Volume Ii Part 12 (1/2)
Seriously I believe, that love of life is less general than the habit of projecting schemes for the future--a vague system of castle-building, which even the least speculative practises; and that death is thus accounted the great evil, as suddenly interrupting a chain of events whose series is still imperfect. The very humblest peasant that rises to daily toil has his gaze fixed on some future, some period of rest or repose, some hour of freedom from his lifelong struggle. Now, I have exhausted this source; the well, that once bubbled with eddying fancies of days to come, is dry. High spirits, health, and the buoyancy that result from both, when joined to a disposition keenly alive to enjoyment, and yet neither cloyed by excess nor depraved by corrupt tastes, will always go far to simulate a degree of ability. The very freedom a mind thus const.i.tuted enjoys is a species of power; and its liberty exaggerates its range, just as the untrammelled paces of the young colt seem infinitely more graceful and n.o.ble than the matured regularity of the trained and bitted steed.
It was thus that I set out in life--ardent, hopeful, and enthusiastic: if my mental resources were small, they were always ready at hand, like, a banker with a weak capital, but who could pay every trifling demand on the spot, I lived upon credit; and upon that credit I grew rich. Had I gone on freely as I began, I might still enjoy the fame of wealth and solvency, but with the reputation of affluence came the wish to be rich.
I contracted my issues, I husbanded my resources, and from that hour I became suspected. To avoid a ”run” for gold, I ceased to trade and retired. This, in a few words, is the whole history of my life.
Gilbert comes to say that the carriage is waiting to convey me to the villa--our luggage is already there. Be it so: still I must own to myself, that going to occupy a palace for the last few hours of life and fortune is very much like good Christopher Sly's dream of Lordliness.
CHAPTER X. SOME REVERIES ABOUT PLACES.
What would the old school of Diplomatists have said if they saw their secret wiles and machinations exposed to publicity, as is now the fas.h.i.+on? When any ”honourable and learned gentleman” can call for ”copies of the correspondence between our Minister at the Court of-------- and the n.o.ble Secretary for the Foreign Department;” and when the ”Times” can, in a leader, rip up all the flaws of a treaty, or expose all the dark intentions of some special compact? The Diplomatic ”Holy of Holies” is now open to the vulgar gaze, and all the mysteries of the craft as commonplace as the transactions of a Poor-law Union.
Much of the ”prestige” of this secrecy died out on the establishment of railroads. The Courier who travelled formerly with breathless haste from Moscow to London, or from the remotest cities of the far East, to our little Isle of the West, was sure to bring intelligence several days earlier than it could reach by any other channel. The gold greyhound, embroidered on his arm, was no exaggerated emblem of his speed; but now, his prerogative over, he journeys in ”a first-cla.s.s carriage”
with some fifty others, who arrive along with him. Old age and infancy, sickness and debility, are no disqualifications--the race is open to all--and the tidings brought by ”our messenger” are not a particle later, and rarely so full, as those given forth in the columns of a leading journal.
How impossible to affect any mysterious silence before the ”House!”--how vain to attempt any knowledge from exclusive sources! ”The ordinary channels of information,” to use Sir Robert's periphrasis, are the extraordinary ones too; and not only do they contain whatever Ministers know, but very often ”something more.”
Time was when the Minister, or even the Secretary at a Foreign Court, appeared in society as a kind of casquet of state secrets,--when his mysterious whispers, his very gestures, were things to speculate on, and a grave motion of his eyebrows could make ”Consols” tremble, and throw the ”Threes” into a panic. Now the question is, Have you seen the City article in the ”Times?” What does the ”Chronicle” say? No doubt this is a tremendous power, and very possibly the enjoyment of it, such as we have it in England, is the highest element of a pure democracy.
Political information of a very high order establishes a species of education, which is the safest check upon the dangers of private judgment, and hence it is fair to hope that we possess a sounder and more healthy public opinion in England than in any of the states of the Continent. At least it would not be too much to infer, that we would be less accessible to those sudden convulsions, those violent ”_coups de main_” by which Governments are overturned abroad; and that the general diffusion of new notions on political subjects, and the daily reference to such able expositors as our newspaper press contains, are strong safeguards against the seductive promises of mob-leaders and liberty-mongers.
In France, a Government is always at the mercy of any one bold enough to lead the a.s.sault. The attempt may seem often a ”forlorn hope”--it rarely is so in reality. The love of vagrancy is not so inherent in the Yankee as is the destructive pa.s.sion in the Frenchman's heart; but it is there, less from any pleasure in demolition than in the opportunity thus.
offered for reconstruction. Mirabeau, Rousseau, Fournier, La Mennais, are the social architects of French predilection, and many a clearance has been made to begin the edifice, and many have perished in laying the foundations, which never rose above the earth, but which ere long we may again witness undertaken with new and bolder hands than ever.
Events that once took centuries for their accomplishment, are now the work of days or weeks. Steam seems to have communicated its impetuosity to mind as well as matter, and ere many years pa.s.s over how few of the traces of Old Europe will remain, as our fathers knew them?
I have scarcely entered a foreign city, for the last few years, without detecting the rapid working of those changes. Old families sinking into decay and neglect--time-honoured t.i.tles regarded as things that ”once were.” Their very homes, the palaces, a.s.sociated with incidents of deep historic interests, converted into hotels or ”_Pensionnats_.”
The very last time I strolled through Paris, I loitered to the ”_Quartier_” which, in my young ambition, I regarded with all the reverence the pilgrim yields to Mecca. I remembered the first ”_soiree_”
in which I was presented, having dined at the Emba.s.sy, and being taken in the evening, by the Amba.s.sador, that I might be introduced to the Machiavel of his craft, Prince Talleyrand. Even yet I feel the hot blush which mantled in my cheek as I was pa.s.sing, with very scant ceremony, the round-shouldered little old man who stood in the very doorway, his wide black coat, far too large for his figure, and his white hair, trimly brushed back from his ma.s.sive temples.
It did not need the warning voice of my introducer, hastily calling my name, to make my sense of shame a perfect agony. ”Monsieur Templeton, Monsieur le Prince,” said the Amba.s.sador; ”the young gentleman of whom I spoke;” and he added, in a tone inaudible to me, something about my career and some mention of my relatives.
”Oh, yes!” said the Prince, smiling graciously, ”I am aware how 'connexion,' as you call it, operates in England; but permit me, Monsieur,” said he, turning towards me, ”to give one small piece of advice. It is this: 'If you can win by cards never score the honours.'”
The precept had little influence on himself, however. No man ever paid greater deference to the distinctions of rank, or conceded more to the prestige of an ancient name. Neither a general, an orator, nor an author--not even the leader of a faction--this astonis.h.i.+ng man stood alone, in the resources of his fertile intellect, directing events, which he appeared to follow, and availing himself of resources which he had stored up for emergency; but so artfully, that they seemed to arise out of the natural current of events. Never disconcerted or abashed--not once thrown off his balance--not more calmly dignified when he stood beside Napoleon at Erfurth, then master of Europe itself, than he was at the Congress of Vienna, when the defeat of France had placed her at the mercy of her enemies.
It was in this same house, in the Rue Saint Florentin, that the Emperor Alexander lived when the Allies entered Paris, on the last day of March, 1814. His Majesty occupied the first floor; M. de Talleyrand, the _rez de chaussee_. He was then no more than ex-Minister for Foreign Affairs; neither empowered by the Bourbons to treat for the Restoration, nor by the nation for the conditions of a government--he was merely ”one among the conquered;” and yet to this man all eyes were turned instinctively, as to one who possessed the secret of the future. That _rez de chaussee_ was besieged with visitors from morning till night; and even when, according to the custom of the French, he made his lengthened toilette, his dressing-room was filled by all the foreign ministers of the conquering monarchs, and Nesselrode and Metternich waited at these daily levees. In all these discussions M. de Talleyrand took the lead, with the same ease and the same ”_aplomb_” discussing kings to make and kingdoms to dismember, as though the clank of the muskets, which now and then interrupted their colloquy, came from the Imperial Guard of Napoleon, and not the Cossacks of the Don and the Uhlans of the Danube, who crowded the stairs and the avenues, and bivouacked in the court.
Here the Restoration was decided upon, and Talleyrand himself it was who decided it. The Emperor Alexander opposed it strongly at first, alleging that the old spirit and the old antipathies would all return with the elder Bourbons, and suggesting the Duc d'Orleans as king. Talleyrand, however, overruled the objection, a.s.serting that no new agent must be had recourse to for governing at such a juncture, and that one usurpation could not be succeeded by another. It is said that when the news reached Vienna, in 1815, that Napoleon had landed from Elba, the Emperor Alexander came hurriedly over to where Talleyrand was sitting, and informing him what had occurred, said, ”I told you before your plan would be a failure!” ”_Mais que faire?_” coolly retorted the calm _diplomate_; ”of two evil courses it was the better--I never said more of it. Had you proclaimed the King of Rome, you had been merely maintaining the power of Napoleon under another name. You cannot establish the government of a great nation upon a half-measure. Besides that, Legitimacy, whatever its faults, was the only Principle that could prove to Europe at large that France and Napoleon were parted for ever; and, after so many barterings of crowns and trucklings of kingdoms, it was a fine opportunity of shewing that there was still something--whether it be or be not by right divine--which was superior to sabres and muskets, generals and armies.”
It was the sanct.i.ty of right--whether of kings, people, or individuals--which embodied Talleyrand's conception of the Restoration; and this it was which he so admirably expressed when arriving at the Congress of Vienna, the amba.s.sador of a nation without wealth or army.
”_Je viens_” said he to the a.s.sembled Kings and Ministers of conquering Europe--”_Je viens et je vous apporte plus que vous n'avez,--Je vous apporte l'idee du droit!_” This was happily expressed; but no one more than he knew how to epigrammatise a whole volume of thought. In private life, the charm of his manner was the most perfect thing imaginable: his consciousness of rank and ancient family divested him of all pretension whatever, and the idea of entering the lists with any one never occurred to his mind. Willingly availing himself of the talents of others, and their pens upon occasion, he never felt any embittering jealousy.
Approachable by all, his unaffected demeanour was as likely to strike the pa.s.sing observer as the rich stores of his intellect would have excited the admiration of a more reflecting one. Such was he who has pa.s.sed away from amongst us--perhaps the very last name of the eventful era he lived in which shall claim a great place in history!
A singular picture of human vicissitude is presented to us in the aspect of those places, but more particularly of those houses wherein great events have once occurred, but where times' change have brought new and very different a.s.sociations. A very few years, in this eventful century we live in, will do this. The wonderful drama of the Empire sufficed to impress upon every city of Europe some great and imposing reminiscence.
A small, unpretending little house, beside the ducal park at Weimar, was Napoleon's resting-place for three days, when the whole world was at his feet! The little salon where his receptions were held at evening--and what receptions were they! the greatest Ministers and the most distinguished Generals of Europe!--scarcely more than an ordinary dressing-room in size, remains to this hour as he left it. One arm-chair, a little larger than the others, stands at the window, which always lay open. A table was placed upon the gra.s.s-plot outside, where several maps were laid. The salon itself was too small to admit it, and here from time to time the Emperor repaired, while with eagle glance and abrupt gesture he marked out the future limits of the continental kingdoms, creating and erasing monarchies, fas.h.i.+oning nations and people, in all the proud wilfulness of Omnipotence! And now, while thinking of the Emperor, let me bring to mind another local a.s.sociation.