Amongst the personages of the day we come upon one class peculiarly
characteristic of this period, namely, the converts. In an anxiously
religious age following upon one of little faith this class was
inevitably a numerous one. Laharpe's conversion during the very course
of the Revolution had excited much attention. Chateaubriand himself
was a convert. It is possibly the converts who help us to the clearest
understanding of the nature of the new spirit, for in them we see it
striving with and overcoming the old. The convert is, moreover, always
ardent; he is full of his new belief, and consequently has, or affects,
a peculiarly expressive countenance. The rule that the spirit of a
period mirrors itself typically in that period's leading characters
holds doubly good in the case of the individual whose character it is
to be converted, especially if that individual is a woman. History
contains no record of a woman, with her receptive nature, having led
her age onward to new development, but some woman generally presents us
with a specially marked type of the character of her age. The _émigrés_
group themselves round Madame de Staël, the leaders of Romanticism
rally round Caroline Schlegel, and the age of the rehabilitation of
religion finds poetically pious expression in Madame de Krüdener.
In Madame de Staël's _Delphine_ there is a scene in which the
heroine enchants a large company with her graceful and expressive
performance of a certain foreign dance, the shawl-dance. This scene
had a foundation of reality. Her beautiful dancing was one of the
many things for which the young and charming Baroness de Krüdener was
remarkable. In _Delphine_ we read: "Never did grace and beauty produce
a more remarkable effect upon a numerous assembly. This foreign dance
has a charm of which nothing we are accustomed to see can give any
idea. It is an altogether Asiatic mixture of indolence and vivacity,
of melancholy and gaiety.... Sometimes when the music became softer
Delphine walked a few steps with head bent and arms crossed, as if
some memory or some regret had suddenly intermingled itself with the
joyousness of a festival; but, soon recommencing her light and lively
dance, she enveloped herself in an Indian shawl, which, showing the
contours of her figure and falling back with her long hair, made of her
a perfectly enchanting picture." The word _Asiatic_ is unmistakably
the characterising word. In 1803 Joubert writes of Madame de Krüdener:
"She is charming, with something Asiatic about her--nature exaggerated.
Such extreme tenderness of feeling can hardly exist without a touch of
extravagance."
Julie Barbe (Juliane Barbara) de Vietinghof was born in 1764 at Riga,
in Livonia. Her education was conducted half on French, half on German
lines. Her father was a distinguished, sagacious man of the world, a
philosopher and Freemason, an art-lover and a Mæcenas; her mother,
a sensible, conscientious woman, had been brought up on strict,
old-fashioned Lutheran principles. Both parents belonged to the highest
class of the old German-Russian aristocracy of the Baltic Provinces,
and were connected with the Russian court.
The first teacher who made a real impression upon their young daughter,
and whose instructions powerfully influenced her future, was the famous
Parisian ballet-dancer, Vestris. At the age of eighteen Julie married
Baron de Krüdener, a Russian diplomatist, a man fifteen years her
senior, who had already been married twice, and had been divorced from
both his wives. Her heart had no share in this union; the match was
considered an excellent one, her vanity was gratified, and she had no
manner of objection to her husband. He seems to have been a sensible,
worthy, well-educated man, cultivated and calm, by no means devoid of
feeling, but both by nature and from his position wedded to all the
conventions of society. The Graces had not stood by his cradle.
It was into the most brilliant society of the eighteenth century that
Baron de Krüdener introduced his wife. At the time of his marriage he
was Russian envoy in Kurland, and immediately after the honeymoon the
couple proceeded to Mitau, where Krüdener negotiated the incorporation
of the Duchy with Russia, and where they were honoured with a visit
from the Czar (Paul I.). Amateur theatricals provided the young wife
with her chief occupation and interest. She went on acting until almost
immediately before the birth of her only son. A few weeks after this
event the young mother was presented to the Empress Catherine at St.
Petersburg. Thence Krüdener was sent as Russian ambassador to Venice;
the most dissipated town of the day, where his wife lived in a whirl of
gaiety.
In Venice a gifted young enthusiast, Alexander Stakjev, her husband's
private secretary, fell violently in love with Madame de Krüdener,
but so great was his esteem for Krüdener and for the object of his
attachment that not a syllable crossed his lips. So well did he
preserve his secret that Krüdener took him with him when he was
transferred to Copenhagen in 1784. In the woods of Frederiksborg
Juliane and her adorer roved about admiring the beauties of nature in
company. It was to the husband that Stakjev at last naïvely confessed
his passion. Krüdener was imprudent enough to show the letter to his
wife, who now for the first time became certain of the nature of
Stakjev's feeling for her, a feeling which she did not return, but
which, with innate coquetry, she had encouraged. The knowledge that
it was in her power to call forth such a passion had an extraordinary
effect upon her. From this moment it was the one dream of her life to
be adored. Stakjev took his departure, but all that had been fermenting
in Julie's young heart now forced its way to the surface. Possessed
by an ardent desire to love and be loved, she had first attempted to
find the ideal of her dreams in her husband. When he, more the father
than the lover, only tried to keep her extravagant feeling in check,
she fell back upon herself, and grieved at being what is now called
misunderstood, but what she called "not felt." Stakjev's passion rushed
past her like a breath of fire and thawed the inward cold which, as
it were, held her emotions ice-bound. They now demanded an outlet. In
Copenhagen, which, of all the places she had lived in, seemed to her
the most unbearable--it is to be remembered that this was a hundred
years ago--she threw herself into a whirl of trivial social amusements,
which engrossed her time and mind, and brought in their train much
indiscriminate and reckless coquetry. Shattered nerves and an affection
of the lungs were the result of all the balls and theatricals, and she
was ordered to spend the winter of 1789 in the South.
Instead of making her way to some quiet sunny spot on the shores of the
Mediterranean, the lady whose health had completely broken down under
the strain of town life hastened to Paris and there revived. In this
intellectual city she is suddenly struck by her own ignorance, acquires
a taste for reading, or rather for writers, and procures introductions
to the great authors of the day--Barthélémy, the author of _Le jeune
Anarcharse_, at whose reception into the Academy she was present, and
Bernardin de Saint-Pierre, for whose _Paul et Virginie_ she had always
had the greatest admiration. She makes a cult of Saint-Pierre and
nature, witnesses the fall of the Bastille, but at the same time runs
up an account of some 20,000 francs at her milliner's. When she is in
the south of France, a young officer, M. de Frègeville, falls in love
with her. Less inexperienced now than she had been in Copenhagen, she
yields, after a struggle, to his persuasions. He induces her to spend
another winter in France, in spite of a promise given to her husband,
and to return to Paris instead of to Copenhagen in the following year
(1791).
After Louis XVI's unsuccessful attempt at flight, Paris was no longer
a safe place of residence for Madame de Krüdener. She made her escape
from France with M. de Frègeville, who was disguised as her lackey,
spent some weeks at Brussels, and then travelled by way of Cassel and
Hanover to Hamburg, still accompanied and protected by her lover in
his character of lackey. At Hamburg she was met by her husband, but
as she even there refused to part from her favourite servant, there
was a violent scene. Krüdener advised her to go for a time to her
mother at Riga, and thither too she was accompanied by the disguised
French officer. Her mother received her most cordially. In 1792, when
she and her mother went to St. Petersburg to see her dying father,
she again met her husband, who had come there to raise the money he
required to procure a divorce. She threw herself at his feet, was
forgiven, and made promises which she did not keep. For the next few
years she wandered about Europe, separated from her husband and from De
Frègeville, but living the life of the dissolute, gay lady of the last
decade of the eighteenth century. Even in his most private letters of
this year her husband never mentions her name.
After meeting her old adorer, Stakjev, at St. Petersburg, Madame de
Krüdener went to Riga, where she remained for some time, then to
Berlin, and thence to Leipzig, where she spent great part of 1793.
From Leipzig she returned to Riga, but almost at once finding that
town unbearable, retired to the family property of Kosse. Here she
formed great plans; it was her intention to become the benefactress
of her serfs, "to educate the Esthonian people and make them happy."
In 1795 she stayed for a few months at Riga, and then went to Berlin.
In 1796 she lived first at Lausanne, then at Geneva with her friend,
Abbé Becker. She frequented the society of the French _émigrés_, was
perfectly idolised, and went from fête to fête dancing the shawl-dance,
which for a time was the great passion of her now mature womanhood.
When young girls began to dance the shawl-dance too, she went off
with her friend, the _émigré_ De Vallin, to Munich. After De Vallin's
compulsory return to France, and Becker's death, Madame de Krüdener
suddenly began to long for her husband and her step-child, but all that
came of this was a flying visit to Munich, where she had the pleasure
of making the acquaintance of this step-child, now a grown woman. After
a stay at Teplitz, she returned to Munich, but was presently at Teplitz
again, and thence went to Berlin, where, in 1800, M. de Krüdener took
up his residence as Russian ambassador. During these years of wandering
she had probably changed her lovers even more frequently than her place
of residence.
The winter of 1800-1801 she spent in Berlin as Russian ambassadress;
but her unpunctuality and general eccentricity made her anything but
a favourite at the well-ordered court of William III. Social success
being her one desire, she tried, now that she was no longer young, to
attract attention by the audacity of her toilettes. She had never been
a beauty, but her expressive features and her gracefulness had always
been much admired. The simplicity which had made her so irresistible
ten years earlier, had now given place to a desire to create a
sensation by a daring style of dress, or rather undress. She covered
her still beautiful hair with a wig, according to the fashion of the
day. Her features and complexion had lost the freshness of youth.
It was at this time that her restless heart, which still craved for
strong emotions, began to open itself to the influence of religious
fanaticism. In a letter to her most intimate friend she writes: "Shall
I confess something to you? It is in all humility of heart I write it.
You know that I am not arrogant--how can a Christian be? But I believe
that God has deigned to bless my husband ever since my return. There
is no imaginable benefit or favour that is not bestowed on him. Why
should I not believe that the prayer of a pious heart which simply
and trustingly beseeches God to help it to contribute to another's
happiness is certain to be answered?"
Why not, indeed? We should willingly believe that it was the presence
of Madame de Krüdener which induced Providence to shower orders and
distinctions upon the Baron if we did not happen to know for a fact
that it was another, less romantic reason which led the Emperor Paul
thus to favour him. The facts of the case are as follows: In the
middle of an entertainment which the Baron was giving in Berlin to the
Prussian royal family and the Grand Duchess Helena, a despatch arrived
from the autocrat of all the Russias, commanding Krüdener instantly
to declare war with Prussia. Their Majesties were still in the house.
Instead of breaking up the fête by displaying this Gorgon's head to his
guests, the Russian ambassador calmly let them dance on; and knowing,
like the sagacious politician he was, how imprudent and how fatal
for Russia such a war would be, he wrote a dissuasive letter to his
Emperor, though well aware that, in all human probability, life-long
exile in Siberia would be his reward. Naturally he mentioned nothing of
all this to his wife. The improbable happened. Paul allowed himself to
be dissuaded, and, full of admiration for his minister's courage and
wisdom, overwhelmed him with proofs of his favour.--So we see there is
a different explanation from Madame de Krüdener's.
From this time onwards her letters become ever more pious and edifying.
She now writes of religion as her panacea against melancholy, and tells
of the thousand sources of happiness which it offers.
In the midst of all this comes a new love affair and another separation
from her husband. In the summer of 1801 we find her at Teplitz. Then
she pays a long visit to Madame de Staël at Coppet, where the desire to
make a sensation as an authoress is aroused in her, and she dashes off
three short stories and the beginning of a novel. To make this last as
perfect as possible, she goes to Paris to seek advice from Bernardin
de Saint-Pierre and make Chateaubriand's acquaintance. Chateaubriand
gives her a copy of his _Génie du Christianisme_ before he has even
distributed his presentation copies, and she is not a little proud
when Madame de Staël finds this book upon her table. But she makes
such indiscreet, unscrupulous use of Chateaubriand's confidences that
he is estranged from her for years, a complete breach being only with
difficulty avoided.
She is surprised in Paris by the news of Krüdener's death. She shuts
herself up, full of grief and remorse. It had been "her dream to
return to him once more, ease the burden of years for him, and requite
his unending generosity." It was not long, however, before Madame de
Krüdener issued from her retirement. In her first short stories she
had imitated Saint-Pierre's style. Now her novel was ready. She called
it _Valérie_; her own youthful love affair with Alexander Stakjev had
furnished her with the plot. It is a well-written, sympathetic story,
perceptibly influenced by _Werther_. But Madame de Krüdener was not
satisfied with writing a novel; she wished her novel to be read and
talked of. The manner in which she set herself to ensure that it should
be, shows that at this period she had not, in spite of her attempts
to do so, altogether renounced the world. She was not contented with
the usual stratagems, such as getting one critic after another to
look through the story in manuscript, reading the whole or parts to
select companies of friends, &c, &c,; no--she prepared its success in
a more determined and thorough manner. Her first step was to write as
follows to a friend in Paris, Dr. Gay, an unknown and vain member of
the medical profession, in whose career she had promised to interest
herself:--
" ... I have another favour to ask of you. Will you get some clever
verse-writer to address a little poem to our friend Sidonie (Sidonie
is the heroine in Madame de Krüdener's first short story). I need
hardly ask you to be sure to see that this poem is in as good taste as
possible. The heading is simply to be _À Sidonie_. Sidonie is to be
asked: 'Why do you live in the country, depriving us by this retired
life of your charm and your wit? Does the sensation you have created
not call you to Paris? Only there will your charms and your talents be
admired as they deserve. Your fascinating dancing has been described,
but who is capable of describing all your attractions?' My friend,
it is to your friendship I confide all this; I feel quite ashamed on
Sidonie's behalf, for I know her modesty. You, too, know that she is
not vain. I have more serious reasons than the gratification of petty
vanity for asking you to have these verses written, and for my other
actions. Be sure to say that she lives in great retirement, and that
only in Paris is it possible to meet with appreciation. Take care to
conceal that you have anything to do with this matter. Have the verses
printed in the evening newspaper. It is quite true that Sidonie's
dancing is described in _Delphine_. Read the book; it will interest
you. But remember, it is not to be mentioned in the verses that it is
in _Delphine_ she is described. It is only the heading, _À Sidonie_,
that is to give any clue to the person to whom they are addressed.
Be so kind as to pay the newspaper. I hope to be able to explain my
reasons to you. Send me the number containing the verses as soon as it
comes out. If the paper will not accept the verses, or if there is to
be too long a delay in their appearance, send me the manuscript and I
shall have them inserted in a newspaper here. You will be doing a great
favour to your friend, and she will explain to you by word of mouth why
she has asked it. You know her timidity, her love of solitude, and her
dislike of praise; but it is an important service you are doing her."
A fortnight later we have another letter on the same subject, another
request to know if Dr. Gay has read _Delphine_: "Madame de Staël
told Sidonie that she would describe her dancing, and you will find
the description in the first volume. Many people think that she has
described Sidonie's face, way of speaking, and lively imagination,
and mixed up with this her own religious and political opinions; for
Sidonie is _profoundly religious_, and takes very little interest in
politics." On this follow more directions with regard to the poem:
"It must tell that her beautiful dancing has been described, without
intimating by whom--must simply say: 'An able pen has depicted your
dancing; the success you have met with everywhere is well known; your
charms have been sung as well as your wit, and yet you persistently
conceal them from the world. A solitary life in your home is your
choice. There you seek happiness in religion, in nature, in study, &c,
&c, &c.' This, dear friend, is what I want; I shall give you my reasons
by-and-by."
The address to Sidonie arrives; Madame de Krüdener acknowledges its
reception: "It is only fair, dear friend, that you should have a copy
of the charming elegy you have written for me, so I herewith send you
one; I wish to keep yours myself."
The elegy runs: "What is it you seek in your solitude? Paris, bewitched
by the magic emanating from you, by your grace, by the brilliant
talents with which Heaven has gifted you, surely offers you hearts
enough, hearts which your gentle spirit has enchained. We saw you, we
flocked round you on that day when you exercised the seductive power of
grace and the constraining power of beauty, the day when, assured of
the palm of genius, you did not despise the praises offered to talent.
You even smiled upon a certain ingenious versifier who ventured to
blend his weak voice with the chorus of the sages and to sketch your
magic dance in words. But the memory of those festive days has been
effaced by the thunderbolt which has fallen from heaven upon you! Do
not our hearts share in your melancholy reflections? Have they not,
devoutly silent, sighed with you in your sorrow? We would not offend
you with impotent consolation, that paraded offering to a paraded
sorrow--we heard you sigh, and we sighed with you. We sighed with you,
and you flee from us! Why do you flee? We are decked in mourning weeds;
the arts keep silence; love hides itself, and with it hide all its
attendant gaieties, that of yore were your joy and your glory."
There is as much again, but this is enough. Madame de Krüdener's letter
ends: "I send you this elegy, the antique colouring (!) and beauty of
which I admire. I appropriate nothing in it except the sorrow, which
you have correctly observed in me and have desired to alleviate. I
have much more than this to say to you, dear Dr. Gay, much that is
more flattering for you, but I cannot find room for it here, can only
with a grateful heart offer my thanks to your art, your noble art, so
beneficial to humanity (!)."
Dr. Gay then proceeded to rhyme his prose. Madame de Krüdener writes to
him: "Sidonie has requested me to convey her heartfelt thanks to the
kindest of friends. The verses are charming. They are already in print.
What an enviably gifted man he is who wrote them! How easy it is to see
that he is Sidonie's friend! How well he paints what he desires us to
see! In every stroke one feels that it is the soul which has wielded
the brush--and what a noble soul!... Sidonie has also received an elegy
in prose, which you must see, and which she considers exceedingly
beautiful. What talent is displayed in the noble, simple style, and
how one is drawn to the mind which speaks such a language! A few
alterations have been made, very few; you have been most successful in
doing what was desired!"
We observe that Sidonie was not content with writing out a rough draft
of her own encomiums, but that she also corrected the fair copy. Such
proceedings require no comment. The indefatigable doctor composes
more poems, and receives requests to plague this, that, and the other
critic. No importuning was required in the case of the pious historian,
Michaud, who spent thirty years of his life in writing the history
of the Crusades; it was rendered superfluous by the intimacy of his
relations with the authoress; his criticism was an enthusiastic one.
At last Madame de Krüdener is able to write to a friend: "My health
is much improved; I have been at balls eight nights running without
being the worse for it. What happiness! I cannot tell you, my friend,
how much I am made of; poems are showered on me, I am overwhelmed with
attentions, people dispute the privilege of a word with me. It is a
thousand times more than I deserve; but _Providence loves to overwhelm
its children with benefits_, even when they do not deserve them....
I should look upon it as cowardice not to publish a work which in my
opinion is a useful one; therefore I regard the journey to Paris in the
light of _a duty_; for my heart, my imagination, everything, draws me
to the Lake of Geneva."
She went to Paris, and _Valérie_ was published in December 1803. All
Madame de Krüdener's guns were primed, ready to salute the book.
Not one missed fire. All the bells of criticism tolled. Like a good
general, she was on the field of battle herself. She drove incognito
from one fashionable shop to another, asking for hats, or scarfs, or
feathers, or wreaths, or ribbons _à la Valérie_. When this elegant
and still beautiful lady drove up in her carriage and asked with such
assurance for these articles of her own invention, the shopkeepers
did their utmost to come to an understanding of what she wanted and
to provide it. And when astonished shop-girls denied the existence of
such wares, Madame de Krüdener smiled so kindly and pitied them so much
because they did not know _Valérie_ that she quickly transformed them
into eager canvassers of readers for her book. She drove on with her
purchases to other shops, and in a few days had produced amongst the
shopkeepers such a furious competition in articles _à la Valérie_ that
her friends, when they went at her instigation to ask for these wares,
became innocent accomplices in her stratagem, and were constrained to
bear witness to her triumph.
Now Madame de Krüdener writes to her friend: "The success of _Valérie_
is complete and unprecedented. An acquaintance said to me the other
day: 'There is something _supernatural_ about such success.' Yes, my
friend, it is the will of Heaven that this purer morality should be
diffused throughout France, where as yet it is not so well understood."
Hardly had this feverish craving for celebrity been satisfied, this
refinement of hypocrisy been brought to perfection, when Madame de
Krüdener's genuine conversion took place. It came about in this wise.
Sitting at the window of her house in Riga one day in 1805, she was in
the act of bowing to one of the most favoured of her numerous admirers
when the unfortunate man was seized with a fit of apoplexy and fell
down dead. This incident preyed on her mind. Her melancholy, however,
did not render her independent of earthly requirements, and she sent
one day for a shoemaker to measure her for a pair of shoes. The man
came. At first she hardly noticed him, but while he was kneeling in
front of her she was struck by his happy expression. "Are you happy?"
she asked him. "I am the happiest man in the world," was the reply.
This shoemaker was one of the "awakened," a member of the community of
Moravian Brethren. He had an aversion to work, and lived at home with
his mother, Frau Blau, one of the worst religious hypocrites in Riga,
who gained her livelihood by imposing upon the rich members of her
sect. The sight of the shoemaker's happiness made such an impression on
Madame de Krüdener's susceptible soul that she again and again visited
his mother and him. At their house she made acquaintance with many more
of the Moravian Brethren, and was soon as enthusiastic a Christian
believer as any one of them. A gradual, slow training in Christianity
would not have been possible in her case, but the doctrine of sudden
conversion and entire change of life was one well calculated to have a
strong effect upon her, now that she was over forty.
The same ardour which she had exhibited in the passions of her youth
she now expended on the passion of her maturer years. Both her words
and actions are henceforth inspired by religious enthusiasm. She
divides her time between devotional exercises and charitable deeds.
Her whole previous life seems to her to have been nothing but error
and foolishness. Her whole life now is but one feeling, love to her
Saviour. "I have not a thought except to please, to serve, to sacrifice
everything to Him through whose grace I desire nothing except to be
allowed to love all my fellow-men, and who shows me nothing in the
future but glimpses of bliss. Oh, if men but knew the happiness of
religion, how they would shun every care except care for their souls!"
Such was Madame de Krüdener's state of mind when, travelling once more
in the autumn of 1806, she met and became intimate with Queen Louisa
of Prussia. It was not long after the battle of Jena. The Queen, in
her deep dejection, was peculiarly open to the persuasion of Madame de
Krüdener's glowing religious eloquence, and Madame de Krüdener gained
great influence over her, and through her over the King. We have proof
of this in a letter from the Queen written some time afterwards. "I
owe to your kind heart a confession which I am certain will cause you
to shed tears of joy. It is that you have made me better than I was.
Your straightforward words when we talked together on the subject of
religion and Christianity have made the deepest impression upon me."
Madame de Krüdener went to Karlsruhe on purpose to see Jung-Stilling.
Jung-Stilling had made a literary reputation for himself by the book
in which he gave an account of his early life as a pious journeyman
tailor. As a medical student at Strasburg he had associated with Goethe
and won his favour. After practising successfully as an oculist, and
holding a professorship of political economy, he had become a kind of
prophet among the Pietists of South Germany, and was honoured as a
saint by the pious court-circle and nobility of Baden. His character
was not strong enough to stand such adulation, and he had degenerated
into a vain and unreliable old twaddler, who boasted of his knowledge
of the other world and revealed the hidden mysteries and designs of
God by means of interpretations of the Revelation of St. John. To
Jung-Stilling Madame de Krüdener now did homage as her master and
guide. He had a weakness for the admiration of great ladies, and a
close friendship sprang up between them. The venerable ghost-seer
was at this time writing his _Theorie der Geisterkunde_ (Theory of
Spirits). Madame de Krüdener was firmly persuaded of the truth of one
of his wise predictions, namely, that the millennium was to begin in
the year 1816, or 1819 at latest.
Not long after this visit to Karlsruhe she met Queen Hortense, who
was so fascinated by her that she gave her a private audience every
morning. But it would seem that Madame de Krüdener ingratiated herself
in this case chiefly by reading to the Queen the manuscript of a novel
she was writing, _Othilde_ by name, the pious moral of which did not
prevent its being a "truly delicious" love-story.
She was now a pattern of every kind of Christian humility. When at
Karlsruhe she climbed up to the dirtiest garrets to do deeds of
charity. One day when she found a servant-girl crying in the street
because she had been sent out to sweep, the great lady took the broom
and swept the pavement herself.
The spiritual condition of Alsace at this time was somewhat remarkable.
To some of its most intellectually advanced inhabitants the irreligion
of the Revolution had communicated itself, but the great mass of the
Protestant population had been terrified into a kind of religious
mysticism, the distinctive feature of which was the belief in the near
approach of the millennium. The most eminent clergyman in Alsace was
the universally respected Pastor Oberlin of Waldbach, a man of the
most sincere piety, who was, however, crazy enough to draw maps of the
kingdom of heaven and publish a plan of the heavenly Jerusalem. He knew
the exact order of precedence of the blessed dead, and was in regular
communication with departed friends. Madame de Krüdener, provided
with letters of introduction to this gentleman and others of the same
persuasion, made her appearance in Alsace.
She had heard that a German pastor at Markirch, named Fontaines, had
the power of working miracles, and that in his house lived a famous
prophetess, Marie Kummer (generally known as "die Kummerin"), a
hysterical Würtemberg peasant woman, who held constant communication
with angels, and in her trances revealed the will of God. And she
had also been told that Fontaines had expressed a wish to make the
acquaintance of the divinely inspired lady from the North whom Marie
Kummer had seen in a vision. In June 1808 Madame de Krüdener arrived at
his house. He welcomed her solemnly on the threshold with the words of
John to Jesus: "Art thou that one that should come, or do we look for
another?" Flattered and delighted, Madame de Krüdener remained under
the roof of this man, who was now generally supposed to be her lover.
They spent their time in the study of the Revelation of St. John, and
every day the lady listened to Marie Kummer's prophecies of the high
mission and the great future awaiting her, and also Fontaines, who was
to be her apostle. She wrote to a friend: "I am the happiest creature
in the world.... The fulness of time is at hand; great calamities
are about to happen, but you need not be afraid. The kingdom of the
Lord is near, and He Himself will reign upon the earth for a thousand
years." She goes on to say: "Imagine that I have literally _experienced
miracles_. You have no conception of the happiness felt by those who
give themselves entirely to Jesus Christ. He in His goodness and mercy
has given me the distinct promise that He will answer the prayers I
offer for my relations and friends."
It is not to be denied that the language in which she describes this
new ardent devotion has a suspicious similarity to the language of a
love which is not at all heavenly. Of God she writes: "It is impossible
for me to tell what tenderness burns in my heart, how many tears I
shed, what words tremble through my whole being when I feel myself
loved thus--I, poor worm of the earth! I said to God the other day:
'What can I say to Thee, O my Beloved! (_O mon bien-aimé!_) Would that
I could shout over the whole earth, and through all the heavens, how
much I love Thee! Would that I could lead not only all men, but all the
rebel spirits back to Thee!"
In the Vatican hangs a picture by a modern Italian painter which
represents a nun kneeling at the feet of Christ, who returns her
tearful gaze with the tenderest of glances. One involuntarily thinks
of this picture when reading Madame de Krüdener's outbursts during
her period of divine intoxication. She writes on another occasion:
"All we have to do is to love, and to persuade others to love, the
kindest, the best, the tenderest of all fathers." During her pious
wanderings about the country, preaching and converting, she was
joined by a young missionary. He was one of the many in whom she
was afterwards disappointed, but shortly after he came to her she
describes their feelings when worshipping together in such words as
these: "What emotion! Can you imagine the bliss of our communions? No
language can express it. We could not even hear the words spoken." It
is impossible in reading this not to think of a passage in the writings
of one of Madame de Krüdener's early admirers: "Lezay prétend (dit
Chênedollé) que Madame de Krüdener dans les moments les plus décisifs
avec son amant fait une prière à Dieu, en disant: Mon Dieu, que je
suis heureuse! Je vous demande pardon de l'excès de mon bonheur?" He
adds: "Elle reçoit ce sacrifice comme une personne qui va recevoir sa
communion."[1] Similar pious emotionalism is, however, common to all
the mystics of the day.
Madame de Krüdener did not know that both Fontaines and Marie Kummer
had a past which was anything but confidence-inspiring.
At the outbreak of the Revolution Fontaines, then aged twenty, was
a violent Jacobin; during the Reign of Terror he cast in his lot
with Eulogius Schneider, and was one of the most eager of that man's
followers in denouncing the clergy, closing churches, plundering
Strasburg Cathedral, &c. He held orations in the temples of Reason,
got himself appointed a Protestant pastor, married, and behaved in
such a scandalous manner that he was compelled to give up his charge.
Nevertheless, when the reaction against the Revolution set in, he
received another call, as representative of the extremest Pietism, and
soon gained a great reputation as an exorciser of evil spirits. When
it came out that he had managed in three years (1801-4) to make away
with almost all the means of his congregation, he had to retire into
obscurity for a time. In 1805 he received a call to Markirch. There,
two years later, he took Marie Kummer into his house. This woman,
though she was a simple vagrant, and had changed her religion several
times, was held in great reverence by the Pietists. A certain Pastor
Hiller consecrated her to be the bride of Jesus. In the course of time
she bore this same pastor a son, who was destined, they declared, to
become the witness mentioned in the third verse of the eleventh chapter
of the Book of Revelation. The worldly-minded civil authorities none
the less condemned Marie to the pillory and a term of imprisonment.
When she came out of prison she proclaimed the end of the world to be
at hand, and advised a general emigration of believers to the Holy
Land. She actually persuaded a number of foolish persons to set out
with her for Jerusalem, and to entrust her with the travelling funds;
but when they reached Vienna she was taken into custody. After a term
of imprisonment there she went back to Alsace. The comet of 1807
furnished her with a pretext for sensational prophecies of plague,
famine, and war, and on hearing the report of the arrival of the
Russian baroness she had a vision, in which that lady's high destiny
was revealed to her.
When Madame de Krüdener had lived in the edifying company of Fontaines
and Marie Kummer for fully eight months, Fontaines began to feel
that he was no longer safe in Markirch. Tales of his past life were
being circulated. Marie Kummer consequently had a vision in which she
received a divine command to go to Würtemberg and found a colony of
true Christians there. The three at once set out. At their religious
meetings in Würtemberg Fontaines was always dressed in black, Madame
de Krüdener in blue, and Marie in grey. Besides prophesying the
approaching end of the world they incautiously inveighed against the
ungodly sovereign of the country, who had introduced a new liturgy.
This led to Marie's imprisonment and the banishment of the other two.
Marie joined Fontaines and Madame de Krüdener in Baden as soon as she
was released, and there they again lived in intimate companionship,
occupying themselves as before with devotional exercises and
prophesying.
Madame de Krüdener, called to Riga by her mother's last illness, held
meetings there too, at which she interpreted the Book of Revelation
and dispensed the sacrament. At these meetings she was assisted by
the pious shoemaker's pious mother, Frau Blau, in her character of
prophetess. Towards the close of the year 1811 Madame de Krüdener
returned to Karlsruhe. Fontaines had by this time been ordered off,
but she continued to work in company with Marie Kummer, who was looked
up to as a great prophetess because she had foretold the victory of
the white over the black angel, and had announced that the people from
the north of whom Jeremiah had written would presently make their
appearance. The Russian war established her reputation, and after
the news of the conflagration of Moscow came she was regarded as a
positively sacred personage.
There is not the slightest doubt that Madame de Krüdener was entirely
persuaded of the purity of her motives, and that she acted in all
sincerity. She is not merely converted herself; she is possessed by
a passion for converting. Again and again the idea of converting the
very denizens of hell and the devil himself occurs to her. It was
but natural that she had to bear much and painful misunderstanding
on the part of those who were unable to believe in the change that
had taken place in her. Even her own mother despised her and stopped
writing to her. But no misunderstanding cooled her enthusiasm, which
made an impression even upon rationalists. One of these, Sonntag, the
chief dignitary of the Livonian church, who had carefully observed her
behaviour at Riga in 1811, wrote many years afterwards that, though in
his official capacity he had been obliged to sever his connection with
her, he owed it to her to bear witness that she showed the deepest,
purest, most active, most self-forgetful and self-sacrificing sympathy
with every suffering and need of humanity.
Soon she, too, receives the gift of prophecy. It was not an
uncommon gift at this time. Both De Maistre and Bonald prophesied
the restoration of the royal family many years in advance, thereby
winning considerable renown. But whenever their prophecies are of a
more definite nature, it happens with them as with the prophecies of
old--they do not come to pass. De Maistre, for instance, writing on
the subject of the proposed seat of government in America, says: "I
may safely wager ten to one that the town will not be built, or that
it will not be called Washington, or that the Congress will not meet
there;" which three things all happened. In 1807 he wrote (_Opuscules_,
p. 98): "Nothing can restore the power of Prussia. This famous edifice,
built of blood, filth, false coin, and pamphlets, has collapsed in one
moment and is gone for ever." He also prophesied that the restoration
of the Bourbons would take place quite peacefully, without foreign
interference, and that autocratic rule and the power of the aristocracy
would in the end be strengthened by the Revolution, &c., &c. Some of
Bonald's prophecies (in his _Théorie du Pouvoir_) were rather more
successful, for the simple reason that he who prophesies the end of the
transient, prophesies what is certain to come true some day; there are
things concerning the future to which Horatio's words apply: "There
needs no ghost come from the grave to tell us this."
But Madame de Krüdener's prophecies attracted more attention than those
of any of her contemporaries. In October 1814 she wrote from Strasburg
to a lady at the Russian court: "We shall soon witness the punishment
of guilty France, a punishment which Providence would have spared it
if it had continued to bow beneath the cross." How was it possible,
after Napoleon's return from Elba, to interpret this otherwise than as
a mysterious prevision of this return?
She also wrote: "The storm is approaching; the lilies which the
Eternal had preserved--the pure, delicate, symbolic flowers which had
been crushed by a sceptre of iron, because such was the will of the
Eternal--those lilies, which ought to have pled their cause before the
tribunal of the purity and love of God, have only shown themselves to
disappear." What could this be but a prophecy of the flight of Louis
XVIII?
The fame of these predictions sped over Europe. One of the first to
hear of them was Czar Alexander. Worn out by the campaigns of 1813 and
1814, tormented by an uneasy conscience, grieved by the sudden death
of his only child and by the desertion of its mother, a lady who had
been his mistress for eleven years, but whose affections were now
transferred to one of his aides-de-camp, enfeebled by excesses of every
kind, Alexander was exactly in the condition to be influenced by pious
mysticism.[2]
He had been brought up without any religious education whatever. When,
during his depression after the capture of Moscow, Prince Galitzin
recommended him to seek comfort in the study of the Bible, such a
thing as a Russian Bible was not to be found in the Winter Palace, and
he had to be contented for the time with a French translation of the
Vulgate. The proceedings at the Congress of Vienna, the faithlessness
of Austria, the ingratitude of France, and the animosity aroused by
his favourite project, the rehabilitation of Poland, in that country
itself, had completely shaken his faith in human nature. The surprise
of Napoleon's return from Elba had shaken his nerves. From the moment
of his mistress's desertion he came under the influence of his wife,
the Empress Elizabeth, who in her deserted condition had long ago
taken refuge in melancholy mysticism. She persuaded him when he was
at Karlsruhe to visit Jung-Stilling and learn what was his opinion of
the political situation, viewed from the standpoint of the Book of
Revelation. Jung-Stilling assured him that Napoleon was none other than
the Apollyon mentioned in the ninth chapter of that book, and that the
millennium was at hand.
In 1814, at the court of Baden, Madame de Krüdener had made the
acquaintance of the Czarina, and since then the ardent prophetess had
carried on a correspondence with one of Elizabeth's maids of honour who
had an enthusiastic admiration for the Czar, with the full intention
that her letters should be shown to him. Certain sentences in them
were unmistakably written for his reading, such as the following:
"What you tell me of the Czar's great and noble qualities I have long
known. I know, too, that the Lord will grant me the happiness of seeing
him--that the Prince of Darkness will in vain endeavour to prevent
our meeting. I have much to say to the Czar." Immediately after the
despatch of the letter here quoted from, Madame de Krüdener moved to
Heilbronn; the Russian headquarters were presently transferred there,
and late in the evening of the 4th of June 1815, heedless of the
aide-de-camp's rebuffs, she made her way, unannounced, into the Czar's
presence, and remained closeted with him for three hours. When she left
him, Alexander's eyes were full of tears, and he was much agitated.
Soon her influence over him was complete. They would shut themselves
up together for half a day at a time, praying, reading the Bible, and
discussing theological problems.
The days immediately preceding the battle of Waterloo they spend at
Heidelberg, occupied in studying the Psalms. The intelligence of
the reverses at Ligny and Quatre-Bras on the 16th and 17th of June
reaches Alexander when he is thus employed; the Psalms console him and
convince him of the justice of his cause. He prays and fasts. On the
18th of June the battle of Waterloo is fought. Alexander immediately
sets out for Paris, but with the understanding that Madame de Krüdener
is to follow promptly. His greatest grief at this moment is that his
brother Constantine is not converted too. Before leaving Heidelberg
our prophetess visits the prisoners who are awaiting their sentence
of death and preaches to them with great effect; then she follows the
Czar, whose Christian disposition affords her intense satisfaction.
In Paris her influence reaches its culminating point. The Czar calls
upon her on the evening of her arrival. Her apartments in the Hôtel
Montchenu are so situated that he can come to her at any hour of
the day from the Elysée-Bourbon Palace by a private garden door. No
dissipation, no amusement had now any temptation for the man whom
the Parisians remembered as being so gay but a few years previously.
"I am a disciple of Christ," he said; "I go about with the Gospel
in my hands, and know nothing else." And Madame de Krüdener writes
of him: "Alexander is the elect of God. He is treading the path of
renunciation." Only language borrowed from the Apocalypse could express
what she saw in him--a founder of the kingdom of Christ upon earth, an
angel of peace with the flaming sword of power, the prince of light,
&c, &c. Napoleon, on the other hand, she, like Adam Müller and his
followers, believed to be the devil himself. Alexander was to restore
the power of Christianity upon earth, and to obliterate the last trace
of the Revolution and its deeds.
Alexander's reverence and gratitude knew no bounds. In the beginning
of September a great review of 150,000 Russian troops was held at the
Camp des Vertus in Champagne. Madame de Krüdener's presence could
not be dispensed with. The Czar's carriage was sent for her early in
the morning, and he received her, not like a favourite subject, but
like a messenger from heaven, sent to lead his troops to victory.
"Bare-headed, or wearing the little straw-hat which she generally
carried hanging from her arm; her still fair hair hanging in plaits
upon her shoulders, with a stray curl falling on her brow; dressed in a
plain, dark robe, to which its cut and her bearing imparted elegance,
and which was confined at the waist by a simple girdle--thus she
arrived at dawn of day, thus she stood at the moment of prayer in front
of the astonished army."[3]
About a year before this Alexander had read a book by the German mystic
Franz von Baader, _On the Necessity Produced by the Revolution for a
New and More Intimate Connection between Religion and Politics_. Under
its influence he had formed a vague project for uniting the Christian
monarchs of Europe in a mysterious alliance, which was to be in a
very special manner commended to the protection of God; but at Vienna
he had been obliged to give up all thoughts of carrying this project
into effect. Now he discussed it with Madame de Krüdener. She entered
into it eagerly, declaring that she herself had already, by the grace
of God, conceived the very same idea. And who dare say that it is
impossible or even unlikely that such an idea as this, _the plan of the
Holy Alliance_, should have originated in the brain of a poor, silly
woman, whose head had been turned by the amours of her youth and the
religious enthusiasm of her later years? It is, as a matter of fact,
more than probable that Europe and civilisation owe their thanks to her
for it. A man who is distinctly inclined to undervalue her influence,
and who is wrong where he denies it, Queen Louisa of Prussia's beloved
brother, the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, writes: "Madame
de Krüdener never exercised the smallest influence over my angelic
sister of Prussia, nor yet over the King, her husband, who judged this
lamentably famous woman perfectly correctly. Of the Emperor Alexander
she had, on the contrary, taken such complete possession that the Holy
Alliance, which he proposed and succeeded in forming, may be regarded
as entirely her work; you may be sure that I should not say this unless
I were certain of it."
Some days after her arrival in Paris, Alexander said to Madame de
Krüdener: "I am leaving France; but before my departure I shall publish
a manifesto, acknowledging our gratitude to God the Father, the Son,
and the Holy Ghost, for His protection, and calling on all nations
to unite in common submission to the Gospel." With these words he
handed her a paper. It was the draft of the compact between the three
sovereigns. Capefigue, who actually saw this document, writes: "I have
lying before me the rough draft of the compact; it is from beginning
to end in the Emperor Alexander's handwriting, with corrections by
Madame de Krüdener. The words _The Holy Alliance_ are written by that
extraordinary woman." Thus even the name is of her devising. She chose
it with a reference to the prophecies of the end of the world in the
Book of the Prophet Daniel.
Having traced this woman's career from the very beginning, we know who
and what she was; we have also some idea of what the Revolution was;
consequently our first feeling is one of astonishment that these pious
maxims and reminiscences of the Apocalypse written, with the same pen
which wrote the Elegy to Sidonie, by the lady who a few years before
was buying scarfs and hats _à la Valérie_, should have had power to
stem the renewed impetus of the current of the Revolution for fifteen
years. Not for fifteen years did inevitable evolution, the progress of
science, the audacity of art, the rebellion of hearts, take shape in
action which broke the charm.
The three monarchs "solemnly declare, in the name of the most holy and
indivisible Trinity, that their intention in the present proclamation
is to assert in face of the universe their irrevocable determination
to be guided, both in the government of their own dominions and in
their political relations with other governments, entirely by the rules
of justice, love, and truth contained in the Christian religion. Far
from being only applicable in private life, these prescriptions ought
directly to influence the conduct of rulers, as indicating the only
means of placing the institutions of society on a solid foundation and
remedying their imperfections."
So much for the words of the compact. What was really sincere and
benevolent intention on the part of the foolish imperial enthusiast was
sagacious hypocrisy on that of his brother monarchs. Who does not know
the rest? Who does not know what the Holy Alliance came to mean--the
introduction of a general European reaction, in essence barbarism, in
its outward form a lie? It was in the name of the Holy Alliance that,
during the saddest decades of our century, even the very feeblest
endeavours in the direction of intellectual and political liberty were
checked or crushed.
The Alliance received the voluntary adhesion of the potentate who
had most to gain from it, the Pope. Without any petty consideration
of his own position as head of the Roman Catholic Church, Pius
lauded to the skies the resolution of his compeers--Alexander, the
Greek Pope; the King of Prussia, the Lutheran Pope; and the King of
England, the Anglican Pope. At the Congress of Vienna he proposed a
plan of restoration in comparison with which the dreams of all the
reactionaries of other days paled and all previous attempts to restore
pre-Revolutionary conditions sank into nothingness. With one stroke of
the pen the existence of the Revolution and the Empire was blotted out.
The Holy Roman Empire was to be restored, and along with it all the
social conditions and institutions of the Middle Ages--tithes, church
property, exemption of the clergy from taxation, and the Inquisition.
The last years of Madame de Krüdener's life present no events of
historical interest. She became ever more sincerely and fanatically
religious, and her desire to display her faith in deeds became ever
more ardent. It was now the one desire of her heart and object of her
life to help the poor and the sick. She preached to the poor, founded
churches, and proclaimed the advent of the kingdom of God. But from the
moment when her Christianity took a practical form the character of
her position changed. The royal personages, the authorities, all the
great, who as long as she remained the court lady had smiled upon her,
instinctively divined an enemy in her as soon as she began to address
herself to the people. On one occasion she traversed Switzerland from
frontier to frontier in a sort of mad religious triumphal procession;
the next time she visited that country she was driven out of one town
after the other. At Basle, where she distributed tracts among the
soldiers and according to her own account converted half the garrison,
the infuriated clergy succeeded in having her expelled from the town.
In Baden, where her charities during a famine were truly munificent,
her house was surrounded by gendarmes, and the people who had sought
refuge with her were dispersed. She was expelled from Lucerne by the
police authorities. When she tried to make her way into France through
Alsace, she was turned back, and was at the same time forbidden to
return to Baden. She was finally conducted under police escort to the
Russian frontier, being passed on by the Würtemberg to the Bavarian,
by the Bavarian to the Saxon, by the Saxon to the Prussian police,
and by these last handed over to the authorities of her own country.
She had lost Alexander's favour for ever, partly because she had been
much too communicative about the origin of the Holy Alliance, partly
because of the mixed and often bad company in which she travelled
about. The accounts which she gave in her religious periodicals and
pamphlets of social evils, of the boundless distress of the poor and
the unjust oppressions of their rulers, were denounced as socialism and
communism. Christianity as she understood it could not but be obnoxious
to the authorities. She was, moreover, foolish enough to express her
enthusiastic sympathy with the Greek war of independence in a very
incautious manner, and presumptuous enough to declare openly that the
Emperor, as founder of the Holy Alliance, was in duty bound to place
himself in the forefront of a crusade against Turkey. Cast off by
Alexander, she left St. Petersburg, and from this time onwards lived,
as a missionary, a life of self-inflicted penance. She underwent all
kinds of hardships, suffering voluntarily herself, and alleviating the
sufferings of others whenever it was possible. She died in 1824 while
on a missionary expedition in the Crimea.
An interesting contrast to the French-Russian Madame de Krüdener is to
be found in the German-Russian Princess Galizin, a lady who belongs to
the end of the eighteenth, as Madame de Krüdener does to the beginning
of the nineteenth century. Madame de Krüdener's characteristics stand
out more sharply on such a background as the life of Madame de Galizin.
The Princess's is a genuinely German type of character. She is as
simple as her younger contemporary is polished and complex; she is
ingenuous and at the same time sentimental, full of soul and wanting
in brain-power. Her husband was, like Krüdener, a man of the world. He
was a friend and admirer of Diderot; it was, indeed, Diderot who first
inspired the Princess with the desire and the courage to study, but
she soon became that philosopher's ardent opponent. As careless of her
feminine attractions as Madame de Krüdener was coquettish, Madame de
Galizin had her head shaved to make it impossible for her to go into
society, and from the age of twenty-four lived a life of seclusion.
To cure herself entirely of egoism she "offered to the God of love
the sacrifice of her understanding." As an instance of her ignorance
of the world it may be mentioned that, when her son desired to enter
the military service of a foreign country, she applied first to the
Prussian, then to the Austrian commander-in-chief for permission to
send along with him a tutor who was to guard him against the irregular
habits of military life, and was astonished by receiving the answer
from both that it was impossible for an officer to join the army
accompanied by a male governess of this description.
In spite of Princess Galizin's warm-hearted sincerity, her tone is
as pietistically supernatural as Madame de Krüdener's is mystically
sensual.[4]
In Madame de Krüdener we have before us a being whose original
equipment would seem to mark her as destined to act some important
part. She possesses a vigour of life and a vividness of emotion
sufficient for two ordinary human beings; only it is not healthy vigour
and emotion, but an inward restlessness, an inward fire, which gives
out sparks incessantly on every side. There is in her an original
capital of Russian volatility and pliability, German sentimentality,
French sense of proportion, and "Asiatic" sensual charm.
She enters life with no thorough education behind her, no serious
aim before her, with a strong craving for happiness, and a poetic
turn--predestined, therefore, to live in illusions. When she finds
herself surrounded by admirers she gives herself up to dizzy enjoyment
of this gratification, and begins to regard herself as a superior
being. As long as she preserves outward fidelity to her husband she
lives in the illusion that she is the heroine of duty. When she becomes
unfaithful, she chooses a new model, and is transformed in her own
estimation into another ideal, the ideal fair sinner. She writes of the
ladies of Geneva, that they have neither the charm of virtue nor "the
charm of sin." This latter she herself acquired. She continued to be
ideal in so far as it is ideal to be the first of one's own species,
unique. On this supposition of her own ideality is founded her belief
that it was she who brought happiness (orders and titles) to her
husband.
All illusion consists in a wrong association of cause and
effect--religious illusion like the rest. But religious illusion is a
double illusion; the individual subject to it does not trace the effect
to its cause, but to a vague origin, the centre of existence--illusion
number one--and in the centre of existence he places, not, as he
imagines, the Deity, but himself--illusion number two. The beautiful
wife believes that her husband receives his decorations direct from
God, but also that she herself is the cause of God's bestowing them.
She is the real cause, God is the means by which she works. She
continues to lead her gay life as long as it continues to provide her
with illusions. But a clever woman, with highly-strung nerves, tires
in the long run of such a life, tires of the new admirer's jealousy
of his predecessor, and of fooling herself and another for, say, the
tenth time with the words: "You are the only man I have ever loved."
After this life has lost its illusions, and existence for the time
being its charm, the possibility of a new illusion presents itself.
Madame de Krüdener regards the apoplectic shock which killed her lover
in the same light as St. Augustine, Pascal, and Luther regarded similar
occurrences. It is a hint, a warning to her. The happy shoemaker tells
her of his certainty of being one of the elect of God. When she learns
the secret of his happiness, she resolves that she too will be one of
the elect.
Faith in God is in her case the satisfaction of the desire to be
elect, to be the chosen one. She believes herself to be converted,
and is, at the bottom of her heart, what she was. When she puts into
the mouth of the Deity the words in which He assures her of His
love, what is she doing but once again writing letters and elegies
to Sidonie? The echo of her own self-adoration sounds to her like a
voice from heaven, and she thanks God now as she did before for being
thus distinguished--by herself. What she desires now as before is to
be loved. As Chateaubriand proceeded to his earthly Alhambra via the
earthly Jerusalem, she seeks her heavenly Alhambra by the way of the
heavenly Zion. The only difference in their cases is, that he wishes to
deceive others; she deceives herself. She is a coquette; so is he, and
so is Lamartine; they are haughty coquettes, and she is a humble one.
What chiefly distinguishes her from them is, however, not her
character, but her gifts and her feminine nature. Chateaubriand, as
a man, has at least a sufficient glimmering of science to make it
impossible for him to be imposed on by miracle-workers and village
sibyls. Madame de Krüdener is a woman, and in a reactionary age the
definition holds good: Woman is the natural prey of the priests.
Destitute of any scientific basis of thought, she sooner or later,
except in rare, unusually favourable circumstances, becomes a prey to
her enthusiasm, which does not know on what to expend itself, to her
vague longings after she knows not what, to her cowardice, which is
terrified by the calamities of life, to her various illusions; and
all these powers--enthusiasm, longing, fear, and imagination--deliver
up their victim bound hand and foot as a prey to the Church, whose
authority has, moreover, been imprinted upon her soul by her education
from her earliest youth. Such was the case with Madame de Krüdener.
All that she comes into contact with of the intellectual life of her
day--its great wars of liberation, its research, its philosophy, its
enthusiasm for enlightenment--passes by her without being understood;
the one quality of the spirit of her age that she understands and
appropriates is its dissoluteness. When the reaction against the 18th
century sets in, and it is, naturally, first and foremost taxed with
impiety and frivolity, Madame de Krüdener immediately joins in the
cry, because she herself has had no eyes for anything else in it, has
comprehended nothing in it but its frivolousness and loose morality.
The reaction gains strength; it soon has a literature of its own, a
literature treating of all those supernatural things which the authors
persuade their readers that they believe in. They write whole volumes
about thrones and principalities, cherubim and seraphim; they appear
to be in sober earnest, but it never occurs to them that any human
being will take them seriously. After any amount of ability has been
displayed in the championing of tradition, there appears a woman
who is simple enough to take everything literally, to believe that
Marie Kummer has talked with angels, and that Fontaines has had such
supernatural visions as it was the height of the fashion to describe in
verse. Poets had begun to hymn the praises of the miracle-worker and
the prophet--a poor naïve Magdalen takes them at their word, believes
in the miracles which are shown her, and tries her hand at prophesying.
We are preparing to shake our heads with a smile, when we perceive that
the powers of the day are taking her seriously. She herself becomes
a power. Chateaubriand, who neither believes in her nor with her,
but who believes in her influence, tries to gain her support for his
political projects, but in vain. She has but one desire, to restore
to Christianity that authority which the Revolution had destroyed. In
her eyes the Revolution has only accomplished one deed, the overthrow
of sacred tradition; she, for her part, desires to do only the one,
opposite, deed--to give back to Christianity its world-overshadowing
power.
Alexander takes up the idea; the other powers adopt it as a useful
political lever. As long as her sole desire is to vindicate the
_authority_ of Christianity, as long as she aims at improving and
converting the nations _from above_, and in concert with their
sovereigns, Madame de Krüdener stands upon the pinnacle of honour
and glory. But the revulsion comes. The consistent development of
her religious tendency compels her to attempt a conversion of the
nations _from below_, to go forth among them and, after the manner of
the old apostles, practise Christianity in action instead of merely
proclaiming it as doctrine. What childishness! So naïve is she that she
believes the potentates will regard her new endeavours with the same
favour which they showed to her earlier ones. She does not understand
that authority dreads all interference with its own principle except
official interference. From the moment when she begins really to act
as a Christian, she is treated as a revolutionist. In the feeling
of the universal brotherhood of humanity which inspires her, and
in the enthusiasm with which she pleads the cause of the poor and
the oppressed, the champions of authority see proof that she is--a
socialist and a communist.
And thus it fell to Madame de Krüdener's lot to give practical proof
of what the rehabilitation of Christianity as authority meant. For it
was only as _authority_, as _power_, as _order_, that Christianity
was wanted. It was employed as the police, the army, the prisons
were employed, to keep everything quiet and support the principle of
authority. From the moment when it began to be regarded as a personal
matter, as a thing in itself, and to be practised in a manner which
threatened to produce social disturbances, from that moment it was
_disorder_, and the authorities expedited it, in the person of Madame
de Krüdener, as promptly as possible from frontier to frontier.[5]
[1] A manuscript of Chênedollé's, quoted by Sainte-Beuve in _Derniers
Portraits_, p. 290.
[2] Chateaubriand, _Congrès de Vérone_, i. 147.
[3] Sainte-Beuve, from the account of an eye-witness.
[4] Katerkamp, _Denkwürdigkeiten aus dem Leben der Fürstinn Amalia von
Galitzin_, Münster, 1828.
The best idea of her religious enthusiasm is to be gained from such a
production as the following beautiful little poem:--