My dear Contessina,
It is now a fortnight since I came here. I am occupying a charming
villa situated on the gulf and giving a view of the whole place, as
well as of Livadia, the _palais_ of the Empress, on the mountain
opposite me. Last Sunday, after mass, I was invited to breakfast at
their Majesties’, and there met the Grand Duke and Grand Duchess
Mikhaïl,—he is governor of Caucasia,—the Queen of Greece, and others.
I have discovered that the Grand Duchess Maria Alexandrovna, the
Emperor’s only daughter, has grown considerably and is prettier than
when I saw her last. Her fiancé, Prince Alfred, is expected here next
week. Niko and André are in Mingrelia, where they are anxiously
expecting me. Salomé is coming to Yalta on the 24th; she will spend
some time with the Princess Orbeliani,[18] my cousin’s widow, who has
a little estate near by, and will then join us in Mingrelia. I leave
Yalta on the 3d of October and reach Poti four days later. Adieu,
dearest Contessina; I wish you as much happiness and good fortune as
you deserve.
Your very devoted
Ekaterina
In the spring of 1874 the princess with great delight informed me that
her son was betrothed to the daughter of Count Adlerberg, a lifelong
friend of the Tsar’s.
One of the next letters brought the description of the wedding, and in
one that came still later the arrival of the young couple at Gordi, the
summer residence of the Mingrelian family, was depicted. I insert the
description here, for it gives a vivid picture of the country in which
later I was destined to spend so many years with my husband.
The journey of the newly married couple went off in excellent shape. A
special ship was put at their service to bring them directly across
from Odessa to Poti, and from there a special train brought them to
Kutais. The whole trip was one endless ovation. The inhabitants lined
the way, and at all the stations they were received by the princes,
nobles, and residents of the district with songs, shouts of joy, and
salvos of musketry. They were compelled to stop and repair to floral
temples where refreshments were ready, and there again began songs,
dances, and other diversions.
At Kutais the travelers remained two days, where the banquets, balls,
and receptions threatened to last forever, so that the young couple
had to steal quietly away in order at length to reach Gordi.
At the entrance of the mountain pass is a bridge which leads over a
rushing stream. There the carriages are left, since the heights can be
reached only on horseback or in palanquins.
So, as soon as the equipages were emptied, they all crossed the
carpeted bridge, which was roofed with a continuous arbor of flowers
and adorned with a triumphal arch marking the boundary of
Mingrelia.[19] Thereupon they took their way to a tastefully decorated
pavilion, where the young couple were received by a delegation of my
son’s officials and servants, as well as by all the princes and nobles
of the region. After the health of the newly wedded couple had been
toasted, all those who had been on horseback mounted so as to make a
cordon around Mary’s palanquin, and the imposing procession started
out along the road which leads up the mountain for seven kilometers.
At the first cannon shot which announced their arrival I went with my
suite to the balcony of their dwelling, where I first received the
cavalcade of the prince from the Letchgum, who, under the leadership
of Prince Gregor, Niko’s uncle, were riding ahead of the newcomers;
then I caught sight of the young couple, who, amid the ringing of all
the bells, the music of a march played by the military band, and the
roar of cannon echoing from the mountains, approached and received
from the steward at the head of his people the bread and salt in
accordance with the custom of the country.
Then they hastened up to me and knelt before me, to receive my
blessing, with the holy picture, on the threshold of their new
dwelling. This moment was so affecting and so solemn that the tumult
of the billowing throng suddenly changed to the deepest silence. Tears
stood in the eyes of all; Mary showed herself especially moved, so
that I had to conduct her into the house to give her time to recover.
At last we proceeded to the church, where the _Te Deum_ was
celebrated, and the archimandrite, together with my almoner, delivered
appropriate addresses. After the religious solemnities were finished I
conducted my daughter-in-law into the great hall and there presented
her with my gift, a parure of diamonds. As regards the dwelling that I
have prepared for them, I can truly call it a jewel casket.
We rested for a while; then the festivities began, and lasted till
late at night. Orchestral performances, national songs and dances,
firing of guns, games, athletic sports, alternated. The number of
guests came to three hundred, of whom a part ate under the great trees
in the park. On the next day it began again, for we celebrated Mary’s
birthday; and for this occasion I had prepared an evening
surprise—fireworks, and an illumination of the mountains with Bengal
lights, which furnished a magical spectacle.
Whenever I received such a letter I read it aloud to the Suttner family,
and it was taken as a settled thing that as soon as the castle was
completed I was to go to the Caucasus. This work was continually
delayed, but we were perfectly satisfied that it was. Life, alternating
between Harmannsdorf and Vienna, was so happy! Harmannsdorf, especially,
offered us a whole succession of delights. During the hunting season
came a throng of guests, and there were dancing and theatricals. In the
park was a large hall with stage and dressing rooms. There we performed
various dramas and comedies, which were witnessed not only by the
Harmannsdorf public and the inhabitants of the neighboring castles, but
also by the peasants of the surrounding villages, who came flocking in
and filled the theater. Then the harvest and vintage festivals, the
excursions to the neighboring Stockern, where also a jolly throng of
young people sojourned, and above all the favorite donkey-wagon parties
and the stolen moments of confidential tête-à-têtes. The only
dissonances that made their appearance in the house sprang from
unfortunate business transactions. On the estate of Zogelsdorf, which
belonged to Harmannsdorf, were quarries which were operated actively but
unprofitably. The new Vienna museums were built from the Zogelsdorf
stone, and the statues of Hercules that adorn the Burgtor were chiseled
from it; yet a dishonest overseer was the cause of this business
resulting in serious losses instead of profit, But the burden of this
anxiety rested more on the parents; the children heard little about it
and did not take it to heart. The brilliancy of our outward life was not
diminished, and our gay and joyous activities went on as usual. Artur
Gundaccar and I had sad moments only when we could not succeed in
banishing the thought of our approaching separation....
“Oh, no more of that,” one or the other of us would say after such an
outburst of grief; “nothing endures forever; let us thank fate for
granting us this bit of heaven.”
I confided this love story to my mother, who had remained at Graz with
her sister. Of course, she urged me either to insist on a marriage or to
leave the house; but I quieted her.
At last, however, his mother too began to have her suspicions. With icy
coldness but with all delicacy she gave me to understand this. And I had
always known that on that side sanction for marriage was not to be
expected. I had not thought of it myself either. I saw the
unreasonableness of such a match. Absolutely penniless, seven years
older ... and he still without employment, also without means, but
qualified and assured to make a brilliant marriage—all the girls were
crazy about him—should I stand in the way of his future? That had never
been my plan—there must one day be a parting, and now that the secret
was half disclosed the moment had come for me to tear myself away. I
mustered up all my courage and said to the baroness: “I am going to
leave the house. I cannot go to Mingrelia yet, the castle will not be
finished for another year. Could you not give me a recommendation to
London? I should like to find a position there in the meantime—far from
Vienna.”
“That is right, my dear child,” she exclaimed warmly, “I understand
you.... See, in to-day’s paper I have found an advertisement for
something which would perhaps suit you; would you like to answer it?”
The advertisement read: “A very wealthy, cultured, elderly gentleman,
living in Paris, desires to find a lady also of mature years, familiar
with languages, as secretary and manager of his household.”
So I wrote offering my services, and received a reply signed with the
then to me unknown name Alfred Nobel.
I showed the letter to the baroness; she made inquiries and learned that
the person in question was the famous and universally respected inventor
of dynamite. Mr. Nobel and I exchanged several letters. He wrote
cleverly and wittily, but in a melancholy tone. The man seemed to feel
unhappy, to be a misanthrope, with the widest culture, with deeply
philosophical views. He, a Swede, whose second mother tongue was
Russian, wrote in German, French, and English with equal correctness and
elegance. My letters too, for whatever reason, seemed to have a very
stimulating effect on him. After a brief delay an agreement was reached:
I was to take the position. The day of my departure for Paris was set.
Now for saying farewell, separating from what is dearest ... _Scheiden
tut weh_: the truth of that popular proverb I experienced.
I can still call up from the past those hours of parting. It was on the
evening before I was to leave. I had been for several days at the house
of an acquaintance in Vienna, to make my preparations. The last day
Artur also came in from Harmannsdorf to be with me for the last time. My
hostess left us alone—she knew that we still had much to say to each
other. But it was hard to talk. We clung in a close embrace and wept.
“To part!” Is it possible? Have we the strength for it? It must be—what
could we do if I remained? Ah, it would have been too beautiful ... it
could not be.... And again two salt-tasting kisses, again sobs and new
laments, new grief-trembling words of endearment. Before he went he
knelt before me and humbly kissed the hem of my gown:
“Matchless, royally generous-hearted woman—I thank thee, thank thee from
the bottom of my heart! Through thy love thou hast taught me to know a
happiness which shall consecrate all my life. Farewell!”
XVI
THE ZENITH OF HAPPINESS
Arrival in Paris · Alfred Nobel’s personality · Unendurable agony of
separation · Two dispatches · A plan of action · Arrival at Vienna ·
Blissful meeting · At last and forever united
I reached Paris early in the morning. Mr. Nobel came to meet me at the
station and took me to the Grand Hôtel on the Boulevard des Capucins,
where rooms had been engaged for me. He left me at the door and said he
would call a few hours later after I was rested. I could not as yet take
up my quarters in his little _palais_ in the Rue Malakoff, because the
suite that I was to occupy was just being carpeted and furnished for me;
so for the time I should have to stay on at the hotel.
Alfred Nobel made a very pleasing impression. He was not indeed an
“elderly gentleman,” as the advertisement gave us to understand and as
we all imagined him, gray-haired and feeble—not at all. Born in 1833, he
was then forty-three years old, rather below the medium height, with
dark, full beard, with features neither ugly nor handsome; his
expression rather gloomy, softened only by kindly blue eyes; in his
voice there was a melancholy alternating with a satirical tone. Sad and
sarcastic, such was his nature. Was that the reason Byron was his
favorite poet?
After a few hours, then, when I had rested and refreshed myself and sent
a dispatch to Harmannsdorf, he came to see me. The letters that we had
written to each other caused us to meet on a different footing from that
of entire strangers, and the conversation was immediately put on an
animated and stimulating basis. After _déjeuner_, which we took in the
dining-room downstairs, we got into his carriage and drove through the
Champs-Élysées. Then he showed me his house, and the rooms that were
reserved for me.
But those rooms I never occupied. Before they were ready I had left
Paris again. This is the way it came about. I was unhappy—ever so
unhappy. Homesickness, the bitterness of longing, the agony of
separation, made me suffer as I had not thought that any one could
suffer. Dispatches from Artur and letters from him and his sisters came
speeding to me every day. The sisters wrote that no one would know
Artur, that he never spoke, that he seemed to be suffering from
melancholia. When I was alone all I could do was to weep or write home
or groan with heartache.
When I was with Alfred Nobel I was for the moment diverted, for he could
chat and tell stories and philosophize so entertainingly that his
conversation quite captivated the mind. To talk with him about the world
and humanity, about art and life, about the problems of time and
eternity, was an intense intellectual enjoyment. He kept aloof from
social life: certain forms of shallowness, of falsity, of frivolity,
filled him with wrath and disgust. He was full of faith in the abstract
ideal of a coming loftier humanity,—“when once people come into the
world with better-developed brains,”—but full of distrust of the
majority of the men of his day, for he had had to make the acquaintance
of so many low, selfish, insincere characters. He was distrustful also
of himself, and bashful even to the point of timidity. He regarded
himself as repulsive; believed that he was incapable of inspiring
sympathetic feelings; was always afraid that people were merely
flattering him because of his enormous wealth. That was doubtless the
reason why he had never married. His studies, his books, his
experiments,—those were what filled his life. He was also a writer and
poet, but never published any of his poetical works. A philosophical
poem a hundred pages long, written in the English language, he gave me
to read in manuscript; I found it simply splendid.
He must soon have discovered that I was burdened with a secret sorrow.
“Are you fancy-free?” he asked me one day.
“No,” I answered honestly.
He pressed me further, and I told the whole story of my love and my
renunciation.
“You have acted bravely; but be completely courageous, break off the
correspondence also—then let a little time pass ... a new life, new
impressions—and you will both forget—he perhaps even sooner than you!”
Break off the correspondence? I could not; it was my consolation. What
was I to do in my lonely hours if I did not write to my dear one—tell
him everything minutely, all my experiences and all my feelings?
Alfred Nobel could give me only one or two hours a day, for he was tied
to his work. He had another new invention in mind.
“I wish I could produce a substance or a machine,” he said to me, “of
such frightful efficacy for wholesale devastation that wars should
thereby become altogether impossible.”
About a week after my arrival Mr. Nobel was obliged to go for a short
time to Sweden, where a dynamite factory was being established; the king
himself had summoned him.
I was now quite alone. The yearning for the man of my heart grew beyond
endurance. Then I received two dispatches. One was from
Stockholm,—“Arrived safely, shall be back in Paris in a week”; and the
other from Vienna,—“I cannot live without thee.”
And my soul gave a cry, “Nor I without thee!” and I had to act
accordingly. Another sleepless night, during which a plan of action was
matured, and on the next day I wrote to Stockholm that it was impossible
under the circumstances for me to take the position in the Rue Malakoff.
I thanked him for all the confidence and friendliness which had been
shown me, but I must return to Vienna.
I owned a valuable diamond cross, an inheritance from my guardian
Fürstenberg; I went out to dispose of this, and the price which I
received for it was sufficient to cover the hotel charges, to buy a
ticket for the next express train for Vienna, and to leave me some ready
money. I acted as if I were in a dream, as if under irresistible
compulsion. I did have flashes of consciousness that this was folly,
that perhaps I was running away from a good fortune and into the arms of
a misfortune; but I could not, could not do otherwise, and the bliss
which I expected to feel in the instant of meeting again outweighed
everything else that might come, even were it death.
I had not announced my coming—I wanted to take him by surprise. I drove
from the station to a hotel, and sent to the Canovagasse a note in a
disguised hand, begging Herr Baron Artur to come to the Hotel Metropole,
Room No. 20, where a lady from Paris had a message from Countess Bertha
to give him.
He could be there in half an hour. With throbbing heart I listened to
every step in the corridor. I had not long to listen till I recognized
the beloved footfall; there was a knock at the door; I tried to say
“Come in,” but my voice failed me. Nevertheless the door opened and—it
was he!