ruin. Alexander, on his side, professed a great
esteem for the character of Prince Adam. Even at the Congress the
rumour ran for a moment that he was going to appoint him his Minister
of Foreign Affairs, instead of M. de Nesselrode, and that he reserved
the vice-royalty of Poland for him later on. It was never known how
far those rumours could be substantiated. Was it a tribute to the
loyalty and talent of Prince Adam? Was it a means of leading people
astray? Afterwards Europe learned how that prince became the martyr of
the cause to which he had devoted the whole of his life. What, in the
future, was to be the upshot of that decision of the Congress? Placed
under the sceptre of the Russian autocrat, would Poland once more find
her level among the rank of nations, or, like the streams which lose
both their name and their substance, was Poland to be swallowed up in
the immense boundaries? Such were the questions discussed one day in
the most lively manner at Princesse Sapieha’s. Around her were the
Comte Arthur Potocki, the Comte Komar, the Prince Radziwill, the Prince
Paul Sapieha, the Princesse Lubomirska, the Comtesse Lanskarouska, and
several other ladies. Illusion is nowhere so thoroughly permitted as
when it becomes a question of country; in that gathering, all hearts
were generally open to the hopes of a political restoration, all minds
believed in the realisation of Alexander’s promises.