Isabey’s Study--His Picture of the Plenipotentiaries at the
Congress of Vienna--The Imperial Sepulchre at the Capuchins
--Recollections of the Tombs of Cracow--Preacher Werner
--St. Stephen’s Cathedral--Children’s Ball at Princesse
Marie Esterhazy’s--The Empress Elizabeth of Russia--The
Picture-Gallery of the Duc de Saxe-Teschen--Emperor Alexander
and Prince Eugène--The Pictures of the Belvedere--The King
of Bavaria--Anecdotes.
One of the memorabilia of the Congress of Vienna which had the
advantage of uniting all suffrages, a privilege not generally granted
to all the transactions of that august Areopagus, is the historical
and beautiful drawing of Isabey representing a sitting of the
plenipotentiaries. The artist was then putting the last touches to
it. One morning, Griffiths and I went to his house. His gallery of
portraits, which contained all the celebrated personages of Europe,
was already very considerable, but our attention was attracted at once
by the drawing which, under the title of ‘The Congress of Vienna,’
will connect his name with the illustrious men he has portrayed there.
Everybody knows that composition, representing the room of the Congress
at the moment Prince de Metternich introduced Wellington.
Theoretically, Lord Wellington had no right to figure in that
production, inasmuch as he only arrived in Vienna in February 1815, and
then it was to replace Lord Castlereagh. His arrival necessitated an
important change in the picture--the introduction of a new personage.
That was the motive which made Isabey choose that particular moment,
inasmuch as it enabled him to leave all the other figures in their
original places. Isabey explained to us very charmingly the discontent
of the new arrival at finding himself relegated to a corner of the
composition, where he can only be seen sideways. The clever artist had
ingeniously explained the situation to the English general, apparently
with great satisfaction to both. Another particular incident had
marked the preliminaries. Among the number of European celebrities
Baron Humboldt was necessarily a figure. They had told Isabey that
he would meet with great resistance on the part of this statesman,
who had a thorough aversion to having his portrait taken. He had even
refused that favour to Princesse Louisa Radziwill, the sister of Prince
Ferdinand of Prussia. Warned of this singularity, and even somewhat
intimidated by it, Isabey presented himself at the diplomatist’s. His
real or simulated embarrassment increased the partial good humour of
the baron, who, fixing his large, blue-goggled eyes on him, replied,
‘Have a good look at me, and then you’ll be bound to admit that
nature has given me too ugly a face ever to spend a penny on it for
its reproduction. Nature would in reality have the laugh of me if she
could convict me of such foolish vanity. She ought to be aware that
I fully recognise the trick she has played me.’ Struck by the reply,
the painter looked with stupefaction at the extraordinary face of the
minister, but immediately resuming his gaiety and quickness of wit,
he retorted, ‘But I am not going to ask your excellency the slightest
recompense for the pleasant trouble I am going to take. I am only going
to ask the favour of a few sittings.’
‘Oh, is that all? You can have as many sittings as you like. You need
not stint yourself in that respect, but I cannot abandon my principle
of not spending a penny on my ugly face.’
In fact, the witty diplomatist sat as many times to the painter as he
wished. When the engraving appeared, his was found the most striking
likeness of all, and he often said, ‘I have not paid a penny for my
portrait by Isabey. No doubt he wanted to avenge himself, and he has
made an excellent likeness of me.’
Leaving the painter’s study, we went citywards, and on the bridge
over the Danube we fell in with Princesse Hélène Souvaroff, General
Tettenborn, and Alexander Ypsilanti. They were going in the same
direction, and told us that they were making for the church of the
Capuchins to see the tombs of the imperial family. They proposed that
we should accompany them, and we accepted.
When we got to the chapel, a monk, after having lighted a large torch,
preceded us to the crypts. There were nine tombs of emperors, thirteen
of empresses, and in all about eighty of the members of the imperial
race. ‘It was in this subterranean chapel,’ said our guide, ‘that every
day during thirty years Maria-Theresa heard Mass before the sepulchre
she had erected for herself by the side of that of her husband.’
‘This trait of Maria-Theresa,’ said Tettenborn, ‘reminds me of one
of the clever answers of Joseph II. When he had granted the public
admission to the Augarten, a lady complained that she could no longer
stroll about there among her equals. “If everybody were restricted to
the society of his equals,” replied the emperor, “I should be reduced
for a bit of air to the crypt of the Capuchins, inasmuch as it is only
there that I should find mine.”’
After contemplating for a few moments those magnificent monuments of
marble and brass, we slowly ascended the steps of the crypt, when the
light of several torches told us of the arrival of a numerous company;
and it would appear that these excursions had all been postponed to the
end of February on account of the weather, for soon Messrs. Nesselrode
and Pozzo di Borgo, the Duc de Richelieu, and M. Amstedt passed us on
their way. Then we went to the ramparts. The conversation had taken
a serious turn, in accordance with the objects we had just left. The
Princesse Hélène compared these crypts with those of the monastery of
Petchersky at Kion, where most of the saints of the convent are placed
in open coffins. Those precious relics draw to the ancient capital of
Moscow a number of pilgrims, who proceed on foot from Casan and other
towns close to Italy.
‘There is no greater proof of the strength of religious feeling than
that,’ said Princesse Hélène. ‘It is at the bottom of all those distant
pilgrimages, which, without it, would seem impossible. But,’ she added,
‘the hope of future recompense assuages present evils.’
‘When I was at Cracow,’ I said, ‘I also paid a visit to the
subterranean vaults of the cathedral, where the Kings of Poland rest.
The coffins are similarly open, and the bodies are embalmed. Time
seems to have respected their forms, and they are still vested with
all the attributes of royalty. The ermine cloak, the sceptre, the
diadem sparkling with precious stones, all those baubles of a vanished
power present a striking contrast to the relentless aspect of death.
Nevertheless, such images of the past are less terrible when brass
or marble disguises, as it does here, the visible effects of death,
or when the monuments are inscribed with a line recalling a glorious
reminiscence, like that of the Narischkine family in the Church of the
Annunciation at St. Petersburg.’
It was a holiday, and the streets were filled with a great crowd,
mainly of artisans, apparently very happy and prosperous.
‘Truly,’ said Griffiths, as I pointed this out, ‘one rarely meets with
a beggar in Vienna. The charitable institutions are administered with
much order and much liberality. Public benevolence in particular seems
to be directed with a great sense of justice. The people, having in
general more industrial aptitude and commercial intelligence than the
other populations of Germany, seem to conduct their own affairs very
well, and it may safely be said there is no capital in Europe which
can be compared with Vienna for its sights, and the happy-go-lucky
existence of its inhabitants.’
The spire of the cathedral was standing against the cloudless sky.
‘Don’t you feel tempted,’ said I to Princesse Souvaroff, ‘to be present
at one of the spectacles which just now seem to cause, rightly or
wrongly, a great excitement--I mean a sermon by the Rev. M. Werner?’
The princess had heard the name, and she fell in with my view, anxious,
like ourselves, to know this simple priest, who, amid so many great
interests and varied amusements, had still found a means of arousing
the enthusiasm of the crowd.
Before he had followed in the footsteps of Massillon and Bossuet, M.
Werner had been a Lutheran and a dramatic poet. He was the author of
several successful tragedies, which he had treated in the most romantic
way. Importing into his theatrical compositions all the energy of his
religious convictions, he had made it a point to paint the commencement
of Lutheranism in the most seductive colours. A circumstance both
poetical and romantic marked the history of his conversion to
Catholicism. One evening he was strolling in the Cathedral Square in
Vienna, a prey to one of those sombre reveries so peculiar to German
poets. In his emotion, he stood contemplating that imposing mass and
the Gothic towers, the summits of which are lost in the clouds. All
at once the door opened, and a venerable priest, dressed in white,
and escorted by two young children, appeared on its threshold, and
started for the couch of a moribund to administer the supreme rites of
his faith. A torch left a trembling but luminous trace behind. Struck
by the spectacle, the Lutheran poet stops and wistfully looks after
the vanishing procession. His imagination has been fired, the inmost
recesses of his heart are moved; the grandeur and sublimity of the
Catholic religion are revealed to him by the very simple fact of an
old priest carrying the last sacrament to a man on his deathbed. From
that moment, M. Werner practically became a Catholic. He left Vienna,
went to Rome, and abjured his errors in the Basilica of St. Peter. Then
after having lived for some two years in a monastery at the foot of
Vesuvius, he came back to Germany, and, discarding the theatre for the
pulpit, began to preach. The peculiar nature of his conversion, his
talent as a preacher, apart from his diction, which still showed the
lofty thoughts and the alternately brilliant and sombre colours of his
former poesy--everything, in fact, combined to bring him into relief.
Whenever he was announced to preach, the church could scarcely hold
the crowd of both pious and merely curious. The theatrical directors,
seeing the success of the preacher, conceived the idea of reviving
the tragedies of the poet, and made an excellent thing out of them.
In the morning the public hurried to listen to the words of the new
St. Paul, and in the evening, with minds still full of quotations from
Holy Writ and the Fathers, the same audiences went to applaud _Attila_,
_Luther_, and other works of the converted heretic. Sorely grieved at
this applause, M. Werner felt compelled to denounce from the pulpit his
former errors, which he would fain have destroyed altogether. But the
more he fulminated, the more piquant seemed the contrast, and his dual
success as an author and as a preacher hourly increased.
The crowd in the cathedral was so dense as to make it difficult for us
to find room. There were princes, generals, ‘grandes dames,’ and, what
was not less strange, people belonging to every Christian community.
After a while the apostle appeared, and delivered a long sermon in
German, of which I did not understand a word, though I was probably
not singular in that respect among that particular audience that
morning. In spite of this, the effect seemed no less satisfactory.
The hollow voice of the speaker, his tall, lean, and wan figure, his
deep-set eyes, all seemed to accord with the fane, whose interior
he caused to resound with his voice. The cathedral of St. Stephen,
in fact, artistically sculptured outside, is dark within, and that
obscurity, itself so favourable to meditation, seemed to add something
sepulchral to the utterances of the preacher.
‘Well,’ said the Princesse Hélène to me when we were coming out, ‘what
do you think of the preacher?’
‘I have only been able to judge partly of his eloquence, and I should
think there would be little fault to find with the moral drift of
his discourse, inasmuch as his dogma is no doubt irreproachable.
Nevertheless, his violent tone and gestures do not inspire me with a
desire to see his theatrical works. If you’ll follow my advice, we’ll
go to the theatre of the Court to see _Cinna_ or _Le Misanthrope_.’
At parting, we said a few words about soon meeting again at the
Princesse Marie Esterhazy’s, who was about to give a children’s ball,
which after the many splendid receptions of grown-up people could not
fail to excite great curiosity. Expectation was thoroughly realised,
for the princess’s rooms presented the most animated and graceful
picture. All the young offshoots of the aristocracy had been invited to
take part in the entertainments projected for their edification. The
crowned guests at Vienna (reduced this time to the rôle of spectators),
all the illustrious political and military personages, followed suit
and gathered round the young ones, endeavouring, perhaps, to snatch
an imaginary glimpse of their own youth in the contemplation of the
unaffected gaiety and games. The apartments of the palace had been
so cunningly arranged as to lead the young guests from surprise to
surprise. Jugglers’ _fantoccini_, magic-lanterns succeeded each other.
And when all those joyous pastimes were exhausted, they finally came
upon the big ball-room, where the dancing immediately commenced, not
with strict adherence, perhaps, to the programme, but with all the more
gracefulness and absence from constraint. The costumes, which, as may
easily be imagined, were all magnificent--Turks, knights, Albanians,
mediæval, Louis XIV., Russian, Polish--were worn with comic importance
by those Liliputian highnesses. Amidst all these little angels it was
easy to perceive that the demon of Pride had exercised his dangerous
seductions. One of those female highnesses got into a great rage with a
companion of inferior rank. The quarrel became so embittered, neither
of them being willing to give in, that it occasioned some trouble at
the ball. It reminded me of the anecdote told me by Lord Stair, which
a few years before had vastly amused all England. It was during the
infancy of the Princess of Wales(?). They had given her as a companion
the daughter of a musician who had acquired a great reputation by
playing the organ at St. Paul’s. The children quarrelled about a toy,
of which each wanted to get possession. The small wranglers claimed
privilege in identical terms. ‘How dare you resist me?’ said the
princess. ‘Don’t you know that I am the daughter of the Prince of
Wales?’ ‘What’s that to me? Don’t you know, yourself, that I am the
daughter of the organist of St. Paul’s?’
Dancing was interrupted by the arrival of the Tyrolese singers, who
were then causing a great sensation in Vienna. They were seven fine men
and ten women, and wore the picturesque costume of their mountains. A
few years before, they had come from the Tyrol as simple journeymen
watchmakers, and in the evening they met together to sing their
national songs. The effect was such as to cause immense crowds to
follow them through the streets. The police were obliged to give them
an escort to prevent disorder. The directors of the Wieden Theatre
engaged them to sing on their stage. The enthusiasm was such as to
make them repeat the same airs half-a-dozen times: the highest society
engaged them for their evening parties, and everywhere they were
equally applauded. During the Congress they had returned to the scene
of their first glory.
After that the children went into a room which till then had been
closed to them. A big tree with golden branches was bending beneath all
kinds of toys; amongst others those pretty boxes made out of Vienna
paving-stones. A lottery was drawn. Before the little ones retired,
they danced a waltz. The sovereigns and the whole of the Court seemed
to share those childish joys, and to forget for the moment their own
agitated existence at the sight of so much innocent happiness. Only the
Empress Elizabeth of Russia preserved an appearance of melancholy. One
could perceive that she envied the joys of maternity. Her affection for
the emperor was such that, when she met with the daughter he had had by
Madame Narischkine, she smothered the child with caresses, trying to
cheat her own aspirations as wife and mother.
To whatever political opinion one may belong, one is always glad to
be able to speak of those who have occupied the world’s stage. Thanks
to the Congress of Vienna, it has been vouchsafed to me to approach
some of the men who have left their names on the pages of contemporary
history; hence the anecdotes which follow.
One bright February day, Zibin, Luchesini, and I were wandering through
the residence of the Duc de Saxe-Teschen. Among the mass of precious
objects there is a collection of about twelve thousand original
drawings, and a hundred and thirty thousand engravings after artists
of various countries. We were courteously received by M. Lefèvre, the
custodian of these treasures, of which, he told us, he was going to
publish a description in chronological order, according to the schools.
At the end of a gallery arranged to hold these rarities, we caught
sight of the Archduke Albert, who was doing the honours to Emperor
Alexander, accompanied by General Ouwaroff and Prince Eugène. We drew
near as they were examining a collection of military maps, the most
complete in Europe.
‘Cities have been destroyed,’ said Archduke Albert. ‘Empires have
toppled over. Tactics have changed, but military positions remain the
same.’ He added: ‘Several comparisons prove that the same chances have
often produced the same results.’ Nevertheless, it was on the scene
of the last war that the attention of his guests seemed particularly
riveted. Nothing equals in interest the remarks of Emperor Alexander on
inspecting those plans of battles.
‘There,’ he said, placing his finger on a certain spot, ‘this or that
corps made this or that mistake. This or that battery took up a wrong
position--this or that charge decided the action. Here, at Austerlitz,
we might have retrieved the game, but Kutusoff stopped too far away
from Mortier, and those frozen lakes of Augezd and of Monitz, in giving
way under twenty thousand men and fifty pieces of artillery, completed
our disaster.’
‘Nevertheless,’ said Prince Eugène, ‘we should perhaps have lost the
battle if the emperor had attacked a few hours earlier. The chances of
war are determined by very small incidents.’
‘There, at Friedland,’ Alexander went on, everything was lost by a
false cavalry manœuvre, of which they took advantage, and by the
retreat of Korsakoff on Friedland. Consequently, the whole of his
_corps d’armée_ was surrounded, and in endeavouring to find an issue
across the waters of the Alle, it found its death. Take it all in all,
we fought well, but we had to deal with cleverer players than we were.’
He passed from the campaigns of Italy to those of Germany, tactfully
avoiding speaking of the disastrous Russian war.
The emperor and Prince Eugène vied with each other in courtesy; the
archduke put an end to the subject by showing them a descriptive
catalogue compiled by himself, which, despite his great age, he
continually revised. To enumerate the treasures contained in this
gallery, one ought to have copied that catalogue from beginning to end.
Some of the drawings dated from the year 1420: there were more than
a hundred and fifty, many of them by Albert Dürer, and the majority
drawn with the pen, the figures richly coloured, especially some birds
of an admirable finish. A still more particular interest attached
to the engravings of this illustrious master, inasmuch as they once
constituted his own collection. The duke pointed out to us several
drawings by Raphael, and fifty sketches by Claude Lorrain.
The emperor came up to us, and spoke very kindly to Zibin, and
presented him to Prince Eugène as the youngest Knight of the Order of
St. George. Having overheard the name of Luchesini, he asked him if it
was his father who had been plenipotentiary at the celebrated Congress
of Sistow under Frederick II.
‘Yes, sire.’
‘And where is he now?’
‘On his estates at Lucca.’
‘If he writes his recollections,’ remarked Alexander, ‘they will be
very interesting, for he has seen and observed much.’
We afterwards paid a visit to the sumptuously decorated apartments.
In one of these a pan-harmonium, composed of a hundred and fifty
wind-instruments, played symphonies and marches, accompanied with
admirable precision by an automatic trumpet. We left the archduke with
his illustrious visitors and went to the Belvedere in order to see a
collection of pictures which had been largely increased by Joseph II.
at the suppression of some convents. The palace of Belvedere requires
no description. Its curator, M. Fugger, was kind enough to serve as
guide, and specially pointed out to us the Titians, Rubenses, and
Vandykes. In the evening we went as usual to the Comtesse Fuchs’s.
There I met Prince Eugène, and the conversation turned on the treasures
collected at Malmaison, which were thoroughly appreciated by Prince
Gargarine and Colonel Brozin, who had become acquainted with them
during Alexander’s several visits to Josephine.