Volume I Part 2 (1/2)
”It was you that sighed!”
”Well, I am very sorry for it. It was wrong of _me_, and very wrong of _you_ to tell me of it. But dear me! is it so late? can it really be three o'clock?”
”I am a quarter past; but I think we must both be fast. You are going out?”
”A mere drive in the Champs Elysees, where I shall pay a few visits and be back to dinner. Will you dine with us?”
”I pray you to excuse me--don't forget I am a sick man.”
”Well, then, we shall see you at the Opera?”
”I fear not. If I might ask a favour, it would be to take the volume of Balzac away with me.”
”Oh, to be sure! But we have some others, much newer. You know 'Le Recherche de l'Absolu', already?”
”Yes; but I like 'Eugenie' still better. It was an old taste of mine, and as you quoted a proverb a few moments ago, let me give you another as trite and as true,--
'On revient toujours.'”
”'A ses premieres amours,'”
said she, finis.h.i.+ng; while with a smile, half playful, half sad, she turned toward the window, and I retired noiselessly, and without an adieu.
Heigho! how nervous and irritable I feel! The very sight of that handsome barouche that has driven from the hotel, with its beautiful occupant lying listlessly back among the cus.h.i.+ons, has set my heart a-beating far far too hurriedly. How is it that the laws that govern material nature are so inoperative in ours, and that a heart that never felt can make another feel? Heaven knows! It is not love; even my first pa.s.sion, perhaps, little merited the name: but now, reading her as worldliness as taught roe to do-seeing how little relation exists between attractions and fascinations of the very highest order and any real sentiment, any true feeling--knowing how ”Life” is her idol, how in that one idea is comprised all that vanity, self-love, false pride, and pa.s.sion can form,--how is it that she, whom I recognise thus, that _she_ can move me? There is nothing so like a battle as a sham fight in a review.
CHAPTER II.
I must leave Paris at once. The weather is intolerably hot; the leaves that were green ten days ago already are shewing symptoms of the sear and yellow. Is it in compliment to the august inhabitant of the palace that the garden is so _empresse_ to turn its coat? Shame on my ingrat.i.tude to say so! for I find that his Majesty has sent me a card of invitation to dine on Friday next. Another reason for a hurried departure! Of all moderate endurances, I know of none to compare with a dinner at the Tuileries. ”Stay!--halt!” cries Memory; ”I'll tell you of one worse again--a dinner at Neuilly!”
The former is sure to include a certain number of distinguished and remarkable men, who, even under the chill and restraint of a royal entertainment, venture now and then on some few words that supply the void where conversation should be. At Neuilly it is strictly a family party, where, whatever ease may be felt by the ill.u.s.trious hosts, the guests have none of it. Juvenal quaintly asks, If that can be a battle where you strike and I am beaten? so one is tempted to inquire, If that can be called society where a royal personage talks rapidly for hours, and the listener must not even look dissent? The King of the French is unquestionably a great man, but not greater in any thing than in the complete mystification in which he has succeeded in enveloping his real character, mingling up together elements so strange, so incongruous, and seemingly inconsistent, that the actual direction or object of any political move he has ever made, will always bear a double appreciation.
The haughty monarch is the citizen king; the wily and secret politician, the most free-spoken and candid of men: the most cautious in an intrigue, the very rashest in action. How is it possible to divine the meaning, or guess the wishes, of one whose nature seems so Protean?
His foreign policy is, however, the master-stroke of his genius,--the cunning game by which he has conciliated the party of popular inst.i.tutions and beguiled the friends of absolutism, delighting Tom Buncombe and winning praise from Nicholas. Like all clever men who are vain of their cleverness, he has always been fond of employing agents of inferior capacity, but of unquestionable devotion to his interests. What small intelligences--to use a phrase more French than English--were the greater number of the French ministers and secretaries I have met accredited to foreign courts! I remember Talleyrand's observation, on the remark being made, was, ”His Majesty always keeps the trumps in his own hand.” Though, to be sure, he himself was an evidence to the contrary--a ”trump” led boldly out, the first card played!
So well did that subtle politician comprehend the future turn events must take, that on hearing, at two o'clock in the morning, that his Royal Highness the Duc d'Orleans had consented to a.s.sume the crown, he exclaimed, ”And I am now amba.s.sador at St. James's!” It must have been what the Londoners call ”good fun” to have lived in the days of the Empire, when all manner of rapid elevations occurred on every hand. The _commis_ of yesterday, the special envoy to-day; a week ago a corporal, and now gazetted an officer, with the cross of the Legion--on the _grande route_, to become a general. A General, why not a Marshal of France--ay, or a King?
We have seen something of this kind in Belgium within a few years back--on a small scale, it is true. What strange ingredients did the Revolution throw up to the surface! what a ma.s.s of noisy, turbulent, self-opinionated incapables, who, because they had led a rabble at the Porte de Flandre, thought they could conduct the march of an army!
And the statesmen!--good lack! the miserable penny-a-liners of the ”Independant” and the ”Lion Beige,” that admirable symbol of the land, who carries his tail between his legs. The really able, and, I believe, honest men, were soon overwhelmed by the influence of the priest party--the vultures who watched the fight from afar, and at last descended to take all the spoils of the victory.
Wandeweyer and Nothomb are both men of ability, the latter a kind of Brummagen Thiers, with the same taste for intrigue, the same subtle subserviency to the head of the state, and, in his heart, the same cordial antipathy to England. But why dwell on these people? they will scarce occupy a foot-note in the old ”Almanach.”
The diplomatic history of our day, if it ever be written, will present no very striking displays of high-reaching intellect or devoted patriotism; the men who were even greatest before the world were really smallest behind ”the fact.” We deemed that Lord Aberdeen and Lord Palmerston, and Messrs. Guizot and Thiers, and a few more, were either hurrying us on to war or maintaining an admirable peace. But the whole thing resolves itself into the work of one man and one mind; neither very conspicuous, but so intently occupied, so devotedly persevering, that persistance has actually elevated itself to genius; and falling happily upon times when mediocrity is sublime, he has contrived to make his influence felt in every state of Europe. I speak not of Louis Philippe, but of his son-in-law, King Leopold.
”Let me make the ballads of a nation, and I care not who makes its laws,” said the great statesman; and in something of the same spirit his Majesty of Belgium may have said, ”Let me make the royal marriages of Europe, and any one who pleases may choose the ministry.”
_Apropos_ of the Roi Leopold, is it not difficult to understand a Princess Charlotte falling in love with his good looks? There is no disputing on this point. The most eminently successful man I ever knew in ladies' society was Jack Beauclerc--”Caucasian Jack” we used to call him at Brookes's. Everybody knows Jack was no beauty. Heavy beetling brows, a dark, saturnine, ill-omened expression, was ever on his features. Nor did his face light up at times, as one occasionally sees with such men; he was always the same sail misanthropic-looking fellow.
Neither could one call him agreeable--at least I, meeting him very often, never found him so. But he was of a determined, resolute nature; one of those men that appear never to turn from any object on which they have set a strong will. This may have gone very far with ladies, who very often conceive a kind of esteem for whatever they fear. He said himself that his secret was, ”always using them ill;” and certainly, if facts could bear out such a theory, one might believe him. Probably no man ever cultivated these tastes with such a.s.siduity--these, I say, for play and duelling were also pa.s.sions with him.