Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine - Volume 54, No. 338, December 1843
TextThe name of Lafontaine decided me. Even the risk seemed less serious than before, and we drove over the drawbridge. The interior of the fortress formed a striking contrast to the scenes which I had just left behind me. All was still stern, and noiseless.
"Give me your papers," said Mendoza; "they will be safer in my hands than in yours."
I had but time to give him my despatch, as we passed through the court which led to the governor's apartments. I was searched in the presence of that important functionary, a meagre old captain of invalids, who had been roused from his bed, and was evidently half asleep. I stoutly denied my being "the criminal who had offended the majesty of the people." But as the governor himself, on gazing at me with his purblind eyes, was perfectly satisfied of my identity, there was no use in contesting the point. A couple of sentinels were placed at the door of my cell, and I was left, like himself, to my slumbers. Before the door closed, I grasped my guide by the throat. The thought that I had been entrapped, actually agonized me.
"Am I betrayed?" I asked, in a whisper of fury.
The only answer was, "Mordecai."
I felt security in the word, and, without a further pang, heard his tread echoing along the distant corridor.
Time rolls on, whether we are happy or miserable. Morning came, and found me feverish from a thousand dreams. Noon came, and my impatience grew with the hour. Evening came, and yet no symptom of my liberation. If, "hope deferred maketh the heart sick," confidence duped, and blindly, weakly, rashly duped, turns to torture.
Why trust a known agent of the police? Why put my liberty into his hands? Why, above all, make him master of my papers? I was overwhelmed with shame. I writhed with remorse. As hour after hour dragged into slow length along, I sank from dejection to dejection, or burst from rage to rage. But at last, when the drums of the garrison were making their final flourish for the night, the key turned in the door of my cell, and the Jew entered. I almost sprang upon him, and his life would have been worth little, but for the words—"You may now leave the fortress." He told me, further, that my absence was fortunate, for a domiciliary visit had been paid to my apartments by direction of the municipality; my trunks examined, and my doors sealed. My absence was imputed to flight; and, as jails were then the only safe residences in France, I had escaped actual imprisonment simply by my volunteer detention; to watch the event, had been the source of his delay. All was speedily settled with the old commandant, who was now as perfectly "convinced, on his own knowledge," that I was not the chevalier, as he had been convinced on the night before that I was. Mendoza's proofs were registered in due form; and with unspeakable delight I once again mounted his cabriolet, and heard the chains of the drawbridge rattle behind me.
My Jew had been true to his pledge. I found horses provided for me at a lonely cabaret, a league off. With the minute foresight which men of his trade learn, he had provided for me a couple of disguises—the garb of a peasant, which I was to use when I passed among the soldiery; and the uniform of an aide-de-camp, with which I was to keep down enquiries when I came among the peasantry. But I was weary of disguise. It had never thriven with my temperament. I was determined, at all events, now to trust to chance and my proper person; and if I must fail, have the satisfaction of failing after my own style. The only recompense which my magnanimous police-officer would receive, was a promise that I should mention his conduct to Mordecai; and, gathering up his rejected wardrobe, he departed.
Fortunately I found disguises unnecessary, though at any other time they might have been essential. The country was all in a state of flight, and every man was too much employed in securing himself, to think of laying hold of others. Thus galloped I through hill and dale, through bush and brier, unquestioned and almost unseen; until, on the evening of the fourth day, as I plunged into a forest, which for the last half hour I had been imagining into a scene of fairyland, a bower where a pilgrim might finish his journey for life, or a man, "crazed by care, or crossed in hopeless love," might forget woman and woe together—I was awakened to the realities of things by the whistle of a bullet, which struck off a branch within an inch of my head, followed by a fierce howl for the countersign. By all the laws of war, the howl should have come first; but these were not times for ceremony. A troop of Hulans rushed round me, sabre in hand. I stood like a stoic; and, of course, attempted to tell who I was. But my German was unintelligible to my captors, and my French, a suspicious language on a Prussian outpost, only confirmed their opinion that I was born to be stripped. Accordingly one demanded my watch, another my purse, and I was in a fair way of entering the Prussian lines in a state of pauperism, or of being "left alone in my glory" by shot or sabre, when an officer rode up, whom I had casually known in some Parisian circle. To him I could explain myself, and to him I exhibited the envelope of my letter, inscribed with the words, "Grand Quartier General." My new friend bowed to this awful address like a Turk to the firman of the padisha, poured out a volley of wrath on the troop, ordered the instant and very reluctant restitution of my property, and with a couple of the squadron at our heels, took me under his escort, to deliver my papers in person.
After an hour's gallop through rocks, rivulets, and brambles, which seemed without end, and totally uninhabited, except by an occasional patrol of the irregulars of the Austrian and Prussian forces—barbarians as savage-looking as ever were Goth or Hun, and capital substitutes for the wolves and wild-boars which they had ejected for the time—a sudden opening of the forest brought us within view of the immense camp of the combined armies.
All the externals of war are splendid; it is the interior, the consequences, the operation of that mighty trampler of man that are startling. This was my first sight of that most magnificent of all the atrocious inventions of human evil—an army. The forces of the two most warlike monarchies of Europe were spread before me; nearly a hundred and fifty thousand troops, with all the numberless followers of a host in the field, covering a range of low hills which circled the horizon. While we were still at a considerable distance, a gun was fired from the central hill, answered by others from the flanks. The rolling of drums set the vast line in motion, and just at the moment when the sun was lying on the edge of the west, the brigades, descending each from its height, halted on the slope. The whole vast manoeuvre was executed with the exactness of a single mind. The blaze of the sun on the arms, the standards, and the tents crowning the brow of the hills, was magical. "Are they marching to battle?" was my amazed question to my companion. His only answer was to check his charger, take off his shako, and bend his forehead to his saddle-bow. A burst of universal harmony, richer than I had ever yet conceived, explained the mystery. It was the evening prayer. The fine bands of the regiments joined the voices of the soldiery, and I listened, in unbroken rapture and reverence, until its close. In court or cathedral, in concert or shrine, I had never before so much felt the power of sound. It finished in a solemn chorus, and accumulation of music. I could have almost imagined it ascending, embodied, to heaven.
The fire of cannon announced the conclusion of the service; we put spurs to our horses, and soon entered the lines; and, on the strength of my credentials, I had distinguished quarters assigned to me.
I now, for the first time since I left England, began to feel the advantages of birth. In London every man is so submerged in the multitude, that he who can hold his head high enough out of the living surge to be known, must have something of remarkable buoyancy, or peculiar villany, about him. Even Parliament, except to a few of the leaders, is no distinction. The member for the shire is clipped of all his plumage at the moment of his entering that colossal poultry-yard, and must take his obscure pickings with other unnoticeable fowl. In Paris, once the Mahometan paradise of stars and garters, the central herald's office of the earth, the royal region of the Parliament aristocracy, where the beggar with a cordon on his breast outshone the banker with millions in his pocket-book, the world was changed; and to be the son or brother of a peer might have been only a speedier passport to the lamp-post. But, in Germany, the land of pedigrees, to be an "honourable" was to be one on whom the sun shone with double beams; the sex, young and old, smiled with double softness and the whole host of Serenities were doubly serene. In camp, nothing could be more hospitable or distinguished than my reception; for the soldier is always good-humoured under canvass, and the German is good-humoured every where. Perhaps he has rather too high an opinion of his descent from Goth and Vandal, but he makes allowance for the more modern savagery of Europe; and although the stranger may neither wear spectacles, nor smoke cigars, neither muzzle his visage with mustaches, nor speak the most formidable tongue on earth, the German will good-naturedly admit, that he may be a human being after all.
But the man with whom my mission brought me most immediately into contact, and to whom I was most indebted for courtesy, would have been a remarkable personage in any country of Europe; that man was the Duke of Brunswick.
On my arrival, I found two letters forwarded from London, and in the hands of an aide-de-camp of the generalissimo. The first which I opened was from the Foreign Office, a simple statement of the purpose for which I was sent—namely, to stimulate the activity of the Prussian councils, and to urge on the commander of the army an immediate march on the French capital; with a postscript, directing me, in case of tardiness being exhibited at headquarters, instantly to transmit a despatch home, and return to my post in Paris. The second letter—which I must, however undiplomatically, admit that I opened with much stronger interest—was from Mordecai. I glanced over it for some mention of the "ane braw name," and bitterly laughed at my own folly in expecting to find such communications in the letter of the hard-headed and busy Jew. All was brief and rapid.
"If this shall find you in the Prussian camp, you will have no more time for me than I have for you. Let me not clip your diplomatic hopes; but this I forewarn you, you will not obtain a single object of your journey; except, perhaps, showing that you can gallop a hundred miles in the four-and-twenty hours, and can make your way through a country of lunatics without being piked or sabred.
"The campaign is over already—over before it was begun. The battle was fought in the council at Berlin, and the allies were beaten. The duke, within the next fortnight, will be deciding on the merits of the ballet in Brunswick, and the French will be madder than ever with triumphs which they never won, preparing for conquests which are already gained, and knocking down thrones, the owners themselves supplying the pickaxes and hammers. You will see the two best armies of the Continent running away from their own shadows; the old councillors of Frederick and Maria Theresa baffled by cabinets of cobblers and tinkers; grey-beard generals, covered with orders, hunted over the frontier by boys, girls, and old women; and France, like a poissarde in a passion, with her hair flying about her ears, a knife in her hand, and her tongue in full swing, scampering half naked over Europe, to the infinite wonder of the wearers of velvet, Mechlin lace, and diadems,—ha, ha, ha!"
While I was trying to decipher this riddle, which was rather too contemptuous for my new views of things, but which I referred to the habitual feelings of a strong-headed man in humble life, brought just close enough to higher to feel his exclusion, an officer was announced as Count Varnhorst, on the staff of the duke. His countenance struck me at first sight, as one which I had seen before; and I soon discovered, that when I was a boy at Eton, he had been on a visit of a few days at Mortimer castle, in the suite of one of the Prussian princes. We had been thus old friends, and we now became young ones within the first quarter of an hour. His countenance was that of a humourist, and his recollections of the Great Frederick rendered him sarcastic on all things of the later generation.
"The duke has sent me for you," said he, "with his apology for keeping you out of bed; but he has appointed midnight for the delivery of your despatches. The truth is, that hitherto we have all slept so soundly, that we must make up for lost time by turning night into day now, just as we have turned day into night for the last twelvemonth."
"But what can you tell me of the duke?"
"Oh! a great deal; but you know that I am on his staff, and therefore bound to keep his secrets."
"Yet, count, remember that we have sworn an eternal friendship within the last five minutes. What can he or I be the worse for my knowing his great and good qualities?"
"My dear young friend, when you are as old as I am, you will see the improprieties of such questions."
"Well, then, to come to the point; is he a great general?"
"He speaks French better than any other prince in Germany."
"Is he an able politician?"
"You must see him on horseback; he rides like a centaur."
"Well, then, in one sentence, will he fight the French?"
"That wholly depends on whether he turns his horse's head towards Paris or Berlin."
"Count, but one question more, which you may answer without a riddle. Do you think that he will receive my mission cordially?"
"He speaks your language; he wears your broad cloth; he loves your porter; and he has married one of your princesses."
"All my difficulties are answered. I am ready; but what shall I find him doing at this extraordinary hour?"
"If asleep, dreaming of the opera at Brunswick; if awake, dreaming of the opera at Paris."
His diamond repeater, which he had laid on the table between us, struck twelve as he spoke; and, wrapping ourselves in our cloaks, we sallied forth into one of the most starry nights of autumn, and made our way, through long ranges of patrols and videttes, to the quarters of the generalissimo.
The mansion was an old chateau, evidently long abandoned to loneliness and decay one of those huge edifices; whose building had cost one fortune, and whose support had exhausted another. But the struggle had been over for the last fifty years, and two or three shrivelled domestics remained to keep out the invasion of the bats and owls. But at this period the chateau exhibited, of course, another scene; aides-de-camp, generals, orderlies, couriers—all the clang and clamour of the staff of a great army—rang through the wild old halls, and echoed up the long ghostly corridors. Every apartment was a blaze of light, and filled with groups of officers of the Prussian and Austrian guards; all was billiard-playing, talking, singing in chorus, and carousing in all the noisy gaiety of the soldier in good quarters.
"All this is tempting enough," said the old count, as we hastened along a gallery that seemed endless, but on which the open doors of the successive apartments threw broad illumination. "I dare say, Mr Marston, that you would prefer taking your seat among those lively fellows, to the honour of a ducal conference; but my orders are, that you must not be seen until the duke gives you carte blanche to appear among human beings again."
The count now opened the door of an apartment, which appeared to have been more lately tenanted than the rest, yet which exhibited signs of the general desertion; a marble table, covered with a decaying drapery, a Carrara alabaster of Niobe and her children on the mantelpiece, a huge mirror, and a tapestry of one of the hunts of Henri Quatre, showed that Time had been there, and that the Prussians had not; but the indistinct light of the single chandelier left me but little opportunity of indulging my speculations on the furniture. The count had left me, to ascertain when the duke should be at leisure to receive me; and my first process was, like a good soldier, to reconnoitre the neighbouring territory. The first door which I opened led into a conservatory, filled with the remnants of dead foliage, opening on the gardens of the chateau, which, wild as they now were, still sent up a fragrance doubly refreshing, after the atmosphere of meershaums, hot brandy, and Rhine beer, which filled the galleries. The casement distantly overlooked the esplanade in front of the chateau; and the perpetual movements of the couriers and estafettes, arriving and departing every moment, the galloping of cavalry, and the march of patrols, occupied me until a valet of the duke came to acquaint me that supper was served, by his highness's commands, in the apartment which I had lately quitted, and that he would be present in a few minutes.
I returned of course; and found the chamber which I had left so dark and dilapidated, changed, as if by a fairy wand, into pomp and elegance. The duke was renowned for splendid extravagance, and the table was covered with rich plate, the walls glittered with a profusion of gilt lamps, and all round me had the look of regal luxury. But one object suddenly caught my gaze, and left me no power to glance at any other. In a recess, which had hitherto been obscure, but over which now blazed a brilliant girandole, hung a full-length portrait of a nun, which, but for the dress, I should have pronounced to be Clotilde; the same Greek profile, the same deep yet vivid eye, the same matchless sweetness of smile, and the same mixture of melancholy and enthusiasm, which had made me think my idol fit to be the worship of the world. I stood wrapped in astonishment, delight, pain, a thousand undefined feelings, until I could have almost imagined that the canvass before me lived. I saw its eye all but glisten, its lips all but open to speak; the very marble of its cheek begin to glow; when I was awakened by a lively voice, saying, in French—"Ah, Mr Marston, I perceive that you are a connoisseur." I turned, and saw the speaker, a man somewhat above the middle size; a remarkably noble-looking personage; in full dress even at that hour, powdered and perfumed, and altogether a court figure; his hands loaded with jewels, and a diamond star of the order of the garter upon his breast. It required no introducer to tell me that I was in the presence of the Duke of Brunswick.
"Come," said he, "we have no time for etiquette, nor indeed for any thing else to-night—we must sup first, and then talk of your mission."
We sat down; a double file of valets, in liveries, loaded with embroidery, attended at the table; though the party consisted of but four; Varnhorst, and a Colonel Guiseard, chief of the secret diplomacy, a pale Spanish-featured officer—to whom his highness did me the honour of introducing me, as the son of one of his old friends.
"You remember Marston," said he, "at Brunswick, five-and-twenty years ago, in his envoyship—a capital horseman, a brilliant dresser, and a very promising diplomatist. I augured well of his future career, but" ——the infinite elevation of the ducal shoulders, and the infinite drooping of the ducal eyes, completed the remainder of my unfortunate parent's history; but whether in panegyric or censure, I was not sufficiently versed in the science of saying nothing and implying all things, to tell. Guiseard fixed his deep sallow eye on me, without a word: at that moment he reminded me exactly of one of the Inquisitors—the deep, dark-visaged men whom the matchless pencil of Velasquez has immortalized.
Varnhorst burst out into a laugh.
"What, Guiseard," said he, "are you reconnoitring the ground before you make the attack? Your royal highness, I think we ought to vindicate our country to this English gentleman, by assuring him that the colonel is not a cardinal in disguise."
The colonel merely smiled, which seemed an effort for his cloistered physiognomy; the duke laughed, and began a general conversation upon all possible topics—England forming the chief; the royal family—the court—the theatres—parliament—the people—all whirled over with the ease and rapidity of one turning the leaves of an album; here a verse and there a portrait—here a sketch of a temple, and there an outline of a cottage—the whole pretty, and as trifling as pretty, and cast aside at the first moment when any thing better worth thinking of occurred.
In the midst of our gaiety, in which the duke had completely laid down his sceptre, and taken his full share, the great clock of the chateau tolled one. The table was instantly swept of supper—the valets withdrew. I heard the tread of a sentinel at the door of the apartment; and the duke, instantly changing from the man of fashion to the statesman, began to enter into the questions then so deeply disturbing all the cabinets of Europe.
I found the duke a very superior man to what I had conceived of him. He was frank and free, spoke of the intentions of the Allies in the most open manner, and censured the errors which they had already committed, with a plainness which I had not expected to find out of London. He had evidently made himself master of a great variety of knowledge, and with the happy but most unusual power of rendering it all applicable to the point in question. My impressions of him and his order, imbibed among the prejudices of England and the libels of France, was that of frivolity and flutter—an idle life and a stagnant understanding. I never was more surprised at the contrast between this conception and the animated and accomplished prince before me. He seemed to know not merely the persons of all the leading men of Europe—which might have naturally been the case with one who had visited every capital—but to be acquainted with their characters, their abilities, and even their modes of thinking. He seemed to me a man born to rule. It was in later days that the habits of a voluptuary, of which his peculiar love of dress might have been slightly symptomatic, produced their effect, in enfeebling a mind made for eminence. I saw him afterwards, broken with years and misfortune. But on this night I could only see a man on whom the destinies of Europe were rightly reposed. I pay this tribute of honour to his memory.
He spoke a great deal, in our conference, on the necessity of a strong European combination against France, and flatteringly addressed to me a strong panegyric on my country.
"If we can obtain," said he, "the cordial co-operation of the English people, I see no difficulty before us. We already have the Ministry with us; but I know the Englishman's hatred of a foreign war, his horror of public expenditure on continental interests, and his general distrust of the policy of foreign courts. And until we can give the people some evidence, not only that our intentions are sincere, but that our cause is their own, we shall never have the nation on our side."
My remark was, "that the chief difficulty with the nation would be, to convince them that the Allied Powers were not influenced by personal motives; I said that the seizure of territory, while the French remained in their defenceless state, would probably excite strong public displeasure in England; and plainly stated, that the only thing which could engage the public spirit in the war, would be a conviction of its absolute justice and stern necessity."
The conversation was here interrupted by the arrival of a staff-officer with despatches from Berlin. A number of papers were laid on the table, and handed over to Varnhorst and Guiseard to read. They proved chiefly notes and orders relative to the advance of the army. One paper, however, the duke read with evident interest, and marked with his pencil down the margin.
"I am delighted," said he, "that this paper has reached us at last. Mr Marston will now see what my real advice has been from the beginning. The French journals have attacked me furiously for the declaration issued at our entrance on the frontier. The journals of England have partly echoed the French, and I am held up to the world as the author of the Declaration of Pilnitz. This paper, which Mr Marston will do me the honour to send at daybreak to his court by a special messenger, will clear my character with his countrymen at once—with the rest of Europe, I am content to wait a little longer."
He then read the paper in his hand; and it was a long and striking protest against the idea of partitioning France, or having any other intention in the movement of the troops than the security of the French throne. This document had been sent to the Council at Berlin, and been returned by them for revision by the duke, and the softening of its rather uncourtly decisiveness of expression. It stated, that even the conquest of France, if it could be effected, must be wholly useless without the conciliation of the people: that it must be insecure, that it never could be complete, and that even the attempt might rouse this powerful people to feel its own force, and turn its vast resources to war. The first measure ought, therefore, to be an address to the nation, pronouncing, in the clearest language, an utter abjuration of all local seizure.
The paper thus returned, and containing the observations of the council, was given to Varnhorst, to be copied. "And now," said the duke, "gentlemen, I think we may retire for the night; for we have but three hours until the march in the morning."
I said some common-place thing, of the obligations which Europe must owe to a sovereign prince, exposing himself to such labours, honourable as they were.
"No," he smilingly replied; "they are part of our office, the routine of the life of princes, the vocation of men born for the public, and living for the public alone. The prince must be a soldier, and the soldier must make the camp his home, and the palace only his sojourn. It is his fortune, perhaps his misfortune, that but one profession in life is left open to him, whether it be the bent of his temperament or not—while other men may follow their tastes in the choice, serve their fellows in a hundred different ways, and raise a bloodless reputation among mankind. And now, good-night. To-morrow at five the advance moves. At six I shall be on horseback, and then—Well! what matter for the then? We shall sleep at least to-night; and so, farewell."