LIBRARY 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY 
 OF CALIFORNIA 
 
 SANTA BARBARA 
 
 FROM THE LIBRARY 
 OF F. VON BOSCH AN
 
 UCSB LIBKAKY
 
 NAPOLEON 
 
 From the Painting by Delaroche in the Collection of the 
 Duke of Portland 
 
 This engraving represents approximately the author's conception of 
 Napoleon's appearance at the period of the story, i. e., 1809. 
 It has been criticized as "idealization"; in reality, Delaroche 
 has treated his subject somewhat as Kresilas treated the por- 
 trait of Pericles in the famous bust; he has, in Furtwangler's 
 phrase, not "idealized," but "universalized" it, 
 
 Photo Braun.
 
 SGHONBRUNN 
 
 A NOVEL 
 
 BY 
 
 J. A. CRAMB 
 
 ("J. A. REVERMORT") 
 AUTHOR OF "GERMANY AND ENGLAND," ETC. 
 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 NEW YORK AND LONDON 
 
 Unicfcerbocfcer press 
 1918
 
 COPYRIGHT, 1918 
 
 BY 
 G. P. PUTNAM'S SONS 
 
 "Cbc Tknfcfectbocfcer press, flew L'erfe
 
 CONTENTS 
 
 CHAPTER PACK 
 
 I. THE PALAZZO ESTERTHAL i 
 
 II. THE NOON PARADE ..... 42 
 
 III. NAPOLEON'S RIDE 68 
 
 IV. THE ASSASSIN 86 
 
 V. THE MIND OF A CITY .... 141 
 
 VI. THE MAKING OF A POET .... 164 
 
 VII. A VIENNESE SUPPER PARTY . . .192 
 
 VIII. NAPOLEON'S DREAM . . . . .217 
 
 IX. THE MASKED BALL . . . . .281 
 
 X. NAPOLEON'S ADDRESS TO HIS GUARD . .313 
 
 XI. ON THE TRACK OF A CRIME . . . 33 1 
 
 XII. AN EMPEROR AND HIS SECRETARIES . . 349 
 
 XIII. AN IDYLL AT MODLING . . . .371 
 
 XIV. A VIENNESE POET AND A VIENNESE 
 
 COMPOSER 392 
 
 XV. "So STIRBT EIN HELD!" .... 413 
 XVI. EPILOGUE 432
 
 SCHONBRUNN 
 
 CHAPTER I 
 
 THE PALAZZO ESTERTHAL 
 
 "TV TO, Toe, I cannot go with you to this parade. For 
 1 N myself, I do not care two straws whether Bonaparte 
 is a black or a white man. To me, this demi-deity of 
 aspiring ramrods is simply a hustler; and, therefore, I 
 suppose, I am a harsh judge of his enthusiasts. All the 
 same, I protest against you women of Vienna crowding to 
 stare at the humiliator of Germany this burglar in a 
 palace of the Caesars! Austria should be an example to 
 other nations; Vienna to other cities. By God, what will 
 be said of us in the Tyrol, at Munich, Frankfort, Konigs- 
 berg, or in Berlin itself?" 
 
 Count Johann Markowitz, a man of four and thirty, just 
 returned from an abortive mission to Petersburg, swung 
 aside from the Princess Durrenstein and the small group of 
 men and women whom he had thus been addressing, and, 
 walking to a window, stood staring moodily past the 
 heavily fringed curtains at a patch of sunshine on the lawn. 
 The higher branches of a juniper tree worked on it a fan- 
 tastic pattern like ebony inlaid on dull gold, and farther 
 off two gardeners were emptying a barrow full of dead
 
 2 Schonbrunn 
 
 leaves upon a fire. Its smoke rose in a pillar through the 
 windless autumn day. 
 
 Toe, Princess Diirrenstein, looking very tall and grace- 
 ful in a clinging gown of fine silk under her high and 
 nodding ostrich plumes, came up to her former lover and 
 said to him almost timidly: 
 
 "What are we women to do? You are severe on us, 
 Johann. " 
 
 "Severe! Look yonder! Look at our brave Viennese ! 
 And it is hardly ten o'clock. There is Austrian patriotism ! ' ' 
 
 He pointed to a strip of road a mile away, white with 
 heat and sunlight. It was dotted with human figures, 
 some on foot, some on horseback, some in the lumbering 
 Austrian caliche harnessed to four or six horses, others in 
 hackney coaches, in berlines, in landaus, in hired waggons 
 without springs, but all streaming in one direction south- 
 ward towards Schonbrunn. 
 
 "Well," said Berthold Stahrenberg, coming up behind 
 them and laying his hand on Johann's shoulder, "what is 
 there wrong in all this? It is Friday, and our worthy 
 fellow-townsmen have on their Sunday coats, and their 
 wives their embroidered stockings. What should they do 
 but blacken the road to Schonbrunn? Why, it proves 
 that we Viennese know a great man when we see one and 
 like to sun ourselves in his neighbourhood that is all. " 
 
 The irony was inopportune, and Count Johann shook 
 off the white, finely-made hand emerging from its delicate 
 lace cuff. 
 
 "It proves that we Germans want heroic hate, and 
 therefore want heroic energy; it proves, too, why we Aus- 
 trians are defeated whenever we make war against that 
 man; and why Wagram repeats Marengo, and Aspern, 
 Arcola. Very near but never quite a victory, and so from 
 disaster to disaster we flounder on." 
 
 There was an awkward silence the silence which falls
 
 The Palazzo Esterthal 3 
 
 upon men and women who are compelled unexpectedly to 
 look at themselves in an impartial mirror. 
 
 The Palazzo Esterthal in which this scene took place on 
 the morning of Friday, the I3th of October, 1809, had, 
 during the French occupation, become the rendezvous of 
 the few great families who still remained in Vienna. Morn- 
 ing by morning throughout that summer and autumn they 
 had met and talked amid the sombre magnificence of its 
 rooms, or sauntered about its gardens, or sat in the im- 
 penetrable shade of the two cedars which guarded the main 
 avenue. 
 
 Berthold Stahrenberg, who in this society in which every 
 man and woman had a nickname was known as "Bolli, " 
 made a gesture of comical despair and went back to a 
 sofa, beside the Countess Prostkeiya, whose pet name Lan- 
 Lan suited her rich figure and placidly luxurious features. 
 
 "Smell these roses," Lan-Lan said, "and forget all else. 
 Each blossom has its own texture, its own odour. " 
 
 "Like women's hair and women's hands," Bolli mur- 
 mured abstractedly. 
 
 "Indeed? How many women's hair or women's hands 
 have you tested then? Hein? Tell me." 
 
 "One one only!" 
 
 She reddened and had no immediate answer. 
 
 Bolli, though not yet five and twenty, threatened by his 
 gallantries to eclipse the fame of Prince Puckler Prasler 
 himself. Lan-Lan had at first disregarded his assiduities, 
 but during the past three or four weeks something in his 
 voice and manner had begun to affect her troublingly. 
 
 "But what would you have us women do?" Toe per- 
 sisted, still standing beside Count Johann. Her soft yet 
 vibrant Polish accent was very marked against his Austrian 
 baritone. "You do not wish us to enroll ourselves into a 
 fighting corps and make Nusschen our captain?" 
 
 Nusschen, Bolli's youngest sister, a girl of seventeen,
 
 4 Schonbrunn 
 
 with a swinging careless gait, had at that moment come 
 forward from a group in another part of the hall. She was 
 a Stahrenberg every inch, one of the race which had given 
 to Austria not only the hero of the siege of Vienna by the 
 Turks, but a series of crusaders, warriors, and statesmen. 
 
 "I should just love that! Forward! On, ye brave! 
 O Dona Burida, why have I not your chances!" 
 
 To Nusschen's girl's enthusiasm the exploits of the Maid 
 of Saragossa against Napoleon's marshals, which were now 
 reaching Vienna, read like those of a nineteenth-century 
 Joan Dare. 
 
 "That is not for the women of Vienna," Count Johann 
 answered. "Theirs is a nobler part to teach our con- 
 querors how to waltz. After the parade this morning it is 
 the masked ball to-night, is it not?" 
 
 This was addressed in a veiled but savage sarcasm to Toe. 
 Nusschen looked from the one to the other in perplexity. 
 
 But at this point Bolli's satellite, Rudolf Kessling, grand- 
 son of that Wilhelm Kessling, the grain merchant of Prague, 
 whom for his great wealth and public spirit Maria Theresa 
 had enrolled in the reluctant ranks of the Austrian nobility, 
 took up the part that Bolli had dropped and attempted 
 to answer Count Johann. He dressed expensively and 
 affected to be a wit, but his dress was often in bad taste 
 and his wit was always German. As Bolli himself ad- 
 mitted semi-apologetically, "You can never be sure what 
 Kezy is going to say or what Kezy is going to wear. But 
 what chance has he?" 
 
 "The French are in a manner our guests, " Kessling now 
 declared with false emphasis. "Why should we not teach 
 them how to waltz the few at least whom a fellow can 
 invite to the Mehlmarkt. " 
 
 "Our guests!" 
 
 Johann's exclamation was as full, of hate as of contempt. 
 At Petersburg and at Warsaw his manners as an envoy
 
 i he Palazzo Esterthal 5 
 
 had been censured as stiff, but never as incorrect or dis- 
 courteous; yet, as Cobenzl had said of him to Metternich, 
 he was a man better fitted to meditate under an old pear 
 tree on the Markowitz estates than to fill subordinate 
 positions in diplomacy. "In a foremost position," Co- 
 benzl had added, "you might get much out of him." 
 
 Irritated by Johann's bearing, who in making this retort 
 had not even looked at him, Kessling now took up the 
 reference to Prussia. 
 
 "Vienna should be an example to Berlin, you say? What 
 has Prussia done since Jena except truckle to Bonaparte? 
 And you know as well as the rest of us what price at Tilsit 
 the lovely Louisa was willing to pay for Magdeburg. She 
 offered the Corsican a rose: the rose was her royal self!" 
 
 Johann, again without looking at Kessling, said con- 
 temptuously : 
 
 "It is a calumny, that Magdeburg story Bonaparte's or 
 another's." 
 
 Nevertheless, this was the version of it that was accepted 
 in Vienna, and Johann knew it. A Habsburg, the Grand- 
 duchess of Tuscany, Marie Leopolda, had sealed it with 
 her approval. 
 
 "After all," Bolli said, intervening, "this Bonaparte 
 makes things hum. We were yawning ourselves to death 
 when here comes this son of a Corsican attorney and squats 
 himself down on the throne of the oldest dynasty in Europe. 
 And keeps there! What? Is not that something? He is 
 barely forty, yet year in, year out, these last fifteen, he 
 has beaten a Romanoff or a Hohenzollern, a Brunswick, 
 a Bourbon or a Habsburg, in battle after battle. And if 
 Germany or Europe will not fight him it must serve him." 
 
 "There I am with you!" Johann said with sudden 
 energy. "If Germany will not fight him she must serve 
 him; by God, and Europe also! Yes, a world only fit for 
 Bonaparte should have for its tyrant a Bonaparte. "
 
 6 Schonbrunn 
 
 Bolli, Kessling, and an official named Freihoff leaned 
 forward simultaneously to answer. 
 
 But Lan-Lan anticipated all three. 
 
 "Come here, Johann, and talk to Toe and me. What is 
 the matter with you? Amongst Russian bears does one 
 grow like a bear?" she said, looking up into his darkening 
 features. "Now listen to me. I am going to this parade, 
 not to do homage to the French Emperor, but simply 
 because I am bored indoors, and because I feel well, and 
 because the morning is fine and the autumn woods glorious. 
 As for Bonaparte, I go to see him exactly as I would go to 
 see the automatic chess-player: each is a curiosity. " 
 
 She referred to the invention of Metzel, then notorious 
 a figure in wood dressed like a Turk which sat before a 
 chess-board and challenged and invariably defeated all who 
 cared to play. 
 
 "Toe feels just the same," Lan-Lan went on, "so does 
 Amalie, so does Nusschen. And, " she concluded with 
 feminine illogicalness, "we are going to the masked ball 
 to-night and therefore cannot shirk the parade this morn- 
 ing. Why do you look at me like that?" 
 
 "To see how one folly breeds another," was the answer 
 on Count Johann's lips; but he masked it under an ironic 
 smile and merely bowed ceremoniously. 
 
 "The automatic chess-player? Your Serenity has said 
 the word. You will permit me to withdraw from this 
 exalted company? I have to see Count Andreossy at 
 eleven. " 
 
 Andreossy, Napoleon's ambassador, first to England, 
 then to Austria, was now governor of the captured city. 
 Towards the Viennese public, he affected an overbearing 
 and harsh manner ; but he was the secret friend and adviser 
 of many of the great families and took a malicious if dis- 
 sembled pleasure in their coarsest as well as in their most 
 pungent and refined caricatures of Napoleon. Sprung
 
 The Palazzo Esterthal 7 
 
 from the smaller nobility of Languedoc, Andre'ossy found 
 in Vienna a life and a society which appealed at once to his 
 pleasure-loving southern temper and to the snobbism always 
 latent in men of his rank. 
 
 II 
 
 Count Johann had indeed an appointment with Andre'- 
 ossy, but this morning also he wished to get away from the 
 habitue's of the Palazzo Esterthal. Behind Bolli's argument 
 he heard, or seemed to hear, thousands, millions of voices in 
 the hubbub of a staccato discordant chorus proclaiming, 
 "Great is Napoleon, great, great, great! He has done 
 something. He has made things hum. " Johann's own 
 deep moral nature was outraged by this admiration for 
 success, the success, he believed, of a man essentially 
 ordinary, secured, not by genius, but by craft, rough 
 soldiership and bloody violence; for in another sense than 
 that of the priests and priest-ridden societies, he thought 
 of Napoleon as "Antichrist" the actual living promulga- 
 tor of a new ethic, antagonistic in every point to that of 
 Galilee. 
 
 "Marat too did something," he said savagely, "so did 
 St. Just and Robespierre, and so did Ivan the Terrible and 
 the Hospidar Vlad Dracul. And they were in their nature 
 and in their right. If we would not have demi-devils make 
 things hum, we must make things hum ourselves. But, 
 being Germans, this we shall never do, never!" 
 
 On the other hand Johann reasoned, nearly every man of 
 Bolli's set, including Kessling, had gone to the front. Two 
 had fallen at Ratisbon ; at Aspern and at Wagram five had 
 been wounded. Again, though Bolli's debts were heavy 
 and though he was reckless at the gaming-table as on the 
 duelling-ground, had he not out of his own purse helped to 
 maintain Count Purgstall's regiment, seven hundred strong, 
 of whom not more than fifty had ever seen their Styrian
 
 8 Schonbrunn 
 
 fields again? Finally, unlike his greatest friend, the poet 
 Heinrich von Rentzdorf, unlike Johann himself, Bolli had 
 in him a touch of authentic military talent. In February 
 he had communicated his own plan of campaign to the War 
 Office. Part of it coincided with the design for a march upon 
 Paris; but it had in it an important modification of that 
 design, characterized by a judge in these matters as "une 
 idee vraiment Napoleonienne. " The Archduke had thrown 
 the paper on the fire and by that act, it was said amongst 
 Bolli's following, he had burned the glory of Austria. But 
 Bolli knew better muttering to himself " Thank God " each 
 time he thought of the Archduke's action. 
 
 As Johann turned to leave the room Toe darted to his 
 side and taking his arm said in Polish, "You are not going? 
 You cannot go. Why are you putting this affront on me? " 
 
 She spoke in a low guttural voice. Her anger and her 
 pain added to the resplendence of her eyes. 
 
 "What have I done?" she pleaded. 
 
 "Nothing, Toe, nothing. I am not myself to-day. 
 What have you to do this afternoon?" 
 
 "I wish to speak to you now now," she whispered. 
 "I must speak with you." 
 
 He wavered, gnawing his underlip. 
 
 "It is impossible," he said at length. "This business 
 with Andr^ossy is imperative. It is about the guard for 
 this accursed ball amongst other things." 
 
 "Ah, here is Meisner, " Toe exclaimed, seizing this 
 excuse to detain him. 
 
 Etienne Meisner, the old Count Esterthal's physician, 
 approached, bowing to the princess. He was a shortish 
 square-built man of fifty, with pale hair, light blue eyes, 
 cleanliness, health, an almost Spartan simplicity in dress 
 and manners. He was a Swiss, but had been trained in 
 Paris and before settling in Vienna had fought in the Re- 
 volution wars.
 
 The Palazzo Esterthal 9 
 
 "Good-morning, doctor," Toe said. "How is the pad- 
 rino? He can go with us to the parade?" 
 
 " Padrino " was the pet name of the old count. 
 
 Johann, returning the doctor's bow coldly, stood watch- 
 ing Toe's face, her quick gestures and her smiles. Her 
 teeth were irregular, as though she had been wilful in her 
 childhood; but her smile, the velvet smoothness of her 
 brow, the glow in her dark eyes, made of this defect a 
 charm. 
 
 The princess's familiarity with the doctor grated on 
 Count Johann ; but it was Toe's way. She seemed to 
 forget her rank with just those men and women in whose 
 society Count Johann would most have wished her to 
 remember her rank. 
 
 "Yes, " he muttered, " I love her, but I shall never under- 
 stand her. " 
 
 He never had understood her he argued moodily ; not 
 when at eighteen, just after her father's death in battle, 
 she had first come to Vienna, a vision of sorrow, seduc- 
 tion and romance; not when, in answer to his passionate 
 adoration, she had affianced herself to him ; not when, at the 
 end of four months of the strangest happiness, she had 
 broken her troth and, as the bride of Prince Durrenstein, 
 had written to him less than a week after her marriage, 
 "Everything will be the same between us, everything! 
 Dearest, my dearest, how I love you now! And in five 
 weeks from Tuesday next I shall see you again! You will 
 still be in Vienna? You will wait for me?" 
 
 He had not waited twenty-four hours. This incredible 
 perversity, outraging every moral instinct, aggravated the 
 wound in his heart. The thunderous march of the French 
 legions from Boulogne had given him distraction, and in 
 the campaign of 1805, and immediately afterwards as a 
 volunteer with the Russians, he had sought and found a 
 temporary oblivion. She had written to him repeatedly;
 
 io Schonbrunn 
 
 marriage, she protested, had merely shown her the power 
 and tenacity of her love for him. "I am wretched, most 
 wretched. " Then, stung by his silence or furious upbraid - 
 ings, she had ceased to write. 
 
 Suddenly, a year and a half ago, in the spring of 1808, 
 a new and disturbing problem had confronted him the 
 death of Prince Durrenstein at Ostrolenka during the 
 plague that the war had left. 
 
 Meanwhile riches had come to Johann himself. An 
 eccentric uncle, a fanatical Josephinist, attracted by his 
 character and repelled by the pedantry of Johann's elder 
 brother, had made him master of a wide tract of mining 
 country in Styria. But everything had come too late: to 
 Toe, her knowledge of herself; to him, his riches and his 
 lands. Yet his infatuation was cureless. 
 
 "At her worst," he thought now, surveying her nervous 
 perverse grace, "she is the best thing on earth to me. The 
 power to wish for something strongly enough to will death 
 rather than lose it she wakens in me that power. I 
 should be worse than a fool to let her go. " 
 
 Nevertheless, he had undertaken the mission to Peters- 
 burg in order to be away from her, to have the leisure to 
 think freely, untroubled by the hypnotism of her presence. 
 
 A quick stir and greetings and exclamations at the foot 
 of the north staircase made everyone look in that direction. 
 
 It was the old Count Esterthal, followed by Patzsch, his 
 body-servant, carrying plaids and a rug. 
 
 Count Esterthal was at this period a man of seventy- 
 two; he stooped, but his features and bearing had an 
 alert and vigorous expression. His thin pale hooked nose 
 emerged between two vivid German steel-blue eyes; his 
 lips were tightly closed, but in the company of children or 
 the young a smile played about them willingly. 
 
 No man in Austria had felt his country's humiliation 
 more poignantly. To the Habsburgs he had in his youth
 
 The Palazzo Esterthal 11 
 
 devoted something of that chivalrous loyalty which the 
 Stuarts extorted from the Cavaliers. The triumphs of 
 the French Revolutionists were to Count Esterthal what 
 the triumph of a slave-revolt might have been to a Sulla or 
 an Appius Claudius. He saw in Bonaparte simply the ener- 
 getic leader of gangs of serfs, the brigand chief of a hideous 
 brood which had burst from the cellars and ergastula in 
 whose fetid darkness they were meant by nature to waste 
 and pine in chains. 
 
 The second occupation of Vienna by Napoleon had 
 found the old Count withdrawn from politics as from the 
 army, tormented by illness, impatience and life-disgust; 
 and a prisoner in his room; and though known to be an 
 intransigeant, he had applied to Andreossy to intercede 
 with the "brigand" that he might be permitted to remain 
 in the city, and that the house in which Esterthal had suc- 
 ceeded Esterthal for two hundred years soldiers, council- 
 lors, churchmen, ardent supporters of Leopold I. or the 
 open antagonists of Joseph II. might be free from the 
 pollution of the murderers of Marie Antoinette as its un- 
 invited guests. 
 
 Andreossy had made the intercession in person; and, 
 exaggerating the old Count's illness, he had excited Napo- 
 leon's magnanimity. 
 
 "Esterthal? Esterthal?" Bonaparte had cried. "Tiens, 
 I remember that name. " And a misty morning on the banks 
 of the Pieve had risen before his memory. "He was at 
 Rivoli, a general of division, was he not? And at the 
 Tagliamento? I remember. C'est un brave," he had 
 concluded sententiously, and, pleased at this reminiscence 
 of his first dazzling victories, he had, after two or three 
 pointed questions, granted the petition. A special courier, 
 however, had overtaken Andreossy on his way back to the 
 city, bearing the stipulation that Count Ferdinand Ester- 
 thai, one of the associates of the Archduke Maximilian,
 
 12 Schonbrunn 
 
 "the firebrand of Vienna," was to give his parole neither 
 to remain in Vienna nor visit his father's house until the 
 peace was signed. 
 
 Bonaparte's memory had served him right. In 1797 
 Count Esterthal, then a "Field-marshal lieutenant," or 
 major-general commanding a division, had negotiated the 
 preliminaries of Leoben. 
 
 On the old Count's entrance Johann turned at once to 
 Toe. 
 
 "I shall see you this afternoon, then?" he enquired, 
 taking her hand as in farewell. 
 
 "Yes, " she said faintly; "if you must go now. Come at 
 three. " 
 
 He made his way to Count Esterthal, seated in the shadow 
 of the huge staircase and surrounded by a small crowd of 
 acquaintances or sycophants. Count Esterthal drew him 
 at once into the embrasure of the window. 
 
 "Well?" he said with a keen glance into the younger 
 man's face. 
 
 "Nothing," the latter answered with a guarded look 
 around. "Liechtenstein and Bubna have an interview 
 this morning. I am going to headquarters now. I fear 
 the worst. " 
 
 " What will be, will be. Che sar& sara. " 
 
 The two stood silent for some seconds, then the old man 
 walked with him to the door. 
 
 "We can talk better outside." 
 
 They had scarcely gone when down the heavily carved 
 staircase a woman's figure appeared. 
 
 Her plain dress amid the brilliant colouring of the guests, 
 her bare head amid the hats, toques and ostrich plumes, 
 the nobility and ease of her walk as she came forward, ex- 
 changing handshakes in the English fashion with the guests, 
 astonished and charmed the most careless observer. 
 
 It was Amalie von Esterthal, wife of the Ferdinand
 
 The Palazzo Esterthal 13 
 
 Albrecht whom Bonaparte had so pointedly excluded from 
 Vienna and from his father's house. She seemed about the 
 same age as Toe and Lan-Lan. Her walk, the symmetries of 
 her figure, drew every eye to the face, almost in fear lest 
 some feature less enchanting than that form should dis- 
 appoint the sight; and if the usual exclamations, "How 
 classic! How Greek!" were heard around her, it was 
 because in a sophisticated society this had become the 
 stereotyped phrase for great and arresting beauty. Her 
 figure was certainly Greek in its proportions and her bear- 
 ing and walk had great freedom in a word, that poise or 
 balance which sculptors at that period were beginning to 
 admire from castes and drawings of the Parthenon. 
 
 "You enter like some beautiful theme in a symphony," 
 Toe murmured, taking her towards the south window where 
 she had stood with Johann. "Your eyes are full of happy 
 thoughts. You have heard from Rentzdorf? The sun- 
 light on your mouth betrays you. It is a rose of paradise. " 
 
 Amalie looked at the flushed features and sparkling eyes. 
 
 "Dearest Toe, what has excited you? Do I come too 
 soon or too late? I thought Johann was here?" 
 
 She referred to the immediate prospect of a betrothal of 
 the Princess and Count Johann Markowitz. 
 
 "I cannot explain to you here. Where can we talk? I 
 am wretched." 
 
 The young Countess, accustomed as she was to Toe's 
 varying temper, saw that her emotion was, if extravagant, 
 sincere. 
 
 "Go to my room, " she said after a second's deliberation. 
 "I will join you immediately. We do not start for quite 
 an hour." She glanced at a clock that rose beside some 
 armour and a stand full of antique boar-spears. "Ah," 
 she exclaimed, flushing in turn, but with anger, "who has 
 committed this folly? And to-day of all days!" 
 
 The heavy crimson curtain of the northern window,
 
 14 Schonbrunn 
 
 which for the past four months had by her express orders 
 hung half-drawn, had been thrown back, disclosing the 
 shattered pilasters and carvings of the adjoining balcony. 
 It was the work of a shell thrown from Vienna itself during 
 the bombardment in April last. The old Count had 
 refused to have the balcony repaired, yet whenever he saw 
 it, he burst into one of those rages which were a misery to 
 the whole household. 
 
 She called the major-domo, glanced in the direction of 
 the curtain and turned once more to her friend. 
 
 " Forgive me, dear Toe. Fritz, who looks after this room, 
 is still with the Landwehr. " 
 
 "What is it?" Toe asked bewildered. "How, your face 
 looks cruel no, Roman, Lombard, menacing anyhow"- 
 searching for a word. "You will come quickly? Do not 
 let Lan-Lan or Nusschen keep you. " She disappeared up 
 the narrow south stair. 
 
 Amalie's intervention in the matter of the curtain was 
 just in time. A minute later the old Count appeared 
 in the doorway. He was accompanied by a little neatly 
 dressed man with a shining bald head, with busy lines about 
 the mouth, but an agreeable smile. This was the famous 
 Councillor of Mines, Count Prostkeiya, Lan-Lan's husband. 
 
 Bolli, his face a mask, sat down beside Kessling. At the 
 other end of the room Amalie rejoined padrino, who was 
 now standing with Baron Freihoff and his two daughters, 
 twins, both dressed in the soft semi-transparent muslins then 
 the fashion in Vienna, which alternately revealed and 
 hid the outlines of their fresh young figures. The two 
 girls, blushing and smiling at Amalie's kindness, kept 
 breaking into little spurts of childish talk. One had a 
 stammer, the other a lisp, and both seemed very inex- 
 perienced and gawky beside the upright grace of Nusschen, 
 who was two years younger. 
 
 "Our fellows are useless in attack," said a young officer
 
 The Palazzo Esterthal 15 
 
 of Jagers, looking now at the Count, now at Freihoff ; "and 
 on a march a shower of rain dispirits a division. " 
 
 ' ' I must beg of you to except Liechtenstein's troopers, " 
 Freihoff said. "They are as good as the French. We 
 have learnt half Bonaparte's game already. We will 
 beat him in time!" 
 
 And in the official's arid tones the names of Steininger, 
 Smola and Oldenberg-Orsini began to collide rapidly with 
 those of Killer, Bellegarde, Kinsky and Schwartzenberg 
 heroes or quasi-heroes of the campaign. But the old 
 Count's harsh laugh interrupted this official verbosity. 
 
 "Yes, next time! Next time! Irnmer das alte Lied! 
 Ever the same old song! I have heard it sung in Austria 
 these fifty years. " 
 
 He spoke the truth. It was the word which had been 
 used to palliate Austria's defeats under Daun and under 
 Loudon in her wars against Frederick the Great ; it was the 
 word he had heard used to salve her diplomatic checks 
 under Joseph II. ; it was the word he had heard used after 
 Valmy in 1792 and after the world-historic repulse of 
 Coburg in 1793. He had heard it again in '94, '95 and '96, 
 and now after Wagram, as nine years ago after Marengo and 
 four years ago after Ulm and Austerlitz, it was reiterated 
 as cheerfully and complacently as ever. 
 
 The Jager, an enthusiastic young soldier, turned to 
 Amalie. 
 
 "You saw the French armies enter Vienna, did you not, 
 each man with a hunk of meat or bread on his bayonet 
 point trim, clean little beggars, with not a superfluous hair 
 on their heads? When once our fellows ... I beg your 
 pardon, " he said, interrupting himself, and, imagining that 
 he had started a topic dangerous to the old Count's temper, 
 he turned in the direction of her glance. 
 
 A little smiling old lady, in the elaborate head-gear of 
 Maria Theresa's days, had come gliding out of the dusk of
 
 16 Schonbrunn 
 
 the great north staircase. She threatened with her fan 
 Bolli and Kessling, she blew a kiss to Amalie, then to 
 Nusschen; her faded eyes beamed with intelligent pleasure 
 and self-satisfaction; but, as everyone in the room knew, 
 she probably was ascribing to each a name or a personality 
 that was not his own or not her own. One day she would 
 mistake Bolli for her eldest son, dead fifteen years ago; 
 another day she would mistake Amalie for the latter 's 
 sister, Ulrica, who was in a convent at Prague; or she would 
 confound the doctor or a chance visitor with the younger 
 Count Esterthal, Ferdinand Albrecht. 
 
 The little old lady was Count Esterthal's elder sister. 
 She now stopped right in the middle of the room. Her lips 
 parted in a fixed smile, showing the false yellowish under- 
 teeth. 
 
 "Whom does she take us for to-day?" Kessling asked 
 with obstreperous gaiety. 
 
 Bolli made no answer, but under his lowered eyelids 
 watched the melancholy scene, afflicting at once to the 
 sight and to the judgment. The entrance of Lan-Lan's 
 husband had fronted him suddenly with the ugliness and 
 the reality of things, and the sight of her figure in all its 
 exotic grace seated beside the trim, carefully dressed 
 Councillor of Mines sharpened the bitterness of the im- 
 pression. 
 
 "Mon Dieu," he thought, "la vie humaine! Napoleon 
 and his marshals out there at Schonbrunn heap up glory 
 or heap up gold, whilst Time, inexorable Time, turns all to 
 a derision, just as it has turned this woman's face to a 
 grinning mask! But the mad world-dance goes on, aimless 
 as life is, aimless as love is, aimless as God is and all God's 
 creatures!" 
 
 "Whom does she take us for to-day?" Kessling repeated, 
 for he had the rich parvenu's self-conceit and took umbrage 
 at Bolli's abstractedness.
 
 The Palazzo Esterthal 17 
 
 "As if I knew," Belli answered. "Monkeys from Pots- 
 dam or Daun and his staff." 
 
 But to the astonishment of everyone the old Maid of 
 Honour walked straight to Lan-Lan and began to talk 
 merrily to Count Prostkeiya. And in a minute or two she 
 was speaking to Lan-Lan herself as though she were the 
 Archduchess Maria Christina, dead these seven years, and 
 laid to rest in Canova's rococo-classic monument. 
 
 "All Her Majesty's daughters are good and kind; oh, 
 my dear, so carefully trained, as for Holy Church itself." 
 Her words became low, broken, solemn, disconnected 
 ejaculations. 
 
 Belli thought of the histories of those daughters of Maria 
 Theresa the hideous cloud of truth or calumny that year 
 by year thickened round their reputations Marie An- 
 toinette, Marie Carolina, Marie Josepha. 
 
 "What a satire upon Holy Church, and that careful 
 training! Bah, this is God's planet, not mine, and He 
 must run His show in His own way." 
 
 in 
 
 Amalie, on escaping to her rooms on the first floor, did 
 not at once find Toe. She lingered a minute in her boudoir, 
 charmed by the sudden stillness, the soft perfumes, and 
 by the subdued light falling on its costly furnishings, sofas, 
 cabinets and rare vases, books and sombre hangings. 
 
 But the sound of her maid's voice speaking in Italian 
 and Toe's laughing replies in the same language came to 
 her from her bedroom. 
 
 The spectacle which there met her amused and amazed 
 her. It was no longer the desperate woman that had 
 quitted her downstairs. The Princess Durrenstein, in 
 her bodice and underskirt, her arms and sloping shoulders 
 bare, stood bending forwards to an oval mirror, carefully
 
 1 8 Schonbrunn 
 
 pencilling her eyebrows. Her gown had been flung on a 
 chair: her plumed hat and veil lay on the bed. On the 
 dressing-table everything was in confusion; the lids of 
 rouge and carmine pots, perfume bottles, brushes, the 
 crystal, porcelain, ivory and silver of the toilet-service 
 all were mixed pell-mell. Tita, Amalie's maid, a flush on 
 her face, the curls loosened on her forehead, stood behind 
 the impetuous visitant, her left arm burdened with vari- 
 ous articles of clothing Toe's cashmere shawl, a scarf of 
 Alengon lace; and on her right a cloak, in which Amalie 
 recognized a fur capote of her own, sent from Mersan's 
 two days ago. 
 
 "En plein vice!" Toe cried. " Caught red-handed." 
 
 She wheeled round and, making her petticoats swirl like 
 a ballerina's, she threw one slender and exquisitely neat 
 foot in front of the other in rapid alternation. 
 
 "But where did you get this capote? You will wear it 
 to-day? You must, you must! Bonaparte cannot stand 
 a shawl, even on Josephine, and I want him to see that 
 Vienna can turn out as elegant figures as Paris and faces 
 a myriad times more lovely! " And she dabbed her freshly 
 carmined lips on Amalie's cheek. 
 
 "Aliens! Let me try it on once more," she said to the 
 maid. 
 
 Her eyes flashing, her lips fixed in a smile of excited 
 pleasure, she slipped again into the coat and began to walk 
 to and fro in front of the mirror, eyeing herself now side- 
 ways, now in face, now twisting her fine, slender neck to 
 see her back. 
 
 "It is too large for her Highness," Tita said to her 
 mistress. "I told Madame la Princess, this, but she is so 
 so irresistible. " 
 
 "I cannot make it out," Toe exclaimed, stamping her 
 foot. "Your things are always newer and more chic than 
 Lan-Lan's or mine, yet she has ten thousand a year for
 
 The Palazzo Esterthal 19 
 
 dress and my own nota three weeks ago came to 6342 
 exactly. Hein, what do you really spend? Do you bribe 
 Mersan in secret? Or is it favouritism?" 
 
 "Neither the one nor the other, dear Toe. It is simply 
 thinking a little." 
 
 Toe with a shrug turned again to the glass, balancing 
 herself and thrusting out one after the other her slim but 
 deliciously modelled hips. The coat would not hang. She 
 drew it off petulantly. 
 
 "There you stand, you superb one, and give never a 
 thought to your own perfections; whilst I, I would give a 
 mine in Styria to have shoulders like yours, that waist, and 
 the rest of you." Tita aided the princess to dress and, 
 taking the capote with her, left the room. 
 
 IV 
 
 Left alone, the two women, each sunk in her own thoughts, 
 walked once or twice to and fro the large room, the scents 
 from the roses and heliotrope outside mingling with the 
 definite perfumes that at that date hung about every fash- 
 ionable woman's bedroom. On a table near the window 
 stood a Sevres vase and some miniatures. One was 
 Amalie's mother; another showed the long but handsome 
 and intellectual features of Prince John of Liechtenstein, 
 Rentzdorf s commander and the most brilliant cavalry 
 leader of Austria, and, after Murat and Ziethen, perhaps 
 the most brilliant of modern times. 
 
 "You see how Johann requites my forbearance," Toe 
 suddenly burst out, releasing her arm and throwing 
 herself into a low chair. "These three days have been a 
 continuous torture. I have asked him to explain; but he 
 says nothing. I have offered every atonement; but still 
 he says nothing. Yesterday I forced him to go with me to 
 matins. I gave him the blessed water, but he would not
 
 20 Schonbrunn 
 
 give it me in return. He refused to kneel beside me; he 
 would neither pray with me nor for me. " 
 
 "But, dearest Toe," Amalie remonstrated, "why did 
 you do anything so foolish?" 
 
 Toe looked at her. 
 
 "What is there foolish in wishing to kneel in the Holy 
 of Holies beside the man you love and intend to marry? 
 Oh, yes; I know what his brother says of us: 'Watches 
 that never show the same hour. ' But he is wrong. Johann 
 and I we were made for each other. Long, long, long 
 ago I knew it. True, Johann does not believe in Rome; 
 he does not believe in Christ. What does that matter? I 
 believe in both ; and for him I am willing to risk my salva- 
 tion. I love him. I love him. " 
 
 Amalie had a return of her impatient mood, but she 
 said nothing, silently caressing Toe's hair. At length she 
 said to Toe gently: 
 
 "But this morning what did you and Johann do?" 
 
 "This morning?" the Princess answered, lifting her small 
 tormented features. "It seems so long ago. What was I 
 wearing? I can always remember in that way. Ah, I 
 recollect. I was in black. We rode together round the 
 ramparts. St. Stephen's bells were in full chime. I 
 demanded straight out why yesterday he had acted in so 
 cruel a way, and whether he had ceased believing in God. " 
 
 "Well, and what did he say to that?" Amalie urged 
 smiling, though her eyes filmed at Toe's naive almost 
 childlike earnestness. 
 
 "What did he say? Sitting firm on his horse he looked 
 at me sideways, up and down, then answered, 'Yes, I am 
 a Christian, Toe, in my own way ; that is, if it be Christian 
 to love your enemies and do ill to your friends. Even 
 there, of course, I cannot presume to rival my brother in 
 devotion, and still less you ladies of Vienna in fervour 
 where a French officer is concerned.' That was his answer
 
 The Palazzo Esterthal 21 
 
 and he struck my horse with his whip and sent me careering 
 on in front. He wanted to kill me. And I should not 
 have minded a bit had I been thrown and killed on the 
 spot. " 
 
 "And afterwards what did you do?" 
 
 "Nothing wise. When he overtook me, I said to him, 
 1 You ought to love me, Johann, for you do ill to me enough 
 to make me think I am your dearest friend.' He was 
 nicer after that. He said that in Russia he had been study- 
 ing the Slav nature; that he hoped by and by to comprehend 
 it, especially as it unfolds itself in the hearts of Polish 
 women. Then he said in quite an odd voice, 'Well, at 
 your worst you are better than the best, Toe: by God, yes; 
 the sweetest, greatest thing on earth to me.' All the same, 
 a quarter of an hour later, he left me at my door like a dog 
 that in pity he had taken for a run. " She began to tear 
 at her lace handkerchief with her small, white, but irregular 
 teeth. 
 
 "I am so wretched, so wretched. I ask myself a thou- 
 sand times why has this come upon me? But there is 
 never an answer. My broken engagement, I am told, was 
 my destruction. But how was I to know? No one 
 warned me: no one dissuaded me. Johann himself con- 
 gratulated me. I thought I was doing the best thing for 
 myself and the best thing for him. He was poor. He 
 habitually spoke despitefully of women and of marriage. 
 I thought it would be just the same with Johann afterwards. 
 I wrote that to him on my honeymoon. How I hate him 
 and hate myself now when I remember ! I could kill my- 
 self with mortification or kill him." 
 
 It was not the depravity of the confession which startled 
 Amalie she was too much a Viennese, too little of a hypo- 
 crite; it was the sadness of life, of all life; it was the pain 
 that this man and this woman had brought on each other, 
 the pain they were yet to bring on each other.
 
 22 Schonbrunn 
 
 "It is Vienna," Toe went on. "In Warsaw I was not 
 like this. But I will make him suffer. When it is too 
 late he will regret me. The dead are always valued. " 
 
 Shiverings like those of a fever traversed her body. 
 Then with an abrupt change of mood 
 
 "No ; I will not weep. I have humiliated myself enough. 
 The villain! I have but to drop my glove and ten of the 
 best men in Austria spring to pick it up. 'The Princess 
 Durrenstein's glove ! ' I could have them tear each other 
 for that glove or for the stalks of the grapes I have eaten. " 
 
 And with hectic cheeks and hot eyes she made a pirouette, 
 advancing with mincing steps, then retreating, holding up 
 her skirts to show her charming ankles and shapely calves. 
 
 "Ja, ich bin es, bin es, bin es, 
 Bin Prinzessin Durrenstein ! " 
 
 It was her own parody of the refrain sung by the hawkers 
 of Tyrolese wood-carving and used with dubious success 
 long afterwards by Grillparzer in one of the most tragic 
 scenes of his most famous drama. 
 
 Then, kissing her hands, she made as it were a triumph- 
 ant exit. 
 
 "Do you think me crazy? Dearest, dearest, speak to 
 me. Advise me. To you I will listen. One thing only: 
 I cannot give him up again. Never, never! I will be 
 anything to him, mistress or wife or sister, but I must have 
 him. The Blessed Sacrament is less to me." 
 
 She knelt, pressing herself against Amalie like a younger 
 against an elder sister. 
 
 "Marriage is the lesser evil, Toe." 
 
 "The lesser evil!" came the passionate cry. "Oh, is 
 there then nothing that is good in life? Is it all evil? 
 How terribly you speak. Yet you are right. I did not 
 think thus formerly. It is Vienna. It is Daruka. I can- 
 not, cannot stand both his cruelty and his inconstancy."
 
 The Palazzo Esterthal 23 
 
 "Be reasonable, Toe. You know Johann's character." 
 
 Daruka was the Princess Ternitchsky, a Circassian 
 married to the scion of a great Viennese family. Amalie 
 pointed out that Johann's assiduities synchronized with 
 Toe's own flightiness and her flirtation with Montesquiou, 
 one of Napoleon's aides. 
 
 " It is Vienna, " Toe muttered in a kind of wanton despair. 
 "Life itself is holy, good and pure. It is this city that is 
 evil." 
 
 "Dear Toe, " Amalie said with a shrug, "you will find a 
 Vienna everywhere. Besides," she went on in a gentler 
 voice, "of what use is it to be jealous of Daruka? The 
 man was never born who could look on Daruka and not 
 desire her. The terrestrial Venus the Venus of the 
 streets Daruka is that thing. You might as well be 
 jealous of the woman who kisses your lover in his sleep." 
 
 "You do you think like that about Rentzdorf?" 
 
 Amalie answered steadily though with averted eyes 
 "Yes, I think like that about Heinrich. " 
 
 There was so strange, so sweet a music in her voice that 
 Toe started back ashamed as before some shrine which she 
 had approached. 
 
 "And that is woman's life? That is all life now and 
 in the past? It is frightful; it is frightful. It is Vienna, 
 its rivalries, its balls, its ostentation, its extravagance, its 
 art, its music everything that made me marry Prince 
 Durrenstein! Oh, I know it now, my perdition! At 
 Warsaw I dreamed of a lover who, though miles and miles 
 away, yes, and in the company of the most seductive 
 women, would see my image only. " 
 
 Amalie got up, worn out, leaving the Princess crouched 
 together by the sofa. But, constraining herself, she an- 
 swered : 
 
 "Dearest Toe, Count Johann loves you if man ever 
 loved woman. He certainly is not like your ideal; for this
 
 24 Schonbrunn 
 
 that you name your ideal is not only a mere phantasy, but 
 a stupid phantasy. You might as well say, 'I will not 
 have fingernails, because they hint at claws ; or I will not 
 have a single hair on the back of my hand, because it hints 
 the beast, ' as to wish for a lover like this block of wood, 
 your ideal. " 
 
 "Amalie! How horrible you are!" 
 
 "You force me to be horrible." 
 
 "I force you? How?" 
 
 "By your Warsaw view of life; by your cult of the Slav 
 temperament; by all that superficial ideality of yours, 
 confusing the thing you desire with the thing that is and 
 ought to be! Instead of looking steadily at the thing which 
 is until it is penetrated and transfigured by the thing you 
 desire it to be, you say excitedly, 'The thing I see is the 
 thing I wish.' Then comes the awakening. Dear Toe, 
 it is the history of Poland, and you know it. If you marry 
 Johann to-morrow," she continued, "he will meet women 
 like Daruka; you will meet men like M. de Montesquieu. 
 Purity, passion, the body, the soul, the senses it is all more 
 mysterious than we think, Toe. There are thoughts we 
 keep back from those we love most dearly. Hourly we lie 
 to ourselves; hourly we dissemble. And this is everlast- 
 ingly right. C'est la vie. It is right that we should be 
 compelled to obliterate thoughts just as we are compelled 
 to obliterate old bad hidden things in our ancestral past. 
 Our life is as our thoughts are; yet neither our thoughts nor 
 their consequences are within our power. To that per- 
 petual cry of yours, ' To whom can I show myself exactly 
 as I am; tell everything, everything?' I answer, Cer- 
 tainly not to Johann; nor to any man. Not even to me; 
 not even to yourself." 
 
 Amalie stopped. 
 
 "To God," she heard Toe whispering; "oh, I tell all to 
 my God."
 
 The Palazzo Esterthal 25 
 
 "You mean in the confessional?". 
 
 Toe nodded. 
 
 "You never do," Amalie answered in a moved voice. 
 "You never do. You forget I too was once a Catholic, 
 and know. Never, I say, never! No woman ever yet 
 confessed all to a man. Our confessions, " she said with a 
 singular laugh, "are like our coiffures, arranged by the 
 invisible lady's maid of the soul." 
 
 Toe shivered. She felt miserable, weak, suffering. 
 
 "Dear Toe," Amalie went on, speaking now in a low 
 friendly voice, "I say all this to you because you are 
 confronted by two roads, one leading to disaster. You say, 
 this is Vienna well, I say again, the suburbs of the actual 
 Vienna are spacious, but of this Vienna of yours, the suburbs 
 are wide as the world." 
 
 Toe in an instant was on her knees beside her. 
 
 "You great, beautiful, high-souled, dear, dear Amalie! 
 I was a demon when I came into this room; and now an 
 angel I am not, nor ever will be; but you, I think, are near 
 the angels, and I, I am near you. I must be alone to think, 
 to think! Where can I go? Round the garden under 
 the cedars? No; I will drive home and back." 
 
 Downstairs, Toe found the company, still more aug- 
 mented, hotly engaged in attacking or defending the authen- 
 ticity of an anecdote told by Lan-Lan on the authority 
 of Madame Raspogli. Napoleon's sister Pauline, Princess 
 Borghese, Madame Raspogli had averred, was addicted to 
 the vice or the extravagance of milk baths which cost a 
 guinea each; and to heighten the bizarrerie of this taste 
 she was, the same authority had affirmed, carried to the 
 bath by a favourite negro named Delmar. 
 
 "The mameluk! The mameluk!" Kessling cried ex- 
 citedly almost as Toe entered the throng. "Why have I 
 not thought of it before?"
 
 26 Schonbrunn 
 
 "Thought of what?" Lan-Lan asked. 
 
 "Rustum Bonaparte's mameluk, who commits his 
 murders for him, like the private assassin of the Borgias. 
 The murders are an intelligible service; but why does he 
 keep him as his valet ? Not till this moment have I known." 
 
 "Well, what is the reason?" 
 
 "Why, to carry him to his bath a family taste, a Bona- 
 partist idiosyncrasy! It is glorious." 
 
 There was a shout of laughter. 
 
 The younger twin blushed, the elder said, "Disgrace- 
 ful!" and looked death at her sister. 
 
 The steady tolling of a bell outside got on Toe's nerves 
 even more jarringly than Vienna's risky stories. It 
 sounded like a deathbell. 
 
 "The Church of the Capuchins," she thought suddenly. 
 "Let me go there. I can reflect and pray. God will 
 illumine me." 
 
 Unlike the Princess Durrenstein, who was a pure Slav, 
 Amalie von Esterthal was, by the mixture of her blood and 
 the discordant traditions in her descent, a typical Viennese. 
 
 On her mother's side she was Italian, tracing her origin 
 to the Ranieri, a fanatical Guelf house, which, banished 
 from Arezzo in the fourteenth century, had settled in 
 Lombardy and by enterprise or war had gradually become 
 possessors of wide tracts of grudging or fertile land in the 
 neighbourhood of Monza. Her father, on the other hand, 
 was of a South German stock and drew his name and de- 
 scent from the Counts of Hildenfeldt in Suabia. Dis- 
 possessed during the Thirty Years' War, the branch to 
 which he belonged had been restored to comparative 
 affluence by Leopold I.; and, thrust again into the back- 
 ground under Charles VI., had re-emerged under Maria 
 Theresa and her successors. Two of Amalie's great-aunts
 
 The Palazzo Esterthal 27 
 
 had been maids of honour to the empress-queen ; her father 
 in his youth had entered the famous Harrach Guard; of 
 her brothers, two were in the Austrian service; a third was 
 equerry to the Queen of Naples, Maria Carolina, Amalie's 
 godmother; a fourth was a priest. Her only sister, Ulrica, 
 five years her senior, had at nineteen adopted the religious 
 life and was now in the convent of the Ursulines at Prague. 
 
 Amalie herself was now in her twenty-eighth year. Of 
 these years the first fifteen had been passed in an almost 
 conventual seclusion at Monza; the next seven partly in 
 Austria and partly in Naples and Palermo at the court of 
 Maria Carolina; the last six in Vienna. 
 
 A patrician in the widest as in the narrowest sense of that 
 term, she seemed by her birth, vigorous health and con- 
 spicuous beauty preappointed to a life of outward brilliance 
 or luxurious calm. Her marriage with Ferdinand von 
 Esterthal had been a "love" marriage. It stimulated her 
 senses and satisfied her pride. He was good-looking; he 
 was young, and apparently her slave; he was by his friend- 
 ship with the Archduke Maximilian one of the most envied 
 officers of the Guard. 
 
 Suddenly this fabric of peace and illusionary joys dis- 
 solved. 
 
 In the same week and almost on the same day she 
 received the news of her mother's death, and discovered 
 that her husband had for an indefinite time been false to 
 her, that he had now as mistresses two of her closest 
 friends, one, her brother's wife, Lucille von Hildenfeldt, 
 the other, his own cousin, Marie von Esterthal. 
 
 It was as if a thunder-bolt had struck her to"the ground. 
 
 In the days and weeks of suffering and perplexity of 
 heart which ensued, of sorrow for her mother's death, of 
 perplexity before her own fierce humiliation, she had to 
 face alone the problems assailing her spirit the central 
 problem above all, long shunned and now thus suddenly
 
 28 Schonbrunn 
 
 and terribly unmasked "What art thou that with brute 
 power hast fashioned the worlds in agony and now hurlest 
 on me this anguish?" 
 
 Untutored by suffering, hate and the lust for retaliation 
 had for a time engrossed her thoughts ; nor was it until the 
 opportunity of a fearful vengeance offered itself that she 
 recoiled in horror from the mad craving to make her in- 
 sulters suffer. It was against herself that her hate now 
 gathered. It was against herself that the murderous in- 
 stinct was directed. 
 
 But again when, she watched the frail, spiritual grace 
 of her sister-in-law, Lucille von Hildenfeldt, she had put 
 the question "Can treachery and murder have lodg- 
 ment in that form? Can it be evil, the desire which one so 
 fair can feel? Wrong and sin? Oh, this world is but one 
 great wrong, and sin is the only reality; good, the dream. 
 Woman's innocence? Was there ever a time when I 
 myself have been innocent?" 
 
 And she saw now that it was not their guilt; it was their 
 imagined bliss that was the arrow quivering in her side. 
 
 A reconciliation patched up by the intervention of the 
 Queen had left her rancour unappeased. "Win back your 
 husband's love," her confessor had pleaded. "You have 
 the traditions of your mother's house to guard." 
 
 "Yes," she had reflected to herself in scornful irony, 
 "let me be a good wife, since a mother I cannot be. And 
 yet why? Why should I win back this man's love whom 
 I despise and loathe? Amalie von Hildenfeldt, the girl 
 who loved Ferdinand von Esterthal, is dead. Would I, 
 the woman, indeed remarry with this well-born jockey and 
 dog-trainer? Is this indeed God's high command?" 
 
 All around her was lampless darkness ; the law of conduct 
 had sunk with the faith from which it was derived. How 
 was a false religion to beget in human conduct anything 
 save hypocrisy or a false law? Living in conjugal "peace,"
 
 The Palazzo Esterthal 29 
 
 consenting to her own degradation amid her friends' ap- 
 proval, she was, she told herself, striving to find a place 
 with the Egyptian in that obscene Malebolge of Dante. 
 
 In 1804 she returned to Vienna in a state of mind border- 
 ing upon madness. Her married life had become a daily 
 contamination, but from this she was now determined at 
 any cost to liberate herself. 
 
 The intercession of "padrino, " her father-in-law, pre- 
 vented a scandal. He had been her mother's friend and 
 Amalie had formed a strong attachment to the lonely old 
 man. Her own father lived in seclusion dedicated to her 
 mother's memory, passing the days and nights, it was said, 
 in abstruse studies of alchemy and astrology. Divorce, 
 despite the laws of Joseph II., was in Austria confined as 
 yet to the middle classes. A suite of rooms in the left 
 wing of the Palazzo was allotted to herself; the right wing 
 to Ferdinand; the public apartments and those of the old 
 Count occupied the remainder of the house. 
 
 VI 
 
 "My life is ended, " she wrote in her diary, "and my life 
 is not begun. I have not known an hour of happiness 
 which I have not proved to be an illusion or founded on a 
 lie. The vain successes at the Court, dress, jewels, the 
 Opera, the theatre, balls, court fetes, admiration, envy, 
 pride, my marriage, religion, the 'peace of the soul' at 
 Monza and at Naples what have these been except the 
 creations of a lie or a dream ? I was born into a false re- 
 ligion, trained to worship a false God. I made for myself 
 a false world and in it found false friends, false joys, false 
 thoughts, false everything. " 
 
 She was a woman to whom religion was necessary if she 
 were to live ; but her intellect, at once exalted and darkened 
 by her suffering, had as yet led her only to denial. Never-
 
 30 Schonbrunn 
 
 theless, she had unawares taken the first step towards that 
 vision of things which she afterwards found in Rentzdorf's 
 dramas. 
 
 "Life is meaningless," she wrote, "yet live on! Life is 
 suffering, and beyond this earth there is nothing; yet live 
 on!" Why? Pressing that question she was pressing 
 towards the light. 
 
 Unpretentious, and, considering her education and her 
 environment, singularly free from affectation and class 
 prejudices, exquisitely sensitive to beauty, she was yet de- 
 nied alike the ambitions of art and of social rivalries which 
 made life a sort of noisy self-complacent phantasmagoria 
 to several of her contemporaries to Bettina, for instance, 
 to Rahel, to Caroline Schlegel and to Mariamne vom Stein. 
 
 Rejecting the religion of Christ which as a kind of 
 Austrian Jansenism she found in Vienna, in the Markowitz 
 circle above all she nevertheless adopted its ethics. 
 
 "Let me live for others. " 
 
 She gave her days to the philanthropies and to the 
 "causes" that were fashionable in the first decade of the 
 nineteenth century, quickly discovering, with a humour not 
 wholly bitter, their organized imposture and innate con- 
 tradiction. "You say the rich pursue phantoms and 
 shadows," she said to Count Markowitz, "but is not the 
 struggle of the poor for bread as phantasmal as the struggle 
 of the rich for pleasure?" 
 
 Round her, the falling of thrones, the tramp of Bona- 
 parte's legions and the monotonous thunder of his cannon 
 seemed a not unfitting accompaniment to her moody days. 
 
 VII 
 
 It was in this state of mind and in the Markowitz circle 
 that for the first time she heard the name and became 
 acquainted with the poetry of Heinrich von Rentzdorf .
 
 The Palazzo Esterthal 31 
 
 At Monza, with her mother or alone, she had read much 
 in Italian ; but at Naples and in Palermo after her marriage 
 she had read nothing. Now, in Vienna, as German grad- 
 ually became as easy to her as Italian, she turned in avid 
 curiosity or enthusiasm towards that blossoming-time of 
 poetry and thought known as the Aufkldrung. Herder, 
 Lessing, Jacobi, Schiller, Zacharias Werner their works 
 became stars in a wider newer firmament of the soul. 
 
 Heinrich von Rentzdorf, who was still quite young, had 
 at first escaped her observation; but when his dramas were 
 once in her hands, she divined in him a genius more akin to 
 Goethe's than to that of any of his contemporaries. His 
 ideas, like those of Goethe, came, as it were, from a dis- 
 tance; and his verses, like Goethe's were impregnated with 
 a magic or a mystery borrowed from remoter twilights than 
 ours. He had Goethe's passion for the German language. 
 He handled each word as if it were itself a poem, the 
 achievement of some unknown but perfect artist. "The 
 quarries at Carrara used to tremble when they heard the 
 footstep of Buonarroti, " the young critic and litterateur, 
 Axel Petersen, had written in the Mercure de Vienne, "so, 
 I imagine, does a German dictionary when Heinrich von 
 Rentzdorf comes near. Austria has at last a poet, a true 
 magister verborum, a master of words, and I am glad to be 
 his Annunciator, if that be not too presumptuous a name." 
 
 Rentzdorf's first work, the drama Caius Marius, pub- 
 lished in 1803, had been acted on nearly every stage in 
 Germany. "It had even paid," the wits said, satirizing 
 the remuneration which at that era even the most suc- 
 cessful book or play brought the writer "a night of the 
 author's losses at the gaming-table." 
 
 Caius Marius was a drama of metaphysical accusation 
 and revolt. But Marius's dreams of world-unity and a 
 world-wide empire, symbolized in the silver eagle that he 
 gave to the Roman legions, had been instantly applied by
 
 32 Schonbrunn 
 
 "Young Germany" to the rising spirit of nationality. In 
 the Roman oligarchs, in Sulla above all, the same enthu- 
 siasts saw their own antagonists the feudal princes, ra- 
 pacious or cruel, and, in their narrow ambitions, the 
 strong allies of Napoleon. 
 
 Goethe, who snubbed Kleist and disregarded Werner, 
 had, in 1803, praised Rentzdorf. Marius was reviewed in 
 the " Museenalmanach " ; and the young author was invited 
 by Karl August to Weimar. 
 
 But Rentzdorf, instead of "following up" in the same 
 style, as Axel Petersen advised, had published, first a 
 volume of verse in classic metres and then two volumes of 
 prose. The former had a timid success; the latter were 
 failures; but in the beginning of 1806 the publication of a 
 second drama, The Death of a Soul, had provoked in Vienna 
 an outburst of surprise, anger, and at last a storm of oblo- 
 quy. The over-praised poet of Caius Marius was now 
 pilloried as a Jacobin, an enemy of religion and of the 
 monarchy. His private life was held up to reprobation. 
 He was at that date not yet six and twenty, but, it was 
 insinuated, he had accumulated within that narrow com- 
 pass of years the disorders and the crimes of a Borgia 
 or a Catiline. Abroad, his life had been as flagitious as in 
 Vienna. He had, it was alleged, travelled in Greece only 
 to live there in pagan freedom with a beautiful Greek whom, 
 before the very altar, he had torn from her bridegroom. 
 His poems, it was pointed out, exalted the marbles of 
 the Parthenon; but the battlefields of Marathon and 
 Leuctra had by him been left unsung. True, he had been 
 one of the band who cut their way from Ulm, and he had 
 fought at Austerlitz ; but could the writer of The Death of a 
 Soul be a patriotic Austrian? 
 
 Literary and theatrical Vienna at that epoch was gov- 
 erned by two old men the poet Alzinger and the dramatist 
 Ayrenhof, both reactionaries, both enemies of France and
 
 The Palazzo Esterthal 33 
 
 of Goethe. In their attack upon Rentzdorf they were 
 joined by a third septuagenarian, Lorenz Leopold Haschka, 
 the author of the Austrian national hymn. 
 
 It was Haschka 's incoherent tirades which first drew 
 Amalie's attention to Rentzdorf. She bought his books. 
 Cains Marius left her puzzled and unsatisfied, but the poems 
 and prose-studies, and above all, this new drama, The Death 
 of a Soul, enchained her brooding spirit. Schiller's ethical 
 rhodomontades and Goethe's later anxious compromisings 
 had depressed or irritated her; but here was a writer who 
 had gazed steadily upon the abyss, here were words and 
 cries torn from a heart that had been goaded by a suffer- 
 ing fierce as her own, here was a mind that in its unrest- 
 ing strife towards the highest and ultimate things had 
 tolerated no compromise; here was no arid scepticism, 
 impotent to affirm; here there was affirmation, a lofty and 
 persisting energy, and to life's problem, an answer, terrible 
 indeed, but fascinating and inexhaustibly profound. 
 
 The drama, The Death of a Soul, had, Alzinger informed 
 her, been written for the profligate actress, Madame X; 
 and Haschka had selected as the prototypes of its charac- 
 ters several well-known personages in Viennese society. 
 
 "Dug out of a woman's breast," Axel Petersen, on the 
 other hand, had written of it the morning after the first 
 representation, "revealing a power truly and superbly 
 tragic vraiment et fierement tragique. " 
 
 "I delivered my soul from hell," the chief character, 
 Teresa Malavista, declares when her lover proposes her 
 return to the convent, "when with you I escaped those 
 walls. And you you would cast my soul back into hell? 
 Ah, it is you who are possessed, Corrado; it is you into 
 whom the tempter has entered. " 
 
 Conquering her anger she pleads with him, remonstrates 
 and he denounces God's vengeance on her sin and on his 
 own.
 
 34 Schonbrunn 
 
 "Sin?" she answers. "What is sin? Who will tell us? 
 Oh, in each sin that with you I sinned, I was reborn in 
 earth's first holiness. My purity till then was incest, my 
 prayers, blasphemy. In my dead body my dead soul 
 worshipped a dead God. Rebellion was in me a cleansing 
 fire. I renounced my vows, but took greater vows. I fled 
 with you. Ah, in the heaven and on the earth, what glory! 
 What a light on the mountains ; in the forest what celestial 
 voices! You remember, Corrado, you remember? We hid 
 in the summer woods; the summer lightnings kindled the 
 leaves to a roof of fretted gold above us; the stars of night 
 were our bride-candles. " 
 
 Again the lover denounces God's heavy wrath on her 
 and again she answers deliberately : 
 
 And again "In my dead soul God's dreaming soul was 
 reawakened ; the wonder of His vision was on me and in me. 
 To save my soul? If my body is not my soul, my soul is 
 nothing. Last night you saw God there; you kissed me, 
 and on my lips tasted God's wine. . . . " 
 
 Seeing in her beauty Satan only, Corrado turns from her 
 in horror, crossing and re-crossing himself; and to all her 
 reasoning and to all her entreaties he opposes this last word, 
 "Repent, as I repent; pray for yourself as I will pray 
 for you. Turn to the Crucified; cling to the Cross. The 
 Cross, the Cross. ..." 
 
 "Pray for me? Murderer of God, you, you will pray 
 and for me?" 
 
 But the strain is at the breaking point; she is a woman in 
 a man's part. She falls, uttering wild inarticulate cries. 
 
 He leaves her, not knowing whether the sorceress, as he 
 now imagines her, be dead or alive, and, obdurate in his 
 resolve, enters a monastery three days later; and the 
 woman hearing of the irreparable act, destroys herself. 
 
 In the last scene of the fourth act the hero, in the garb 
 of a black friar, is discovered at midnight praying in his
 
 The Palazzo Esterthal 35 
 
 cell, but tortured even in this sacred retreat by the singular 
 doubt Does he not by praying for the soul of a dead but 
 unforgotten mistress imperil his own salvation and hers? 
 Has not all been in vain the murder of her love and of 
 life? 
 
 His cry "A lost soul!" is left ringing in the spectators' 
 ears as the curtain falls. 
 
 This book had affected Amalie with a shattering power. 
 It put into precise, painful distinctness ideas which had 
 long worked obscurely in herself, here in Vienna or even at 
 Monza long ago. It seemed to her the voice of another 
 age but of what age? Not the era which Schiller had 
 outlined, rising like a palm on the horizon's verge; not the 
 era of a terrestrial paradise of comfort and well-being, such 
 as the Girondins had visualized; nor yet the era of culture 
 which Count Johann had accepted from Goethe's teaching 
 and spoken of to her in words which silenced but never 
 convinced. 
 
 In the spring of 1806 she quitted Vienna, going first to 
 Prague, then to Karlsbad. It was a characteristic of 
 Amalie that she never let a day pass without some hours 
 under the open sky, walking or riding. In Vienna the 
 ramparts and the rolling meadowland west of the city had 
 been her recreation-ground; at Karlsbad the woods and 
 heaths. That year in her health a sudden buoyancy, a 
 mental and physical harmony had declared itself. In the 
 leisured weeks at Karlsbad, she read and re-read all Rentz- 
 dorf's writings, steeping her soul on her solitary rides or 
 walks, in the haunting music of his verse, discovering mean- 
 while everything possible of his life, appearance, and charac- 
 ter, forming her own impression, sifting the true from thefalse. 
 
 It was easy for her to understand the power which his 
 personality exercised over men like Count Johann, Belli, or 
 Lan-Lan's brother; it was not less easy to understand the
 
 36 Schonbrunn 
 
 epileptic rages or senile virulence of the septuagenarian 
 poets, Ayrenhof and Haschka. 
 
 Reading The Death of a Soul in bed one morning she 
 suddenly recollected an incident in Vienna when Haschka 
 and Ayrenhof had come together to call on her and she had 
 introduced the subject of Rentzdorf's drama the impo- 
 tent rage, the skinny, trembling, uplifted forefinger, and 
 Haschka's quavering scream, "Rentzdorf? Heinrich von 
 Rentzdorf? Countess, he is Antichrist; a blacker atheist 
 than Bonaparte or Robespierre!" 
 
 Recalling that incident now in the glorious morning 
 sunlight, she thrust aside the book, lay on her back and 
 laughed like a pagan goddess to whom_Hermes has been 
 narrating a freakish story. 
 
 Meanwhile the days went past : summer's heat had be- 
 come autumn's languors but still she avoided the return 
 to the capital, as if that reading and that scenery had 
 reared around her a palace of the soul in which she could 
 dream of a peace mightier than the peace that seemed to 
 have shipwrecked in her life for ever. 
 
 Amazed at the suddenness and tenacity of her own pre- 
 possession, "Can I be in error?" she asked herself. "Is 
 this thing of God, and in this old world can a newer vision 
 and a newer faith have indeed arisen?" 
 
 To her at least it had arisen. Earth was reinvested in 
 meaning: its bitterness and sorrow remained, but the 
 bitterness and sorrow were God's. 
 
 That summer, at one of the fetes in the Hofburg devised 
 by the Empress Ludovica, she had met Rentzdorf. 
 
 VIII 
 
 Three years had passed since that meeting. 
 In the surprise of the passion which had seized her it 
 had seemed that it must burn itself out, self-destroyed by
 
 The Palazzo Esterthal 37 
 
 its own excess; and in the fierceness of the love-thirst, the 
 desert-thirst of the soul, she had let herself go, with sealed 
 eyes, on, on, on. 
 
 Yet the days had grown to weeks, the weeks to months. 
 Yesterday's bliss had been still the soul of to-morrow's ec- 
 stasy. The anticipation of each meeting was transport ; in 
 the realization the actual still left the imagined transport 
 behind. Gradually the order of their days was regulated 
 by the facilities it offered or the obstacles it opposed to their 
 meetings. Society and the drift of everyday concerns be- 
 came an increasing impatience. For their life-vision like 
 their passion was isolating. Except in the ideal forms of 
 music and of Greek drama they rarely found true com- 
 panionship. 
 
 During a visit to Florence in the days of her revolt, her 
 loneliness and her misery, she had stood long in front of 
 the Dawn of Michael Angelo. The energy, the divine 
 beauty and the diviner suffering in the naked figure had 
 then daunted and appalled her, like some dream in stone 
 of an ecstasy and an anguish that she had never known and 
 never would know. Now she saw in it the image of her 
 own virgin passion, her own awakening, her own rebirth in 
 unexperienced wonder and delight. With just this might 
 in her limbs, her clasping hands, she strove towards her 
 lover now. 
 
 IX 
 
 The rising war feeling throughout Europe in the winter 
 of 1808-9, the hopes rekindled by the Spanish insurrection, 
 the wild surmises and wilder rumours, Austria's heroic 
 rashness, Stadion's recall, the opposing policies of the court 
 and the Archduke, and at last the certainty of war, brought 
 on Amalie the first ordeal, compelling her to face the worn 
 question of public and private duty. 
 
 Rentzdorf's decision was immediate.
 
 38 Schonbrunn 
 
 "Here is no debate," he had said, "only an assertion. 
 It is not for Austria, but for ourselves as Austrians that 
 we resume this war. Germany's shame would make this a 
 shame, this that we are, you and I. " 
 
 Facing death apart or life apart, there was for these 
 two passionate beings only silence, and in the woman's 
 heart the conviction, heavy and chill but solemn as evening 
 bells, that the sinking of the life-light in his eyes would 
 leave her own eyes unseeing also. 
 
 Three days later Rentzdorf was with his regiment on the 
 road to Ratisbon. 
 
 And the woman's part? The part of the mistress left 
 behind? 
 
 That r61e Amalie von Esterthal conceived not less 
 greatly than her lover conceived his role as a fighter. 
 
 "To see in that hour the whole; he in me and I in him, 
 and God in both, working to His own great end across 
 thousands of dead men as across thousands of dead worlds, 
 dying in them to live the mightier dream that beyond 
 Time is yet to arise this is the command laid on me. " 
 And at another time she told herself, "Before a battle the 
 one thing forbidden me is the prayer, ' God shield my lover!' 
 My prayer must be, ' God for Germany !' And after a bat- 
 tle the one thing forbidden me is, ' Thank God my lover is 
 safe!' My word must be, 'Is it defeat? Is it victory?" 1 
 
 Thus she had lived through April and the campaign of 
 Ratisbon; thus she had lived through May, and the horri- 
 ble carnage at Eckmuhl, Aspern and Essling. Then had 
 followed the palpitating awful pause of Lobau, when, like 
 a caged beast, Bonaparte's army was shut up in a small 
 island girt by the Danube, whilst its enemy raged around 
 upon the eastern shore, yet was unable to give the death- 
 thrust to the entangled brute until at Wagram, tearing and 
 gnawing its way through the net, out on them the monster 
 sprang !
 
 The Palazzo Esterthal 39 
 
 Worn by the anxiety and fever of the preceding weeks, 
 it had seemed to Amalie that she could endure no further 
 strain, that with another battle to face her brain or her 
 life would make shipwreck; yet when on the 5th of July, 
 the battle actually came, a kind of mad hostility to the in- 
 sulter of Germany and the torturer of her lover and herself 
 gave her the fierce strength which hate supplies. 
 _ A thunderstorm during the night had raged with so 
 terrifying an influence that it turned her fears for her lover 
 into a momentary vague personal fear, and a kind of 
 gladness had filled her, till in contempt she turned on 
 herself. 
 
 "What is this storm, which in all Austria will not destroy 
 five lives, beside to-morrow's rage to-morrow's?" 
 
 The day of the battle of Wagram rose sultry and oppres- 
 sive even after the storm. Dazed, she had walked from 
 one room to another, then to the garden and the streets, 
 then back to her rooms again, dry-throated, dry-eyed, 
 frantic at each moaning thud, thud of the cannon not ten 
 miles away. That sound had begun at six in the morning; 
 hour after hour it had lasted; it seemed as if it would last 
 for ever, as if in Vienna here it were the beating seconds' 
 accompaniment for ever. 
 
 It was now noon. In the garden was the hum of bees 
 and the ghastly mimicry of summer peace. Her brain was 
 parched; it felt like dust, a handful of dust shaking about 
 in her skull. 
 
 "The symphony of battle," someone had once repeated 
 in her presence someone who had never been in a battle. 
 
 Most harrowing to her had always seemed that fearful 
 pause for prayer, for officers and men to receive the 
 sacrament. 
 
 "The symphony of battle!" 
 
 To-day she could see in it neither grandeur nor heroism. 
 She heard, she saw only the repulsive, hideous reality
 
 40 Schonbrunn 
 
 the roaring of one kind of shell, the deadly moans of another, 
 the terrific crash and crackle of a third ; then in the sicken- 
 ing stench and smoke the gasps, the horrible cries, the 
 yells, the silences, the curses, the laughter, the neighing of 
 mangled horses, the crash and volleying of musketry like 
 gigantic whips of steel cracking incessantly, interminably. 
 
 ' ' The symphony of battle ? What mockery ! ' ' 
 
 She watched the creeping hands of the time-piece. That 
 frightful thunder northward still rolled on, carnage and 
 blood. Once an awful hurly-burly followed by a dreadful 
 silence made her spring to her feet, then throw herself on 
 her knees, her handkerchief pressed to her mouth to stifle 
 her own cries. The silence was the more terrific, for she 
 knew what was happening in that silence the terrible 
 charge of horse or foot, the battle's essential agony. 
 
 The cannonade was resumed, fitful but persistent. 
 
 "My God, will this battle never end? How long then 
 does it take two hundred thousand men to kill or mangle 
 each other into powerlessness ? " 
 
 Mistress of her actions no longer, she went out, past the 
 garden, through the suburbs, into the inner city, going she 
 knew not whither, seeking she knew well what she was 
 seeking. 
 
 Men and women thronged the windows, roofs, towers, 
 balconies, watching the two "squads" of gladiators, each 
 a hundred thousand strong, mangling and massacring each 
 other on the Marchfeld. 
 
 Long lines of wounded began to straggle into Vienna 
 an unending host. The infinite sorrow of the world! 
 Earth seemed a charnel-house; its graves stood open, and 
 she saw corruption nations and men and empires. In 
 every street the wild rumour "Defeat!"; in every street 
 another wild rumour "Victory!"; till rumour killed 
 rumour and all was chaos. 
 
 She walked on; past the Prater, across the river, past
 
 The Palazzo Esterthal 41 
 
 Austrian villages tranced in the afternoon quiet, still seek- 
 ing she knew well what she was seeking. 
 
 The July evening descended. 
 
 "He is dead." 
 
 Fate with inexorable accent spoke the words. 
 
 "It is now! It is now! God's dream in us is ended, 
 God's anguish stilled. ..." 
 
 A giant hand split the pulsating, hot, azure cope stretched 
 like a blue black cauldron lid above her, split it and flung 
 the halves into the abyss, and in the firmamented void 
 the torture enginery of a universe, throbbing and panting, 
 was stilled. The worlds fell sundering, little heaps of dust 
 falling upon little heaps of dust. 
 
 " It is finished. Being's drama is ended. Self -destroyed, 
 the world-soul passes to its peace. " 
 
 That had been in July. Now it was October. 
 
 "And to-day this day or to-morrow at latest I shall see 
 him again." 
 
 She took out his letter and for the twentieth time read 
 the open words and the cypher they concealed. 
 
 Since the surrender of Vienna in April every letter that 
 entered or left the city was read by Bonaparte's secret 
 police. The lovers had accordingly invented a method of 
 communication by inserting a real letter within the words 
 of a sham letter. The difficulty of writing such a letter 
 was extreme; but they had leisure enough, and the difficulty 
 was diminished by the ease with which both wrote Italian 
 and German. 
 
 " I will be in Vienna in four days from the writing of this, 
 or at most in six." 
 
 She studied the cypher again, testing it in every way. 
 The meaning was unmistakable. 
 
 "To-night!" she whispered to herself with madly beating 
 heart. "Let me not die of the joy of it! To-night!"
 
 CHAPTER II 
 
 THE NOON PARADE 
 
 AT half-past eleven the old Count, wrapped in rugs and 
 shawls, seated himself angrily in front of Toe and 
 Amalie in the back seat of the Esterthal carriage. 
 
 The condition of the harness and of the horses was a re- 
 minder of his own and Vienna's humiliation, and at the last 
 moment he was about to give up this drive. Yet he owed 
 Andre"ossy and the French Emperor this courtesy; he was 
 conscious too of an unadmitted curiosity the wish to look 
 face to face on this man whom he had not seen since 1802, 
 when as world-dictator at Amiens and at LuneVille he gave 
 peace to Europe. 
 
 "ToSchonbrunn." 
 
 Ten minutes later, from a rise of ground they saw, less 
 than a mile away, a low green hill crested with a white 
 pillared temple or basilica. Nearer, the gleam of the noon- 
 day sun flashed on a triple row of windows and a long grey 
 frontage of stone. 
 
 It was the palace of Maria Theresa. The green hill be- 
 hind it was the Gloriette. There it lay like a living thing, 
 in the wide sultry stillness of this autumn day. 
 
 "How desolate!" Toe exclaimed. How desolate! "It 
 crouches like a beautiful slave. ... If stones could 
 have sense, those walls would weep. " 
 
 The old Count lifted his heavy lids. He looked at the 
 
 42
 
 The Noon Parade 43 
 
 long grey pile. Even at this distance he could, with his 
 soldier's sight, make out the massive ornamentation, the 
 colonnade, the outer staircases, the two huge obelisks, each 
 surmounted by the Austrian eagle's outspread wings. 
 To-day above that eagle floated everywhere the French 
 tricolour, emblem, to his eyes, of all that was most unspeak- 
 able and hideous in modern times the Paris mob's maniac 
 cruelty, the prison massacres, the murdered queen, the 
 humiliation year by year of Austria's war-chiefs; Coburg, 
 Klerfayt, Beaulieu, Wurmser, Cray, Alvintsky, Mack, and 
 now, greatest of all, the Archduke Charles. 
 
 "Yes; yes," he muttered with a touch of weary fatal- 
 ism. "It is so; it is so." 
 
 This Bonaparte seemed to beggar admiration. Already 
 he had outdistanced every human competitor, past or pre- 
 sent, in the race for glory. 
 
 He looked again at the palace. What another Austria 
 and what another France it had been when as a boy sixty 
 years ago, he had seen that structure rise, piece by piece, 
 the rival of Versailles ! Those broad green walks, those deep- 
 embowered walls of yew, those cool green niches enclosing 
 the white limbs of statues, a royal pleasaunce indeed, 
 fit for an empress's devotion to her gallant strong-thewed 
 husband-lover, Francis of Lorraine! 
 
 "And now instead of Daun and Loudon, it is Bonaparte 
 and his Septembriseurs. " 
 
 He lowered his lids again and sank in somnolent sullen 
 brooding. His face, Toe thought, the grey moustaches and 
 closed eyes, looked like one of the old Teutonic knights 
 carved in stone in the cathedral of Kracow. 
 
 They were now within three hundred yards of the narrow 
 stream of the Wien which flows close past the main entrance 
 to the palace. Around the gilt-spiked railings the crowd 
 stood three or four deep, but as yet it was a listless, silent 
 crowd.
 
 44 Schonbrunn 
 
 A post-chaise full of women, drawn by four spirited horses, 
 jolted past the Esterthal carriage and with laughter and 
 greetings swept into the huge quadrangle. 
 
 "Who is she in the white hat and heron's plume?" the 
 Count enquired. 
 
 "Madame Bellegarde, " Amalie answered; "Bausset, the 
 maitre du palais, has given her a window. " 
 
 "Go round by the Bruhl road," he said harshly to the 
 coachman. "We need not go in yet. " 
 
 Before this spectacle of the wife of an Austrian field- 
 marshal rushing to stare at Bonaparte, the Austrian in him 
 was once more thoroughly awakened. He had again to 
 choke down the command to return to Vienna. 
 
 The horses were backed, and the detour began. 
 
 This road led through the rugged and picturesque scenery 
 south of the capital. The air was sweet; the stillness be- 
 came momentarily more profound, affecting Amalie with an 
 intensity almost morbid. It was one of those serene au- 
 tumn days which appear the very emblem of all that the 
 world-spirit strives throughout eternity to attain. 
 
 Like most cultured women of her era Amalie had been 
 drawn into the torrent of " sentimentalism " associated with 
 the names of Holderlin, Volney, Ossian and Chateaubriand; 
 but in Rentzdorf she had found a thinker and a poet who 
 gave a deeper interpretation of nature as to art. 
 
 This emotion, this spiritual yet enervating melancholy 
 was now upon her, evoking as its harmony the memories 
 of days with her lover now an assignation in old Vienna, 
 or here amid this very scenery, or an " Ausflucht " during 
 the first year of their intimacy, when they had spent eleven 
 days in a solitary inn mid the Carinthian forests. 
 
 "Those autumn days!" she said under her breath. 
 " Their tranced silence and those songless woods! " 
 
 The scent of the Carinthian pines was wafted to her down 
 the years. The yearning which seized her was fierce as
 
 The Noon Parade 45 
 
 pain. She half closed her eyes lest any outward sight or 
 sound should mar the dream. 
 
 Until those eleven days life's actualities had ever fallen 
 short of her ardent imagination. Therein life differed from 
 Nature and from Music. For till then Nature's glories, a 
 wide landscape under a setting moon, twilight by a lake, the 
 midday stillness falling between a mountain gorge had, 
 like Music, exceeded the heart's imaginings and held it in a 
 rapture of adoration. But those days in the Carinthian 
 inn had ushered in a mystic golden chain of linked hours in 
 which life's actualities left behind even Music's and Nature's 
 transcendencies. 
 
 "You are mad, and you infect me with your madness," 
 Toe had once said to her in one of her flashes of Slav in- 
 tuition, "but I would rather know this madness of yours 
 than all the world's wisdom. Maria Magdalene what 
 she might have been to Christ, that you are to Rentzdorf . " 
 
 "Thanks, I prefer Amalie von Esterthal, " she had 
 answered. 
 
 The recollection roused her, and, smiling, she looked at 
 Toe's pensive face. 
 
 The old Count, his thin shoulders and figure emerging 
 from the rugs like the head and neck of a tortoise from its 
 shell, was teasing her about Poland. 
 
 "Who is the greatest fool amongst your kings, Princess? " 
 
 "Sobieski, " Toe retorted, guessing his intention. "And 
 why? Because he aided Austria and delivered Vienna for 
 you when he might have let the Turks sack it. " 
 
 "Right," he answered. "And I, an Austrian, praise 
 your wit. And now I put to you, a Pole of the Poles, a 
 second conundrum who is the next greatest fool after John 
 Sobieski?" 
 
 Toe blinked her eyes as though the sun were in them; but 
 the device did not give her inspiration. 
 
 "I will tell you, Princess. It is Poniatowski; it is your
 
 46 Schonbrunn 
 
 precious prince Poniatowski, the betrayer of Germany, the 
 abettor of Bonaparte. " 
 
 "Poniatowski is a hero, not a traitor," Toe flamed out 
 indignantly. "He may be false to Germany, but he is true 
 to Poland; none truer, none." 
 
 "Well, we shall see," the old Count said sententiously, 
 touching the tip of one of Toe's delicate ears. "A knavish 
 speech remains steadfast in a knavish ear. Time will bring 
 my words to light. " 
 
 And satisfied with the vaticination, he pointed to a dell 
 thick with gorse and brambles and remarked that, like the 
 ground on which Schonbrunn stood, it had once belonged to 
 the Knights Templars. 
 
 A bugle call rang out clear and sweet in the stillness. It 
 came, not from Schonbrunn, but from their right from the 
 south-west from some cantonment. 
 
 "You have Prince Berthier's passes? " he said suspiciously 
 to Amalie. "It is certain that he will be present at this 
 parade?" 
 
 "Quite certain, padrino. He told me so in the Graben 
 yesterday. " 
 
 ii 
 
 The two fountains in front of Schonbrunn, the one rep- 
 resenting the Danube and its tributaries, the other the 
 recently annexed Polish provinces, were being stared at con- 
 temptuously or negligently by the French troops now filling 
 the spacious quadrangle. A group of carriages, occupied 
 almost exclusively by Viennese nobility, was stationed close 
 to the eastern wing of the palace. 
 
 "Well, monsieur le baron, what are the ladies of Vienna 
 saying of us now?" asked a French aide-de-camp, stopping 
 his fine black horse close to the carriage in which Freihoff, 
 the official, sat with the twins.
 
 The Noon Parade 47 
 
 Disconcerted by the apostrophe, which seemed to demand 
 a witty reply, Freihoff put on a look of sulky dignity and 
 said nothing. 
 
 "Why, what the devil should they say of you?" a Jager 
 answered. "The women of Vienna have memories. Have 
 you not robbed them of sixty thousand men, their cousins, 
 brothers, lovers, husbands of friends?" 
 
 Montesquiou, the aide-de-camp, a stranger to the speaker, 
 affected not to hear. Though he had a tinge of the brutish 
 manners of the Napoleonic staff, he was a gentleman and 
 felt that he had brought the retort upon himself. 
 
 Two other French officers sitting their horses a few yards 
 away, overheard Montesquieu's question and the Jager's 
 answer. 
 
 "What is that the Austrian says?" one of them muttered 
 to his companion. "Bigre, have we not given Vienna 
 thirty thousand French stallions that neigh as joyously to 
 those Austrian jennets as any Pandour or Croat of them all? 
 Hein?" 
 
 " Taisez-vous, Legros ! Are you drunk by twelve o'clock? 
 Have you no eyes?" 
 
 The officer who spoke thus angrily was Colonel Favrol, 
 a man of good family like Montesquiou, and though an 
 enthusiast for Bonaparte, yet possessing the mind of an 
 artist and a dreamer. Count Esterthal's carriage had at 
 that moment drawn up immediately beside that of Bolli 
 and Freihoff, and he himself and Legros were the two officers 
 quartered, not indeed upon the Palazzo Esterthal, but upon 
 the old Count's Opera box. 
 
 "Ah, your Viennese flame! She too is here, is she?" 
 Legros answered, thrusting out his thick red underlip. 
 
 Amalie, after a friendly answer to Favrol's salute, glanced 
 quickly at the terrace and double flight of stairs above the 
 colonnade on her left, and then at the waiting crowd outside 
 the railings shop-keepers, artisans, loafers, beggars, thou-
 
 48 Schonbrunn 
 
 sands of German or Czech faces, round, honest, frank, sar- 
 castic or supercilious. 
 
 A quick roll of drums announced the arrival of a division 
 of the Guard. The regiments of foot began to move to 
 their places. The huge oblong was now packed with troops, 
 horse and foot cuirassiers and Polish lancers, hussars, 
 chasseurs and grenadiers. Aides were riding about in all 
 directions. The commands of superior officers were re- 
 peated by their subordinates and passed from rank to rank. 
 The joyous peal of a bugle was followed by the swift, in- 
 credibly graceful evolution of some squadrons of cavalry. 
 
 "Those hats must be very uncomfortable on a hot day, " 
 naively observed the younger twin, gazing at the shakos of 
 the grenadiers. 
 
 No one answered the remark. All eyes were on the evolu- 
 tion of the horsemen or on the sombre lines of the infantry, 
 those world-conquering legions, enhaloed as by an aureole 
 with the light of victory which, kindled at Valmy, had 
 burned with a brighter and ever brighter lustre through years 
 of war, from Arcola and Marengo to Austerlitz, Jena and 
 Wagram seventeen years of war, battles of the republic, 
 battles of the directory, battles of the consulate, battles of 
 the empire. 
 
 An adjutant with a pale and angry face galloped up to 
 Favrol, who, stopping by Amalie's carriage, had begun to 
 name the regiments to her. 
 
 "What is the matter?" Favrol asked, impatient at the 
 interruption. 
 
 "The 3 ist again, mon colonel! They will be late at 
 God's judgment day if they can these dogs 1 ." 
 
 Favrol by a word accorded him the permission to leave 
 his post, and he dashed through the main gates between the 
 two great obelisks and the gilt eagles glittering in the au- 
 tumn noon. 
 
 Toe's eyes followed the hussar.
 
 The Noon Parade 49 
 
 "He is going to Nussdorf, " she thought, trying to recol- 
 lect the name of the division quartered in that suburb. 
 
 "Who is in command of Nussdorf?" 
 
 "General Vandamme, madame la princesse, " Favrol 
 answered. 
 
 Toe averted her head. Vandamme's savagery seemed to 
 taint the air. 
 
 Turning once more to Amalie, Favrol resumed his talk. 
 Would she be at the opera to-night? It was to be Mozart's 
 Cosifan tutti; the Emperor had given the order. 
 
 But a murmur and a stir ran right round the crowd sta- 
 tioned outside the iron railings tipped with gilt spear-points. 
 A deep and presaging silence followed, a silence like that in 
 a cathedral when the bell announces the uncovering of the 
 Host. 
 
 Napoleon was about to appear. 
 
 A riderless white horse had been led forward and stood 
 surrounded by equerries at the foot of the stair in front of 
 the palace door. 
 
 Seconds ticked past; a minute; two minutes; four; still 
 he did not come. 
 
 The murmurs rose again. What had happened? 
 
 Innumerable eyes were fastened on the white horse, 
 studying each detail of its green and gold trappings. Was 
 this the famous charger Solyman, one citizen immediately 
 behind the group of carriages asked, or was it JEsop? 
 It was the Arab, another asserted, which Maximilian I. 
 of Bavaria had presented to the French Emperor. The 
 frontlet and jewelled bit made that indisputable. And in 
 complacent slow South German he narrated an anecdote to 
 his neighbour, who had that morning arrived from Prague. 
 Napoleon, returning one summer evening from Vienna to 
 Schonbrunn and putting his horse to the gallop, had been 
 thrown violently just outside the suburbs. It was the first 
 time he had ridden the Bavarian's gift.
 
 5O Schonbrunn 
 
 "Is that true?" one of the twins asked in a low voice 
 speaking in French. 
 
 "Most certainly," Kessling answered dictatorially. "It 
 was a Thursday, the i8th May, three days before Aspern, 
 a moonlight night. The French Emperor was returning 
 from a visit to the Alleegasse, Prince Berthier's lodging. " 
 
 Outside the railings the conversation continued. 
 
 "Why is the horse named Solyman?" the Prague citizen 
 asked. 
 
 "To affront the Viennese," came the answer. "Thus 
 Napoleon is as much greater than Solyman II. as the rider is 
 greater than the horse. D'ye see? As how? We Vien- 
 nese brag of our victory over Solyman; Napoleon sends him 
 out to grass or rides him into battle." 
 
 There was a laugh. Toe's eyes were dancing. She al- 
 ways had a pleasure in the wit of the streets. 
 
 "Ah, what is that?" 
 
 A figure in a blazing uniform all gold and scarlet had 
 appeared on the balcony. An order was shouted at the 
 same instant. Two adjutants galloped across the courtyard 
 in the direction of the western gate. 
 
 But the troops still stood grim and silent as bastions 
 gleaming with brass, iron and steel. 
 
 Once more there was the hush of awed expectancy. Still 
 Napoleon did not come. 
 
 Meanwhile the white horse made himself comfortable 
 and, pawing the ground, swished the flies from his quarters 
 with his short-cut tail, tranquil as though he were waiting 
 for a Viennese mercer returning to his shop in the Graben, 
 instead of for an Emperor about to review the most famous 
 legions in the annals of war. 
 
 To Amalie the air seemed suddenly to have grown sultry 
 and oppressive. Her heart was beating unsteadily. The 
 sensation which she experienced was exactly like that which 
 in a theatre she experienced when the curtain was about to
 
 The Noon Parade 51 
 
 rise on a scene too harrowing. It was against these men and 
 above all against the man who was about to appear that her 
 lover had fought ; it was to these men that she owed the sick 
 horror of the days before Wagram. 
 
 Involuntarily she glanced around. Over the old Count's 
 features was passing a mask of grey and rigid stone. 
 Bolli's look retained its habitual light cynicism, but there 
 was a tightness about the mouth. Kessling was trying to 
 imitate Bolli's indifference, but his mouth hung slightly 
 open ; his eyes stared. The elder twin sat demure and stiff. 
 The younger had ceased to gaze at her own red-heeled shoes 
 and embroidered stockings, and lolled with her slim legs 
 crossed. 
 
 The crowd began to fret and curse. Why did he not 
 come? Being German, it was now too excited to gossip. 
 It could only wait stupidly sullen or stolidly good-natured. 
 
 And here within this quadrangle and yonder outside the 
 railings, in the brains that ticked behind those thousands of 
 eyes, something of the opinions expressed in the Palazzo 
 Esterthal, something also of the opinions of later genera- 
 tions, were passing and re-passing in a more or less synco- 
 pated form. To some Napoleon was a mere criminal, 
 harsh, egoistic, brutal, the assassin of d'Enghien, the assas- 
 sin of Palm; to others, he was already the hero of romance, 
 simply "the greatest man" depicted forty years later in 
 Thiers' fatuous and famous volumes; to others, a giant 
 mediocrity, destitute of supreme genius even in war, yet 
 coveting and obtaining all that the ordinary man covets 
 and seeks to obtain; to a few, something supernatural, por- 
 tentous and evil.] 
 
 Toe became restless, and repeatedly turned to look at 
 Amalie. The latter sat silent, feeling rather than seeing the 
 quick, nervous motion of Toe's long lashes. She felt the 
 heat of the sun, now right overhead, but she did not raise 
 her sunshade.
 
 52 Schonbrunn 
 
 Infected by the emotion pulsating on every side, her 
 imagination reverted to Napoleon, less as a man than as some 
 prodigious event daily affecting or appearing to affect tens 
 of thousands of lives in every nation of Europe and, so to 
 speak, throughout the world; never alone; always moving 
 amid armies, thronged theatres, political revolutions. But 
 effacing this impression of vague masses of force she saw 
 him as in the enthusiasm of her girlhood she had seen 
 him enter Milan, his Hamlet-like countenance very pale, 
 mounted on a black charger. She contrasted him with 
 Austrian generals or with Austrian statesmen, whose char- 
 acter and private idiosyncracies were known to her from 
 gossip or observation Cobenzl, Kaunitz, Stadion, Metter- 
 nich, Wittgenstein, Ziethen, Hiller, Bellegarde, even Liech- 
 tenstein and the Archduke. 
 
 "No, he is of another clay. He is not like other men at 
 all. Or is it my stupidity?" 
 
 Fragments of Rentzdorf's talk recurred to her. Like 
 Beethoven, Schiller, Goethe and other German artists or men 
 of letters, Rentzdorf had been profoundly troubled by Na- 
 poleon's personality. Unlike Wordsworth in England and 
 Beethoven in Germany he had not burst into denunciation 
 when the consul became emperor. 
 
 "Bonaparte has brought back to the world the secret of 
 heroism that was lost to the world, " he had written to her 
 from Ratisbon, and he had quoted Sarpedon's reply to Glau- 
 cus as at once the most heroic verse in all poetry, and the 
 fittest to express his own conception of Napoleon's career. 
 Right or wrong, it is not in modern times, but with the heroes 
 of the Iliad that we must set this man; the essential, imper- 
 ishable part of him." 
 
 A deep breath, almost like a sob, startled her. Then a 
 single voice, a woman's in the crowd, rang out. 
 
 "Yonder! Yonder he is! Mother of God, how beauti- 
 ful!"
 
 The Noon Parade 53 
 
 It was Napoleon. 
 
 Toe, with a convulsive gesture, grasped Amalie's hand. 
 
 An immense shout at the same moment rent the air 
 sweeping into its contagious enthusiasm even the Austrians 
 ' ' Vive 1'Empereur ! Vive 1'Empereur. " 
 
 Neither Toe nor Amalie heard it. Both sat as though 
 walled in by silence, their eyes fixed on the stairs. 
 
 A short man in a cocked hat, a white vest, a dark green 
 coat on which a solitary star glittered, had suddenly ap- 
 peared on the terrace. He did not pause more than ten 
 seconds, then began hastily to descend the flight of eighteen 
 steps on his right, the flight nearest to the eastern wing of 
 the palace. 
 
 Toe turned her shining eyes first on Amalie then on the 
 old Count. 
 
 Napoleon ? That man who was like an earthquake, could 
 he actually be, there in the broad sunlight, not more than 
 fifty yards from where she sat? 
 
 "He should have his head bare always, like the busts of 
 the Caesars," she heard Bolli say in a voice that, though 
 scarcely above a whisper, sounded distinct as a bell. 
 " Neither hat nor helmet will ever become that brow. " 
 
 Toe studied avidly the figure at the foot of the stairs, the 
 ungainly hat, the creases on his waistcoat, the spurs which 
 seemed too large for his height ; rivetted her glance on the 
 greyish pallor of the countenance, the wide, preoccupied 
 forehead, the vitreous brooding gaze that appeared to take 
 in everything yet rested nowhere. 
 
 But his foot was now in the stirrup, and awkwardly, 
 though rapidly, he shuffled into the saddle. 
 
 The transformation was instantaneous. 
 
 He sat motionless for several seconds, ten, twenty, or 
 thirty, as though he waited for someone who did not come. 
 An expression of singular melancholy filled the eyes, which 
 now appeared blue a pale but definite blue.
 
 54 Schonbrunn 
 
 "He is thinking of Lannes. " 
 
 The words seemed to have been spoken in Bolli's neigh- 
 bourhood rather than by Belli himself so fast shut were his 
 lips, so intent, so unmoving, so inexpressive his features 
 when Toe flashed round on him. 
 
 "Ah," she thought to herself in Polish, "what phantoms 
 must everywhere attend him ! Everywhere ! Everywhere ! 
 Phantoms of vanished armies, dead friends, dead compan- 
 ions-in-arms, marshals, generals, captains, colonels, the 
 rank and file! The Man of Destiny? It is Destiny itself 
 on horseback over there." 
 
 Napoleon's brow in 1809 had still its impressive quiet, his 
 glance had lost none of its authoritativeness ; but to an 
 impartial scrutiny he carried his forty-one years badly; his 
 cheeks were puffy and dirty-grey in hue; there were folds 
 of loose flesh in his neck above the collar of his coat; the 
 thickening of the back of the leg against the saddle was 
 evident. 
 
 Amalie felt Toe's hand jerk her own. She turned to meet 
 a curious look in the eyes of the volatile Slav. 
 
 "C'est bte, tout cela, n'est-ce pas? I can understand 
 why Madame Walewska wept so much when she gave 
 herself to him. With that face and figure, he is not the 
 lover to make a woman forget her sins ! Certainly he is not 
 like the man you spoke to me of in your room hein? " 
 
 With a joyous, airy laugh she leaned her elbow on the 
 side of the carriage, and lifting her head high sat half angrily, 
 half contemptuously surveying the conqueror and his suite, 
 every man of whom to her eyes looked a "roturier," a 
 "ranker." 
 
 Was it to see this that she had that morning annoyed 
 and perhaps estranged Count Johann forever? 
 
 Napoleon, surrounded by his glittering suite, had ad- 
 vanced to the first line of troops. 
 
 His head, Toe said critically, was too large for so diminu-
 
 The Noon Parade 55 
 
 tive a body, and that broad, powerful chest suggested a 
 dwarf's malignant strength. He had long arms; and he 
 sat his horse as though with those long arms he had seized 
 it from an ambush and, springing on its back, now crushed 
 the superb brute to the earth by his super-human weight 
 or cunning. 
 
 "Comme c'est vilain!" 
 
 On Amalie, meanwhile, Napoleon made an impression of 
 a different sort. The tragic, mysterious forces behind this 
 man affected her. 
 
 "Yes even in the saddle he looks no hero, " she admitted, 
 her gaze following the white horse and his rider. "He 
 looks even vulgarly aggressive; and when he walks he digs 
 his heels into the ground to give himself height or assertive- 
 ness. He does not walk; he struts. " 
 
 Yet was not Hildebrand, she asked in a flash of recollec- 
 tion, in the single authentic description which has come 
 down to us just such an insignificant, short, thick-set 
 fellow, with nothing notable except the blue, piercing eyes? 
 
 "Yet at Canossa. ..." 
 
 At Monza she had breathed in, as her natural air, the 
 history of the Middle Age. She knew the great pontiffs 
 Hildebrand, Innocent, Boniface, Sixtus, almost as friends; 
 the not less titanic Ghibellines their antagonists ; the saints 
 and the poets, the artists and the scholars ; beside Napoleon 
 they all seemed lesser men, less mysterious, less intricately 
 and variously distinguished and set apart. 
 
 And a new train of ideas arose to confirm this impression. 
 As her glance passed from figure to figure of the suite, she had 
 seen them at first only in the mass the sinewy grace of the 
 horses, the brilliant uniforms, the plumes, the helmets, the 
 gilt spurs, the white and scarlet, the orange, blue and gold 
 of the embroideries. Now she took in personal details. 
 These were the faces, these were the figures of remarkable 
 men, men whose names were spoken with admiration in
 
 56 Schonbrunn 
 
 every capital of Europe. Yet merely in feature, how com- 
 monplace they one and all appeared beside Napoleon! 
 And she summoned up the faces of the absent marshals 
 Masse"na, Soult, Ney, Augereau, Davout, Murat. Yes, 
 remarkable they were; great they might be, those marshals 
 and generals, absent or present; but again, Bonaparte's 
 greatness was of another order than theirs. It baffled her; 
 but it was undeniable. 
 
 "Ugh! How he smells of eau de Cologne!" Albertina 
 said in her clear-cut but affected tones, pressing her lace 
 handkerchief to her nostrils. " Did you notice it as he rode 
 past?" 
 
 "Yet he is said to hate violent perfumes," Bolli said 
 reflectively. 
 
 "He does," Kessling interposed in his heavy emphatic 
 way. And to the delight of the twins, who had been strictly 
 brought up in the Maria Theresa tradition, he narrated one 
 of the riskiest and most recent of anecdotes, yet very much 
 to the present point how Bonaparte last November had 
 turned a Spanish dancer out of the Escurial at midnight, 
 because, having given her an assignation, she had, the better 
 to captivate her imperial admirer, saturated not only her 
 wearing apparel but her skin with the heady perfumes whose 
 secret the Spanish women had acquired from the Saracens. 
 
 in 
 
 Bolli, with lowered eyelids, sat examining intently a small 
 group of Viennese citizens who on foot were pressing close 
 about the Emperor. These men and women were, he saw at 
 once, citizens of the middle or lower class, the bearers of pe- 
 titions. One of Napoleon's staff was receiving, the petitions, 
 handing some to the Emperor, others to an official of the 
 household. Amongst the petitioners Bolli noticed a young 
 man, apparently a student, who, when Napoleon appeared,
 
 The Noon Parade 57 
 
 had been waiting at the western of the two flights of outer 
 stairs, and, on Napoleon descending the eastern flight, had 
 run round rapidly as though to meet him; but before he 
 could reach the Emperor, Napoleon had mounted, and sat 
 on horseback surrounded by his staff. 
 
 Belli was interested by the boy's appearance, by his youth 
 and fine features, and by the suppressed ardour or excite- 
 ment in his bearing. His gestures seemed to indicate that 
 he was expostulating with the guards and that he was refus- 
 ing to present his petition in the usual manner, but was 
 insisting upon handing it to the Emperor himself. 
 
 At that moment Napoleon and his entire suite, amongst 
 whom Belli recognized Prince Berthier, the due de Rovigo, 
 General Rapp, Mouton, and the fearless but effeminate 
 grace of Saint-Croix, moved towards the troops stationed 
 in the remotest part of the quadrangle. A detachment of 
 cavalry swinging forward at the same time made a screen 
 which momentarily hid from sight the Emperor and those 
 about him. 
 
 Bolli saw the youthful petitioner no longer, for his atten- 
 tion was engrossed by the dispute which had arisen amongst 
 his Viennese friends whether they should get out of their 
 carriages and follow Napoleon on foot, or go forward in their 
 carriages as far as the guards would permit them, or simply 
 remain where they were. 
 
 "How Austrian! " Bolli reflected. " My God, how Aus- 
 trian! O my country!" 
 
 A trivial incident determined the action of all. Madame 
 de Bellegarde and her party, who had been the guests of 
 de Bausset, the Emperor's prefect of the palace, and had 
 been standing at one of the windows of Schonbrunn, 
 now came forward in their bright-coloured costumes, turned 
 up feathered hats and floating veils. A cloud of perfume 
 came with them. 
 
 "Ah, Princess, ah, Countess!" cried one of them, stop-
 
 58 Schonbrunn 
 
 ping beside the carriage in which Toe and Amalie were 
 seated. "Did you have a good view? He looks in a vile 
 temper, does he not?" 
 
 "Varinsky declares that he has been abominably rude to 
 Prince John of Liechtenstein and has sent a most insulting 
 note to our dear Emperor's peace proposals. We shall have 
 war. " 
 
 Amalie knew this woman's character, but sne heard the 
 last words with a sudden sickening terror, and as through a 
 thick mist she heard voices and fragments of the ensuing 
 dialogue. 
 
 "Ugh! the Corsican peasant!" 
 
 "The noble Archduke and our dear Emperor. ..." 
 
 "If the fool English had not sat down to rot in Wal- 
 cheren. ..." 
 
 "Have you heard M. de Metternich's latest mot?" 
 said another voice: "'I was born to be the enemy of 
 the French Revolution. And Napoleon is the Revolution 
 
 They were the clear ringing tones of Madame de Belle- 
 garde. She was very much the Field Marshal's wife, 
 domineering and condescendingly affable by turns, and to 
 Freihoff's irritated confusion she now addressed to him a 
 voluble harangue on the triumphs of Metternich, the miracu- 
 lous young diplomat at Stockholm, and above all at Paris; 
 his dignified retort to the Corsican when, a few months 
 ago, the latter, seizing him by the collar of his coat, had 
 demanded, "What then does your master, Francis II., 
 wish?" "My master wishes that his ambassador should 
 be respected," the brilliant plans he had formed by 
 which Austria should become the temporary ally of France; 
 long enough, that is to say, for this atheistical, gimcrack 
 parody of an empire to die of spontaneous combustion, 
 when, Austria, by the mere pressure of events, would be 
 the solitary first power left standing, and, dominating
 
 The Noon Parade 59 
 
 Europe, for Europe's benefit, would bring back again the 
 great days of Charles V. and Maximilian. 
 
 "Austria? The future of Austria? " 
 
 It was an inexhaustible theme, absorbing enough to make 
 these men and women forget Napoleon himself and discuss 
 the flimsiest or most serious theories. Instantly the buzz 
 of conversation became louder. Many in their excitement 
 came down from their carriages. The Viennese power of 
 confusing what is with what is desired, the Slav power of 
 mistaking memories for hopes, gave ardour to their words 
 and gestures. 
 
 If the eye of an observer could have excluded the serried 
 ranks of Napoleon's legions, and taken in only the out- 
 line of the sombre distant woods, and felt only the stillness 
 of the autumn day, he might have imagined that this bril- 
 liantly attired throng were no more the natives of a captive 
 city crowding to do homage to a victor's greatness or a vic- 
 tor's pride, but members of a free society, a hunting party, 
 say, such as one sees in Watteau's paintings, halting for 
 the noon-day heat to pass. 
 
 But an immense shout rent the air, making even these 
 dust-clogged hearts to tremble by its violence. 
 
 "Vive 1'Empereur! Vive 1'Empereur!" 
 
 "What is the matter now?" 
 
 They looked into each other's faces. Was Napoleon ha- 
 ranguing the troops ? Was he making some proclamation ? 
 
 Again the shout was repeated, more prolonged, zigzag- 
 ging along the lines. 
 
 In those voices Bolli, at least, and the old Count, read a 
 heroism or a fanaticism against which Germany was still 
 powerless. 
 
 Then, at a considerable distance, a trumpet rang out, a 
 sound that seemed the very spirit of war. 
 
 "It is the chasseurs of the Guard," Bolli said to the old 
 Count. ' ' Yonder they come ! How they ride, these fellows ! "
 
 60 Schonbrunn 
 
 Bolli, tormented by his own thoughts, had not looked at 
 the riders attentively; but, anticipating the question, had 
 answered, as he imagined, accurately enough to satisfy an 
 old man's curiosity. 
 
 The Count watched the horsemen. A light rose in his 
 dim eyes. War was once more the only game fit for a man, 
 the only art worthy the consecration of a life-time, and for 
 him that game was over, and the season of that consecration 
 gone. 
 
 "They are not the chasseurs," he said harshly, scanning 
 the squadron nearest to him. "Who are they? Ask him, 
 I beg of you, ask him," he said, turning to Amalie, and 
 pointing his trembling arm in the direction of an orderly 
 who was riding leisurely past with an off-duty air. Favrol 
 and Montesquiou and the other French officers had fol- 
 lowed the Emperor some minutes before. 
 
 "Nansouty's cuirassiers, madame," the orderly an- 
 swered. - 
 
 "And those others?" 
 
 "Durosnel and the gth Hussars, escort of the wounded 
 returning to Znaim and Molk. " 
 
 The officer, who was very young, spoke with emphasis 
 and naive surprise, unable to comprehend that any man or 
 woman of any nation could be ignorant of such names as 
 Nansouty and Durosnel. 
 
 "Who the devil cares about Nansouty's cuirassiers or 
 Durosnel's hussars? " an Austrian muttered. " Meerveldt's 
 Uhlans or Siegenthal's Light Horse are worth a dozen of 
 them." 
 
 "Ah, tiens! See yonder," Madame de Bellegarde ex- 
 claimed, not liking the reference to Siegenthal, her husband's 
 rival ' ' the dog ! What an ugly mongrel ! ' ' 
 
 A mangy cur, with his ears down, was trotting stealthily 
 along the front of the palace ; but once under the colonnade 
 he stopped, as if considering, and then bolted at right angles
 
 The Noon Parade 61 
 
 straight towards the entrance. The guards stationed by the 
 obelisks opened the gilt-spiked iron gates at once. 
 
 Albertina clapped her hands and laughed joyously at their 
 deference to the unhappy-looking cur. 
 
 "What does it mean?" she asked eagerly. "Whose is 
 the dog?" 
 
 "Bonaparte's familiar," Kessling answered with his 
 boisterous laugh, "the black fiend to whom he has sold his 
 soul." 
 
 "It is Malbrouck, madame, " the orderly explained to 
 Toe's silent question. Attracted at once by Toe's vivacity 
 and the sunlight on Amalie's hair, he had loitered by the 
 carriage and with a half -boyish awkwardness, for under the 
 fierce-looking shako it was a boy's face that smiled out on 
 the two charming women, he began to sketch the history of 
 the most famous of all regimental dogs. 
 
 At the battle of Marengo, nine years ago, Malbrouck 
 had been a pup; but he had seen every later campaign ex- 
 cept that of Jena. He had had his first bayonet thrust at 
 Marengo itself. The paw of his right foreleg had been 
 smashed by a bullet at Austerlitz, and this, for a time, had 
 sickened him of war. At Eylau, however, he had re- 
 appeared, and throughout that dreary campaign he had 
 passed from regiment to regiment, accepting a kick or a 
 blow from the flat of a sabre as a hint that his time of service 
 with the cuirassiers or the hussars had expired. His low- 
 ered ears merely proved that he had recognised in the 
 orderly an officer of a regiment which he had quitted; for 
 during the past ten days he did not belong to the cuirassiers 
 but to the dragoons stationed in the city. Malbrouck had, 
 therefore, no right to be at Schonbrunn that morning, and 
 knew it. 
 
 Bolli sat listening to the narrative. A crowd of ideas and 
 emotions was struggling in him anger, defeated ambition, 
 this morbid, ill-starred passion for Lan-Lan, a vague hope for
 
 62 Schonbrunn 
 
 the future of Germany and contempt for that hope and for 
 all hope, the German's resentment against the greatness of 
 France, the individual's resentment against the greatness 
 of Bonaparte. Yet where in Austria could he ever have 
 found the road to that dazzling summit? Luck it was 
 Bonaparte's luck ! 
 
 Bolli had talent enough and brain enough to make his 
 envy of Bonaparte not ridiculous. 
 
 "But Austria is rotten, rotten through and through. 
 Chemnitz is right. She must sink as Venice has sunk if 
 Germany is ever to arise. Yes, by God, we are degener- 
 ates; to us there is no meaning anywhere; but at least we 
 are nearer the height of things than these demi-devil barrack- 
 room swaggerers of Bonaparte!" 
 
 IV 
 
 Napoleon, meanwhile, had reviewed his grenadiers and 
 addressed a brief congratulation to a detachment of sap- 
 pers for their completion of the tete du pont at Krems. 
 His anger, which ought to have been terrible, had, to the 
 surprise of his staff, not fallen on the laggard 3ist. 
 
 As he now rode slowly towards the western gate his cloudy 
 mien was very noticeable. 
 
 A detachment of the wounded, all belonging to the old 
 guard and still fit for service, had been drawn up four deep 
 in the shadow of the houses and some fine trees. They 
 stood, this mournful band, silent, resigned or morose. The 
 faces of many of them had been tanned by the suns of many 
 climes, Italy, Egypt, Germany, Spain, Poland, Austria; the 
 faces of others were fresh and still youthful, grave or lighted 
 up by a reckless and ruthless gaiety, exempt from joy. 
 No calumny, scarcely disaster itself, had power to darken 
 the exultancy, the plenitude of life, which possessed them 
 looking once more on him. 
 
 These were Bonaparte's "wolves" attached to him by
 
 The Noon Parade 63 
 
 one of the most complex and singular sympathies known in 
 the annals of war. 
 
 Historians of Napoleon drag in Attila or compare the 
 allegiance of these desperate yet disciplined bands to the 
 attachment which bound his veterans to Hannibal, or his 
 mercenaries to Wallenstein. M. Taine has even carica- 
 tured the real character of the French armies by comparing 
 them with the "Free Companies" of the Middle Age, and 
 by comparing Bonaparte himself with a Francesco Sforza 
 or a Castruccio Castracani. There was, indeed, a touch of 
 the Hun in the armies of the Empire; and in Bonaparte 
 himself there was a touch of Attila. But like the ruins of a 
 sunset the ruins of a great ideal coloured all the actions of 
 those armies. Even their violence and their lawlessness were 
 a challenge to the inert nations "Endure our arrogance 
 or find within yourselves the motives to a higher arrogance 
 or a greater heroism. Liberty? Yes, we idolized it once. 
 But whilst we fought for your liberty, our harvests rotted in 
 the fields. Our enemies reaped their harvests and ours, and 
 you did nothing. Liberty, we know now, is an empty name; 
 but the greatness of man that is not yet a dream? Glory 
 and plunder, a forced kiss or a forced till, then a soul 
 panted out on the sod these are life's ultimate essence?" 
 
 These were the questions that the "wolves" glared at 
 their Emperor, once in heroic confidence, to-day in Vienna 
 searchingly, doubtingly. 
 
 And in silence also Bonaparte answered "There is in 
 life no other greatness ! The path to glory to him who can 
 tread it ! That is my word to you. " 
 
 "Vivel'Empereur !" 
 
 It was to the new Mohammed the response of his faithful ; 
 not with the droning accent of congregations in mosque or 
 cathedral, but shouted out clear in laughter and joy like the 
 ringing of swords. 
 
 Greatened by his purpose and his presence they mut-
 
 64 Schonbrunn 
 
 tered the creed to themselves and to each other march 
 ing, marching; knowing in life four things only, the march 
 the bloody hailstorm of bullets, the bivouac, the red dawn 
 the day after. 
 
 Bonaparte's own contempt for " ideologues " was in har- 
 mony with the sentiment of his armies. He was a sensu- 
 alist and a materialist; so were his officers; so were the 
 men. He was in his heart of hearts an "atheist "; but it 
 was challengingly. He refused his reverence to the stupid 
 gods created by stupid men. And who shall condemn 
 him? He denied Jesus and the Jahve of Isaiah. Was he 
 to kneel before the demi-deity of Hegel or La ReVellire- 
 Le*peaux? What vapid futilities, what verbal juggleries in 
 those men whom he despised! Hegel, Kant, Schleier- 
 macher, Schelling did not such names justify his con- 
 tempt for ideologues and professors ? 
 
 To the eyes of an English observer in this very year, 
 1809, Bonaparte's Guard looked, he tells us, as though 
 every man of it either had been or ought to be at the gal- 
 leys. "An army of convicts!" Yet, when in 1816 this 
 same observer attempted to throw upon a huge canvas 
 the last charge of that Guard at Waterloo, he could find 
 no better inspiration to aid him in conjuring up those war- 
 worn countenances than just to stand for several minutes 
 or for several hours in front of the portraits of Horatio, 
 Lord Nelson! Sentimentality; naivete'; intrepidity; ex- 
 haustless bravourel 
 
 "You have seventeen wounds and have not got the 
 cross?" Napoleon said in an indefinable accent to one of 
 these "braves." 
 
 "Yes, sire, I have the cross." 
 
 ' ' Comment ? Where is it ? "
 
 The Noon Parade 65 
 
 The grenadier, puzzled, looked at his breast. 
 
 The cross was hidden by the lapel of his coat. 
 
 Napoleon passed on, addressing here a question, there a 
 jest, till he reached the last man on the left. Then he cast 
 his eyes back over the ranks, oddly reluctant that morning 
 to leave his "faithful." 
 
 Other things were shams ; here at least amongst his gren- 
 adiers was reality. 
 
 "We shall meet again, mes enfants. " 
 
 " Vi ve 1 ' Empereur ! ' ' 
 
 It was the assignation for a battlefield bloodier than 
 Aspern-Essling or Wagram. 
 
 He was about to remount his horse. He had even given 
 a command to the colonel on duty to change the direction 
 of the line so that the grenadiers might once more defile 
 before him, when a stir, an altercation and a rapid inter- 
 change of question and answer on his right made him check 
 his impatient horse in order to discover the cause of the 
 bustle. He saw, not fifteen feet away, Berthier dashing up 
 to a knot of officers composed of Rapp, Savary, and three 
 or four of his own or Berthier's suite. He noticed at the 
 same moment, in the midst of this group, a slim figure 
 which, though dressed in the ordinary blue coat and high 
 white neck-band of the period, seemed that of a boy of six- 
 teen or seventeen. He had a rapt, uplifted look, and held 
 in his hand stretched high above his head a sheet of paper. 
 He was gesticulating violently, and crying out in a language 
 which Bonaparte took to be German. 
 
 The student if he were a student had evidently, Na- 
 poleon thought, wished to present his petition whilst he 
 was on foot. But why? 
 
 "One more importunate petitioner," he reflected with 
 a shrug. "Oh these Germans!" And he turned aside 
 indifferently. 
 
 But there was a sudden gleam of steel. He had not the 
 
 5
 
 66 Schonbrunn 
 
 opportunity to distinguish whether the gleam came from 
 Rapp's sword or from some other cause; for at that moment, 
 an abrupt and mournful roll of the drum announced a har- 
 rowing and piteous spectacle on his left. 
 
 It was a strange band that, slowly debouching from be- 
 hind Schonbrunn, entered by the western gate and drew up 
 before their Cassar. It was the wounded of the Young and 
 of the Old Guard, incurably wounded or unfit any longer for 
 war. Three days ago they had been released from hospital or 
 from prison. There they now stood, riveting his sight, a mel- 
 ancholy apparition. They were of all arms ; some fearfully 
 maimed, yet erect and resolute-looking; some dejected; 
 some sullen and defiant ; some reckless or laughing. Some 
 shouted " Vive 1'Empereur " ; others in silence looked their 
 rage on the man who had brought them to this. There were 
 faces still bandaged; faces which showed sabre-slashes or 
 bayonet-thrusts that had partially gangrened; bodies am- 
 putated hideously. Some came from the great abbey at 
 Molk; some had marched from Znaim or from Krems to 
 be present at this day's parade. 
 
 There they now stood, waiting, prepared for their fare- 
 well to war and to him. 
 
 " Mes enfants . . . " he answered to another feeble shout 
 "Vivel'Empereur!" "Mes enfants. ..." 
 
 Dismounting, he went up to the men thus maimed or 
 afflicted for him or for the idea which he incarnated. He did 
 not now content himself with a survey ; he was seeing them 
 for the last time on earth; he was the brother or the father 
 taking an eternal farewell of his children. 
 
 "Mes enfants. ..." 
 
 His glittering spangled escort stood and watched. 
 
 This was a moment in which Bonaparte was supreme. 
 To see him thus was to see the living refutation of the calum- 
 nies of Jaffa. 
 
 He went in and out amongst the ranks. He spoke to this
 
 The Noon Parade 67 
 
 man; spoke to that. His eyes now darkened with pain, now 
 kindled with approval or encouragement; and his strident 
 voice, with its Corsican accent, softening strangely, he 
 looked at their scars, touched the amputated stump of an 
 arm or of a hand ; he permitted a carabineer, three of whose 
 fingers had been blown off as he wrenched aside the muzzle 
 of a rifle, to place his own fingers in his mouth where the 
 under jaw had been removed; and long he stood silent beside 
 a chasseur, nothing of whose blackened face seemed living 
 except the fierce sadness in the eyes. He had been one of 
 the most powerful men in Marmont's corps, over six feet in 
 height, full of the joy of life and vigorous youth. From 
 others Napoleon seemed to give and to receive the most 
 intimate or tender confidences, long confidences though they 
 lasted but a second, words and looks that made it a light 
 thing for these men to march to the ends of Europe, and, 
 under his eye or far from it. fight for him, suffer for him, 
 hunger, thirst, fatigue, heat, snow, and die for him.
 
 CHAPTER III 
 NAPOLEON'S RIDE 
 
 NAPOLEON heard the last "Vive 1'Empereur," the last 
 bugles and buoyant rat-a-tat-tat of the drums as the 
 troops marched back to their cantonments in the city itself 
 or on the slopes above Nussdorf, or to the gardens, or at 
 Hetzing and Ebersdorf . 
 
 The angry anxiety and disquieting premonitions of the 
 morning, banished by the sight of his grenadiers, had re- 
 turned. But Corsican and superstitious as he was, he could 
 find no cause for these presentiments. 
 
 "Bah, I shall go for a ride. The open sky will clear my 
 brain. That stuffy palace is full of stoves, haunted by bats 
 and foul deeds." 
 
 He wheeled his horse, which curveted with expectancy. 
 
 At that moment Berthier approached as though to com- 
 municate to the Emperor a matter of importance. Napo- 
 leon looked at him dubiously. Never had Berthier's face 
 the gosling whom he had made an eagle seemed more 
 vapid, his short thick-set figure more wooden. His cheeks 
 were powdered, but that did not disguise his age. His 
 eyes had the vitreous unpleasant lustre which eyes that 
 move in a powdered face always have. 
 
 "Not now!" 
 
 Napoleon spoke curtly, and gave way to the strain of the 
 Arab towards the obelisks and the huge bronze gates. 
 
 68
 
 Napoleon's Ride 69 
 
 What could Berthier have to say? His couriers had not 
 arrived from Spain. No message from Altenburg or Totis, 
 where the Emperor Francis now resided, was possible. 
 All else could wait. 
 
 Signing to his escort, Napoleon, crossing the dirty stream 
 that gives Vienna its name, took the northerly road. Once 
 in the open country he struck a little to the left towards 
 the heights of the Wiener Wald. 
 
 Above him and around him was the autumn stillness. 
 Nature in the woods and on the hills and the far outstretched 
 plains was accomplishing the vast processional changes of 
 her year, and beside that process even the history of this 
 region, receding beyond the Middle Age and the Roman 
 times into a dim and half-fabulous past, appeared to his 
 brooding eye brief as the glory of the leaves. 
 
 "Un songe leger qui se dissipe, " he said, repeating one of 
 his commonplaces. A dream that passes life and man's 
 annals. 
 
 His thoughts turned to that morning's work. He con- 
 templated it now with satisfaction, now with anxiety and 
 discontent. He had made a concession to Austria. He had 
 reduced her indemnity from a hundred millions to eighty 
 millions; but except in this point he had not abated by a jot 
 his original demands. Bavaria, his ally, would henceforth 
 dominate the eastern slopes of the Hansruck. The left 
 bank of the Traun was compromised. The ulcer in the 
 Tyrol would at length be scarified. Every acre he de- 
 manded in Carinthia, Carniola, Fiume, and Trieste was to 
 be surrendered. Illyria would start from the tomb in 
 which she had lain for centuries. What might not that new 
 nation effect? The pennons of six thousand ships already 
 floated in the harbours of Trieste. Trieste was the pre- 
 destined rival of Venice. Across Illyria he would drive a 
 high-road to the very heart of the Ottoman empire. It was 
 the subjugation of Europe.
 
 70 Schonbrunn 
 
 "And it is time." 
 
 Every additional day at Schonbrunn lowered his prestige, 
 and gave colour to the damning rumours circulated by the 
 English press. 
 
 He felt the edge of his hat tight on his forehead. He 
 shifted it a little, and rode on. 
 
 Well, if it did mean war, he resumed, it would be a zest 
 to inflict upon Austria a more crushing defeat than Wagram. 
 
 "And afterwards?" 
 
 He would certainly dethrone Francis II. That perjured 
 despot was no longer fit to reign. Indemnifying the Czar 
 in Poland or in the Danubian principalities, he would place 
 on the throne of the Habsburgs a subject-king, Davout 
 perhaps, or the Archduke Charles, or ... 
 
 "But they will accept this morning's offer. I read it on 
 Liechtenstein's face." 
 
 "Your Emperor must accept this or sacrifice the lives of a 
 hundred thousand men, " he had said to the plenipotentia- 
 ries as the clock struck eleven, and getting up he had stood 
 with folded arms under the portrait of Charles V. "You 
 are soldiers, not diplomats, both of you. I too am a sol- 
 dier. We understand each other. We know what war 
 means, you and I. It is the scourge of the human race." 
 
 He had not uttered the words in a voice of menace, but 
 in a voice of camaraderie, dejected a little yet perfectly 
 quiet and resolute. He had conducted each interview in 
 that manner, as a soldier conferring with soldiers, men who 
 act, disdaining the fatuities of men who talk, diplomatists 
 and "avocats. " Earlier in the morning, taking Count 
 Bubna aside, he had expostulated with him on his fidelity 
 to Austria. He had enlarged upon the history of Bo- 
 hemia, the Count's native country. He had compas- 
 sionated her wrongs from Ottocar to Podiebrad, and from 
 Podiebrad to the Winter King. And who had inflicted 
 those wrongs? Who, after the White Mountain, had stabbed
 
 Napoleon's Ride 71 
 
 Bohemia in the back, leaving her a corpse among the 
 nations, a people without a language, without a religion, 
 trod upon, spat upon, refused even the memory of her 
 greatness? Who but a Habsburg, the Styrian Ferdinand? 
 
 "And is it you, you, a Bohemian, who now come to me as 
 the envoy of a Habsburg, you who plead for Francis II., you 
 who, if you chose, might see in me your deliverer, the re- 
 storer of Bohemia's honour and the regenerator of her an- 
 cient glories? I can give your country a place amongst the 
 nations. Austria never will. " 
 
 To Prince John of Liechtenstein, on the other hand, he 
 had appealed as one great strategist speaking to another 
 the emperor of battles addressing a neglected great soldier. 
 
 "If I had had you at Eckmuhl," he had said, "I should 
 not have left you in the lurch. Was the Archduke jealous 
 of your horsemen? On the day of battle a true general 
 treasures each talent, even that of a rival. I created three 
 marshals after Wagram. What honour have you received? 
 Come, tell me, " he had said taking him by the ear. "I do 
 not see the Grand Cross of Maria Theresa on your breast. 
 Have you left it at Totis?" 
 
 And now he had said his last word, made his last conces- 
 sion. The rest he would leave to fate and Champagny! 
 
 He laughed at the sudden sarcasm and touched Solyman 
 with the spur. For Champagny was a nonentity. 
 
 In the decision itself, a decision which would affect the 
 destiny of nations and the lives of tens of thousands of men, 
 he felt a kind of exhilaration. His sense of power became 
 intoxicatingly vivid. 
 
 Rapid motion in the open air always quickened Bona- 
 parte's ideas. Since giving up the game of barres as unsuit- 
 able for a man of forty and an emperor, riding had become
 
 72 Schonbrunn 
 
 his only form of exercise. Fencing he had never loved, and 
 he was no sportsman. Whether at Fontainebleau or Mal- 
 maison the chase had never afforded him an hour's heart- 
 felt pleasure unless perhaps the malicious pleasure of 
 disconcerting by his erratic course the seriousness of Berthier 
 as "Grand Veneur. " But his joy in the open air, riding 
 or driving, had increased, not diminished, with the years. 
 The firmament had always been the roof of his real study. 
 His brain became desiccated in a room ; but under the azure 
 canopy thoughts crowded in on him in swarms, nebulous 
 sketches became vast and precise designs. What a fool 
 Debret was, he abruptly reflected, to paint him in a gilded 
 salon seated by a table loaded with books and maps. 
 
 "As if I were a Regent de College like that cuistre 
 Necker!" 
 
 He rode on. 
 
 Over a tuft of pines crowning the heather-clad knoll on 
 his left the rooks were flying. The crowing of a cock shrilled 
 up into the afternoon stillness, but the farm was lost in the 
 mist-veiled distances. In a neglected field, rushes and a 
 patch of flea-bane rose beside the rank grass. Half a mile 
 further on a swine-herd crossed his path, slouching past with 
 his right elbow resting on his horn which was slung from his 
 shoulder by a dirty cord. Napoleon looked at the peasant. 
 His face was seamed and so battered by weather, hard life 
 and cares, that it had almost lost its human expression, and 
 he made no sign of recognition either of the Emperor or of 
 his glittering suite. 
 
 Why should he? The bodies of his two sons, killed, one 
 at Aspern in May, the other at Enzersdorf in July, lay 
 under the heath of the Marchfeld, and the husband of his 
 only daughter, pressed for the army of the Archduke John, 
 had never returned from Poland. No man knew whether 
 he were dead or wounded or a prisoner of war in some 
 Russian shamble.
 
 Napoleon's Ride 73 
 
 "There goes a villain I would rather meet here than in 
 the forest by night," Napoleon heard one of his cortege 
 remark. He recognised the accent of Montesquieu. It 
 was the true Versailles accent which contrasted with that of 
 Lannes, Augereau, Ney, as well as with his own. Davout 
 had a touch of it; so had Berthier. 
 
 Napoleon rode on with a slack rein, his horse's head 
 drooping. 
 
 Memory and imagination alike were now awake, and he 
 ranged the past, the present the campaign against the 
 English in Belgium, the campaign in Spain, the suspicious 
 pourparlers between Berlin and Vienna, Vienna and Peters- 
 burg darting thence into the future where in the East he 
 felt looming the gigantic war, the climax of all his wars. 
 
 It was his life-purpose, grandiose or great, outlined long 
 ago, abandoned but never forgotten, luring him still. 
 
 "The East there is the battle-ground of the future. A 
 greater Pharsalia a greater conflict than that of Caesar 
 and of Pompey must be fought out there!" 
 
 But there too was England; and there too was Russia. 
 Already the Czar, his smooth ally, was intriguing with 
 Persia against France ; his Cossacks might at this hour be 
 marching on Stamboul. 
 
 "What profit have I derived from Selim's murder? Fate 
 has played the Czar's game." 
 
 At the name of Persia, Bonaparte's imagination, enmeshed 
 in the romance of the world's past, Cyrus and Alexander, 
 the romance of the world's future, which had disappeared 
 at Acre only to rise again at Austerlitz, now lured him 
 in thought upon thought. Egypt, Persia, India, the oldest 
 civilisations of the world, must, with France, be made the 
 four centres, the four great lamps of culture, of religion 
 Christ, Osiris, Zoroaster, Brahma. What a vision yes, 
 but what a plan also and what a goal! What a goal clean 
 and hard to strive towards! Philosophy was sterile.
 
 74 Schonbrunn 
 
 Whoever was right, the ideologues were always wrong, 
 Kant, Fichte and the Jena coteries of whom he had heard so 
 much at Erfurt. Religion, on the contrary, was life itself, 
 and its perennial lamp kept alive by his genius and his army 
 of priests, who could tell what new thing might not in the 
 future decades or the future centuries arise! Paris, Mem- 
 phis, Delhi and Ispahan. . . . 
 
 A loud laugh interrupted his climbing phantasies. He 
 looked behind him. Absorbed in musing, his slackened 
 pace had brought him close to his escort. Some of the 
 horses, despite their riders' efforts, were even struggling to 
 get in front of the Arab. 
 
 Napoleon touched the grey and put a wider gap than 
 before between himself and his escort. He had in those 
 minutes experienced one of his best and highest moods 
 the consciousness of solitary power, and with this the per- 
 ception of a theatre for its exercise, spectral but limitlessly 
 vast. A harmony had been set up in all his being, evanes- 
 cent but most poignant. Now by that laugh it was shat- 
 tered. The proximity even of his guard that afternoon, 
 their voices and their faces, infected the air, dragging back 
 to earth his thought as it soared. 
 
 "What makes men laugh?" . . . 
 
 ' ' If Lannes had but lived ! In him I had a man who could 
 answer when I spoke to him, a mind that could understand. 
 But these others they are traitors or egoists, imbeciles or 
 valets. Lannes eh bien, to each man his fated hour." 
 
 His mind went back to Aspern and the evening on which 
 Lannes had received his fatal wound. He saw in imagina- 
 tion the swollen Danube, brown and swift, the plunging 
 trees, and, under a storm-racked sky, the ditch on the edge 
 of which Lannes, tired with the long day's battle, was rest- 
 ing, his legs crossed, his head on his hand, grieving himself 
 for the death of a comrade, General Pouzet, whom, mortally 
 wounded, he had seen carried past wrapped in a cloak.
 
 Napoleon's Ride 75 
 
 When lo! humming through the evening air, comes a spent 
 bullet, shattering both his knees. 
 
 "The hazard in things, " Napoleon reflected, "the hazard 
 in things ! He escaped the sharp-shooters of Saragossa and 
 the storming of Ratisbon, and a spent bullet finds him at 
 Aspern!" 
 
 And with a touch of the fatalism and the fight against 
 fatalism so strong in the Napoleonic ethics, he pressed still 
 further his scrutiny of the inscrutable. In the consultation 
 of physicians, if Larrey's decision to amputate had not been 
 carried out, would Lannes have recovered? Was that de- 
 cision wise? Was it even sincerely given, or, like his mar- 
 shals, were his surgeons too the slaves of jealousy, and was 
 Larrey's judgment warped by the wish to differ from Yvan? 
 
 "Bah, all is chance and all is purpose, all is accident and 
 all is intention!" 
 
 in 
 
 Napoleon's grief for Lannes had been sincere, as sincere 
 as any emotion that he had felt since Desaix or Muiron 
 fell. He had thought him irreplaceable; but in an hour his 
 place was filled and not a day had passed in which he had 
 not felt some moment of gratification because Lannes was 
 not there. 
 
 "Yes; he was too frank, too sudden and violent in opposi- 
 tion. He was vain, very touchy; at Ratisbon he had drawn 
 his sword on Bessieres, Massena had to part them. . . . 
 Did Charlemagne's wit detect some profit even in the death 
 of Roland? But this is the curse which clings to power. 
 In the death of the best-loved friend we welcome the death 
 of a rival, and I have known many such deaths. " 
 
 Their names and faces rose, shadows in the clouds 
 Muiron at Arcola, the best remembered, the most regretted 
 of all; Desaix at Marengo just when victory would have 
 made him most troublesome; Kleber in Egypt just when his
 
 76 Schonbrunn 
 
 return would have been most embarrassing ; and now Lannes 
 just when his frankness was becoming too frank. 
 
 "But Bernadotte will live on, and Fouche; no spent bullet 
 or friendly shell will rid me of these. War? The evils oi 
 war? I have seen as much hate in David's studio or in 
 Tronchet's library as in my court or cabinet. " 
 
 Napoleon from a very early period, from a date much 
 anterior to his Letter to Buttafuoco, had read and pondered 
 what might be named the pathology of the human mind. 
 He had not read the De I' Esprit of Helvetius; but he had 
 rediscovered for himself and made his own several of that 
 thinker's positions. Already at eight and twenty he had 
 come to Hamlet's maxim that "There's nothing either good 
 or bad but thinking makes it so." Everywhere, in death 
 as in life, one dark purpose works to its end. 
 
 A swerve of his horse, which had set its foot on a snapping 
 branch, startled Bonaparte from his reverie. He looked 
 around, and as he gazed the beauty of the scene insensibly 
 mastered him. He drew up on a gentle eminence. 
 
 "C'est beau!" he said to Rustum after some minutes 
 of contemplation. The handsome young Mameluke, who 
 alone of his escort had ventured to approach, rolled his jet 
 eyes listlessly round the horizon, but said nothing. 
 
 The scene which Napoleon surveyed was indeed one of the 
 fairest and most surprising in Austria. On his left, rising 
 like an immense and noble amphitheatre, the wood-clad 
 heights known as the Wiener Wald, robed in the melan- 
 choly glories of October. On his right, a mile and a half 
 away, draped in a golden haze, the myriad roofs and gables, 
 spires and domes of the city clustering around the great 
 cathedral of St. Stephen's, whose spire in reckless slender- 
 ness rose over all as though it would scale the heavens. 
 Northward, full in front, in a gentle depression, lay the 
 village of Heiligenstadt, its white walls and red-tiled roofs 
 like islets in the rolling sea of orchards and vineyards,
 
 Napoleon's Ride 77 
 
 meadows and tufts of trees, through which a brook flow d 
 languidly in sparkling or shadowed windings. 
 
 But Napoleon in mid-life had little real love for the beauty 
 or poetry of Nature. To him a landscape was now the 
 theatre for the evolution of armies. The pastoral scene in 
 front, amid whose thickets and streams, the haunt in sum- 
 mer of nightingales, Beethoven in those very years had 
 passed some of his most tragic and visionary hours, speedily 
 bored him, and he turned to his right, studying the outlines 
 of the city, the narrow circle of the Old City scarcely a 
 mile in diameter and its wide skirt of suburbs encased in 
 greenery. Yonder through the luminous haze some miles 
 to the northward, that steady wreath of smoke should be 
 Wagram ; and sweeping southward his eye rested longer on 
 the ruined spot where had stood the villages of Aspern and 
 Essling and Enzersdorf, a field of graves, conquerors and 
 conquered silent together. 
 
 A harsh reflection shattered the reverie. 
 
 " Five months ago and I am still at Schonbrunn. Why ? " 
 
 His features hardened; in his figure the strained con- 
 tracted expression like that of a beast of prey alert and 
 vigilant. 
 
 "But that city is mine. Twice in five years it has been 
 my booty, twice I might have sacked it as Genghis did 
 Samarcand. They may compel me to do it still!" 
 
 Everything exasperated him against Vienna its defi- 
 ance in May ; the satire upon his strategy, seizing a capital 
 before he had defeated the army ; the insolence of the in- 
 habitants; the sarcasms on his fte-day, the notorious 
 "Zwang" acrostic, carefully interpreted to him by Savary 
 and Sulmetter; these protracted negotiations; the secret 
 press. Peace or war, he must inflict on that city some 
 deadly and unforgettable insult, some unforgettable mark of 
 his anger and of his power. 
 
 But his eye, passing from bastion to bastion, from the
 
 78 Schonbrunn 
 
 spire of St. Stephen's to the hexagonal tower of the Minor- 
 ites, rested upon a spot in the southern portion of the city 
 close to the royal palace. 
 
 It was the Church of the Capuchins. Only three days 
 ago he had stood for a long space of time in the crypt of the 
 vault where the dust of the Habsburgs mouldered, emperor 
 and queen, archdukes and princes, the elder and the younger 
 line, Habsburg and Habsburg-Lorraine Matthias and 
 Rudolf, Charles, Leopold and Maria Theresa. And sud- 
 denly, here under the wide sky as that morning in the 
 damp odours of corruption, the same order of ideas gripped 
 him the nothingness, the supreme nothingness of all that 
 exists. Even his battles, the solidest and most enduring, the 
 masterstroke at Ulm, the trick on Dolgorouki at Austerlitz, 
 Jena, Eylau, Friedland and, but yesterday, the thunder of his 
 hundred-gun battery over there at Wagram and, screened 
 by its smoke and terror, Macdonald's charge sweeping 
 through the Austrian centre, endangering victory by vic- 
 tory's very excess .... 
 
 "A smoke that vanishes, un songe le"ger qui se dis- 
 sipe. ..." 
 
 "What is it? Of what am I afraid? If I died to-morrow 
 I should still be, not with Conde" and Turenne, Gustavus 
 or Frederick, but with Caesar and Alexander. What can 
 tarnish their splendour? What total reverse, what disaster 
 touch me now?" 
 
 He turned his horse's head slowly and took the road back 
 towards Schonbrunn. 
 
 He was impatient to be at work. There were letters to 
 his ministers in Paris, letters to his generals in Spain, to be 
 dictated. 
 
 But the curious depression of the morning increased as he 
 once more turned towards the palace. It seemed as if 
 from Schonbrunn itself something deadly, something hostile 
 crept towards him stealthily yet resistlessly.
 
 Napoleon's Ride 79 
 
 ' ' Am I used up at forty ? Is my imagination indeed mori- 
 bund? Is this the beginning of the end? " 
 
 Yet at no period of his life had his contempt for other men 
 been so overweening, his demand for an instantaneous 
 homage to his genius so imperious. His arrogance had 
 increased; he had become intolerant of contradiction or 
 criticism of any kind upon any subject. A caricature which 
 had appeared in Munich a Corsican monkey snatching 
 chestnuts from the fire, which England and Russia ate, 
 "tasting all the sweeter because they're salted with French 
 blood," had exasperated him for days. He resented even 
 the laughter in Paris, where all, even God Himself, was 
 laughed at. During the past campaign every bulletin of 
 the Grand Army, each of the twenty-five written since April, 
 had been travestied by the wit of the two street-corner ras- 
 cals, Becoche and Galliafre. Excited by Fouche's insinua- 
 tions he had seen during the same months in the prodigious 
 success of Chateaubriand's Les Martyrs an insult to the 
 conqueror of Ratisbon and Wagram, a voluntary tribute 
 to the personal ascendancy of the exiled poet. 
 
 But his own genius? Yes; it had lost its lan, its cer- 
 tainty, its copious variety. He had attempted to hide this 
 from himself, but he had known it in himself at Aspern, 
 which was a defeat, as at Wagram, which was a victory. 
 At Eckmuhl he had for an instant felt the blinding splendour 
 once more about him; but it vanished. He had felt the 
 same failing power in his diplomacy; he was too nervous, he 
 was too irritable. He had felt it even in dictating his bulle- 
 tins which were stuffed with all the old phrases and all the 
 old lies, but absolutely devoid of the old fire. His harangue 
 to the troops on the eve of Wagram had remained a blotch 
 and a botch. His metaphors were tasteless, his apostrophes 
 vapid, his denunciations of his enemies' perfidy, of Austria's 
 treachery, rang hollow to his own ears. 
 
 Napoleon never openly admitted an error; but he had too
 
 8o Schonbrunn 
 
 much common sense, too strong a love of reality not to 
 acknowledge in his own breast that he committed many. 
 And this morning they rankled furiously. Every great line 
 of policy during the past two years seemed a blunder a 
 blunder the guet-apens of Bayonne; a blunder the invasion 
 of Spain; a blunder the blockade of England. 
 
 "England!" he suddenly flashed out. "Always Eng- 
 land!" 
 
 From the very start of his career she had been the fixed 
 irreconcilable enemy, pursuing him like a huge ironic smile 
 the real source of his defeats, the genius of his miscalcula- 
 tions and his errors. How had he ever ventured into that 
 quagmire of physiocratism, le blocus? Quesnay's idea, 
 Quesnay's and the physiocrats. 
 
 "Starve England? What madness! Starve the octopus, 
 if you can, but how is it to be done? Stab her to the heart, 
 England, the strangler of the globe? You cannot, for she 
 has no heart, only a maw and her ubiquitous deadly tenta- 
 cles ships, fleets and yet more fleets, and everywhere 
 gold." 
 
 Yes, she might retreat from Antwerp and from Flushing 
 as from Burgos and Corunna. Like the sea, her element, 
 she would return in hate and in irony. His very name 
 "Napoleon" became ridiculous when pitted against that 
 name "England" a gaudy foam-bubble flung upon the 
 gaunt face of an ancient cliff. How could he have dreamed 
 of conquering England with such a nation as France behind 
 him noisy, fickle, blustering, vapouring France! 
 
 From his English policy his tormented fancy turned to the 
 military errors which he had committed in the present cam- 
 paign. Despite those mistakes he had quelled the Arch- 
 duke Charles ; but behind the Archduke he now definitely 
 surmised a something which he could not quell, a force 
 inexhaustible as life, mysterious, intangible. He had sur- 
 mised it at Erfurt in peace; he had felt it behind the furious
 
 Napoleon's Ride 81 
 
 assaults at Aspern, and in the sullen retreat from Wagram 
 he had known its unconquerable stubbornness. 
 
 It was the nation. It was the people. 
 
 "Bah, Francis and Metternich dread this force more than 
 I dread it. Yet Paris? Paris is the fever-centre of this 
 force. For Paris is the Revolution." He sank in deeper, 
 more sombre brooding. 
 
 Here again the recollection, the incredible recollection of 
 error confronted him. And as its climax he evoked the 
 violence, the frantic violence of his interview which ended 
 in the dismissal of Talleyrand. 
 
 There too was error. Traitor as he was, the club-foot 
 priest was invaluable ; his opposition was sometimes bought, 
 his approval never. Champagny was a nigaud. His 
 acceptance and resistance meant nothing, and even his 
 honesty was suspect. Had not his ineptitudes in the ne- 
 gotiations at Altenburg seemed intentional? Talleyrand 
 would have concluded peace two months ago. 
 
 "Talleyrand is gone! The rats are quitting the sinking 
 ship. Bonaparte is lost. " 
 
 The taunting royalist witticism, reported or invented by 
 Fouche", he had at the time disdained; but to his purged 
 eyesight to-day it seemed laden with meaning. To Talley- 
 rand's defection he could distinctly trace the greatest, subtl- 
 est error of all the imprisonment of the Pope. To seize 
 Pacca the cardinal and leave him safely tied up and gagged 
 at Fenestrella was policy; but why had he given Miollis the 
 order to seize the Pope also? Madness or blindness, it was 
 the capital, the irretrievable mistake. Pius VII. was old. 
 His gentleness and distinction had won the affection of most 
 men and of all women. And in his conflict with himself the 
 Pope had so blended dignity, resolution, and humility as to 
 extort the admiration of Europe. 
 
 Yes; it was a blunder, a blunder so incredible that he 
 could not believe that it was he who had committed it. 
 
 6
 
 82 Schonbrunn 
 
 "And yet," he said, spurring his horse which at that mo- 
 ment needed no spur, "I should act in the same manner to- 
 morrow. I am no stirrup-holder like Frederick Barbarossa ! 
 Gratitude is a name Pius VII. crowned me, and out of 
 Monsieur Bonaparte made me Napoleon I. ; but out of 
 Signer Chiaramonti, who made him Pius VII.? Eh? Eh? 
 It is the time that is at fault. I should at once have created 
 an Anti-Pope, Maury or Fesch or another. So the Freder- 
 icks acted, so the Saxon emperors, the Ottos and the Hein- 
 richs ; but the time is at fault. Heroism is no longer possible 
 in Europe. And even against England my policy is realis- 
 ing itself deadly if slow. After this chaos. I must go 
 on and on. We are tied to our fates. Rest? Stop? 
 Ask the avalanche to rest. ..." 
 
 IV 
 
 "Whom have we here?" 
 
 Napoleon suddenly saw two figures in black standing 
 motionless side by side near a dark patch of trees. Sur- 
 prised, he looked at them. It was two priests in the Greek 
 dress. Recognizing Napoleon, they removed their hats, 
 shaped like the inverted heel of a boot, and bowed deeply. 
 
 Despising philosophy, but interested in every form of re- 
 ligion, Napoleon signed to them to approach. He knew 
 that by the Treaty of Passarowitz every Greek resident in 
 Vienna was exempt from the imposts levied upon foreigners. 
 He knew also the evil character of the Greek, pilloried in the 
 Viennese proverb, "One Greek equal to two Jews." But 
 these were both fine-looking men, bearded, with broad open 
 foreheads. 
 
 "You are happy in Vienna?" he enquired. "Yours is a 
 great religion. It is the oldest form of Christianity. I 
 esteem your Patriarch. " 
 
 The priests again bowed deeply.
 
 Napoleon's Ride 83 
 
 Then he put various other questions, enquiring their names, 
 their ages, whether they were married, how many children 
 they had all this not from the wish to show his superiority, 
 but simply because his mind struck naturally for the con- 
 crete. Driven on by the same impulses he put questions to 
 them regarding their parishes and the villages around, the 
 vineyards and the rotation of crops. 
 
 "You have many bad methods in Austria. England robs 
 you. Why, for instance, do you not grow turnips ? These 
 red potatoes suit the sandy soil around Berlin but in 
 the loamy soil by the Danube they are absurd. And 
 why do you not plant tobacco? You are Greeks and 
 should teach the Germans as well as the Magyars. The 
 plantations in England have begun again. Yorkshire, its 
 broadest county, is one tobacco-field." 
 
 The younger priest, who was the son of a farmer at Ico- 
 nium, was about to answer, but uncertain whether he had 
 understood the Emperor's rapid French, he refrained. 
 
 A few of Bonaparte's suite were impressed, the majority 
 bored by the interview. 
 
 Then for some seconds Napoleon sat looking at the two 
 men in silence, perhaps contrasting their sequestered un- 
 eventful lives with his own. 
 
 "Pray that your God may this day illumine your sover- 
 eign's heart, and that he may give to his people peace 
 peace which is the greatest of all blessings, as war is the 
 greatest of all scourges to mankind. " 
 
 And with a grave but negligent salute he rode on, once 
 more absorbed in vexatious brooding. Schonbrunn was in 
 sight. Behind its long frontage and the two obelisks of 
 Paccazzi crested by the Austrian eagles with outspread 
 wings, he saw rise from its wooded hill La Gloriette, and 
 far behind it, the eye of his mind always taking in vast 
 spaces, he divined the headwaters of the Drave and the 
 glittering rampart of the Austrian Alps.
 
 84 Schonbrunn 
 
 But nothing could shake off his uneasiness, for now at that 
 very interview with the priests his mind began to forge for 
 itself exasperating fancies. 
 
 To his overwrought nerves every incident seemed a 
 warning sent by Destiny. "Ah," he said suddenly, "it is 
 the thirteenth of the month; it is Friday; the word to-day 
 is 'Timoleon' and the countersign 'Persepolis.' What an 
 accumulation of omens! Conspiracy, death, treason and 
 fratricidal rage. And those two priests, starting from the 
 ground by that dark wood?" 
 
 The very priests were now an omen, heralds of ill in their 
 black and outlandish garb. Every superstition, always on 
 the alert in his Italian temperament, now awoke, like hounds 
 on the track baying behind him Corsican superstitions, 
 memories from his youth, his own most mysterious career, 
 always a perplexity to him. Other omens recurred to him. 
 His faithful valet Pfeister had gone raving mad on the field 
 of Wagram, distracted by the heat and the unparalleled 
 cannon firing; a month later the explosion on his birthday 
 had killed twelve men, wounding seventeen. 
 
 He wheeled his horse and glanced rapidly back, his eye 
 ranging over the rolling landscape, doubting whether the 
 priests were real priests and not spectres risen from the 
 ground to daunt him. 
 
 Nothing was in sight. 
 
 " Where is Berthier ? Why is he not here? " he demanded, 
 discovering for the first time the absence of the Prince de 
 Neuchatel. "Stop those two priests and bring them back, " 
 he said in the same breath to Lebrun and Montesquieu, 
 the two swiftest horsemen of his body-guard. "No; you 
 stay here," he commanded Rustum, who, something of a 
 spoiled child and vain of his horsemanship, was about to 
 dart after them. 
 
 " Me go quicker, " the Mameluke muttered sulkily, check- 
 ing the black charger he rode that morning.
 
 Napoleon's Ride 85 
 
 But, ashamed of his fancies, Bonaparte almost instantly 
 dispatched two other riders to stop the first, instructing 
 them to ascertain merely what road the priests had taken. 
 
 "If they are phantoms," he argued, "it is to my sight 
 only that they are visible. " 
 
 And heedless of the confusion and astonishment of his 
 escort, lost in black dreams, his right knee twitching against 
 the saddle as always in his moments of passion or unusual 
 excitement, Napoleon waited. 
 
 Seconds passed and grew to minutes, one, two, three; 
 then Lebrun, though the older man, heading Montesquiou 
 by a length, was seen returning. 
 
 "Ehbien?" 
 
 "They came from Penzing and are on their way to Konig- 
 stettin, thence by cross-roads to Staasdorf. " 
 
 Napoleon sat for some seconds in silence, still looking in 
 the direction from which his riders had returned. 
 
 "They are lovers of the picturesque always, ces gaillards- 
 la, in nature or in a wench. " 
 
 He gave an impatient tug at the right rein, for during the 
 wait his grey had sidled up to Rustum's black. He rode 
 now at a walking pace. Schonbrunn was scarcely a mile 
 and a half away. At intervals he could see the gleam of the 
 outspread immovable wings of the Habsburg eagles above 
 the obelisks, surmounted by the fluttering tricolour. 
 
 Bonaparte sat heavily forward in the saddle, his head sunk 
 on his prodigious chest, his shoulders high. His counte- 
 nance had lost its expressiveness; his eyes had again the 
 tarnished unsearchable look, like greyish glass in which we 
 can see nothing. His face alternately riveted and repelled 
 scrutiny, seeming now full of profound significances, now 
 an empty mask.
 
 CHAPTER IV 
 
 THE ASSASSIN 
 
 MEANWHILE, in Schonbrunn and around it and in 
 Vienna itself, a rumour had spread that, at the 
 noon parade, an attempt had been made on Napoleon's 
 life. The fact was reported at several places simultan- 
 eously. In a solitary farm, eleven miles from Vienna, a 
 swineherd who had fought against Bonaparte at Rivoli 
 came running to his master shortly after twelve o'clock. 
 
 "The Emperor of the French is dead. " 
 
 "Then God be praised, " was the simple and pious answer. 
 
 It was known before one o'clock at Modling, a village 
 ten miles to the south of Vienna ; and at Ertzen and Dorn- 
 bach, hamlets lying twelve miles to the west of Schonbrunn, 
 it was reported about the same hour. 
 
 Indeed, the rapidity with which, in days before elec- 
 tricity, rumour travelled recalls that paragraph of a Greek 
 historian describing pou? the spirit of Rumour, the myste- 
 rious influence which seems to move from place to place with- 
 out crossing the intervening space, so incredible its speed. 
 
 The details were variously stated. In all well-informed 
 circles, it was asserted that by the prompt intervention 
 of General Rapp and two other officers of the suite the 
 Emperor himself had been unaware of the danger, that the 
 assassin had been instantly and silently hurried to the guard- 
 
 86
 
 The Assassin 87 
 
 room of the palace, that the review of the wounded had 
 not even been interrupted. 
 
 All admired this example of French decision, and it was 
 contrasted with the dilatory methods and fuss of the Aus- 
 trian gendarmerie; for the assassin, urged by religious or 
 political fanaticism, had approached within a few feet of 
 his unsuspicious and unarmed victim. 
 
 In Schonbrunn itself the excitement was extreme. The 
 thousand rooms, staircases, corridors, and even the garden 
 walks, were like a buzzing hive; but instead of with bees 
 they swarmed with officials, servants, aides-de-camp, mar- 
 shals, princes, generals, pages, valets, uniforms of every 
 hue and arm, chasseurs, grenadiers, dragoons, voltigeurs. 
 
 About two o'clock, Duroc, the Grand Chamberlain, and 
 Prince Berthier, who had been closeted together for twenty 
 minutes, entered the main reception-room. The former's 
 face had a look of haggard concern, if not grief. His at- 
 tachment to the Emperor was of long standing and sincere. 
 He had fought at Rivoli ; he had stood by the First Consul 
 on the third Nivose when the infernal machine exploded in 
 the Rue St. Nicaise. 
 
 To many the attack, real or imaginary, was an excite- 
 ment, a curiosity; Duroc it made physically sick and ill. To 
 the others Napoleon was an institution, a man superior to 
 suffering; but Duroc saw him in daily life. He saw him 
 affected like others by what he ate or drank, by the weather, 
 the sunshine or the damp. He was the hourly witness of 
 his weaknesses, his diseases. Others had heard in July last 
 the rumours of epilepsy, or again in August, of insanity. 
 Duroc knew the reality. They speculated upon his death 
 now above all that he could have no heir by illness, or 
 on the battlefield, or by poison, or as to-day by a dagger- 
 thrust. Duroc could share none of these speculations. 
 The Court of the Tuileries resembled, Favrol had said in 
 disgust, Rome under Pius VI., when a black-frocked popu-
 
 88 Schonbrunn 
 
 lace speculated on the death of a pope as upon a gigantic 
 lottery, crying out "Non videbis annos Petri. " To Duroc 
 Napoleon was still as at Arcola. 
 
 "My dear Duroc," Berthier said in answer to an ex- 
 postulation wrung from the Grand Chamberlain, "what 
 is one to do? Risks he must run. Mon Dieu! do not I 
 try to keep him within bounds? as you have tried, Duroc, 
 as you have tried. But what is the result?" 
 
 If Berthier's grief was less sincere his face made amends. 
 That was grief -stricken enough. It was the ruin of a face. 
 For in the heat and excitement the perspiration had formed 
 little runlets everywhere amongst the powder on his 
 cheeks. 
 
 "This may be a warning to him," Duroc said quietly. 
 "Who is to inform His Majesty?" 
 
 "You had better do that," Berthier answered cordially. 
 "You certainly." 
 
 Berthier, whose jealousy had steadily repressed the 
 advance of Davout, had no jealousy of Duroc. Besides, 
 he still smarted under Napoleon's snub, and knew that the 
 Emperor would at once conjecture why he had attempted 
 to speak to him after the parade. 
 
 About the large, uncouth iron stove which disfigured this 
 charming rococo apartment, stood four general officers and 
 two aides-de-camp, not that day on duty, but now called 
 out by the Emperor's danger, Colonel Favrol and General 
 Mouton, "the lion named a sheep." Mouton was fast 
 rising in Napoleon's favour. He had slept in the Emperor's 
 tent on the night of the conflagration which, after Cla- 
 parede's bloody engagement, had burst out in Ebersdorf, 
 burning wounded and dead alike in one hideous holocaust, 
 and filling the air for three miles around with the smell of 
 roasting human flesh. Mouton had the face of an Irish- 
 man, a "ranker, " dirty-looking and sullen. Favrol, on the 
 other hand, was, like Montesquieu, a man of good family,
 
 The Assassin 89 
 
 and found himself daily outraged by the barrack brutalities 
 of Napoleon's "rankers." 
 
 These two now stood side by side, but talking in the 
 guarded, quiet way of men who esteem but do not trust 
 each other ; members of a profession in which intrigue was 
 the path to advancement. 
 
 Before Favrol's eyes still floated the image of the open 
 carriage, the profiles of the two women the Princess 
 Durrenstein's wayward grace, and the sadness and energy 
 of the Countess Ama 1 ie von Esterthal. Had she too a 
 lover? And that lover? 
 
 II 
 
 "Mad or sane, I hope the Emperor will make short work 
 of him, " a heavy, red-faced general of cuirassiers observed 
 to Mouton. "This attack on His Majesty may be a 
 preliminary to an attack on the army itself. Germany is 
 a nation of fanatics. " 
 
 "That will be all right. What happened to Eschen- 
 bacher and Thell?" Mouton spoke carelessly, but his 
 voice had so brazen a ring that it penetrated the room, 
 echoing. 
 
 Eschenbacher and Thell were two honest bourgeois of 
 Vienna who in May had been shot for some trivial offence 
 against military law. 
 
 The other officers turned at Mouton's voice; some 
 remained where they stood, others came nearer to the 
 group about the stove. 
 
 The movement left isolated a big, lean, sunburnt general 
 of grenadiers, heavily marked by smallpox. This was 
 Hulin, "the stormer of the Bastille. " Though a "ranker" 
 he had neither Mouton's voice nor his aggressive geni- 
 ality. 
 
 Favrol moved away. Mouton's manners grated on him
 
 90 Schonbrunn 
 
 worse than Mouton's accent. But he was immediately 
 joined by Bertrand. Bertrand was clean-shaven, fair- 
 complexioned, and, at two and thirty, a general of division. 
 
 "What's on at the opera to-night?" he said to Favrol. 
 "And the Austrian charmer how's that, eh? I saw you 
 in her rear at the parade. Any signs of a thaw or is she 
 still polar? Both she and her Polish friend look as if they 
 might become tropical enough. Eh? Lucky at cards, 
 unlucky in love. " 
 
 Favrol, wheeling round, said abruptly: 
 
 "What do you think will be the effect of this morning's 
 affair? Did you see the attempt? Or the assassin himself ?" 
 
 "Not the actual blow. But I am convinced I saw the 
 fellow himself loafing at the foot of the stairs slim and 
 blonde as a girl. It may set us on the march from here to- 
 morrow. It may keep us here for another six months." 
 
 Bertrand and Favrol knew very well that at this moment 
 the secret pre-occupation of every heart in the room and 
 in every room of this crowded palace, and in every barrack, 
 camp or cantonment in which the attack was surmised or 
 known, was just this question: "What will be the effect 
 of this on the prospects of peace?" 
 
 A second later both men had a proof of it; for a cavalry 
 officer, bright-eyed, smiling, high-complexioned, redolent 
 of good health, showing his white teeth, came jingling his 
 gilt spurs towards them. "Well, mon g6neral, " he said, 
 addressing Bertrand. "What do you think? Is it war or 
 peace? To me it doesn't matter a damn Je m'en fiche. 
 I've been in the saddle ten hours to-day, and last night I 
 had not three hours' sleep. Serving Napoleon is like serv- 
 ing a devil. " 
 
 "Blagueur!" said Bertrand. "A jay like you! What 
 lively young woman kept you awake?" 
 
 "No girl at all," the younger man said seriously; "but 
 our Lady of Spades. A beggarly queen a very raven of a
 
 The Assassin 91 
 
 card not another all night! I'm now done brown! Done 
 brown!" he repeated, as though the word summed up some 
 aspect of his philosophy of life. 
 
 "He that would live next year must live to-day," 
 chanted an aide-de-camp, quoting a saying of Napoleon's 
 which at this period the latter iterated in his letters to his 
 brother Joseph. "And he who would live to-day must 
 have cash. " 
 
 "Why," said a dragoon, "if we stay much longer the 
 Viennese will have to eat their own rats. My servant 
 bayonets seventy of a morning squeak, squeak!" he said, 
 imitating the scream of a wounded rat. 
 
 He was quartered in the city and had this instant brought 
 a message from his own general to Nansouty. "Hot in 
 this oven, is it not?" he muttered, taking off his helmet and 
 wiping his forehead. His hair smelt of pomade. 
 
 And the newcomer excitedly told once more, with varia- 
 tions and details, the story of the attack. According to 
 this latest version the assassin had been seen three days 
 ago lounging at the foot of the stairs, waiting then to per- 
 petrate the dastardly act. 
 
 "Longer, longer! Seven days ago ..." interrupted 
 Mouton. "No, but let me speak. It was last Friday at 
 this very hour. I was on duty and I saw the fellow as 
 plainly as I see Dafour yonder; but that morning the 
 Emperor, instead of descending by the right as he usually 
 does, went down by the left. That choice saved his life. 
 But this morning, I ask, what saved him? Who can tell 
 me that?" 
 
 "Mon Dieu who is that?" muttered the dragoon in a 
 stage aside. 
 
 From an inner room a man in a cuirassier's uniform ad- 
 vanced a step, then stood motionless. He was of uncertain 
 age, yet, like nearly every man in the room, under forty. 
 His strangely furtive yet arrogant and penetrating glance
 
 92 Schonbrunn 
 
 seemed to take in the conversation in every quarter of the 
 room. 
 
 Duroc lifted his head and looked at the sinister visitor 
 quietly. Berthier took no notice of him. After a few 
 seconds, but still without a word of greeting or courtesy 
 to any man, he disappeared. 
 
 Bertrand approached Hulin. 
 
 "Savary becomes unbearable. He can be civil only to 
 the Emperor. " 
 
 Hulin shrugged his right shoulder curiously. It was the 
 action of the old linesman hitching up his knapsack. 
 
 "Yes; he looks an ill-omened bird, does he not? But he 
 loves this day's work, and its sequel. We hate it, we 
 others, yet we consent. " 
 
 in 
 
 A clatter of hoofs outside, the champing of bits and the 
 voices and laughter of a gay cavalcade came through the 
 open windows. The stove had been lighted; the two iron 
 statues used for heating the hall were also glowing, and 
 the soldiers, accustomed to the bivouac, had flung the 
 windows wide. 
 
 "It is the Emperor." 
 
 The change was instantaneous and, though usual, still 
 magical. Every figure took a different attitude, many 
 making a desperate effort to assume the poses, to recollect 
 the gestures studied by Napoleon's orders under M. Gardel, 
 director of the Opera ballet in Paris, the right foot drawn 
 back, the head and shoulders respectfully bowed. Voices 
 were lowered, but at the same time the excitement on every 
 face was augmented. One minute passed, a second and 
 then a third. Outside the riders had not dismounted, but 
 silence had crept over them; even the horses appeared to 
 have caught the infection, for the jingling of a rein or the
 
 The Assassin 93 
 
 champing of the bits occurred at rarer and rarer intervals. 
 Within the room the malaise, the impatience became 
 intolerable. 
 
 Had something happened to Napoleon, after all? Mon 
 Dieu, was it his dead body that the cortege was bringing 
 home? 
 
 Someone went to the window and peeped. 
 
 It was Berthier. 
 
 He was heard to exchange a rapid sentence or two with 
 Duroc, and arm in arm they were about to proceed down- 
 stairs, when the double door was flung violently open and, 
 white as death, but with his greyish eyes almost black in 
 their burning intensity, Napoleon appeared. 
 
 His glance, which passed from face to face each man 
 felt it, like the cold touch of a lance probing his inmost 
 thought. 
 
 The silence became profounder. Then rushing straight 
 upon Berthier, who stood with his arms folded in ridiculous 
 imitation of his master, Napoleon exclaimed, his voice 
 thick and shrill with passion: 
 
 4 ' What is this I hear ? Speak ! ' ' 
 
 But before Berthier could answer two other figures, both 
 in the uniform of the chasseurs of the Guard, appeared in 
 the doorway behind the Emperor. It was Savary, due de 
 Rovigo, and General Rapp. 
 
 "Ah, mon brave Rapp you here too?" Napoleon cried, 
 abandoning Berthier. "Savary tells me that I owe my 
 life to you. What is the meaning of it? Recount, re- 
 count!" 
 
 But for the grey pallor of Napoleon's face it might have 
 been thought that he spoke the words in sarcasm or in 
 insult, so like a sneer was the tone in which he jerked out 
 the rapid interpellation. 
 
 Rapp, disconcerted by this brusque reception, narrated 
 the incident, but slowly and confusedly. He was evidently
 
 94 Schonbrunn 
 
 labouring under strong feeling, and, as always on such 
 occasions, his Rhenish accent betrayed itself and his 
 words became entangled. 
 
 "Come, come!" Napoleon said more kindly, "debar- 
 bouillez-vous, clear the mud from your mind and speak 
 distinctly! At what hour precisely was this, and where 
 exactly was I standing? How did the assassin's intention 
 escape me?" 
 
 "Your Majesty was engaged with the Guard," Berthier 
 broke in. 
 
 "Let Rapp speak," Napoleon said coldly. 
 
 Rapp began again. His resentment had vanished; his 
 attachment to his master and that master's danger alone 
 were in his heart. His face became animated. His fine 
 soldierly figure held erect, he expressed in a few words his 
 indignation, his concern, his devotion to the Emperor and 
 his gratitude to God. 
 
 Rapp was not yet forty, though three years older than 
 Savary. Like the latter he was devoured by a fever of 
 ambition, but unlike the latter he was scrupulous in his 
 means of realizing that ambition. Constantly disappointed, 
 constantly seeing men inferior to himself pass him in the 
 race for titles, riches, rank, he had the reputation of being 
 unlucky or evil-starred. Whilst men like Duroc, Murat 
 and Berthier passed through a hundred battles without a 
 scratch, Rapp never entered a battle and seldom a combat 
 without a misfortune of some kind, a bullet wound, a 
 sword-thrust or a fall from a horse. His open and in- 
 dependent character interfered with his advance, and 
 thus at nine and thirty he was only a general and for the 
 last weeks only, a count, an honour won by his gallantry 
 at Aspern and by arduous exertions in Lobau. The great 
 moment of Rapp's life had been the moment at the battle 
 of Austerlitz in which with seven hundred men he had 
 charged the Imperial Guard of the Czar himself, had cut a
 
 The Assassin 95 
 
 gap into that famous body of horsemen, veterans of Su- 
 varow, and, wheeling round when he was about to be 
 enclosed, had forced a desperate path through the envelop- 
 ing grey-coats and covered with wounds and blood had 
 returned leisurely to his position, and later on in the 
 December evening had taken part in the grand pursuit. 
 The frost had congealed his wounds. But before he 
 bivouacked he had been sent for by Napoleon in person 
 and, covered with frozen blood as with a glittering mail 
 of glory, he had presented himself before the Emperor in 
 his tent. Napoleon's words still at times rang in his ears. 
 After Jena, however, a change had come over Rapp. He 
 was nicknamed "the German"; the heavy moustache 
 which he obstinately wore in an army whose officers were 
 mostly, like the Emperor, clean-shaven, or, like Davout 
 and Savary, clean-shaven on the lip and chin but whisk- 
 ered barely to the lobe of the ear, seemed to justify the 
 nickname. He could not explain it himself, but he was an 
 Alsatian, and it might have been that the humiliation of 
 Germany stirred some lingering or inherited reminiscences 
 of his race in his blood. He had been at Eylau and at 
 Friedland, but he had never again found quite the rap- 
 ture of that moment at Austerlitz, and disappointment or 
 jealousy or a secret rancour or an ill-quenched German 
 patriotism or a republicanism only half dead had aggra- 
 vated his naturally sardonic temperament. 
 
 IV 
 
 "And where now is the assassin?" Napoleon at length 
 said, interrupting Rapp in the midst of his narrative; for 
 as if embarrassed by the Emperor's approval, nods and 
 encouraging words, Rapp, instead of answering briefly, 
 had plunged into irrelevancies, digressions and repetitions 
 what Savary had said, what Berthier had thought, what
 
 96 Schonbrunn 
 
 Mouton had proposed, what Bertrand had answered. 
 "Answer each question as I ask it, and that question only. 
 Where is the prisoner?" 
 
 "In the guard-house of the west wing. " 
 
 "But how came you to suspect that he meant to assassin- 
 ate me?" 
 
 The tone and the look which accompanied these words 
 startled every hearer. 
 
 If there were a snare or treachery in the question, or if 
 the "Corsican touch" made itself felt, Rapp ignored it. 
 His honest limited countenance was undisturbed. 
 
 "Something in his persistence," he said deliberately, 
 "his earnest and exalted mien " 
 
 But like the swift vicious glimmer of unexpected light- 
 nings came the interruption: 
 
 "Since when has an earnest look or an exalted mien 
 become the mark of a criminal?" 
 
 "Your Majesty! In Germany " 
 
 Rapp appeared about to begin a digression. Napoleon 
 stopped him again. 
 
 "Answer my question." 
 
 The false calm of Napoleon's accent was well known. 
 Every man shifted uneasily and every heart that had a 
 secret felt as if the covering were lifted and those glaucous 
 eyes were gazing in upon it. 
 
 Berthier's left arm dropped by his side; his right re- 
 mained helplessly across his chest as if held in an invisible 
 sling. Duroc glanced pleadingly but furtively at his mas- 
 ter. Savary's mean-looking, close-set eyes became atten- 
 tive, and straining his head slightly forward to listen, the 
 line of his long nose seemed to reach his upper lip and his 
 resemblance to Leonardo's Judas became more apparent. 
 
 Impassive, Napoleon awaited the reply. 
 
 Rapp did not at once proceed. This was not the Em- 
 peror whom he knew, this was not the master who habit-
 
 The Assassin 97 
 
 ually addressed him as "mon brave Rapp." Before this 
 accusing judge it was not the murderer who was impanelled, 
 it was he, Rapp, or it was Savary or it was one of his fellow- 
 officers, the aides-de-camp, generals and marshals standing 
 around in bewildered or self-condemned apprehension. 
 What had seized Napoleon? 
 
 It was characteristic of the impression made by Napoleon 
 even on his most faithful ones that whilst there was no 
 sublimity to which they did not imagine his genius capable 
 of mounting, there was also no meanness and no crime to 
 which they could not imagine it stooping. 
 
 Rapp struggled to realize the situation; but he could 
 only image, incongruously, the Emperor's reception of the 
 two couriers bringing the news of Talavera. The first 
 Napoleon had accused of being in league with the English 
 and of forging the report of Wellington's victory. The 
 second he had rewarded for an unusually rapid ride from 
 Bayonne by throwing him into a dungeon in Vienna. And 
 there, for anything Rapp knew, the unfortunate messenger 
 still lay. Was Napoleon for this morning's devotion about 
 to reward him in the same manner? Or was he doubting 
 his word, or was he doubting Savary's, or had Savary given 
 a distorted account? for Savary was known to be under- 
 mining Fouche's power and suspected of undermining 
 everybody's. Was he, Rapp himself, perhaps the victim of 
 a got-up job of Savary's? Was the attempt at assassina- 
 tion part of a faked conspiracy? Or, if the conspiracy were 
 real, did Napoleon suspect that someone in this room was 
 in league with the assassin, and would his answer lead to 
 that traitor's conviction? 
 
 That answer, cost what it would, he now determined to 
 give. He spoke. 
 
 "I observed that whilst the assassin held out the petition 
 in his left hand he carried his right thrust in the breast of his 
 coat and seemed to clutch a weapon there. " 
 
 7
 
 98 Schonbrunn 
 
 "You have searched him?" 
 
 "Yes, sire." 
 
 "And the result?" 
 
 "We found on him a purse with three florins, a miniature, 
 some papers, and this, your Majesty." 
 
 Every face was changed and suppressed exclamations of 
 horror burst from one after another of the witnesses of this 
 extraordinary scene. 
 
 The weapon which Rapp stood holding out towards the 
 Emperor was certainly formidable enough, fit even in an 
 unsteady or faltering hand to inflict a deadly injury. It 
 had been a table-knife; it was now a dagger. Both edges 
 had been ground to a long, fine point, a blade of about nine 
 inches set strongly in a coarse haft of unpolished ash. 
 
 Napoleon alone did not blench. His manner became if 
 possible quieter. It was the look almost of gaiety which St. 
 Hilaire had seen on his face at Ostrolenka and which 
 Davout had described in a letter to his wife from Auerstadt 
 as his "battle look." 
 
 The Emperor took the dagger from Rapp's hand, glanced 
 along the blade, then placed the point first against the white 
 full flesh of his wrist, then against the deep green of the 
 sleeve of his coat, continuing his scrutiny of the steel. 
 Apparently he did not detect the marks that he sought, 
 for he flung the weapon clattering on the table laden with 
 vases and precious ornaments beside him, with the remark : 
 
 "The daggers of England find me even here. Take it to 
 Geraudin; ask him to test whether the point is poisoned, 
 whether the Cabinet of St. James's is imitating that of the 
 Borgias. En veYite", Canning goes further than Pitt." 
 
 Then, one suspicion hunting another out of his brain, he 
 turned harshly to Rapp. 
 
 "How comes it that the criminal spoke only to you?" 
 
 Napoleon in putting this question looked at Berthier, 
 then at Savary, and then again at Rapp, and waited.
 
 The Assassin 99 
 
 Duroc intervened, placatingly as always. 
 
 "The Prince de Neuchatel does not know German and 
 the due de Rovigo speaks it imperfectly. " 
 
 The storm suppressed till then flamed out. 
 
 "Have my armies thrice conquered Germany and only 
 one man in all my staff knows the language of the countries 
 we have overrun?" 
 
 Duroc was heard to say something of the Count Daru. 
 The latter had been with the Emperor at Erfurt and had 
 intervened tactfully, though late a little, when Napoleon, 
 that patron of the arts, had addressed to the author of 
 Faust, Egmont, Goetz and Iphigenie the naive questions 
 "Have you written any tragedies? Are you married? 
 How many children have you ? How old are you ? If you 
 come to Paris I will suggest subjects to you better than any 
 you can find at Weimar the death of Caesar, for instance." 
 
 But the Emperor's outburst against his officers' ignorance 
 of German was only a preliminary. He now resumed his 
 inquisitory and turned once more to Rapp. 
 
 "And to you, monsieur the professor of German, what 
 did the assassin say ? " he enquired with an adder-like smile. 
 "What harm have I done him that he wishes to kill me? 
 And who is he? Is he English?" 
 
 "He speaks German," Rapp answered, "and says he 
 comes from Erfurt, but to every other question I asked him 
 he had but one answer, 'Das kann ich dem Napoleon 
 selbst nur sagen' 'That I will tell to Napoleon himself 
 only." 1 
 
 The Emperor did not immediately continue. He seemed 
 at once inquisitive and troubled by this evidence of 
 resolution. 
 
 "He wishes to see me then?" he said at last. 
 
 "Sire, he is unshakable and will speak to no one but to 
 you." 
 
 Napoleon glanced at Berthier and then at Duroc, but it
 
 ioo Schonbrunn 
 
 was not a look which either of them could fathom or 
 attempt to answer. 
 
 "Bring him here, " he said briefly after a pause. 
 
 Savary, accompanied by two aides-de-camp, left the 
 room. For a second or two there was a buzz of conversa- 
 tion, but the tension of nerves which every man felt had 
 scarcely diminished, and again silence fell. 
 
 Napoleon began to walk up and down with his hands 
 behind his back, his head bent, his brow unmarked by 
 anxiety, but wearing an expression of intense thought. 
 His mind had gone back to the incidents of his ride, to the 
 cloud which had weighed on him when he wakened that 
 morning, to the hesitancy which had marked his interview 
 with Liechtenstein, to the omens or presages which had 
 pursued him throughout the day his reflections on look- 
 ing across to the field of Wagram, and his meeting with 
 the two priests. Within him, he reasoned, death had 
 closed mysteriously in a conflict with life, and these pre- 
 monitions had marked the phases of that conflict. But 
 since his twenty-fifth year he had lived cheek by jowl with 
 death, sleeping night by night, so to speak, on the edge of a 
 grave. Recently his mind had taken habitually to think- 
 ing of his own death and the manner of it, and, obscurely 
 foreboding that with his supernatural luck he should not 
 die on the battlefield, he had turned to the thought of 
 assassination and spoke much of Caesar's death, picturing 
 himself dying in that manner. Who could tell that Murat, 
 Fouchd, Talleyrand and Junot had not included some such 
 act in their conspiracy of the preceding November? 
 
 "No, this is not in my destiny," he decided suddenly, 
 his lips moving though not a sound escaped them. "Others 
 may be assassinated like Kl^ber or Paul I. I shall die
 
 The Assassin 101 
 
 only on the battlefield. Destiny, the nature of things, all 
 is in that what we are or shall be. " 
 
 At a stir that to his strung nerves sounded like a crash, 
 he turned. In the doorway stood Savary, and, between 
 two gendarmes, his hands tied behind his back, Napoleon 
 saw a tall, slim boy, well-made, with blonde hair, blue eyes 
 and a general expression at once in face and figure that 
 suggested a girl masquerading in boy's clothing. Nothing 
 in him was English, and his voice when he answered 
 Savary, who, after examining the cords which tied his 
 hands behind his back, commanded him to advance, dis- 
 pelled the illusion that the prisoner was a girl. His stock 
 was torn, and under the sunburnt face and chin the neck 
 was very white. The rest of his dress also showed traces 
 of a struggle; for he had fought furiously even after his 
 arrest and had indignantly resisted being searched. 
 
 Napoleon, whose purpose appeared now to be to cast 
 over the whole affair a semblance of unimportance or 
 comedy, looked at the prisoner with an air of incredulity, 
 even smilingly. "What is your name?" he said briefly 
 but not unkindly. 
 
 The boy did not answer. Napoleon frowned. 
 "He does not understand your Majesty," Duroc said, 
 intervening. "He speaks only German." 
 
 "Ah! Who then? Tou jours le brave Rapp!" 
 
 Rapp stepped forward, and addressing the boy began: 
 
 "His Majesty the Emperor of the French desires to ask " 
 
 Napoleon stopped him. 
 
 "Address him in my person as if I were actually speaking 
 to him, and quit that galimatias. " 
 
 The interview then proceeded, Napoleon putting the 
 questions straight to the prisoner, Rapp translating them 
 straight into German, very harsh and Alsatian in its accent 
 against the boy's soft, Suabian, lapsing patois. 
 
 Napoleon repeated his question, "What is your name?"
 
 102 Schonbrimn 
 
 "Friedrich Staps." 
 
 ' ' Stabs ? How do you spell it ? " 
 
 Rapp transliterated the boy's answer. 
 
 "How old are you?" Napoleon proceeded. 
 
 "Seventeen." And then after a second's reflection he 
 added, "I was seventeen in March last, " as though wishing 
 to claim for himself the utmost age possible. 
 
 Napoleon looked at him searchingly. He did not seem 
 of peasant birth; he might have been, rather, a student, or 
 a page in the house of one of the Austrian nobility, whose 
 servants at that period were often selected from the bour- 
 geois families. On the other hand, his accent was not that 
 of Vienna. 
 
 "And your home? And what is your father's occu- 
 pation?" 
 
 "I live at Erfurt. My father is a pastor at Naumburg." 
 
 "You are a Thuringian then?" As though struck by a 
 thought Napoleon said quickly, "You saw me at Erfurt 
 in November nearly a year ago?" 
 
 "I did." 
 
 There was a pause. That question and that answer 
 hovered above an abyss of tragedy from which the accuser 
 not the accused wished to avert his eyes. Abruptly 
 Napoleon resumed the original course of his questions. 
 
 "Of what religion is your father Romanist or Re- 
 formed?" 
 
 "He is a Lutheran." 
 
 "And your mother?" 
 
 " My mother is dead. " 
 
 "And the miniature which was found in your possession?" 
 
 "Meine Geliebte my sweetheart's." 
 
 "Ah, you young hot-head," Napoleon suddenly burst 
 out, "what disaster you have brought upon her and upon 
 your father and upon all your family ! Why have you done 
 this thing? What injury have I done you? Answer me,
 
 The Assassin 103 
 
 and remember that upon your answer depends not only 
 your own life or death but the shame or fortune of her you 
 love of all you love. " 
 
 "They will not be ashamed of me. They will only 
 regret that I have not succeeded." 
 
 The words were assured; but the manner was hesitating. 
 At Erfurt he had seen Napoleon surrounded by Germans, 
 his satellites. He had seen even Goethe walk along the 
 linden avenue arm in arm with Marshal Lannes and appar- 
 ently proud of his companion the Roland of this new 
 Charlemagne. 
 
 Napoleon, as though divining his prisoner's inmost 
 thought, said suddenly, but so softly that it was like the 
 rebuke of a friend: 
 
 "And yet you wished to assassinate me?" 
 
 "I did, because you are the enemy of Germany." 
 
 "The enemy of Germany? Yet you saw me at Erfurt, at- 
 tended by your princes, your kings, your nobles, your poets, 
 your men of science, your priests, your pastors? Why then 
 do you call me the enemy of Germany? No; but answer. " 
 
 "They hated you even whilst they flattered you or made 
 peace with you. I wished to deliver them and to deliver 
 my country." Then in a voice of sombre and exalted 
 determination the young Thuringian continued: "I have 
 failed. But there are ten thousand behind me. One will 
 arise and do what I have failed to do. " 
 
 "Ah? Enverite?" 
 
 The boy's last words had an exaggerated if not a false 
 air. Yet they did not resemble words learned by rote. 
 
 Napoleon considered him attentively and again he 
 changed his tactics; for he had now begun to regard this 
 extraordinary youth as an adversary whom he wished to 
 defeat on his own ground. This he could only achieve by 
 convincing him that he was in error. 
 
 "What books do you read?"
 
 104 Schonbrunn 
 
 "History." 
 
 "Whose history?" 
 
 "Schiller's." 
 
 ' ' Skiller's ? I do not know him. ' ' 
 
 He looked around. Dam, who had made himself fa- 
 miliar with German literature, could have easily solved the 
 Emperor's perplexity; but to-day he was at Znaim super- 
 vising some orders relative to the accoutrement of the Fifth 
 Corps, Massena's. 
 
 "You are young," Napoleon said, trying another tack; 
 "and the young read poetry. Whose poetry do you read? " 
 
 "Schiller's." 
 
 "Skiller? Comment? Again Skiller! Who is this 
 Skiller? Is it a pen-name? Was he at Erfurt?" 
 
 He looked interrogatively and angrily at Rapp; but 
 Rapp, if he had heard of the author of Die Rduber and 
 Wilhelm Tell, knew no more of the author of the Revolt of the 
 Netherlands and The Thirty Years' War than did Berthier 
 or Duroc. No one could tell Napoleon who "Skiller" was. 
 Was he perhaps a political incendiary one of the scores 
 whose pamphlets had been seized by his police and, under 
 Fouche"'s orders, translated and abbreviated for his private 
 study? 
 
 Quick as light Napoleon's mind fastened on this hypo- 
 thesis, and thinking to confuse the prisoner and extort the 
 truth, his suspicion leapt out in the next question: 
 
 "You are one of the Illuminati? You wish to imitate 
 Brutus? A German Brutus! What madness!" 
 
 But the boy denied that he even knew what an Illumi- 
 nat was. 
 
 "But Germany! You believe in the destiny of Germany 
 and are prepared to die for that belief? You are very 
 singular!" 
 
 He laughed his mirthless, shrill Corsican laugh. Staps 
 made no answer.
 
 The Assassin 105 
 
 Hulin, who now stood with Berthier in the inner circle 
 about the Emperor, had become morbidly interested in the 
 interrogatory. For in this boy's face, bearing and action 
 he saw something that unaccountably reminded him of 
 Camille Desmoulins and that amazing day, the I2th July, 
 when from the Boulevard in front of the Cafe de Foy he 
 gave to the citizens of Paris and to Europe the insignia of 
 Liberty the green cocarde. Hulin was himself young 
 again; there was electricity in the air and Freedom's war- 
 thunder in his blood and his arteries ; battle-cries of triumph 
 were splitting the heavens, the shouting of an emancipated 
 people storming the Bastille, the citadel and the symbol of 
 the despotism crushing the world. 
 
 Yet he had been one of the foremost to hail in Bonaparte 
 a greater than Danton or Desmoulins, a greater than Mira- 
 beau or Hoche, than Marceau or Barnave. 
 
 But now, this instant, here in the palace of the Habsburg 
 tyrants, another and a ghastly memory assailed him a 
 secret shame, an enduring remorse, over which his perplexed 
 mind for the past five years had brooded and brooded. 
 It was the part that under the Consul Bonaparte's orders 
 he himself had played in the murder of the due d'Enghien. 
 And as the picture of the Bastille faded another pic- 
 ture took its place the March night at Valenciennes, the 
 open grave, the firing-party and the fosse, the trial, the 
 murder and the torchlight burial the last of the Condes 
 thrust into that ignoble sepulchre. 
 
 A fearful presentiment seized him. He turned aside 
 and with an immense weight upon his brow and shoulders 
 he stood leaning by a window. 
 
 VI 
 
 Meanwhile, Napoleon had perceived the error he had 
 made in conducting this enquiry before so many witnesses.
 
 io6 Schonbrunn 
 
 He could not now doubt the reality of the danger which he 
 had run. This was no faked-up plot, nor was it the hys- 
 teria of the beautiful but depraved Countess Ortski, Lord 
 Paget's mistress, who had bought a dagger from a jeweller 
 in the Ludwiggasse and, pretending an assignation with 
 the French Emperor, had declared to everyone in the shop 
 willing to listen, "This night Austria shall be avenged." 
 Upon being informed of the occurrence Bonaparte had 
 contented himself with remarking, "The noble Countess 
 confounds the parts of Rahab and Judith," and all Vienna 
 had laughed and for a day the French Emperor had been 
 popular. But this he had neither the wish nor the power 
 to treat lightly. The assassin had come as a petitioner, 
 and, at Schonbrunn, he had always been willing to consider 
 petitions; that morning, too, he had been unarmed, and 
 though the secret coat-of-mail he habitually wore might 
 have defended his breast, his throat and face were exposed 
 to an assailant who had had the craft to get within a few 
 feet of him. Napoleon now distinctly remembered the 
 vicious glitter of steel from which the sudden entry of the 
 wounded from Molk had diverted his attention. 
 
 Yes, the wing of Azrael had brushed past him, and nearer 
 than at Ratisbon, though that was near. 
 
 And, always various in his emotions as in his projects, 
 Napoleon felt a new impulse rise within him. It was the de- 
 sire to turn to profit the mistake which he had made in thus 
 examining Staps in public. It was the desire to convince 
 once more the assassin and his own officers of the greatness 
 and supernatural character of his destiny, in which he 
 himself at this period, with a mixture of calculation and 
 mysticism, most deeply believed. For might not the 
 fanatic's words have awakened some slumbering doubts of 
 that destiny in the minds of his listeners in Republicans 
 like Hulin, for instance, in half-convinced Royalists like 
 Favrol and Montesquieu, in the advocates of a peace policy
 
 The Assassin 107 
 
 like Berthier and Rapp, Massena and Davout, anxious 
 only to enjoy in security the riches and honours they owed 
 to him? He felt too all the injured man's desire to 
 refute unjust calumny. He felt also the tyrant's implac- 
 able, primitive impulse to strike to earth his accuser. 
 
 These thoughts had not occupied Napoleon's brain two 
 seconds of time when, to his astonishment, the young 
 Thuringian burst into a torrent of unintelligible words. 
 Napoleon forgot his part and turning to Rapp he asked 
 angrily: "What is the sce'lerat saying?" 
 
 "You have broken every condition of Pressburg. You 
 lied: you perjured yourself: you extorted 20,000,000 
 gulden beyond the stipulated sum: you did not withdraw 
 your troops though you swore to withdraw them: you 
 retained the fortresses in Friuli and forced an open passage 
 into Dalmatia. What right had you to threaten my 
 Emperor when he attempted to make every man a soldier? 
 Is not every man in France a soldier? You, you only are 
 the cause of this bloodshed and this fury of war!" 
 
 These accusations were not spoken consecutively, but 
 collected by Rapp from the young Thuringian's indignant 
 utterances. 
 
 In an instant Napoleon was in the whirl of self-defence. 
 
 A political crowd Napoleon could never dominate nor 
 even address, as Brumaire had proved; but a single in- 
 dividual with a crowd looking on there was the field of his 
 oratory, as his brothers and his own ministers and the am- 
 bassadors of foreign nations Metternich, for instance, in 
 the memorable scene in February last, and Lord Whit- 
 worth at the rupture of the Peace of Amiens had expe- 
 rienced. The stage was now set for a similar scene. 
 
 "I am the executeur testamentaire de la Revolution. I 
 wish nothing but the good of humanity. How then could 
 I be the enemy of your country? Are not the Germans 
 men? You have studied history, you know the causes of
 
 io8 Schonbrunn 
 
 wars; for history is the only philosophy; it is the invisible 
 axis upon which eternity revolves. Why did Austria 
 raise half a million men as soon as I was beyond the Pyr- 
 enees? English gold and the criminal folly of your Stadions 
 and Maximilians led your Emperor astray. These are the 
 true disturbers of the peace of nations. I alone can give 
 tranquillity to Europe and the world. Why then do you 
 wish to assassinate me?" 
 
 The young Thuringian gazed at him in amazement. 
 He was alternately fascinated and repelled by the changes 
 in Napoleon's expression, the rapidity of his utterance, the 
 raucous Corsican accent thridding along the syllables, 
 the trembling of his left leg, the convulsive movement of 
 the lower part of the face, the gleam of small white teeth 
 above all, by the thrust forward of the tremendous chin, 
 which gave a wild-beast appearance to the countenance. 
 He forgot himself and did not understand a syllable of 
 Rapp's interpretation. 
 
 But the waiting silence, the fiery impatience in Bona- 
 parte's eyes, showed him that he was meant to answer. 
 He therefore repeated his former statement. 
 
 "You are the enemy of the world. Had I destroyed you 
 I should have won undying glory and set German}'- free." 
 
 "Comment? After what I have said? You must be 
 mad, or ill."] 
 
 And again going out of his r61e he addressed himself to 
 Rapp. 
 
 "Repeat to him that I wish to give peace and unity to 
 Europe and happiness to all men, that the princes and rulers 
 of his country are my friends, and as he is a reader of poetry 
 and a student, tell him that the professors of his universities 
 and M. Wieland and M. Goett (i.e., Goethe), have accepted 
 from me the Legion of Honour. " 
 
 Here the prisoner listened attentively to Rapp, who now 
 spoke slowly, distinctly enunciating his words; and as he
 
 The Assassin 109 
 
 proceeded the boy's face clouded, and when he heard of the 
 Legion of Honour accepted by Goethe his head sank. He 
 knew the reverence with which Schiller looked up to the 
 greatest poet of the German tongue, and at Erfurt with a 
 kind of awful reverence he had looked forward to the seeing 
 of Goethe for the first time. With a sick misery he re- 
 collected once more the day on which he had seen him 
 walking arm in arm with a French marshal under the lime 
 trees of the esplanade. He had looked for that marshal 
 amongst Napoleon's guards on his first visit to Schonbrunn 
 and he had been told that he had died in battle. The 
 recollection seemed to confirm the hideous assertion that 
 he now heard for the first time, and under what circum- 
 stances! He saw again Goethe's figure, erect and majestic, 
 and his countenance like that of a god in its calm and in its 
 inscrutable serenity. Could that lofty spirit indeed have 
 accepted a decoration from the dwarf there who had barked 
 unmeaning words at him? There must, he reasoned, be 
 some explanation a vision beyond his reach. Goethe 
 could not be a time-server or the flatterer of brutish power. 
 But he was too tired to think. He had not slept for three 
 nights, nerving himself for his great task, his "sacrifice," 
 the deed which God Himself had laid upon him, the ordeal 
 against which he had struggled, resisting the angel of God. 
 For he was young and loved his life and loved beautiful 
 things, poetry and the song of birds and the long day's 
 dreaming and the vistas which his Wanderjahre opened up 
 before him when his years of apprenticeship at Erfurt should 
 be terminated. But all this was now over; his course was 
 finished. He had obeyed the high command : he had failed, 
 and he had now only to die. 
 
 A voice roused him from his reverie. 
 
 It was Napoleon's, and it was instantly followed by 
 Rapp's interpretation, addressed to him once more in the 
 first person.
 
 no Schonbrunn 
 
 "If I pardon you, if I give you your liberty, will you 
 acknowledge your error and will you give up these frantic 
 principles? Also will you tell me the names of those who 
 instigated or hired you to attempt this crime? You are 
 young; you may have many happy years to live, marriage 
 with the woman you love, and success. Why should you 
 surrender all? You are young to die. Give up the names 
 of your accomplices. " 
 
 The insult was like the lash of a whip. The prisoner 
 raised his head which like that of an abashed girl had sunk 
 on his breast. The blue eyes flashed with an extraordinary 
 fire and he spoke now with an energy that thrilled his mean- 
 ing across the foreign words to Napoleon himself and to the 
 heart of every man in that room. 
 
 "I repent nothing: I regret nothing, except that I have 
 failed to kill you. I have no accomplices and no instigators. 
 I have been in Vienna eleven days and I have not spoken to 
 anyone except to the landlord in whose house I lodge. This 
 deed was not my seeking. Two months ago God laid this 
 command on me, but at that time I did not wish to obey. 
 Night by night I prayed to my heavenly Father that I 
 might not have this thing to do ; yes, I hardened my heart, 
 I wept and entreated that it might be given to another. 
 Then God became angry and I was most wretched, for I 
 was estranged from my God, my Father in heaven was 
 angry with me. And I swore a dreadful oath that if He 
 would but forgive me and be reconciled to me, I would do 
 His will. If you set me free to-day or to-morrow or in a 
 year or at any time I would still seek to kill you; for you 
 are the enemy of God and of all men ; yes, you are a tyrant, 
 the oppressor of Germany, and to kill you is to serve my 
 country and to pacify my offended God. " 
 
 It was Napoleon's turn to flinch. Disconcerted, he stood 
 for some seconds silent. He looked scrutinizingly at the 
 speaker, and with a cold smile said briefly:
 
 The Assassin in 
 
 "No one instigated you? You have no accomplices, 
 you say? Who then are the ten thousand behind you? 
 You are delirious. You contradict yourself. " 
 
 But mastered by his own impatience and by a new and 
 more plausible theory which had taken possession of him, 
 he did not wait for the answer, but without transition and 
 without a gesture, gave the order: 
 
 "Send for Corvisart." 
 
 The boy tugged at his bonds as though he would have 
 drawn his hands across his eyes a pathetic, confused 
 gesture. It was not tears; but a cloudiness that came in 
 front of his thoughts. He could not see the answer to 
 Napoleon's accusation of self-contradiction. He knew that 
 there was no contradiction ; that in saying that ten thousand 
 stood behind him he meant to express his conviction of Ger- 
 many's resolve to destroy the tyrant in one way or in an- 
 other. He was about to say this, he had even turned to 
 Napoleon, but an immense fatigue came down on him 
 what did it matter what that dwarf with the huge un- 
 shapely chest and head thought or said or did? 
 
 VII 
 
 No history illustrates more vividly the tendency of a 
 high cause to work fanaticism in the mind than that of 
 Friedrich Staps. 
 
 Born in 1792, at Eisenach in Thuringia, he had passed 
 his boyhood partly in his native city under the shadow 
 of the Wartburg, partly at Naumburg. The features of 
 his home and school life were the features habitual at 
 that period in every German pastor's family simple and 
 pure manners, deep piety, cleanliness, truth-speaking and 
 reverence. His father had studied enough Latin and Greek 
 to make the heroes of Livy and Plutarch a little nearer 
 and more vivid than they can ever be to the reader
 
 1 12 Schonbrunn 
 
 totally ignorant of the classics, and he early made the 
 names of Leonidas and Miltiades as familiar to the boy 
 as those of Luther and Melancthon, CEcolampadius and 
 Zwingli. 
 
 As a child Friedrich was sickly but impetuous, undis- 
 ciplined and wayward; yet at nine he had learned at his 
 mother's knees to repeat her favourite passages from Klop- 
 stock's Messias. But the religious emotion kindled by the 
 subject and the solemn rhythm of the verses became already 
 in his boyhood secondary to the pride that as a Thuringian 
 he felt for Germany's great poet. This pride became an 
 enthusiasm as the years passed. His reading extended 
 itself; he became acquainted one by one with the living 
 writers of the golden age of German poetry Lessing, 
 Schiller, Uhland, Jacobi, Goethe and the fixed if secret 
 resolve took possession of his mind as he grew towards 
 manhood to take his place amongst that sacred band. He 
 too would be a poet. 
 
 Suddenly the horror burst over Germany. Within ten 
 months the entire German race, so to speak, was subject 
 to one of the bloodiest inundations in human annals. 
 
 The effect of the defeats of 1805 and 1806, from Ulm 
 to Jena, on the young Thuringian was harrowing. He 
 could not eat; he could not sleep. His studies and his 
 hopes were abandoned. He went about the village or 
 the woods drooping and listless. Then the change came. 
 The fragments of a diary written three years later have 
 preserved to us the nature of this change. 
 
 "From the Rhine to the Oder, from the Baltic to the 
 Danube, I looked and I saw everywhere men in chains. 
 I saw Germany like a beautiful woman in an Eastern slave 
 market with her head bent before a savage and insulting 
 tyrant. An invisible sword was already by my side. I 
 determined to set her free. " 
 
 The romantic and wild scenery of his early home,
 
 The Assassin 113 
 
 steeped in the legends of the Middle Age, minnesinger 
 and crusader, and during his holidays long visits to his 
 mother's kindred at Detmold near the Teutoberg and the 
 field of the Hermannsschlacht, scene of the heroism of 
 Arminius and the destruction of Varus and his legions, 
 stimulated the emotions of anger, resolution and despond- 
 ency which alternately convulsed the boy's mind. What 
 German could walk in the templed gloom of those woods 
 and return to his home the contented thrall of a Bonaparte? 
 
 Poverty and the necessity of choosing a means of liveli- 
 hood, for the pastor was not rich and there were five other 
 children, tore Friedrich for a time from his breedings; 
 he refused to study theology, "feeling that his country 
 would yet demand from him a service incompatible with a 
 pastor's career." But he abandoned at the same time the 
 cherished dream of being a soldier. Of what use was it to 
 become a soldier? The very armies of Germany might at 
 any moment be ordered to enroll themselves beside the 
 hosts of the tyrant. Yet every thought of his mind was of 
 a German uprising and of the deliverance of his country 
 by war. The poetry of Schiller, especially the dramas of 
 Die Yungfrau and Wilhelm Tell gave precision to his fluctuat- 
 ing aspirations. And when he was sixteen he saw in the 
 secret society of the Tugendbund or League of Valour a 
 pledge of the practical realization of his most ardent hopes. 
 
 Suddenly blow on blow struck those hopes to the ground. 
 Stein, in whom he had seen at once the craft and the 
 heroism of Arminius, was flying into exile, no man knew 
 whither; Hardenberg had been bought; the diplomat Haug- 
 witz, like the priest Dalberg, had always been a shuffler; 
 the spirit of the heroic Queen of Prussia was broken; the 
 princes of Germany were vying with each other in banishing 
 the "patriots," or in surrendering to the tyrant's venge- 
 ance all suspected of sharing the aims of the League of 
 Valour. And amidst this panic of treason and defection 
 
 8
 
 ii4 Schonbrunn 
 
 came the appalling actual defeats of 1809 and the suppres- 
 sion of the premature revolts of Schill and Brunswick. 
 Midnight once more settled over Germany, and this time 
 it seemed for ever. Prussia was a second Poland. The 
 land of Frederick was partitioned and every free spirit 
 banished. Wurtemburg, the home of Suabian heroism, 
 was handed over to the tyrant's brother. Saxony, Bavaria, 
 the Rhine region, were appanages of the conqueror's 
 splendour. Austria, bleeding to death from the hideous 
 stabs of Aspern-Essling and Wagram what could Austria 
 effect? And the conqueror was still in his prime and his 
 legions were growing in multitude year by year. If he 
 lived another ten years, would there be a refuge for freedom 
 on this planet ? 
 
 The shadow of Napoleon loomed to his ardent imagination 
 more portentous than the half-fabulous names of Sesostris 
 and Nebuchadnezzar. A newer and darker design gradually 
 took complete possession of the young Thuringian's soul 
 the design of murdering the tyrant. War and open revolt 
 were useless; for in this Napoleon there was something 
 daimonic. Such a deed was unprecedented in German 
 history, but to Staps' inflamed imagination the Napoleonic 
 tyranny was, in its corroding shame, unprecedented not 
 only in German but in human history. It was not a crime. 
 Many of the most shining names in history were those of 
 tyrannicides, and with a glow of ardour which lasted for 
 weeks Friedrich now recollected his boyish enthusiasm for 
 the verses which enshrine the memory of Harmodius, the 
 murderer of Peisistratos, the tyrant of Athens. 
 
 " I will wreathe my sword with the myrtle's leaves, 
 The sword that reached the tyrant's heart." 
 
 When, however, he turned from the conception to the 
 execution of his murderous design, horror seized him, and 
 when he conquered that horror and saw the glory of the
 
 The Assassin 115 
 
 deed in the dazzling light of old battlefields and heard 
 his own name spoken in wonder by millions of liberated 
 Germans, a sense of his own incapacity and the innumer- 
 able difficulties in his way roused again the very horror 
 that he had recently conquered. All was despondency, 
 and, like the poet Kleist two years later, Friedrich Staps 
 thought of self-destruction as a means of escape from his 
 own intolerable misery and the misery of Germany. 
 
 The gloom within the young Thuringian's mind was 
 aggravated by the events of 1809. Austria had come forth, 
 and Austria had fallen. The English victories in Spain 
 might all be lies; they were contradicted in every French 
 newspaper. The one thing certain was that their armies 
 under Sir John Moore had run like hares the instant 
 Napoleon crossed the Pyrenees. 
 
 " Night must it be ere Friedland's star will burn." 
 
 Had Napoleon after Znaim concluded the treaty and 
 returned to France; had he even left Germany in August, 
 Friedrich Staps might have ended his days by suicide or 
 sunk into obscurity. But July became August and August 
 September and still the tyrant lingered at Schonbrunn 
 there within a day's journey there within reach of a 
 dagger. Was there not in this something metaphysical? 
 
 His purpose flamed up again. And it flamed up in a 
 transfigured glory. The cause of the transfiguration is 
 hidden. Nothing in his manuscripts reveals the process. 
 It may have been a chance study of the Old Testament. It 
 may have been a fresh reading of Schiller's Die Yungfrau. 
 It may have been a sermon preached by Oberlin. The 
 result is clear. The God of his father's religion and of his 
 own childhood, the God of whom he had learned in his 
 mother's talk when the hush of twilight fell with sacred 
 mysteriousness over river and valley, added His mandate
 
 n6 Schonbrunn 
 
 to that of Tyrtseus and the example of Roman Brutus. 
 The Lord God of Hosts spoke to him at Erfurt as He had 
 spoken to Joan Dare at Domremy "Go forth, Friedrich 
 Staps, and give freedom to thy fatherland! Go forth and 
 strike down the evil one!" 
 
 The new design thus hallowed he did not hide in his own 
 breast entirely. Under the pledge of awful secrecy he re- 
 vealed his divine mission to Frederike Neumann, sprung, 
 like himself, from a pastor's family. 
 
 She went home, and whether in weakness, or, infected 
 by his heroism, desirous of sharing his glory, she informed 
 her mother. 
 
 Horror-struck, the latter communicated the design to the 
 pastor himself, and Staps was forbidden the house. The 
 girl was at the same time sent to a distant province. 
 
 Staps was thus left to execute his fearful design alone. 
 
 VIII 
 
 Meantime, waiting for Corvisart, the buzz of conversa- 
 tion once more filled the room. 
 
 Emotions had crystallized, judgments were expressed. 
 General Hedouville, one of Napoleon's escort, a Frenchman 
 with the soul of a janizary, fixed his flashing black eyes 
 now on Napoleon, now on the prisoner. He seemed quiver- 
 ing with impatience for the order to cut the latter in pieces. 
 Bertrand, impulsive and theatrical, gesticulated violently, 
 calling heaven to witness his horror at the crime. The 
 hussar Lacourbe's figure towered over his two fellow-officers. 
 He maintained his air of haughty superiority which dis- 
 guises the stupidity of the mere horseman. When Lacourbe 
 was mounted, as Savary once said, the brains were in 
 front of the saddle. Bertrand began again to deplore the 
 recklessness with which the Emperor continually exposed 
 himself.
 
 The Assassin 117 
 
 "At Valladolid six months ago I saw him with my own 
 eyes go down amongst a company of evil-looking monks 
 and start a theological discussion upon the Inquisition. 
 What was there to prevent one of those ruffians from 
 plunging a dagger in his breast? The Pope would have 
 beatified him." And to-day, this young German, he 
 could bet, had been egged on by the priests, just like that 
 Dominican who stabbed Hubert, the Emperor's valet, at 
 Burgos. "The Emperor is brave as a lion; but he ought to 
 think of us. On his single life how much depends!" 
 
 "Truly," said Mouton, with humorous sarcasm, "how 
 much, how very much, as our creditors know!" 
 
 The young dragoon aide who had lost at cards groaned 
 a deep assent. In every heart in that room now crouched 
 the question "What if the assassin's dagger had actually 
 reached its mark? To me what would have been the 
 consequences?" 
 
 Some looked to the future and the chances of a new regime, 
 Jacobin or Constitutional; some remembered Moreau and 
 mused fugitively on his designs for the restoration of the 
 Bourbons; others thought of Talleyrand and his "legitimist" 
 obsession. Some plotted a republic in which they them- 
 selves might play a political r61e ; some again quite seriously 
 thought of an elective empire, the ruler being chosen by the 
 army. Davout or Bernadotte or even Murat might at 
 once succeed Napoleon. Some again contemplated anx- 
 iously the risks to honours, titles, riches, lands which any 
 change must involve. All, however, saw in Napoleon's 
 death the certainty of a temporary peace, and for peace 
 every man in that room was longing. 
 
 Napoleon, his brow laden with thought, was again walk- 
 ing slowly up and down. He was not unaware of the loyal 
 or disloyal thoughts swarming behind those eyes that 
 looked at him with so much affection or so much concern; 
 he was old in the experience of men; the human heart had
 
 n8 Schonbrunn 
 
 little that was ugly to reveal to him now. Their fidelity to 
 him, which was their honour, was the fidelity of brigands 
 sworn to the same enterprise. He had never been the dupe 
 of the hypocritical codes of compassion and fraternal love. 
 The ethics of the tiger were the ethics of man. 
 
 Rapp, meanwhile, had placed himself nearer to the 
 prisoner. His return to the language of his own boy- 
 hood, or something sympathetic in Staps' appearance, was 
 working in him a curious change pity, or at least under- 
 standing. The boy himself appeared to be once more 
 unconscious of his surroundings. Now and then he tugged 
 nervously at the cords fastening his hands. They had 
 been knotted violently and awkwardly, and Rapp saw a 
 bruise, ragged-edged and bleeding, on one of the wrists. 
 His hands were finely made, but, like his face, sunburnt. 
 Swift to feel sympathy or moved by some suspicion in his 
 own mind, he now said to Rapp in confidential undertones 
 and in German: 
 
 "WhoisM. Corvisart?" 
 
 Rapp did not at once answer ; then in an indifferent tone 
 he said curtly: 
 
 "His Majesty's physician." 
 
 At once the prisoner's countenance was all excitement 
 and he exclaimed protestingly : 
 
 "But I am not ill. What has a doctor to do here?" 
 
 He turned as in anger towards Napoleon, who, arrested 
 by the question and Rapp's answer, had stopped in his 
 walk, and stood eyeing Rapp and his prisoner. He seemed 
 about to speak when the doors were again flung open and 
 Corvisart entered. 
 
 IX 
 
 Though only fifty-five the famous physician looked a 
 man of sixty. His quiet dress, decorated only with the
 
 The Assassin 119 
 
 small red ribbon of the Legion of Honour, formed a con- 
 trast to the blaze of uniforms, just as the intellectuality of 
 his features formed a contrast to the manly unintelligence 
 which characterized most of the officers, making him, as 
 it were, the sole companion to Bonaparte in that room. 
 His naturally keen features were sharpened by suffering or 
 weariness, and his eyes were tarnished. 
 
 Savary, wishing to oust Rapp, began to explain the 
 incident to the physician, but Napoleon interrupted him at 
 once: 
 
 "Corvisart, here is a patient for you. Examine him and 
 tell me what you think of his state. " 
 
 Uncertain whether it was a mystification, for he saw no 
 signs of sickness, Corvisart hesitated. 
 
 "To work! To work!" the Emperor said with false 
 gaiety, and, determined to prevent Savary or Rapp from 
 impairing the impartiality of the physician's opinion, he 
 came and stood near and pointed to Staps. 
 
 Corvisart looked at the prisoner in silence, then placed 
 his fingers on his pulse. His own wrinkled hands, of a 
 dirtyish red colour and covered on the back with sickly 
 hair, made more marked the boy's smooth and delicately 
 modelled wrist. Corvisart's sight was dim, but his touch 
 was marvellous in its delicacy. His patient felt this and 
 looked at the physician in trustful naivete. He failed, 
 however, to understand the questions which after a second 
 or two Corvisart put to him in low, reassuring tones. 
 
 Receiving no answer, Corvisart once more felt the pulse, 
 looked into the boy's eyes, which met his with an eager, 
 almost childlike intensity, and, to the astonishment of 
 every hearer, the prisoner suddenly said in bad French : 
 
 "Je ne suis pas malade, monsieur, pas vrai?" trans- 
 lating the last words literally from the familiar German 
 idiom "nicht wahr. " " I am not ill am I?" 
 
 In the strung state of the onlookers' nerves, had a deaf
 
 120 Schonbrunn 
 
 mute suddenly spoken the effect could not have been more 
 instantaneous. 
 
 Smiling, Corvisart was about to reply, but the Emperor 
 by a gesture indicated that he was to speak to him, and to 
 speak to him only. 
 
 "No, your Majesty, he does not seem to me ill. The 
 pulse is irregular, wavering a little, but nervousness would 
 explain that." 
 
 ' ' You are certain ? Be careful. ' ' 
 
 Impatient a little for as he afterwards told Duroc, he 
 imagined that he had to do only with a Viennese student 
 who, in his eagerness to see the parade, had forced his way 
 past a sentry or, as had happened before, had hidden in the 
 grounds all night Corvisart again examined Staps and 
 again took his wrist. 
 
 "It is quite certain, sire; he is suffering from nothing 
 except a slight shock to the nerves. " 
 
 "Well, my good Corvisart, this youngster has just at- 
 tempted to murder me. How do you explain that ? Eh ? 
 Is that the mark of a sound brain? " And in malicious glee 
 he took the physician by the ear. 
 
 Napoleon's reply may or may not have surprised Cor- 
 visart. His manner betrayed nothing. The steel-grey 
 eyes remained steady, nor did he drop the assassin's wrist 
 in horror. Corvisart, indeed, had long since come to see 
 in all life a malady; and now, before Bonaparte's irritating 
 insistence on Staps' madness, his mind in a tranced flash had 
 darted across the mental phases of Napoleon's own career. 
 To Corvisart, Napoleon, the greatest man on earth, was a 
 sick man; and in the genius which convulsed a world he saw, 
 point by point, the progress of two maladies, frightfully 
 interlaced, epilepsy and cancer. The first had triumphed 
 in Bonaparte's youth ; in the melancholia of Valence, in the 
 erotomania kindled by Josephine Beauharnais, who to Cor- 
 visart had, as to a confessor, revealed every secret of the
 
 The Assassin 121 
 
 alcove, every secret of her "maniac lover " And now in 
 mid-life canceroid tendencies were declaring themselves. 
 
 "Which is the true madman the young assassin or the 
 middle-aged world-tyrant, his victim?" 
 
 The problem roused all Corvisart's interest in the 
 pathology of the human mind. During the recent cam- 
 paign he had had opportunity enough of indulging that 
 interest. To the prolonged rage of battle and its effects 
 on the human mind had been added, during the hideous 
 weeks in Lobau, the ravages of typhus. Hospital fevers 
 were peculiarly malignant in type. The Danube was in 
 flood. The war of the elements imitated the warfare of 
 men. Thunderstorms alternated with periods of torrid 
 heat or continuous rains. The cases of madness and 
 cerebral affections were unusually numerous and violent. 
 That of Pfeister, the Emperor's body-servant, had been 
 the most painful. Distracted by over-excitement and the 
 terrific cannonade of Wagram, he had, on the day of the 
 battle, rushed shrieking into the woods, and was found four 
 days afterwards a gibbering madman, gnawing the root of 
 a tree whilst he crouched stark-naked in a grave which he 
 had dug with his finger-nails. The contagion had spread. 
 Fortunately the Spaniard, Esquirol, had at that very period 
 abolished the savage custom of loading the mad with chains 
 and pinioning them to an iron staple in their solitary 
 dreadful cells. Corvisart had been one of the first, during 
 the Wagram campaign, to adopt a humaner treatment. 
 
 That Napoleon himself had been affected by the tainted 
 physical and the tainted moral atmosphere the physician 
 had not a doubt. His silences, his transports of rage, his 
 bursts of garrulous confidence, recalled the consular period 
 and the soliloquies of Pont-au-Faix; whilst the recrudes- 
 cence of his passion for Madame Walewska recalled only 
 too faithfully the erotomaniac infatuation for the over-ripe 
 charms of Josephine. And at this very moment, surveying
 
 122 Schonbrunn 
 
 the Emperor furtively, Corvisart, to his anxiety, detected 
 symptoms which were rarely misleading the earthy com- 
 plexion, the toneless gaze, and at intervals a faint yellowish 
 foam at the corners of the mouth, which now began to twitch 
 incessantly. 
 
 " Bigre this is my real patient, " he muttered to himself, 
 seized again by the same presentiment as some seconds 
 ago. 
 
 Napoleon, meanwhile, had resumed his fevered walk to 
 and fro. He desired to prove on the spot that Staps was 
 insane. This, he considered, was the only answer that he 
 could make to Staps' accusations which, he imagined, had 
 affected some of his suite, especially Rapp and the republi- 
 can Hulin. Profoundly sceptical of man's wish for truth 
 in any department of human activity, how was he to trust 
 to the silent eloquence of fact or to the tardy justice of time 
 to eradicate these accusations? Again, he desired to hide 
 from his staff and if possible from Corvisart himself, the 
 distinction of this from the former attempts at assassina- 
 tion or former plots, imaginary or real, which Fouche had 
 from time to time unravelled or pretended to unravel. All 
 these were tainted with personal ends. But here he was 
 confronted by something new, something disconcerting, in- 
 explicable. 
 
 "England, the cabinet of St. James, is not in this," he 
 told himself in the interval of intense meditation. "This 
 is German only." 
 
 And in that German youth there was something of the 
 ancient world, something Greek, as he stood there, negli- 
 gently scornful, it seemed, his head again drooping a lit- 
 tle on one side, in fatigue not in shame, the eyes lowered 
 and half-closed, yet fixed, musing on things beyond Bona- 
 parte's range or perhaps, he suddenly said to himself, med- 
 itating merely his frustrated attempt, or the resumption of 
 it at some future time or even now, now and here in this
 
 The Assassin 123 
 
 room? Why not? Seizing with a leopard-bound some 
 weapon, why should he not complete the design? 
 
 Napoleon had the heavy sickening sensation of a stab; 
 he felt the dagger point dully searching the fibres about his 
 heart, and ever the victim at least for a period of his own 
 vivid fancies, he stepped back involuntarily so deadly, yet 
 so incomprehensible and portentous was the force of hate 
 or scorn that now seemed to encircle or to emanate from 
 the prisoner's vicinity. 
 
 But was Corvisart the man to aid him in declaring mad 
 a sane man even in Austria ? 
 
 He wheeled round and looked fixedly at the physician 
 standing imperturbable, quietly observant, his head slightly 
 bent in ironic courtier-fashion. For several seconds Napo- 
 leon did not speak, did not stir, but, a lion about to spring, 
 stood studying the man whom, rightly or wrongly, he classed 
 with Hulin as "an unperverted Jacobin." Then with a 
 brief gesture pointing to the prisoner, he dropped rather 
 than spoke the words: 
 
 "Take him away. " 
 
 And at a sign from Savary, Friedrich Staps, accompanied 
 by the two aides-de-camp, walked with a light step from 
 the room, and, transferred to the gendarmes waiting out- 
 side he passed from Schonbrunn and from the general ob- 
 servation and knowledge of men for ever. 
 
 Napoleon being Napoleon, it was impossible for him 
 not to observe that the Thuringian had neither looked 
 round nor exhibited the slightest curiosity in his imperial 
 person, as though, lifted above the grandeurs and distinc- 
 tions of time, his thoughts were bent only upon the dark- 
 ness or upon the light whither he was moving, and at how 
 frightful a speed ! 
 
 " He is young to die. " 
 
 Berthier alone caught these words which Napoleon spoke 
 carelessly, yet in momentary compunction. The boy's
 
 124 Schonbrunn 
 
 simplicity and dignity, like that of a wounded duellist who 
 knows he has to die but studies to bear himself greatly, had 
 extorted his admiration. Intrepidity, indeed, was now 
 almost the only quality which could excite admiration in 
 Bonaparte. Every other admiration was dried up in 
 him; but this boy had intrepidity. 
 
 As soon as the prisoner had been removed, Napoleon's 
 suite, princes, dukes, marshals and generals, with a single 
 elan crowded about the Emperor with words or cries of 
 felicitation, each according to his temperament, his real or 
 feigned enthusiasm. Napoleon's well-known willingness to 
 receive petitions made the indignation, above all in soldiers, 
 very sincere. 
 
 He quickly silenced their empressement, and turned to 
 Corvisart. 
 
 "You are certain he knows what he is doing?" 
 
 Corvisart's face had assumed the morose aspect which 
 it had worn throughout the campaign. Napoleon put it 
 down to his jealousy of Larrey, made a baron after Lobau. 
 
 "Quite certain, your Majesty." 
 
 "Not a trace of mania not even of religious mania?" 
 
 Corvisart's smile was like a sneer. 
 
 "Who can tell the bounds of madness? And religion, 
 sire, is never far from madness, at least in a German. They 
 are a nation of dreamers and idealists. Even their scien- 
 tists here in Vienna talk as if the soul were a distinct entity 
 a guest in this inn, the body." 
 
 "Ah?" 
 
 Napoleon again looked at him scrutinisingly. He did 
 not like the answer. It savoured of Jacobinism. And he 
 did not like Corvisart's bearing. 
 
 Born of a Romanist family, and, like Duroc, a native of 
 the Ardennes, Corvisart had lost his faith in the Revolution
 
 The Assassin 125 
 
 without finding it possible to believe in the Empire; but 
 from '93 he had kept at least one conviction, which time 
 only strengthened in its bitterness the conviction ex- 
 pressed by Fouche's inscription, carved in that year of the 
 Terror upon every cemetery in France "Death is an 
 eternal sleep." Destined for the law in his youth, but 
 passionate for science, above all for the writings of Buffon 
 and Cuvier, he had by a bold device freed himself from its 
 hateful drudgery, and hearing at Brussels some lectures on 
 anatomy, had seen in that the path to the knowledge for 
 which he thirsted. At the house of Barras he had met 
 that other perpetual malade, Josephine de Beauharnais, 
 and, consulted by her, he had become an habitue of her 
 own and Barras' circle, and there in '95 had met the hun- 
 gry, threadbare, taciturn, stiff-mannered, provincial artil- 
 leryman, Bonaparte. His attitude towards the Emperor 
 had retained something of that first relationship. 
 
 Divining some intention in the Emperor's persistence 
 and wishing also to disarm his suspicions, he now said: 
 "But I have not seen much of the patient, your Majesty. 
 I should like to examine him again. There may be a latent 
 neVropathie." 
 
 Napoleon's brow cleared. "Go, my good Corvisart, go. 
 Talk with him in the guard-house, sit beside him, question 
 him, win his confidence, speak to him of his home and of 
 his childhood, of his friends. The wild writings of the 
 Illuminati and the ideologues of Weimar and Berlin have 
 perverted him." 
 
 He took Savary aside, spoke to him some rapid words, 
 gave instructions. Taking Corvisart with him the due de 
 Rovigo then left the presence. 
 
 XI 
 
 Napoleon resumed his pacing of the floor. His false 
 calm gradually disappeared. His features worked inces-
 
 126 Schonbrunn 
 
 santly; his glances darted suspicion. He seemed ringed 
 in by traitors. England was forgotten. He had before his 
 imagination a more insidious peril. 
 
 This was the Tugendbund, the Bond of Valour, the 
 League of Virtue, that singular secret society which was 
 everywhere in Germany, but everywhere disappeared the 
 instant it was approached. For nearly two years, by the 
 aid of Davout's spies and Fouche's police, he had been 
 observing its subterranean operations. Its invisible but 
 omnipresent activity recalled the action of the Jacobins 
 during the Terror. Its Board of Six sat at Konigsberg, but 
 it had its branches in every town and principality from the 
 Oder to the Rhine and from the Baltic to the Styrian Alps. 
 Its ostensible aim was the regeneration of the Father- 
 land. Its abettors, it was alleged, sought at once to restore 
 religion and purify taste, and to fight against corruption in 
 political as in social life ; but its real design was to overthrow 
 Napoleon. The King himself, Frederick William III., 
 was said to be its Grand Master. The Queen of Prussia, 
 the beautiful Louise, was its Armida, was suspected of 
 inspiring its leaders by enticements similar to those by 
 which Marie Antoinette seduced the leaders of the Revolu- 
 tion. Minister vom Stein, le nomme Stein, of Napoleon's 
 dispatch from Madrid, was, it was rumoured, its Mirabeau; 
 but every man prominent in German public life had en- 
 couraged or joined this infernal conspiracy Hardenberg, 
 Niebuhr, Scharnhorst, Goltz, Stadion, Blucher, Dalberg 
 himself, the Primate, Napoleon's most servile flatterer. 
 It had its agents in every university in Germany Gottin- 
 gen, Heidelberg, Jena, Marburg, Tubingen. How could it 
 fail to extend its venomous influence to the great University 
 of Vienna and its three thousand students? Another of its 
 reputed agents, the celebrated August von Schlegel, the 
 friend of Madame de Stael, had lectured to those very 
 students less than a year ago.
 
 The Assassin 127 
 
 "Fanaticism in the blood of youth works like a subtle 
 flame," Napoleon reasoned, "prompting to heroism or to 
 deadly error." The poet Collin and his brother he had 
 had his eye on them and their songs and their writings 
 since February last. Translations of their stuff had been 
 distributed in Paris itself. He had ordered their arrest the 
 day of his arrival at Schonbrunn, but it was too late. The 
 conspiracy had drawn other elements to itself the dis- 
 content with the feudal tyrannies, was as violent in the 
 Germany of Frederick William and Francis II. as in 
 the France of Louis XVI. Schiller's Robbers, and even 
 the melodramatic patriotism of Firbellin, the village-born 
 youth loved by his mistress, condemned by her lord to be 
 thrown alive into a smelting furnace, expressed phases of 
 this social and political discontent. 
 
 But the peace the terms of peace? What would be the 
 effect of this attempted murder upon them? 
 
 He stopped his walk and stood. 
 
 "Send Nicas here." 
 
 The famous courier, whose midnight ride through the 
 Wienerwald had extorted the admiration and the laughter 
 of Vienna and the army, was in waiting. He entered at 
 once, light, agile, with the look of an explorer or traveller, 
 the finest figure except Favrol's in the room. 
 
 Nicas seemed to have expected the summons. Indeed, 
 since eleven that morning, when Prince John of Liechten- 
 stein and Count Bubna left Schonbrunn, he had been 
 lounging about the palace with his instructions known and 
 sealed, waiting for this order. For just as in war Napoleon 
 always had plan behind plan lightly held within his brain, 
 so in diplomacy he had scheme behind scheme ready to be 
 sprung on his adversary at any unforeseen moment. 
 
 Napoleon took him to the end of the room, but almost 
 instantly returned, and some seconds later Nicas, on a 
 black powerful horse, the same as those upon which the
 
 128 Schonbrunn 
 
 Chasseurs de la Garde were mounted but with better 
 staying power, was on his road. 
 
 Those who saw him gallop through Vienna twenty 
 minutes later saw that he left the city, not by the road that 
 went to Brientz, but by a road which went to Altenburg. 
 And with a thrill of excitement men asked for his figure 
 had become known in Vienna "Has the peace been signed 
 then, and is he the bearer of the news to Petersburg and to 
 the Czar Alexander, or to Warsaw?" 
 
 Meanwhile, in the presence chamber, at a sign from 
 Duroc, the Grand Chamberlain, several officers had retired. 
 There now remained only a select group composed of Na- 
 poleon's great officials or most trusted generals. 
 
 Napoleon's aspect had not changed, unless that after dis- 
 patching Nicas his expression had lightened somewhat. 
 
 His eye fell on Berthier. "Ah, you rogue ! " he exclaimed 
 laughing. "What became of you and your Mameluke 
 Guard? You made a run to the town? You have your 
 plots with Maret?" 
 
 "But your Majesty " Berthier expostulated. 
 
 He took hold of Berthier by the ear. The demonstration 
 of affection seemed sincere. Tears stood in Berthier's eyes. 
 
 "Yes, yes, I know," Napoleon went on. "You are both 
 alike ; you must have your fingers in every pie. That devil 
 of a Maret, " he continued, his good humour flowing out like 
 sunshine, "turned up at Soma Sierra on a November night, 
 half frozen 'Sire! Sire!' He seemed to think it a crime 
 that I had fired a shot when he was not there to see. Le 
 bon Maret!" And he laughed again. 
 
 In this deliverance from a great danger a pleasant sense 
 of well-being had at first diffused itself over him. But the 
 mere mention of Spain was vitriol. The cloud returned to 
 his brow, darker and more ominous than before. 
 
 "These hired assassins it is not against me but against 
 my brave grenadiers that they are sent. You saw their
 
 The Assassin 129 
 
 wounds to-day. You heard their cries. But they shall at 
 /east have bread, my brave ones. I will rule Spain with a 
 rod of iron. She has refused my good. She shall know my 
 evil. I will turn her cities into garrisons. I will stall my 
 horses in her monasteries, and her cathedrals I will make 
 granaries for my armies." 
 
 And releasing the Prince de Neuchatel's ear which till 
 that moment he had been affectionately holding, he pushed 
 him almost rudely aside. The real storm, which during 
 Corvisart's presence had announced itself only by prelimi- 
 nary flashes now hurtled over the heads of the courtiers and 
 soldiers. 
 
 "The ingratitude of men!" he suddenly burst out. 
 "L'infamie humaine that is the maxim which down the 
 centuries each man has to learn, and to each it is surprising 
 as death! What gratitude had Caesar or the son of Philip? 
 And I, whom can I trust?" 
 
 And turning sharply, and glancing alternately at Berthier, 
 Duroc, Bertrand, Rapp and Hulin, "Fidelity? Where is 
 fidelity?" he exclaimed, unconsciously imitating Nero's 
 cry as the sword of the pretorian entered his breast, "I 
 find egoism everywhere. What is this I hear of Soult? 
 I hunted the English leopards to the sea. I go, and the 
 English are back in Spain. And that is the moment 
 which this fanfaron of a Soult chooses to make himself a 
 king! When he ought to be on Wellington's traces he 
 organises conspiracies in Oporto, talks like an avocat, 
 sends me a committee requesting me to give Portugal a 
 monarch King Nicholas I.! For what dynasty but that 
 of Soult can succeed the House of Braganza eh? Le 
 brave Soult! And whilst the courtiers are kissing the 
 hands of King Nicholas, the English cannon send them 
 skipping and I have lost Oporto." 
 
 He darted to a table on which a map of Germany was 
 lying outspread. It was the same that he had used that 
 
 9
 
 130 Schonbrunn 
 
 morning with Liechtenstein and Bubna. Flinging it on 
 the floor Napoleon bent over another, a map of Spain. 
 
 "There, there," he cried, pointing to a spot, "there is 
 Wellington, or there was Wellington three weeks ago: to- 
 day for anything I know he may be sitting in Madrid. 
 And what does Joseph do ? How does the King my brother 
 act? Wellington has not more than thirty thousand men 
 and he is three hundred miles from Torres Vedras, his base; 
 yet Joseph does nothing; he writes to me that he has only 
 ten thousand troops. Ten thousand! Good God! Has 
 then Wellington no communications? And why did he 
 publish his numbers to the world? Am I a conqueror? Yet 
 at Eckmiihl I had only one against five ; but in the orders of 
 the day I declared that I was fifteen to ten, and my brave 
 grenadiers fought as if it were a jest. Soldiers do not 
 reason. They believe. " 
 
 Hulin did a piece of mental arithmetic and suddenly 
 looked at Rapp. Even at three hundred miles from his 
 base Wellington must still have had twelve thousand to 
 fifteen thousand men. A sarcastic light had risen in his 
 eyes. He had been through the Italian campaign with 
 Bonaparte. This was not the spirit in which Bonaparte 
 at that period, at Arcola or at Rivoli, addressed his troops. 
 Was Napoleon's brain becoming dulled, Hulin asked 
 himself, or was he simply talking for effect, unscrupulous 
 in argument, haranguing the imaginary Joseph? 
 
 Napoleon pushed aside the map and, his hands behind 
 his back, began to walk up and down. 
 
 XII 
 
 All were congratulating themselves that the storm was 
 over and Duroc was about to remind the Emperor that 
 he had eaten nothing since breakfast, when on a sudden 
 the thunder gathered again, and this time it burst over Ber-
 
 The Assassin 131 
 
 thier, who, with his arms folded, stood in perfect uncon- 
 sciousness that this attitude, good enough in Napoleon's 
 absence, was ridiculous and supremely irritating in Napo- 
 leon's presence. It prevented the Emperor taking that 
 attitude himself. 
 
 But with a curious cunning or malignity he did not at 
 once attack Berthier directly. 
 
 "Ingratitude and imbecility are my world." And as 
 though appealing to the Prince de Neuchatel for support 
 he looked at him searchingly. "Nature should have given 
 me a hundred heads as she gave Briareus a hundred hands. 
 I loved Marmont as a son. Yet you know, you know his 
 fatuities at Laa there where a single squadron of Radet- 
 sky's hussars might have destroyed the bridge and made 
 my victory and the death of twenty thousand men in vain. 
 And in Passau and in Antwerp, in Madrid and in Rome 
 why am I not there myself? Why am I still in Vienna? 
 Why am I not with my armies in Spain? It is you, Ber- 
 thier, you who are to blame." 
 
 Berthier unclasped his arms and stepped back, staring at 
 his master. The latter poured on the astonished Prince de 
 Neuchatel a torrent of picturesque invective, now a single 
 epithet, now an unforgettable laughter-provoking phrase, 
 caricaturing, ridiculing in every possible manner Berthier's 
 disposition of the army in April last, scattered over an 
 area of sixty miles. 
 
 " Dites, dites ! If the Archduke had stood in your council 
 of war as your most trusted adviser, what other dispositions 
 would you have taken ? You could have been annihilated ; 
 you ought to have been annihilated." 
 
 And as though he intended himself to supplement the 
 Archduke's neglected duty and annihilate Berthier now, 
 he advanced upon him ; but suddenly checked himself with 
 a gesture of mingled grief and discouragement. 
 
 Berthier, "the heaven-born chief of the Staff," the con-
 
 132 Schonbrunn 
 
 stant lover of Madam d'Este*, a passion perplexing to his 
 master as to himself, was a man who in service found his 
 greatness as others in command ; in his youth the follower 
 of Lafayette and freedom's daybreak in the West, the hero 
 of Lodi, extravagant, indefatigable, squandering a million 
 a year. 
 
 Napoleon resumed. 
 
 "I came to Donauworth. I had to fight five battles in 
 five days. I stormed Ratisbon. I had to lead my armies 
 to Vienna against a massed enemy, three hundred thousand 
 of them, and I had to do this as rapidly as a man travels 
 in a time of peace, fighting eleven battles and thirty-seven 
 combats. Do you suppose that is good for a nation or for 
 an army ? And, but for you, it might all have been avoided." 
 
 If this were acting, General Hulin thought indignantly, 
 it was greater than Talma's. If Napoleon actually knew, 
 if at that moment he was actually conscious that Berthier's 
 dispositions were due to Napoleon's own mistake or to the 
 failure of a semaphore message, how could he or any man 
 speak in those tones ? 
 
 Another brusque change in Napoleon's ideas stopped 
 Hulin's morose speculations. 
 
 "But I should do everything myself, everything. In 
 Paris, my capital, nothing is right. Cambaceres does 
 nothing; Clarke does nothing. My minister for war 
 allows the English to believe that I have only fifteen 
 thousand men to spare and if they care to land at Flushing 
 the road to Paris is open. My ministers ! By the God of 
 battles, they will lie in bed and snore till the English wake 
 them! And Fouch what does that traitor mean?" 
 
 He looked round for Savary forgetting for the moment 
 that the due de Rovigo had left the room with Corvisart. 
 Duroc explained. The explanation appeared to bring 
 Napoleon's thoughts back to the incident of the morning. 
 But now he took it up from yet another standpoint.
 
 The Assassin 133 
 
 "He stuffs his imagination with Roman histories, that 
 young hothead. But in Paris itself books appear every 
 week, newspapers appear every morning and of what are 
 they full? The History of La Vendee, Suetonius and 
 Tacitus, and the falsified, distorted lives of the Roman 
 Caesars is that the reading that Fouche thinks most 
 suitable for the great French nation, the successor of Rome? 
 It is to place daggers in the hands of my subjects. / 
 become Tiberius, Nero, Domitian que scais-je? If this 
 is done in Paris what wonder that I find a Brutus at 
 Schonbrunn!" 
 
 Berthier, though no ally of Fouche, made a conciliatory, 
 half-protesting gesture and glanced insinuatingly at Duroc. 
 Both dreaded the due d'Otranto. Was not the Emperor 
 exaggerating? 
 
 "Do you wish proofs?" Napoleon burst out furiously. 
 "Tiens, I will give you proofs." 
 
 He sketched with amazing accuracy and rapidity the 
 books which had appeared during the campaign, especially 
 the writings of Beauchamp, a former agent de police, who, 
 simulating the desire to return to Napoleon's service, had 
 taken to the writing of "history," and into a brochure 
 upon La Vendee had woven an appeal for a rising against 
 Napoleon, the gaoler of the Pope, similar to the rising of La 
 Rochejaquelin against Robespierre. Again, in Rapin's 
 treatise on Roman Law Savary's secret police had dis- 
 covered this sentence, and used it against Fouchd's secret 
 police "Thus Tiberius, till now a friend of the Senate and 
 of the Republic, when once he had embrued his hands in 
 the blood of the high-born Germanicus, turned to tyranny 
 and waded deeper and deeper in blood." To an unpre- 
 judiced eye there was nothing in this that could offend the 
 most susceptible of tyrants, but Savary, tormented himself, 
 it was said, by the injured phantom of d'Enghien, had 
 pointed out to Napoleon how easy it was to interpret the
 
 134 Schonbrunn 
 
 paragraph and the succeeding chapter as a deadly satire 
 upon his own history since March, 1804. 
 
 "Am I Tiberius?" he exclaimed, this time appealing to 
 Duroc as though to destroy the effect of Berthier's re- 
 monstrance. "Is this Capri? But Fouche is conspiracy 
 incarnate. And Murat that popinjay, ce geai de Murat 
 is still his tool. 'No conspiracy without a sword' is 
 axiomatic, and in the conspiracy against me the King of 
 Naples ii that sword. Murat? He would sit upon my 
 throne mine that plumaged cock who thinks he has the 
 pinions of an eagle! And now, if Murat fails, Bernadotte 
 will serve. Bernadotte! The blase old ruffian who nearly 
 lost me Jena. And why was he not at Eylau? And why 
 was he late for Austerlitz? Every grenadier in the army 
 knows why we had to wait three days in the terrible Decem- 
 ber weather, with neither food nor brandy, and then arise 
 and defeat two Emperors and the armies of two Empires. 
 And now, that is the man who issues his proclamations 
 without my permission and demands money money 
 money, but will do nothing to earn it. Does no blasted 
 tree grow by the Scheldt to which this Judas might hang 
 himself? But it is the same with Massena, the same with 
 Ney, with Junot, with Augereau, with Suchet, with Murat." 
 
 And he enumerated the sums disbursed annually to these 
 marshals. Berthier alone had two millions a year; Davout 
 900,000; Massena 1,200,000; Marmont 700,000. Certainly 
 there seemed a reason for Bernadotte's exclamation long 
 afterwards: "Once I was a marshal of France. Now I 
 am merely King of Sweden. " 
 
 "Gold, gold! I would need a Golconda, and have but 
 a Spain. The ingratitude and rapacity of men! Was 
 Genghis or Timour surrounded by such vultures? Spain 
 costs me millions and yields me nothing. I have spent 
 seven hundred and ninety millions this year, and in 1808 
 I spent seven hundred and sixty-five millions. How much
 
 The Assassin 135 
 
 did I get from Spain? Not a sou, and it absorbs some of 
 my bravest troops. I should be there amongst them I 
 should be there amongst them. ..." 
 
 Anger now fled from his voice ; it was full of nothing but 
 self-reproach. 
 
 Berthier chose this moment to let fall the question which 
 for several minutes had been in his head: 
 
 "Where should your Majesty not be?" 
 
 And Napoleon, as if conscious that he had exceeded the 
 measure in his rebukes, ignored the flattery and once more 
 spoke in a tone of bitter self -exculpation. 
 
 "If I were what my enemies and the English say, do you 
 think my soldiers would not know it? They see me every 
 hour of every day. Or do you suppose that they fought 
 as they have fought these twelve heroic years from Arcola 
 to Ratisbon and Wagram for three pence a day? No, it is 
 because I speak to their souls, to something in them pro- 
 found, mysterious. They accuse me of being a slave to my 
 ambition. Ambition? I and my ambition are one. How 
 can I be its slave unless I am slave to myself? Do they 
 imagine that I am a Romanoff? Do they think that I 
 would commit murder for a crown? And a throne! What 
 is a throne? The throne of Clovis was the stump of an 
 oak. And the sceptre of the first of the Capets was, like 
 the sceptre of Agamemnon, cut from the nearest hedge. 
 A throne! On the day of my coronation I had no rest 
 until I had torn my robe to tatters and kicked them about 
 the floor. Duroc is my witness. I could neither think nor 
 act in the gew-gaws. I could not even feel myself a man. " 
 
 And in a voice like that of a man in a trance, Napoleon 
 uttered the singular words : 
 
 "If I could but have ten more years or even five. 
 With peace in Europe I could do much in five years. Paris, 
 Europe, Asia, and then But too much is against me. 
 I have come too late. The fire is extinct. "
 
 136 Schonbrunn 
 
 But caught again into the vortex of self-exculpatory 
 denunciation, he hurried on: 
 
 "It is the kings that are to blame. The kings have 
 vowed my ruin. They will not give peace to Europe. To 
 cover their own crimes they accuse me of crime. Assassins, 
 they declare that I am an assassin. The Czar accused me 
 of the murder of d'Enghien and put his court in mourning. 
 Where was his virtue, his indignation and his abhorrence of 
 foul play when the cut-throats sent by Pitt were lurking 
 round Petersburg ready to strangle his father, my friend 
 and ally, Paul I.? And Gustavus IV.? He too calls me 
 assassin. But he is fallen, and I do not make war upon the 
 fallen. And these Prussians, dreamers and cretins they 
 make an idol of the Mecklenburg-Strelitz princess that 
 infamous House Frederick William's Queen, Louisa. 
 They lie and lie about my interview with her. She is thirty- 
 five and already passte and Frederick William is a year 
 older than I am. They had come to years of discretion at 
 Austerlitz, both of them. Where then was the great-souled 
 Queen Louisa? Where were the Prussian Hector and 
 Andromaque when, on the morning after the battle, I made 
 Haugwitz demand that Prussia should seize Hanover?" 
 
 His laugh was terrible the laugh of the Hebrew; but 
 his brow remained black, and he walked up and down ab- 
 sorbed in still blacker reflections. 
 
 "You appeal to laws?" he said flashing round and ad- 
 dressing an imaginary throng of adversaries. "What do 
 I care for your laws, human or divine so called? Laws, 
 human or divine, are temporary contracts between tem- 
 porary and changing aggregations of men. The ancients 
 made the gods themselves bend before Destiny. And my 
 politics is Destiny. The laws that I obey spring from 
 within me. My will, withdrawn and apart, unites in the 
 dreadful solitudes with the inmost will of the worlds and 
 then I act and I then am Destiny. "
 
 The Assassin 137 
 
 He resumed the attack on the court of Berlin. 
 
 "His Majesty of Prussia at my bidding picked Hanover 
 out of England's pocket when England's back was turned, 
 and your Queen Louisa, your Andromaque, flung her 
 white arms round the pickpocket Hector's neck your 
 tearful heroine, beautiful in her disaster, heroic, unyielding, 
 constant! And elated by the heroic success she gave a 
 dance on that very jour de Van; she was insolent to my 
 ambassador. The two criminals, with Hanover safely 
 pocketed, dreamed that Prussia single-handed could now 
 meet the victor of Austerlitz. Jena taught them a lesson 
 Jena. But only for a time. The wise remember Des- 
 tiny's chastisements; the fool quickly forgets all save his 
 folly, and Prussia is that fool. She is my ally; yet a 
 Hohenlohe fought against me at[Eckmuhl and galloped back 
 to Berlin like a jackal to its lair. So are they all, all your 
 hereditary kings and princes, Habsburg, Hohenzollern, 
 Romanoff, your English Guelph and Spanish Bourbon! 
 Europe is one huge Augean stable. And Prussia? Prussia 
 is the foulest corner of it all. But they shall know, they 
 shall know what it is to arm against me the fanatic's 
 dagger." 
 
 A tracery of ideas swept across Napoleon's face. He was 
 sick of the word "Revolution"; for his would-be assassin of 
 that morning was a Revolutionist; and he could not now 
 speak of his dynasty without betraying a secret that he 
 wished to maintain until at least he had returned to Paris. 
 Yet something he must say; for he was wrought to the 
 height, and with a curious blending of craft, prudence, and 
 extreme audacity, feeling a joy in thus expressing his 
 contempt for men by uttering truths perhaps profound, 
 but to those who heard him unintelligible, or, if intelligible, 
 certain to be regarded with furious opposition. Danger 
 Bonaparte had rarely shunned; and this was danger. And 
 now crushing in his hands his old hat, already soft and
 
 138 Schonbrunn 
 
 kneaded, though provided every three months with a new 
 white silk lining, he stopped, and with that oratory which 
 at these moments, aided by the real mystery and power of 
 his personality, always electrified: 
 
 "Do you know what it is against which I war? It is 
 against Patriotism; it is against Nationality. Patriotism is 
 the eating ulcer of humanity. War alone can cauterize 
 the sore. Like range behind range of mountains I see new 
 wars arise; mine are only the prelude. " 
 
 Hulin lifted his head. Standing with both his hands 
 lightly poised on the gilt edges of a richly carved table he 
 looked at his master. 
 
 "A federated Europe with France at its head? There is 
 a thought here, " Hulin said to himself and waited. 
 
 But Bonaparte permitting a storm of ideas to pass un- 
 spoken, Hulin saw suddenly the Emperor's face flush, his 
 eyes lightened, the sound which his hands made twist- 
 ing and untwisting his hat, soft as it was, could almost 
 be heard in the silence. His right leg was trembling 
 convulsively. 
 
 Duroc, fearing another epileptic attack like that in 
 August which had brought Corvisart flying to Schonbrunn, 
 crept nearer him, but stopped at the Emperor's next 
 words. 
 
 "But you do not understand. Not one of you under- 
 stands. What? Is there one of you who would not have 
 been glad in his very soul had that dagger sunk to the hilt 
 in my breast? Is there one of you? There was a Ganelon 
 in the army of Charlemagne. Why should not Schonbrunn 
 have been my Roncesvalles? To-night perhaps it may be; 
 these walls are full of daggers." 
 
 His face at this moment had the look of a death-mask, the 
 earthy pallor, the tintless vitreous gaze, the lashless eye- 
 lids, the forehead without eyebrows, as if thought and life 
 together had receded into some inaccessible heights or
 
 The Assassin 139 
 
 remotenesses from which he surveyed the whole course and 
 end of human life and history. 
 
 "That venomous boy, hired by Austria or hired by 
 Prussia, or by the Jesuits at the bidding of Cardinal Pacca 
 what do I know? Perhaps in collusion with my own 
 followers, my own ministers for it needs but this that 
 one of you should betray me. Austria? But they shall 
 not succeed. They splinter their daggers on adamant. 
 You give me counsels unasked, you din my ears with your 
 snoring banalities moderation, peace with England, to 
 come to terms with Liechtenstein, the inconveniences of 
 the Continental System. Is it that I do not know them, 
 these inconveniences I?" 
 
 He sought for words. His eyes darted ineffectual light- 
 nings about the room. The words came. 
 
 " You warn me? You? You would dictate my duties, 
 thrust yourself between my goal and me? You would 
 frustrate my designs, moderate my course, even guide my 
 path mine! You, you would prescribe a path to the 
 avalanche?" he exclaimed, grasping at the metaphor which 
 had occurred to him on his ride. "You deform, be-monster 
 yourselves by your folly, not me. " 
 
 Suddenly he rushed at Berthier and seizing the lapel of 
 his heavily embroidered coat he dragged him to the window 
 which looked out across the garden and fountains, the 
 statues and parterres, bathed now in the last light of the 
 October afternoon, and, pointing to the sky, Napoleon 
 exclaimed : 
 
 "Do you see that star? Do you see it?" he repeated in 
 a voice that sent a shudder to the heart. 
 
 Berthier, thinking that his master was mad at last, or 
 that he was the victim of a cataleptic attack similar to that 
 of August, stammered some vague words his sight was 
 not so keen as his Majesty's; stars, by ordinary men, could 
 be seen at mid-day only from the bottom of a pit.
 
 14 Schonbrunn 
 
 "You do not see it? Yet you counsel me; would control 
 my course? I see it, moi. And that star is the ruler of my 
 fate. It is the star of my destiny guiding me on, on, on! " 
 
 Trembling violently, he released Berthier, and struggled 
 against the emotion convulsing him; then, furious at his 
 own loss of self-command, he stuttered fiercely the word: 
 
 "Sortez." 
 
 He sank back, shuddering and shuddering again. His 
 features, sickening pale, were convulsed. The faint dirtyish 
 foam gathered more thickly about his lips. 
 
 At a commanding sign from Duroc the room was cleared. 
 He and Berthier remained alone with the Emperor.
 
 CHAPTER V 
 
 THE MIND OF A CITY 
 
 IN Vienna that afternoon the ferment provoked by the 
 conflicting rumours was extreme. War was judged to 
 be inevitable. The Bourse within half an hour registered a 
 fall of three per cent. The shops in the main thoroughfares, 
 in the Graben and Karnthnerstrasse, closed as usual for 
 the mid-day meal, had not re-opened. Thousands of 
 citizens paraded the streets or stood in excited groups, 
 especially in the Alleegasse and its vicinity, awaiting 
 the arrival of Berthier, Prince de Neuchatel. Hundreds 
 thronged to the Cathedral or to the great churches of St. 
 Michael and St. Dominic to pray. For what? 
 
 Towards evening the cafe's, restaurants, bierhallen, were 
 packed. At the Cafe" Che'nier, recently opened in the 
 Kohlmarkt and frequented by the middle class, the crowd 
 outside became so large and so menacing that it was twice 
 dispersed by the gendarmerie. Their new uniforms, an 
 invention of Napoleon's satellite, exposed them to the 
 jeers and hoots or to the witticisms of the mob. 
 
 Inside the cafe* a babel of guttural voices drowned the 
 tzigane orchestra. 
 
 "I saw the blood on his vest. With my own eyes I saw 
 the blood!" a Greek "banker," really a money-lender, 
 asseverated, waving his plump brown hand covered with 
 
 141
 
 142 Schonbrunn 
 
 rings. "I was standing beside the Prince de Ponte Corvo, 
 who is my very good friend. Napoleon threw up his arms, 
 then dropped them, so, so, so" imitating the gesture 
 "closed his eyes, staggered and was about to fall when the 
 Prince de Ponte Corvo " 
 
 But a ponderous, hulking figure, a Viennese silk-merchant, 
 interrupted the speaker. "The Prince de Ponte Corvo, did 
 you say?" he began with slow emphasis. "Nonsense! 
 Bernadotte is in Belgium. I read it in the Gazette yester- 
 day. " And he muttered contemptuously, "These usur- 
 ers are all alike, liars or coiners to a man. " 
 
 The dispute became bitter. Several of the Viennese 
 took the side of their fellow-citizen against the hated Greek ; 
 others, who had borrowed or hoped to borrow from the 
 latter, asserted that they too had recognized Bernadotte; 
 some had seen him that morning, others had passed him 
 yesterday riding in the Prater. 
 
 But a new-comer who had forced his way through the 
 cordon gave a new trend to their ideas. He was a great 
 timber-merchant and the barges of his fleet were known on 
 every jetty of the Danube from Rustchuk to Ratisbon. 
 "Napoleon?" he began mysteriously, rolling out the name. 
 " No mortal hand struck him down. His time is up. Ten 
 years ; ten years of power and glory ; gold and women and 
 palaces and gardens. He's got 'em all. The demon has 
 kept his bond. But what of that? The time is up. What 
 hasn't happened to-day will happen to-morrow. Ten 
 years ago to-morrow, Saturday, I4th October, 1799, General 
 Buonaparte came back from Egypt. He landed at Frejus. 
 Why was he not shot for deserting his army? For the same 
 reason that he was not guillotined when, a few weeks later, he 
 conspired against the Republic. For the same reason that he 
 was defeated at Marengo, yet victorious. It is Hell's doing. 
 It is his compact with Hell. Until this time to-morrow, I4th 
 October, he is invulnerable. But after to-morrow "
 
 The Mind of a City 143 
 
 This account, which explained everything, made a deep 
 impression and a man who had not yet spoken now asked : 
 
 "Can any one inform me whether that story of Madame 
 Walewska having borne the Corsican blackguard a son 
 in the apartments sacred to our blessed empress Maria 
 Theresa, is true or false?" 
 
 He was a thick-set, combative individual, and though a 
 Styrian he had Magyar blood. He too was a merchant, 
 but traded with the Ionian islands trafficking in the sul- 
 phur and marbles of Corfu, in the currant vines of Zante, 
 and for the last two years in the spices of Cephalonia. 
 
 "That can I, " the barge-owner retorted. "It was no son, 
 but a monster born the evening of the demon's apparition. 
 It is whispered that she too had abandoned her body to the 
 embraces of the demon. His son, not Bonaparte's. Bona- 
 parte can't have a son. " 
 
 All except the Greek crossed themselves, some phleg- 
 matically, some with looks of horror. 
 
 "Has the Tempter still those tastes then?" 
 
 The other nodded significantly. 
 
 An old fellow with a long thick dirtyish white beard said 
 in a greasy voice: "It fulfils the scriptures. It fulfils the 
 prophecy which was on every lip on his birthday fe"tes 
 ' The black eagle shall raven no longer, struck down within 
 Wien's walls.'" 
 
 The prophecy was not in the Old Testament; but it was 
 the most famous of the anagrams formed by blending 
 Napoleon's full name with the motto of the city itself, and 
 the whole serious company became absorbed in the discus- 
 sion of omens and portents, prophecies and comparisons of 
 Napoleon and Suleiman, and the siege of Vienna by the 
 Turks with the sieges of Vienna by the French. 
 
 "You speak of the I4th October. Let me tell you about 
 the 1 5th, the day after to-morrow, when Suleiman the 
 Magnificent was forced to raise the siege of Vienna." Who
 
 144 Schonbrunn 
 
 could tell what deep plans were not in the Archduke 
 Charles's head, or in that of the Archduke Johann there 
 behind the Russbach? 
 
 And with a simultaneous impulse of bourgeois loyalty, 
 they rose heavily to their feet and shouted gutturally 
 "Es lebe der Herzog Karl; es lebe der Kaiser; es lebe der 
 Herzog Johann! Hoch! Hoch! Hoch!" 
 
 II 
 
 In the Villars cafe*, on the other hand, situated in the 
 Stephanplatz, a very different state of feeling prevailed. 
 The Cafe* Villars was the rendezvous of fashion, and though 
 not by any means crowded this afternoon, for the majority 
 of its habitue's were with the army or with the Emperor, it 
 still presented a scene of great animation. A fine orchestra 
 was playing. The guests were talking in low tones and 
 drinking coffee or sherbets or wine. Here the attack on 
 Napoleon was pooh-poohed. It was even insinuated that 
 it was a got-up affair, designed as an excuse for breaking off 
 negotiations or more subtly to dissemble, by the appear- 
 ance of his personal danger, his real weakness and an in- 
 tended concession to Austria. 
 
 "Nothing is too diabolically subtle for Bonaparte," a 
 brother of Lan-Lan's observed; "but the affair does not 
 strike me as a fake. Bonaparte rode away. If it had 
 been a fake he would have become histrionic and talked 
 Plutarch. It was Savary who arrested the assassin. I 
 saw him taken to the guard-house. I thought he had 
 been stealing." 
 
 Lan-Lan's brother had a face less oval than his sister's, but 
 he had her soft voice and half-humorous dogmatism of 
 manner; he had her long eyelashes, and their upward curl 
 was very visible as he blinked before a broad shaft of sun- 
 light that suddenly flooded through an open door across the
 
 The Mind of a City 145 
 
 room, lighting up with phantasmagoric distinctness the 
 inlaid patterns on chairs and tables, glasses, bottles, the 
 faces of the Austrians seated around them. 
 
 The report that Staps was a Viennese student was dis- 
 missed with the sententious comment, "Vienna might breed 
 a Caesar or a Sulla, but a Brutus never." 
 
 Here also the conversation settled upon the probable 
 effect of this real or imaginary conspiracy upon the pro- 
 spects of peace. Would the Archduke be reconciled to his 
 brother, Stadion replace Metternich, and the war be recom- 
 menced ? Such a war, it was admitted, could only end in the 
 fall of Bonaparte or in the erasure of Austria from the map of 
 Europe. One man, a councillor of Mines, stated his opin- 
 ion categorically. 
 
 "Begin the war again? And why? To please England? 
 To please Prussia ? How long is Austria to act the gladiator ? 
 It is all very well for the Archduke Charles to cry, 'The 
 freedom of Europe has taken refuge under our banners.' 
 The freedom of Europe! Freedom is a dangerous word and 
 should be left to the Jacobins. What is 'Europe'? A 
 name. Five bloody battles in one year. Austria has done 
 her part." 
 
 "Besides," said another, placing his epigram once more, 
 "the Archduke is played out. He began as a second 
 Eugene; he ends as a second Mack. " 
 
 So in the cafe's men talked and conjectured, and in private 
 houses, where they sat watching the hands of the ladies at 
 their enfilage or mizzling the picking apart of gold bro- 
 cade the same conjecture, varied a little, went on. 
 
 Towards the dinner hour, which in Vienna at that period 
 was about six o'clock, an approximation to the truth be- 
 came known; and in hundreds of families that evening, in 
 the city and in the suburbs, one mysterious word passed 
 from lip to lip. 
 
 "The Tugendbund? It is a reality then?"
 
 146 Schonbrunn 
 
 m 
 
 That same evening the Opera House in the Karnthner- 
 strasse was crowded. Members of the nobility and of the 
 leading families of Vienna had begun to slip back to the 
 city and now occupied their boxes or sat incognito in the 
 stalls, entered under various false names on the Governor's, 
 Count Andre"ossy's register. The attaches of the Russian 
 ambassador, Czartorysky, and the prominent members of 
 the Russian colony, the Ostrakovs, the Gradins, the Petrow- 
 skis, refusing to submit any longer to the boredom of Press- 
 burg or the filth of Buda Pesth, were there almost to a man, 
 relying on the friendship of their master with Napoleon. 
 Many of the boxes and almost all the fauteuils were occupied 
 by French officers quartered in the houses of the owners. 
 French officers also mixed with the Viennese in the huge and 
 dimly lighted parterre. 
 
 The piece was Co si fan tutti; but only a few virtuosi, or 
 partisans of the new school, listened. Mozart's music, 
 even this, the gayest of his operas, the least tinged with 
 "Mozartian melancholy," was to French and to Italian 
 ears in 1809 heavy, slow and uninspired, and in some por- 
 tions barbarous and absurd, as the E flat Symphony or the 
 Finale to Don Giovanni. Great music, these critics de- 
 clared, had come to an end with Cimarosa. Pergolese and 
 he had found no successors, and, except Mayer and Baer, 
 Germans in blood but Italians in manner, not even an 
 effective imitator. 
 
 But to-night the question occupying every mind was still 
 the probable effects of the sensational incident of that morn- 
 ing upon the peace negotiations. 
 
 In a box on the right-hand side of the stage, on the same 
 side as the Imperial box but a tier higher, sat the old Count 
 Esterthal and two French aides-de-camp, one of whom was 
 Favrol, the other Colonel Legros, a cavalry officer of the
 
 The Mind of a City 147 
 
 swashbuckler type. He was aide-de-camp to Oudinot, 
 successor of Lannes in the command of the Second Corps. 
 
 It was now the end of the first act. The wish to talk in- 
 stead of listening had become universal, alike in the par- 
 terre, in the stalls, and in the boxes. The stage manager 
 had repeatedly appeared and been as repeatedly sent 
 back amid impatient or angry shouts of "Attendez! 
 Attendez!" 
 
 In the Esterthal box the conversation, studiedly avoiding 
 politics, had turned upon music and the drama. Favrol 
 admired Haydn and was an enthusiast for Mozart. He had 
 had, he once told Amalie laughingly, but three passions in 
 his life, Mozart, Cimarosa, and Shakespeare. And in herself, 
 though he had never had the courage to tell her this, he had 
 discovered something of each of his passions the reckless 
 joy and rich laughter of Cimarosa, Mozart's ethereal melan- 
 choly, and the foreshadowings of that energy and passion, 
 the desire for which had driven him from the vapid liter- 
 ature of his time to study day and night the Italy of the 
 Renaissance and the tragedies of Ford and Webster, Tour- 
 neur, Marlowe and Shakespeare. 
 
 The old Count, on the other hand, detested everything 
 modern, the new German poetry and the new German 
 music. He called Schiller "a Jacobin," and Goethe "an 
 enemy of religion," and Werner "a maniac." But he liked 
 the military plays of Ayrenhof, which Favrol styled "head- 
 quarters timber," and he praised the simple and homely 
 pathos of the Suabian, Konrad Grubel. Rentzdorf's art 
 the Count simply refused to discuss. 
 
 "We Germans," the old aristocrat declared, after the 
 momentary silence caused by Rentzdorf's name, "read too 
 much, write too much, think too much. What is this chat- 
 ter about the Aufklarung and these philosophies of enlight- 
 enment? Sensible men despise such mountebankism. We 
 have had enough of Josephinism. The doctrine of equality
 
 148 Schonbrunn 
 
 would require society to begin at the beginning with each 
 new generation. Men are not equal. That doctrine cost us 
 the Netherlands: it cost us Italy. Now we are about to 
 lose Illyria. And why?" 
 
 Favrol had a singular sensation. He ceased to be a sol- 
 dier sitting by right of conquest in a captured city. He was 
 merely the son of a small landed proprietor of Languedoc 
 talking to a member of the oldest and haughtiest, if stupid- 
 est and most bigoted caste in Europe. Yet he had neither 
 the power to answer nor the will to laugh, so actual and so 
 unbridgeable was the gulf separating him from this man 
 and from his convictions. And what if Count Esterthal's 
 convictions were an anticipation of that "judgment of 
 posterity" upon the French Revolution to which each fac- 
 tion whether in triumph or beside the guillotine, had suc- 
 cessively appealed? 
 
 "But Colonel Legros cannot see the parterre," Count 
 Esterthal said. 
 
 With a courtesy full of irony he forced the aide to come 
 forward whilst he stepped back himself, leaving the two 
 French officers to study the house. 
 
 The scene they looked on had in its distinction and variety 
 no equal in Europe; for here were grace, rank, richness of 
 costume, famous names, reputations military and civil; 
 and here too every effect that woman's seduction can impart 
 to variousness of origin, temper, pose, or attitude. To 
 Favrol its seduction to-night was extreme; but poignant 
 too was the impression of its transitoriness ; for this that 
 moved there so full of life was to him in his present mood 
 unsubstantial as a picture cast by the rising sun upon a mist 
 above a cataract, to-morrow to be replaced by another, and 
 yet another, eternally, cycle beyond cycle; and out there in 
 other worlds, myriads of them crawling blindly round my- 
 riads of suns, in their mad flame dance the same unmean- 
 ing drama youth, passion, glory, age, and the grave
 
 The Mind of a City 149 
 
 monotonous as the season's alternations, monotonous as 
 day and night, monotonous as all things, as all things. 
 
 Nevertheless, for a second or two, the sheer sensuous 
 appeal lifted his spirit to that region which the medisevalists 
 name "the heaven of pure joy" verum gaudium coeleste. 
 An unseen, mystic trumpet-call, the triumph of the existent, 
 the spirit of vital joy, laughed there, murderous, inexorable, 
 whispering in those voices, pulsating in those white forms 
 as once it had pulsated, murderous, inexorable, in the rangers 
 of the forests and the night, the tiger and the puma. 
 
 "The beginning and the end, alpha and omega," Favrol 
 said, turning away. 
 
 The glistening black eyes, vigorous moustache, olive 
 skin warmed by the sun, and red mouth of Legros confronted 
 him. 
 
 "What's that old poll parrot been talking about?" the 
 aide-de-camp asked Favrol in a husky whisper. 
 
 "Art." 
 
 "Art! Holy Moses! What I want is a woman, a real 
 live girl. I'd rather talk about these Viennese high-flyers 
 where's the old poll's daughter? What did she leave the 
 box for? Hell and lightnings, did you see her look when I 
 squeezed her arm? But I'll bring her down a peg. I'll 
 teach her to respect an officer of la Gr-r-rande Anne'e! 
 What's the matter?" 
 
 "Nothing," Favrol answered indifferently, "but you'd 
 better not forget what happened to Gavroche. " 
 
 Gavroche three weeks ago had been sentenced to death 
 by Napoleon for offering an insult to the Princess Esterhazy 
 within the precincts of Schonbrunn itself, and had only 
 been respited on the urgent intercession of the entire staff. 
 
 "Oh, I didn't mean that, " and twirling his moustaches to 
 vertical points he said with an air of tipsy gravity, " Charles- 
 Aristide Legros is too much a man of honour to squeeze a 
 woman against her will a second time. All I meant was ' '
 
 150 Schonbrunn 
 
 Favrol looked down at the stalls. In the crowd which 
 was increasing amongst the fauteuils he suddenly saw the 
 Countess Amalie. She was in white; and to his eyes her 
 dress, from the ostrich plumes above her hair down to the 
 white silk shoes, became a shimmering cloud. No other 
 woman in that room was quite like her the brow, the fine 
 nostrils, the poise of the classic head, the symmetries of the 
 figure, shoulders, waist, and hips. Beauty streamed from 
 that woman, environing her with a raiment of sorcery; yes, 
 of her that word could be spoken. 
 
 A deep melancholy invaded Favrol; an aria of Pergolese 
 sang in his ears like a refrain from an irrevocable past, 
 
 "Si cerca, si dice, "L'amico infelice, 
 
 "L'amico dov'e?" . "Respondi, mort." 
 
 Favrol had never told himself that he was in love with 
 Amalie von Esterthal; but in her society he experienced a 
 sentiment for which he had to coin the phrase "serene 
 splendour. " In their talks he had again and again met with 
 unexpected utterances which, he judged could only have 
 arisen in a mind habituated to unusual thought, and with 
 a capacity for suffering or bliss beyond that of most women. 
 Leaving the Palazzo one afternoon in September he had, as 
 he sauntered along the ramparts, compared the conversa- 
 tion, because of its subtleties, to the talk of two mathe- 
 maticians upon the motion of a wave and its equations. 
 But instead of a profound study of curves and lines, her talk 
 had seemed to him to imply the profoundest study of hu- 
 man emotions and ideas. 
 
 "Yes, I must get away from Vienna; the sooner the 
 better." 
 
 In Vienna he always felt beneath himself. Its caste 
 system froze. Artists, composers, poets, unless they were 
 men of birth, were in Vienna treated like valets. Mozart 
 had been kicked out of doors, nor had he seemed to resent
 
 The Mind of a City 151 
 
 the outrage. Yet what hideous scarecrows many of the 
 women were, and what cretins the men! Francis II. himself 
 went slinking about like a frightened hound. 
 
 Legros meanwhile looked at the scene, his shining black 
 eyes glancing from woman to woman, finding each face, 
 each contour desirable or indifferent. 
 
 "By God," he said to Favrol, pointing to the semi- 
 transparent costumes that like soft-hued flowers showed 
 themselves everywhere about the theatre, outlining women's 
 forms, "when a young man in Vienna marries he knows at 
 least what he is marrying, and on his wedding night he can 
 have little either to learn or fear eh? Look there! Look 
 at those two! I've got as much on when I go slap into my 
 bath. Mon Dieu, Vienna's the place to study the perfec- 
 tions of the feminine figure!" 
 
 The old Count had risen abruptly, and placing his box at 
 the command of his two enforced guests, he excused him- 
 self. There was a marked touch of haughtiness in his 
 courtesy. 
 
 IV 
 
 Downstairs Count Esterthal forced his way through the 
 crowd with some difficulty, ignoring the outstretched hand 
 of friends and acquaintances. The one subject upon which 
 they wished to speak with him, was the one subject which 
 he wished that night to avoid. He reached the front row 
 of the stalls. Amalie smiled to him from a distance and 
 raised her fan; but arrested by the dense crowd the Count 
 shook his head in amused perplexity. He stopped to take 
 breath beside a faded crimson curtain looped back by a 
 cord and a heavy gold tassel, underneath the first tier of 
 boxes. 
 
 The stalls here were chiefly occupied by French officers, 
 strangers to Esterthal. Other officers from various parts of 
 the theatre had joined them. All were talking and gesticu-
 
 152 Schonbrunn 
 
 lating. Further back, in the fourth and fifth rows, servants 
 in livery with numbers affixed to their hats were handing 
 round ices and sherbets. 
 
 The Count turned from these to the group of which 
 Amalie and Toe were the centre. In one of them he recog- 
 nized Count Markowitz, Johann's elder brother; beside him 
 stood an official in the War Department. He too, like 
 Markowitz, was a dilettante and "patron of religion, moral- 
 ity, and the arts." Kaas, the Dresden landscape painter, 
 stood a little behind, stroking his long fine beard. Amalie 
 herself was talking to a tall, erect, white-haired old man, 
 with a distinguished bearing but insignificant features. He 
 wore the dress of an abbe. But another member of the 
 group, talking to the Princess Diirrenstein, made upon 
 Count Esterthal, fatigued as he was, an instantaneous and 
 extraordinary impression. This was a man of middle height 
 powerfully built, slightly aggressive in his bearing. His 
 face, dull red in complexion, was marked by smallpox; but 
 a countenance more commanding in its genius, a head more 
 lion-like in its tranquil power, its masses of black hair 
 growing low on the forehead which they seemed to grip like 
 a helmet, Count Esterthal had never seen; and for one 
 singular moment he experienced the exact sensation which 
 he had experienced that morning in looking at Bonaparte 
 from about the same distance. Mistrusting his own sensa- 
 tion, Esterthal looked at Toe and then at the face of the 
 man she was addressing. His eyes were half-closed; but 
 there was at once suspicion and the most haunting pathos in 
 the glances which, when Toe ceased speaking and there was 
 a silence, these eyes cast upon the faces around; nor could 
 anything exceed the locked energy of the mouth, the con- 
 flict of extreme suffering and extreme will. 
 
 "I must be getting old, old and fanciful, like Wunnser at 
 Mantua," he said to himself irritatedly, and with an impa- 
 tient step he advanced towards the group.
 
 The Mind of a City 153 
 
 There he exchanged a few words with Count Markowitz ; 
 then taking Amalie's arm he drew her aside. Before he had 
 spoken a word she had divined his wish. 
 
 "You are tired? I too am tired a little. Let us go 
 home, " she said hurriedly. 
 
 Uncertain of her real wishes he did not at once answer. 
 He had divined the unrest in her mood all day, and to-night 
 at the Opera under her tranquil reserve that unrest, he had 
 easily perceived, had become a fever. 
 
 "You have heard nothing?" she said carelessly. 
 
 "Of the negotiations? Nothing." 
 
 She turned, hiding her pallor and under her lowered 
 eyelids her eyes, discouraged, half-desperate, seemed to 
 probe every corner of the Opera. 
 
 The Count to gain time looked at the group from which he 
 had just taken her, above all at the thick-set figure of the 
 stranger. The latter now stood not fifteen feet away, so 
 that his features were clearly visible, the deep dent in the 
 chin, the changing grey and blue of his eyes, deep-set and 
 under thick, dusky brows. His voice, though he softened 
 his sibilants like a Rheinlander when he answered the tall, 
 white-haired personage, in whom Esterthal now recognized 
 the famous organist and composer, Abt Vogler, was abrupt 
 and aggressive as his bearing. 
 
 "What, you here, Beethoven?" 
 
 Beethoven? The name suggested nothing to Count 
 Esterthal. 
 
 Piqued at his ignorance of so notable a personality in 
 Vienna, the Count was about to enquire the name of this 
 man, when Amalie, drawn by the wild hope that Rentzdorf 
 might be waiting for her at the Palazzo, said again, 
 
 "Shall we go home, padrino? Do you mind? You will 
 see Count Markowitz later. I have asked Charlotte and 
 him to supper. Toe too is coming. They are all going to 
 the Rittersaal. Prince W.
 
 154 Schonbrunn 
 
 A shout interrupted her. The stage-manager had once 
 more appeared in front of the curtain, but once more his 
 excuses and appeals were silenced by the angry and derisive 
 hootings. Amid the hubbub in French, German, and Italian 
 Count Esterthal and Amalie started slowly to walk towards 
 the main entrance. Near the extremity of the parterre a 
 sudden rush of a part of the audience towards the stage, 
 where the tumult had increased, separated them, and two 
 acquaintances, pouncing on Count Esterthal, announced on 
 "positive information" that the armistice was interrupted, 
 that Champagny had left Altenburg, that Liechtenstein 
 had been peremptorily recalled by Francis II., that Stadion 
 was once more in power and war declared. 
 
 "But what the devil is happening yonder?" 
 
 The old Count turned his impassive face backwards to- 
 wards the stalls. A number of French officers had sprung 
 upon the stage and had begun to sing and gesticulate as 
 though acting an improvised piece. Others roamed about 
 the orchestra, wrenching the instruments from the players, 
 and amid laughter and ironic applause began themselves to 
 produce the most ear-splitting and discordant sounds, whilst 
 the officers on the stage imitated the crowing of cocks, the 
 barking of dogs, the mewing of cats, or neighed like horses. 
 
 "C'est une emeute, " someone said beside him. 
 
 It was a riot, but as yet it was good-natured. 
 
 Amalie had made her way alone to the entrance. There 
 she stopped and stood for some seconds looking back. The 
 light was dim. The parterre of the Vienna Opera House, 
 like the parterres of all German theatres at that period, was 
 lighted by candles and a few oil lamps. 
 
 She was about to return in search of her father-in-law 
 when from the direction of the boxes behind Her on her
 
 The Mind of a City 155 
 
 left she saw or thought she saw an officer in the uniform 
 of Kinsky's Horse make towards her through the crowd 
 tall, very erect, with an air of extreme distinction at once 
 in his features and his bearing, yet it was the bearing of a 
 poet or artist rather than that of a soldier. 
 
 Amalie in the dusk looked at him unrecognizing, though 
 conscious that her heart was beating wildly; then, mortally 
 pale, she stood still, suppressing the cry of half -delirious 
 joy and suffocating tears. 
 
 The next instance her lover was bending over her out- 
 stretched hands. 
 
 "Heinrich! Caro mio, mio diletto, mio diletto. . . ." 
 
 Her voice trembled in every syllable, but the unforgotten 
 and unforgettable language of her girlhood was cadenced 
 like a passion-song. It was the very language of passion; 
 the language of all intense feeling, of suffering or of joy. 
 
 His eyes drank in like an enchanted wine each seduction 
 of her figure, from her brow under its high nodding plumes 
 to the brilliants that flashed on her shoes. 
 
 "How you are beautiful!" he said. "Great God, to see 
 you again this, this! It is madness to look at you. " 
 
 "Heinrich, Heinrich, speak to me! You have come? 
 I was going away. Whose is that uniform? How badly 
 it fits your shoulders ! It is too narrow. " 
 
 She was trembling in every limb. 
 
 He laughed and his voice chimed strangely with hers, 
 burdened with the same delirious bliss. 
 
 And maddened by her beauty, the burning rose on her 
 face, her smile, the ardently parted lips, he bent again over 
 her hands. 
 
 "Ah, not here," she said faintly; "this way come this 
 way, " she entreated, "come with me. " She drew him im- 
 petuously into an obscurer angle. 
 
 "Caro mio, I love you, I love you," she whispered again, 
 and to his blinding surprise her lips touched his lips. "How
 
 156 Schonbrunn 
 
 are you here? You have not told me. Or have you'told 
 me?" she repeated, dazed by her own bliss. 
 
 He laughed and answered "I am here as one of Prince 
 Liechtenstein's aides. Zettich you remember little Karl 
 August von Zettich? I have his passport and his uniform. 
 Seven of our men have been arrested as spies. Schonbrunn 
 is a nest of angry wasps. But where were you going? " 
 
 She remembered Zettich. He had the courage of a 
 demon. Like Rentzdorf he belonged to Kinsky's Horse, 
 which since Aspern had become legendary for its courage 
 wherever German was spoken. At Znaim Rentzdorf had 
 at the peril of his own life saved Zettich's, rescuing him from 
 under his horse after sabring two Polish lancers. 
 
 "Going? I do not know what I am saying. Yes, I was 
 going, but ..." 
 
 The uproar on the stage riveted every eye. They were 
 for this brief moment practically alone. 
 
 "Listen, beloved," she said hurriedly. "There is a 
 supper party before the masked ball. You know about it 
 the ball, I mean? Come to supper; come to me at ten. 
 We shall go together to the Rittersaal. Toe will manage 
 that you enter. She is in front there, talking with Marko- 
 witz and Beethoven." 
 
 The passion burning in her eyes dazzled him. 
 
 "You do not wish to see Beethoven to-night? Ah God, 
 I have to leave you. There is padrino." 
 
 "There is nothing on earth save you," she whispered 
 and the next instant she was standing beside padrino under 
 the wide awning outside the Opera House. 
 
 The old Count peered with angry eyes from group to 
 group, carriages, sedan-chairs, phaetons, hackney coaches, 
 link-boys, and mingling here and there with the blaze of 
 servants' liveries the brown uniforms and white epaulettes 
 of the new Viennese gendarmerie. 
 
 "Why are these fellows loafing outside?" he grumbled,
 
 The Mind of a City 157 
 
 glaring at the gendarmes. "They ought to be clearing the 
 house of those dogs. " 
 
 He did not care a straw for the piece ; but the arrogance of 
 the French in interrupting the performance had exasperated 
 his pride. 
 
 VI 
 
 "We are nearly arrived, " Amalie said to padrino twenty 
 minutes later. "You are not cold?" 
 
 Glancing out of the window of the carriage she saw rise, 
 spectral in the darkness, the sinister black hexagonal tower 
 of the Lowel Bastion. 
 
 The old Count, still crouched in the corner into which he 
 sank on leaving the Opera, lifted his head wearily. Had 
 the lumbering gilt-laden Estherthal coach been his coffin 
 he would not have greatly cared. These home-comings 
 from the Opera always made him feel his isolation and his 
 age. The tramp to the grave that every man must com- 
 plete alone "C'est ga, c'est gal" 
 
 Two minutes later the carriage stopped. The link-boys 
 thrust their torches into the sockets fixed in the iron railings. 
 The glare lighted up the ancient stones. The smoke above 
 the yellow flames rose in little jets of blue and grey. 
 
 Amalie sprang lightly from the carriage and swinging 
 round stood drinking in the cool night air fragrant with 
 shrub, flower, and tree. 
 
 In the hall, which was large and badly lighted, a servant 
 with powdered hair came forward and handed her a letter 
 on a silver salver. The courier, he said, was waiting to 
 take back the answer. He was to start again for Buda- 
 Pesth at midnight. 
 
 Amalie tore open the letter. It was, she knew, from her 
 husband. The light from a bronze candelabra fell on her 
 neck and finely modelled shoulders as she read.
 
 158 Schonbrunn 
 
 The letter was elaborately worded, yet singularly am- 
 biguous, and in some parts obviously insincere. He antici- 
 pated, he said, a renewal of the war. His corps had been 
 ordered nearer to the Bohemian frontier; in two days they 
 were to be at Troppau and there await "developments." 
 Metternich, it was rumoured, had been recalled. He 
 himself might be in Vienna next day ; he might be detained 
 for an indefinite time. In any case, the honour of kissing 
 her hand was unavoidably deferred. 
 
 "Ah, merci!" she said under her breath. "God be 
 praised for that, anyhow!" 
 
 Aloud she asked, "Where is the courier?" 
 
 "He is resting, Madame," the servant answered. "He 
 will require a fresh horse. I have informed his Highness." 
 
 "I will give you the answer in an hour. He can have 
 Sigismund if the Count cannot spare a mount. Rothgar, 
 the bay, I shall want to-morrow." 
 
 "And Father Giacomo?" the servant said hesitatingly. 
 "He came again this evening and awaits your Serenity. " 
 
 But at that moment a Capuchin friar, preceded by an- 
 other servant in livery, came forward, and lifting his hood 
 discovered Fra Giacomo's fine intellectual features, the 
 mask of the Italian priest of the higher ranks. 
 
 Involuntarily she bent her head to receive his blessing. 
 
 "Forgive me," she said in Italian. "You have been 
 kept waiting. " 
 
 "This makes amends." 
 
 She knew the imprudence and even the danger of receiv- 
 ing a Capuchin in her house, but danger allured her, and 
 this man had been her mother's confessor, and, like her 
 mother, was a Lombard of great family. During the war 
 he had acted bravely; for, though not an Austrian, he had 
 been one of the devoted band who in the thick of the fight 
 had carried the wafer in a consecrated box to the dying in 
 battle after battle from Eckmiihl to Wagram.
 
 The Mind of a City 159 
 
 They spoke together for some minutes in low voices. 
 She heard again in the Lombard tongue the familiar phrases 
 about the poverty and the suffering in Vienna ; the price of 
 bread in the Leopoldstadt black bread had risen to ten 
 kreutzers the loaf; no meat was to be had except horse-flesh 
 in that quarter, and in the villages no meat of any kind. 
 Winter was coming. 
 
 "Yes, yes; I know, " she said wearily, yet not impatiently. 
 
 The friar, though her face was hidden, seemed to read her 
 thoughts. The set of his mouth became more rigid. 
 
 To Amalie Christ had long ceased to be a force in her 
 spiritual life, and, possessor through Rentzdorf of another 
 vision of good and evil, she had little patience with Dom 
 Giacomo's superficial subtleties; yet Jesus' ethics still exer- 
 cized a sentimental control over her conduct ; the sound of a 
 vesper bell still had a power over her soul ; she clung tena- 
 ciously to Monza's cloistered calm, to the memories of her 
 girlhood there, her early dreams of sainthood or heroic 
 romance. 
 
 "Shall I see the steward?" the Capuchin asked, vexed 
 with himself, and desirous to end her embarrassment. 
 
 "Yes," she said quickly, "see Adrian; I will send him to 
 you at once. " 
 
 She gave an order to the servant. 
 
 "God keep you in His holy guard," Fra Giacomo said 
 in Italian, pulling forward his hood. 
 
 VII 
 
 Amalie went straight to her boudoir the room immedi- 
 ately adjoining that in which that morning she had dis- 
 covered Toe in corset and petticoat stationed before her 
 toilet table. 
 
 The door of this room once closed behind her, the hate- 
 fulness in things was exorcised or excluded, and in its still- 
 ness and memories she could surrender herself to her joy.
 
 160 Schonbrunn 
 
 Her maid in the bedroom was already busying herself 
 with her dress; but even for the supper she had still two 
 hours, and for the ball she would not start till midnight at 
 the earliest. She gave Tita some direction, ordered a bath, 
 returned to the boudoir, and, sitting down in front of the 
 fire, she stretched out her hands to the blaze. The flames 
 sparkled on her rings and lighted up the modelling of her 
 ringers and the exquisitely rounded, firm white wrists. 
 
 "The vision beatific?" she murmured, impelled by some 
 reflection of the day and an interview with Toe late that 
 afternoon. "Lost in this, God in me sees His end His 
 goal; that is the vision beatific, my beloved, O my beloved." 
 
 Her lover's face rose before her now in a celestial efful- 
 gence; her lover's voice, trembling with adoration it had 
 the accents of her own heart's craving, the world-soul's 
 craving. 
 
 Sighing, she flung herself back and lay with closed eyes, 
 conscious of the charmed stillness and faint perfumes of the 
 room, conscious of the darkness outside, the garden, the 
 motionless trees, the dark environing earth outstretched 
 under the night-sky. 
 
 Here in this room, in the ornaments or in the books, as in 
 her bedroom in the very articles on her toilet table, were 
 objects sanctified by some hour of passion's ecstatic vision 
 darker or diviner than its predecessors. And here above all 
 on the shelves of a cabinet in tulip-wood, were Rentzdorf 's 
 own writings in various editions and bindings, priceless to 
 her during this frightful campaign as to her sister Ulrica in 
 the convent at Prague her prayer-book a new God indeed 
 and a new missal, but more overpoweringly glorious day 
 by day. 
 
 And it was just this constant appeal to the universal and 
 to the transcendental which, to her rigid own self-examin- 
 ing, redeemed Amalie von Esterthal's judgment upon her 
 motives from mere self-approbation or empty self-will.
 
 The Mind of a City 161 
 
 Outside God there was for her no reality, no goodness, no 
 knowledge, no vision, no joy. But this that she lived, this 
 that she knew, this was very God. 
 
 In the same cabinet on the same or on a separate shelf, 
 were the writers for whom Rentzdorf had kindled her inter- 
 est the Spanish dramatists Tirso and Calderon, Jacobi's 
 translation of Hamlet and four other Shakespearian 
 plays, Wieland's Oberon and Holderlin's romantic fantasy 
 Hyperion. 
 
 She felt a smile about her lips and, opening her eyes, 
 glanced round the fragrant twilight of the room, lit only by 
 the fire and a single silver lamp, and closed her eyes again. 
 
 Her lover's voice thrilled in her ears ; his thoughts in her 
 spirit; his hand-clasp on her breast. Impatient to have 
 something of his, she took out one of her favourites amongst 
 his books the Runes of the Acropolis. Rentzdorf had 
 wished to destroy every copy but she had several. 
 
 "I hear your voice. You are here, the characters, 
 protagonist and denteragonist, the others, men and 
 women." 
 
 "What can it be like to have a poet for a lover? " Toe had 
 once asked her. "It must be idyllic, to sip the cream of 
 all his thoughts his poems, to read his books, and to know 
 the veriest thoughts of his very heart upon all things. " 
 
 "Idyllic perhaps; but stormy a little? It should not be 
 exactly a tranquil existence do you suppose?" 
 
 In her admiration for the Runes Amalie was not unjusti- 
 fied. The fever which tormented Rentzdorf 's manhood 
 burned in those pages which he thrust aside with so 
 unfeigned an impatience. Greek tragedy there was re- 
 cast, and spoke in accents of a spiritual anguish transfigured 
 by his own unrest. Where, he demanded in an early para- 
 graph, was that Heiterkeit, that serener calm which Winkel- 
 mann had already made fashionable as the characteristic 
 of Greek thought, art, culture, and Greek life? Thu-
 
 162 Schonbrunn 
 
 cydides was not heiter, nor was Herodotus serene. Despair, 
 fierce suffering, was not unknown in the Cyclades ; and from 
 Pindar and from Homer, as from Archilochus and Hesiod, 
 it was easy to cite judgments upon human life frightful 
 as that of Lear or (Edipus. In the same manner the lords 
 of those who know Empedocles, Orpheus, Plato, Heraclei- 
 tus, and Julian were made in this transfiguring light 
 to pass before the reader, and spoke or answered. And 
 the Parthenon reappeared, this earth's masterpiece of 
 beauty, the Doric columns, the frieze, the shapes of colossal 
 loveliness, transfigured by the eyes that had gazed on their 
 sun-steeped marbles; and the tragedy in stone was subtly 
 woven into the tragedy of human life itself the transiency 
 of things, the eternal mystery'of birth, persistence, and the 
 grave. 
 
 "He who defines Existence, defines suffering. Being is 
 the transient; it is that which perishes and ought to perish. 
 The Beautiful, on the other hand, is the mirage of that 
 which is beyond Being, of that which is not yet; that which 
 God desires to be, and to be eternally. Therefore its per- 
 fect symbol is death, and its test is the ardour of the death- 
 desire which it provokes within man; for this desire is the 
 desire to be one with the end towards which throughout 
 eternity God strives." "The existent, all that is," he 
 said in another paragraph, "is on fire with the world-soul's 
 anguish; but to that anguish, inscrutable in its origin, the 
 universe owes its origin; the Beautiful is the vision of that 
 which shall arise when the world-soul's strife is attained. " 
 
 She laughed in restless happiness reimagining the inci- 
 dent and other kindred moments. But the laugh startled 
 her from her trance; and she recollected the waiting courier. 
 
 "Mon Dieu! To write a letter now and to him?" 
 
 Walking up and down, her shadow moved beside her on 
 the floor as she passed and repassed in front of the silver 
 lamp that stood on a cabinet richly inlaid and decorated
 
 The Mind of a City 163 
 
 with paintings on porcelain representing some scenes in 
 Arcady. 
 
 But she tore herself from the seductive enticements 
 drowning her, and sitting down she began the letter, but 
 tore up the first copy; then very rapidly, then very slowly, 
 weighing the syllables, she commenced a second copy. 
 But she found the task difficult; for the more she considered 
 the letter she had received the more she felt convinced that 
 its words were meant not for her but for Napoleon's police. 
 
 "That?" she thought; "is it that again?" 
 
 The "That" to which she referred was her husband's 
 visit to Vienna a few weeks ago in violation of his parole 
 to Napoleon. 
 
 She knit her brows; but abruptly she thrust aside the 
 fear. Nevertheless, she was careful to answer the letter 
 in accordance with its tenor. In this she was loyal. 
 
 "It is done!" she said. 
 
 Her glad cry was like a school-girl's liberated from a task. 
 She glanced down the page with knit brows. Her style 
 was ornate as Count Esterthal's own. She burnt her fingers 
 as she sealed the letter. 
 
 "Tutf menzogna," she said, stamping her foot involun- 
 tarily. "No; the only lie is the world's lie. This, this is 
 reality each timeless hour. What other truth, what other 
 God is there or can be?" 
 
 A light as of very heaven descended on her face. Her 
 spirit, onward-driving on waves of sunlight, rushed to the 
 event. And in and through that soul, thus in ecstasy, a 
 mightier, darker power strove to an end not her end, to a 
 peace not her peace. 
 
 Her maid, re-entering, announced that the bath was ready. 
 
 "The bath?" 
 
 Amalie had forgotten her own order. She took off her 
 necklace, her bracelets, her rings, laying them one by one 
 on her dressing-table, and began slowly to undress.
 
 CHAPTER VI 
 
 THE MAKING OF A POET 
 
 IN the autumn of 1808 it was rumoured in Viennese literary 
 circles that Goethe was at work upon a new novel, the 
 Elective Affinities. Shortly afterwards there arose one night 
 in Rentzdorf's lodging in the Rothenthurm a discussion of 
 the methods of fiction and the drama, and Axel Petersen, 
 impatient to submit all literary forms to the hydraulic 
 press of the four-act play, had derided as bad art the novel- 
 ist's habit of inserting character sketches of the various 
 personages in the romance as they successively appear. 
 "Absurd in a drama," Rentzdorf had asked, "but is it so 
 absurd in a novel? The novelist by a single page has to do 
 for the reader all that in the drama is entrusted to the ac- 
 tor's genius, to costume, to scenery, to facial expression, 
 gesture, voice, silences. Besides, a novel is un miroir qui se 
 promene and in everyday life what is more common than 
 that on your first introduction to a distinguished man, every 
 friend or acquaintance acts in just the manner that you 
 censure in Agathon or Wilhelm Meister? To me, with all 
 its prolixity, the latter book is serene as. an autumn day in 
 Attica." 
 
 Rentzdorf, who has noted the incident in a scrapbook 
 destined to be worked into a volume on the art-forms of his 
 time, can have had no anticipation that exactly a century 
 
 164
 
 The Making of a Poet 165 
 
 later it would be quoted on this page by an English writer 
 in defence of a summary of his own career in a novel in 
 which he figures side by side with Napoleon. 
 
 Heinrich von Rentzdorf was now in his thirty-first or 
 thirty-second year. His life in Austria had been the life 
 of an artist tormented by the intellectual unrest of his era 
 its scepticisms, political violence, spiritual ardours, reac- 
 tions, and wrathful despairs. 
 
 Genius for religion is rare as genius for art. Rentzdorf 
 possessed both. 
 
 "I can scarcely remember the time, " he had said once to 
 Count Johann, "when in my breast two passions or two 
 wills were not in conflict the passion for Art and the pas- 
 sion for Religion, the will to Beauty and the will to Truth. 
 And to this day, when I descend into myself I recognize the 
 same two forces. They have dominated and dominate my 
 entire life. Their conflict is that life. And yet what a 
 waste and sterile history is mine! For seven years religion 
 to me meant no more than an incessant sifting and testing, 
 or an endless accusing and defending of faiths and philo- 
 sophies of other eras and of other minds of one faith and 
 philosophy above all, that of Jesus the Christ. Morning 
 by morning I sprang from my bed and, flinging back the 
 curtains, saw the glory of another day. Why had it 
 been given me? And on the instant the enchantment was 
 shattered; the splendour was fog and dust. I searched in 
 my own heart ; I brooded over the processes of my faculties ; 
 I pondered the mediaeval theologians and the system- 
 mongers of modern times. And in Kant as in Aquinas I 
 found but variant upon variant of the dreary eternal story 
 of Eden, Israel, Nazareth, and Golgotha. 'What art 
 thou,' the fathers at Gratz used to say to me, 'that puttest 
 questions unto God? ' I knew it well, that priggish refrain. 
 I knew it in St. Augustine as in Dante and St. Paul. And to
 
 1 66 Schonbrunn 
 
 what other end was I born, I asked, except to put questions 
 unto God? What right thus to interrogate is greater than 
 my right? Dragged unasked out of the deep sleep of Noth- 
 ingness, flung down tortured into this torture-chamber of a 
 universe, this measureless vast of suffering in uncounted 
 worlds down the unreckonable years what other question 
 shall I ask? The hour that I forget that question is blasted. 
 And still they spoke of Jesus, as if that nursery tale, because 
 it had amused the slow wit or served the cunning hypocrisy 
 of eighteen hundred years, were an all-heal; until at length 
 his very name became a symbol of ennui; his religion, an 
 angry loathing, a triumphant imposture or dull fatuity that, 
 like the Ptolemaic system of the stars, for eighteen hundred 
 years had made bestial the European mind. Why had this 
 dogmatist, Aryan, or Hebrew, robbed me of my birthright, 
 my spirit's unfettered contemplation of the world, beggared 
 posterity and made all our thinking, all our faiths accept- 
 ances or contradictions of his own theorizings and poor 
 scheme of things? 'Jesus a God?' I could no longer see in 
 him even an heroic man . . . . " 
 
 Count Johann laughed. 
 
 "And yet, " Rentzdorf went on in a changed voice, "there 
 had been a time, there had been a time. . . . My God, 
 Johann, the very midnight of the world-soul's anguish 
 seemed to possess my soul when at Gratz I heard in St. 
 ^Egidius the Tenebra. Now when I see those same white- 
 robed Dominicans I say in my heart These are they who 
 lie, not unto men, but unto God. Eh bien, that seven years' 
 struggle terminated only for another to begin. I had re- 
 jected Christ. But the highest in me still seemed at waf 
 with itself, God with God. I studied nature and read books, 
 for months I sacrificed days and nights in solitary medita- 
 tion, hoping that some vision, some wide principle, would 
 arise within me or without me ; I admired or argued against 
 the principles of others; but in vain. Was I, the German
 
 The Making of a Poet 167 
 
 who had rejected Christ, to accept the Greek Plato or 
 the Hindu Gotama? The former's hair-splitting myths, 
 the latter's renunciation, which is a cheaper death, were 
 meaningless as Kant's imperative or Spinoza's causa sui. 
 And what was their mandate to me except 'Submit! 
 Submit! Christ is the best. Be wise and stick to him.' " 
 
 "And believing this," Johann had answered, "think- 
 ing these thoughts, you yet waste yourself in going to 
 war against Bonaparte, that more self -confident, brilliant 
 mediocrity?" 
 
 "Believing this, thinking these things, I go to fight against 
 Bonaparte. Hero or mediocrity, he fights for his own 
 hand. " 
 
 Even to indifferent observers of Rentzdorf's youth, the 
 deeply religious bias of his nature quickly revealed itself. 
 
 "He will never make either a diplomatist or a councillor, " 
 his uncle had said to Rentzdorf's mother. "He has too 
 hot a head for affairs. Send him to Gratz. The Jesuit 
 fathers will at least teach him the ancient languages and the 
 rudiments of modern theology. Every man in these times 
 ought to be able to read Zeno and Plato and yet have the 
 chance of growing up a Christian, if in the long run he pre- 
 fers Galilee to Athens. " 
 
 Rentzdorf's uncle, a man in mid-life, with blue eyes and a 
 fine full-grown beard, dressing in top-boots and a green 
 hunting suit, was a professed Epicurean, but cultured and 
 tolerant, living in tranquil indolence from year's end to 
 year's end on his domain near Mohacz those acres of heath 
 and mountain scrub dotted by blast furnaces and copper 
 mines, and in more fertile spots by farm steadings, across 
 which Rentzdorf played as a child. Feudalism in such re- 
 treats had still in Austria its full vigour, unaffected by 
 Joseph II. 's "reforms." 
 
 Two months after this interview Rentzdorf was at Gratz. 
 Its fortress, dark with memories of the wars of Ferdinand
 
 168 Schonbrunn 
 
 II. and Wallenstein, its watchmen telling the hours of the 
 night in the Styrian dialect, and at dawn saluting the rising 
 sun with a blare of trumpets and the long roll of the Styrian 
 drum, made a background of romance to his boyish musings. 
 
 At Gratz his intellectual supremacy quickly showed itself. 
 Every form of study allured him in turn the classical lan- 
 guages, music, drawing, painting, mathematics, modelling 
 in clay, verse- writing in French and Italian, as in German. 
 His imagination already answered to Nature's summons. 
 Now he would stand rapt before a sunset, now before a 
 pageantry of feigned experiences vivid as actuality, tri- 
 umphs, heroic defeats, strange loves; at another time he 
 would turn from his sketch-book or easel in a frenzy of 
 despair, staring at a wide and most living landscape whose 
 twilight mystery he felt in every throbbing vein but could 
 not fasten to his canvas. 
 
 The multiplicity of his gifts wore down his health and ir- 
 ritated his teachers. His manners puzzled or enraged his 
 companions; for he was already immoderate in his attach- 
 ments as in his antipathies, and subject to paroxysms of 
 jealousy or insight which darkened or vexed his mind irre- 
 sistibly as a storm the lake. 
 
 An affection of the eyes suddenly paralysed all effort and 
 gave his overstrained mind the repose it needed. Reading 
 was forbidden; painting had to be abandoned forever; 
 but he was allowed paper and a pencil. In this crisis the 
 old power over words, proved by the ease with which he 
 could imitate in Latin the cadences of Propertius and in 
 French those of Racine, came as a beneficence from on high. 
 Poetry became for him the art of arts, superior even to music 
 and sculpture. 
 
 It was the year 1794. 
 
 Immured within the Jesuit seminary, Rentzdorf and other 
 young Austrians knew next to nothing of the true sequence 
 of events in France. The States General had met; the
 
 The Making of a Poet 169 
 
 Bastille had fallen; the first republic had been proclaimed; 
 a Bourbon king and a Habsburg princess had been guillo- 
 tined; Danton had spoken his great defiance, Valmy had 
 been fought, Brunswick and Klerfayt repulsed, Belgium 
 annexed, and the war begun. But to the Jesuits' pupils 
 all this had been presented through a coloured and dis- 
 torting medium. 
 
 Gradually something of the truth pierced the ramparts of 
 calumny or silence. The effect was correspondingly great. 
 To these young men, whilst they had slept the morning sleep 
 of youth, a new heaven and a new earth appeared to have 
 arisen. By the Jesuit fathers the principles of the Encyclo- 
 pedie and the teachings of Rousseau, Helvetius, Diderot, 
 and Voltaire, had been branded as those of Antichrist; 
 but when the victories of Pichegru and Moreau followed 
 those of Dumouriez, when in the north Belgium and Holland 
 were overrun and, in the east, the frontiers of France ex- 
 tended to the Alps, the question flamed up in every generous 
 heart Can these indeed be the victories of Antichrist? 
 Can God indeed have laid under His interdict the writings 
 which have kindled such heroism as this of Marceau, Hoche, 
 Kleber, and Desaix? Is Liberty indeed the fruit of the tree 
 of Death? And is it to extend the dominion of Antichrist 
 that the armies of France are conquering a world? 
 
 The date for Rentzdorf to leave the seminary was ap- 
 proaching; yet for months he looked forward to that date 
 not with joy but with passionate regret. 
 
 Meanwhile, his father had died; his mother and sisters, 
 though retaining the house in Vienna, had settled in Hun- 
 gary on a small estate near his uncle's domain. There 
 Rentzdorf, now a student in Vienna University regularly 
 spent his vacations, passing long days alone in the woods or 
 in his boat on the Danube, with a sister to whom he was 
 attached, often till far into the night, thinking his own 
 thoughts, dreaming his own dreams, whilst he watched the
 
 170 Schonbrunn 
 
 passage of a star from branch to branch as it crossed a rift 
 of sky. 
 
 It was at the University that his friendship with Bolli 
 and with Count Johann Markowitz began. As Austrians 
 they were in this dilemma ; they were bound to hate France, 
 yet in their inner life they found no thought worth thinking 
 which did not derive its colour and its vivacity from that 
 nation's literature. 
 
 ii 
 
 The ideal of knowledge and life here upon the earth and 
 now had for a period been to Rentzdorf the determining 
 result of the Revolution. 
 
 Later he was to put to this knowledge the question 
 "What art thou?" and to this rejoicing in the earth here 
 and now ' ' Why art thou ? And in what and in whom shall 
 I rejoice?" 
 
 But for a time these things were their own end. 
 
 To know all, to experience all, to be all to know the 
 bond attaching this Daedalian world to its Originator, to 
 know the bond uniting his own heart to the universe and 
 to its Originator; to rejoice in all in man's wisdom, the 
 creations of art, woman's living beauty, the mountains, 
 statues, music, to love all rigid and flowing things, memory- 
 haunted rocks, palaces, lonely rivers, the forests' pillared 
 shade "these to me are God," Rentzdorf at that time as- 
 serted: "I know no other. Yes; I see God most just there 
 where most you deny God. " 
 
 In Vienna, its men and women, Rentzdorf found oppor- 
 tunities in abundance of testing one article of his creed to 
 experience all. Europe at that period contained no society 
 in which the life-desire could so easily or so completely be 
 realized beautiful, idle, or brilliant women, the froth and 
 lees of every court and capital in Europe, politicians, diplo-
 
 The Making of a Poet 171 
 
 matists, men of science, and men of fashion, poets, painters, 
 sculptors, musicians. 
 
 A miniature at this period portrays Rentzdorf as tall, 
 slender, dark-haired, dark-eyed; his features already force 
 the beholder to return to them, speculative. His own social 
 rank, his youth, the audacities of his wit, the publication of 
 his first poems, the part he took in the campaign of Marengo, 
 opened every door. 
 
 A woman's passion shattered the torpor invading him, 
 and tore him from his self-destroying dream of pleasure. 
 
 At Mohacz, whilst still a pupil in the seminary, he had 
 met and in secret loved Irene Apponyi, who was four years 
 older than himself and the wife of a neighbouring landowner, 
 a Magyar noble. Indolent, sensuous, and self-indulgent, 
 she had inflamed the boy's passions and riveted his infatua- 
 tion; to her he wrote every intimate thought and for her he 
 composed verses, imaginary scenes, dialogues, sketches of 
 dramas. But at the end of two months the inexorable day 
 of the return to Gratz had come ; yet he had never forgotten 
 that first terrible joy, nor was it, apparently, forgotten by 
 her. Nevertheless, through the appointment of her hus- 
 band to the Dresden Court, for five years he had not once 
 seen her again. Now, in the winter of 1800-1801, she 
 suddenly confronted him in the ripe splendour of woman- 
 hood, a leader of one of the most reckless coteries of Vienna. 
 She was a lady of many adventures; but she spoke in regret 
 and tenderness of "other days," describing in this veiled 
 way their first tempestuous meetings; and, by some devil's 
 art, she managed to adjust this new or this old "friend- 
 ship." 
 
 The caprice of the woman of fashion was to the young 
 poet an exalted and exalting passion. At first she was 
 amused by his fervour and his sincerity; and when his dar- 
 ing made him dangerous, she affected anger and refused him 
 her house. Misery and a vast fear brought him to the
 
 172 Schonbrunn 
 
 verge of madness. She relented ; but when she attempted to 
 "explain things" and regulate their future, it was in words 
 that to him, in his ignorance, seemed purposely chosen to 
 torture or destroy him. Irene's voice was still to him a song; 
 but as she spoke that night it was as though his skull had 
 been opened and molten lead were drop by drop let fall 
 upon his brain. 
 
 "Dearest, dearest boy, I am seven and twenty. Why 
 should it matter so much to you that my lips have been 
 kissed by others? Or that others before you, as you ex- 
 press it, should have been pressed to my breast? See! 
 Is it not enough that you now kiss those lips and that I 
 press you to this breast, that you call leprous and tainted ? 
 Is this leprosy, or this? Dear Heinrich, Werther is very 
 fine as a story; but in real life, he finds another Charlotte 
 or puts up with Albert. And why do you object to Lothar? 
 He is my oldest friend. Be reasonable or I will go away 
 again ; for I cannot yet see how I could have acted otherwise 
 than I have acted. And certainly I cannot see that I am 
 doing anything wrong. " 
 
 Irene Apponyi's lesson, though in the end it struck home, 
 and nearly killed the neophyte, her lover and her pupil 
 in life-experience. In the frightful desolation that rushed 
 down upon his spirit Rentzdorf had perhaps the first per- 
 ception of the tremendous if sombre vision which afterwards 
 dominated his art and all his thought the vision of this 
 universe as an eternal illusion born of God's eternal suffering, 
 God's eternal strife to end that anguish and, beyond that 
 illusion, to find reality and deliverance. 
 
 But three weeks later, when he woke from the fever and 
 through the mists of delirium saw this same Circe, disguised 
 as a boy-student, seated by his bed, watching him with 
 haggard, grief-tormented eyes, he had to confront yet 
 another life-experience, and from her frenzied embraces 
 and tears school himself to a yet steadier gaze into the
 
 The Making of a Poet 173 
 
 riddling perplexities of a woman's heart, and the modern 
 temperament. 
 
 Had her cynicism destroyed itself or was it from the out- 
 set a feigning? Or had his passion at last kindled her pas- 
 sion? Certainly she who but a month ago had shut her 
 doors on him because of a social indiscretion, would not 
 have run this risk for a caprice, however flattering to her 
 vanity. 
 
 "A madman's dream, this universe. This life is all, yet 
 this life is nothing, " he told himself during his slow conval- 
 escence; "but it is, it is Irene Apponyi's mouth. There 
 is no meaning anywhere; love is a lie; woman's constancy 
 not only a dream but a bad dream. Truth is meaningless 
 as God. Let us act that faith, live that creed. " 
 
 A fearful liaison then began, born amid blood-lust and 
 soul-despair, half-wondering, mutual desires and mutual 
 contempt. It was a chaos, but a chaos above which the 
 lightnings of their unforgettable first raptures flashed and 
 glimmered. They passed hours in the same society, in a 
 noisy or frantic gaiety that was not even pleasure; that at 
 its best was oblivion, at its worst, the brutalization of every 
 ennobling sentiment. Alone together afterwards, they 
 tortured each other, now by venomous allusions to their 
 mutual infidelities, now by studiedly maladroit confessions 
 or incriminating silences. Their assignations became a hell 
 to which each came resolute to torture the other; yet they 
 met and met ; for, riveted together by some mysterious bond, 
 those hours were the days' crown, those miseries the only 
 sanctitudes that this earth reserved for either. 
 
 "Life-hate?" Rentzdorf once reflected in a moment of 
 sinister insight. "Has that become life's goal to me? And 
 therefore -hatred of her, who is still to me life's fairest, most 
 consecrate expression. I wonder. I wonder." 
 
 All his ancient enthusiasms, all his mystic hopes and ques- 
 tionings, now became the target of his own or his mistress's
 
 174 Schonbrunn 
 
 derision. They laughed together in detestable intimacy at 
 his first letters. There was no God; or if there had ever 
 been a God, He had long since destroyed Himself in self- 
 horror at the hideous abortion, this universe this world in 
 which not one heart's desire is or can be fulfilled, and not 
 one soul's question answered. 
 
 in 
 
 In this conflict of perversity and cynicism it was the 
 woman who was vanquished. 
 
 Outwardly, she did not change her conduct. She even 
 exaggerated her own crimes; but when she spoke of her 
 lovers or her admirers it was with icy lips, and a fearful 
 intentness came into her face when she cross-questioned him 
 upon the way in which he had passed the hours or the days 
 of her enforced absences from Vienna. 
 
 "What do I want?" she had whispered with set teeth 
 after a meeting of unusually fierce recrimination, in which 
 the mask of cynicism was flung off entirely. "What every 
 woman wants and never obtains; what every woman seeks 
 and never finds. " 
 
 She now began at each meeting to lead their conversa- 
 tion back to Mohacz, to the scenery of their early friend- 
 ship, the lake, the woods, to his letters, and their long 
 strange talks. 
 
 "I was at least your first love. In your memory I shall 
 have that place, Heinrich. Nothing can take that from 
 me." 
 
 Her tears seemed to Rentzdorf the tears of a morbid or 
 spurious sentiment, yet this became her repeated cry. And 
 furious that she should have this consolation, or that even 
 in this detail she should be false to their creed, he deter- 
 mined to deny even his own past. 
 
 "Are you so sure?" he answered the next time she re-
 
 The Making of a Poet 175 
 
 peated the assertion. "Every woman thinks she is a boy's 
 first love. Perhaps. Who can ever tell?" 
 
 Stupefied, she raised her head and looked at him; and 
 ruthless and shameless, he had forged details. 
 
 "Perhaps? You say 'perhaps'?" she had breathed like 
 a person stunned. "Helena Nicholsevna? O my God I 
 do not wish it to have been her. Tell me; you must be 
 lying?" 
 
 And a horrible terror had come into her wide-open eyes, 
 making her face rigid and grey like a face carved in grey 
 stone. 
 
 Half an hour later, as she rose to return home, "Well," 
 she had said, drawing on her gloves, "I owe to you to-night 
 the longest, steadiest stare into the abyss I have ever had. 
 It is health-giving as strong pure air." 
 
 Disturbed by her words as by her manner, disturbed 
 above all by the vileness of his own part in this hideous 
 incident, Rentzdorf that night had written to her, recanting 
 his words ; but instantly determining to see her in the morn- 
 ing, he had burnt the letter. Despite the resolution, he 
 was unable to sleep. Fear, the unmistakable tragic fear, 
 was upon him. 
 
 "But what fear? And for whom? Not for her. What 
 greater gift could I, even by a lie, have given her than just 
 that same steady stare into the abyss? Reality is there." 
 
 Yet the meanings of the great tragedies were plain, the 
 black root in things from which these night-pieces blossom, 
 and the tragedies actually lived by men and women seemed, 
 in his half-dream, strangely near to him. 
 
 Next day, going to her early, he found her half-dressed 
 lying on a sofa with her hair down. With a wild cry she 
 had sprung to her feet and, clinging to him, had confessed 
 her act. Horror-struck, he had struggled from her clasp. 
 For the woman whose kisses martyred his lips was a dying 
 woman. Reckless of everything save her suffering, he
 
 176 Schonbrunn 
 
 called her maid; a physician was summoned; the poison 
 appeared to be counteracted; but five weeks later Irene 
 Apponyi was dead. 
 
 Rentzdorf had to fight two duels, first with her husband, 
 then with a lover. 
 
 Severely wounded in the latter, Rentzdorf had, for the 
 last week of his mistress's life lain at the point of death 
 himself, and Irene's dying moments were soothed by a 
 recrudescence of her childhood's religion and by the belief 
 that her lover would not survive her. 
 
 Rentzdorf on his recovery had left Vienna, and passed 
 the winter in Italy; then, from Venice, he had abruptly 
 started for Greece, making the voyage to the Piraeus on a 
 trader's sloop. 
 
 IV 
 
 Four and a half years went by. 
 
 In Rentzdorf 's life the history of those years is the history 
 of the process by which he attained that newer vision of God 
 and of the universe which became for him Time's last word 
 upon man's destiny and upon Being's drama and Being's 
 doom. 
 
 Hitherto Rentzdorf had been merely abreast of the far- 
 thest-forward ranging thought of his time. Even in the 
 rebellious anarchic despair of the Irene Apponyi period he 
 had co-equals in men like Zacharias Werner and Friedrich 
 Schlegel. Now, in the daring as well as in the steadiness of 
 his thought, he outstrips all his contemporaries. His life 
 becomes the voyage of a soul towards God, or, as he after- 
 wards described it, the voyage of God in his soul towards 
 the final consciousness of God's destiny and God's doom. 
 
 Rentzdorf passed those years partly in travel, partly in 
 prolonged visits to Mohacz. "In art, in art and its sereni- 
 ties, " he told himself as he slowly recovered from the re- 
 morse and fever into which Irene Apponyi's suicide had
 
 The Making of a Poet 177 
 
 plunged him, "there is the peace imperishable; there is the 
 medicine my spirit needs." 
 
 And he gave himself to the sedulous study of poetry and 
 the perfecting of his craft. 
 
 But the quiet of the soul which this task brought was 
 premature. The pitiless insight of the mystic urged him 
 beyond this illusion as it had urged him beyond Girondinism 
 and the illusions of '93, and Kant's religiose philosophy. 
 If science left answerless every question worth answering ; 
 if knowledge of the past was pedantry; if thought was 
 futile and passion a disease, was it not folly to torment his 
 mind in a search for the perfect verse or the perfect phrase 
 into which to press the essence of that science, that know- 
 ledge, that passion, or that thought? 
 
 And once more the only life-choice was between a self- 
 condemned feverous striving and the dull inactivity of 
 despair. 
 
 "You ask too much of life," his uncle said to him. " No 
 one has ever solved the Sphinx's riddle and no one ever will. 
 Read the Stoics and Montaigne. Nature too teaches us 
 calm. The sea still lifts her waves, the mountains their 
 immovable peaks, and the green returns to the woods." 
 
 But to Rentzdorf this "calm" would have meant treason 
 against himself, and the surrender of the only purpose 
 that made time endurable. Forbidden too the return to 
 the blind tumult of Viennese society. Already with Irene 
 Apponyi he had outlived all that. With her he had scaled 
 the topmost summits of Rebellion, pursuing passion with 
 her into its most sacred and secret recesses, living day by 
 day the accusations and the denials which others feigned. 
 
 "But our rebellion," he now said, urged by sympathy or 
 by some spirit of half -extinguished remorse, "that too was 
 God O, very God of God ! And for me, so far as woman 
 is concerned, truth and heroism are buried in her grave. 
 She has found calm; mine is the anguish still."
 
 178 Schonbrunn 
 
 And in this agonia of his own soul he turned, revitalized, 
 in the pursuit of life's stronger ihterpretings and the newer 
 vision, the God that is to be. 
 
 The memory of Irene's life-despair and reckless candour 
 had re-kindled his will as once her lips had the power to 
 re-inflame his desires. 
 
 It was the winter of 1803-4. 
 
 Napoleon's original and semi-mystic phase had ended. 
 The prophet to whom in 1800 all men looked as the har- 
 binger of a new era had become the rival of Trajan, the 
 imitator alternately of Constantine and of Charlemagne. 
 
 Rentzdorf at Mohacz, in the long winter nights of that 
 year, had with a fresh and tingling zest resorted to study 
 and to books. His purpose in this effort had become better 
 defined and more precise. The religions and the philoso- 
 phies, he argued, were indeed vain. The passionless, pith- 
 less God of Kant or the acrobatic God of Hegel were as 
 intolerable as the tribal God of Israel, even when transfigured 
 by Isaiah and by Jesus into the God of all the earth. Igno- 
 rance had receded with the centuries. Knowledge had come 
 no nearer. In the end the failure of metaphysics was com- 
 plete as the failure of religion. But was despair therefore 
 inevitable? By a resolute gaze into those boundless spaces, 
 now flung wide to man's scrutiny, and by an equally resolute 
 study of the aeons of a dateless past, of the chronicles of the 
 rocks, and the annals of man, and by a fixed meditation 
 simple and sincere, upon the spirit itself and its inward 
 workings, might there not be vouchsafed him, even at this 
 late hour, some truer, profounder vision of things? 
 
 "Others like Kant have gone to Nature and the past in 
 order to find proofs of a preconceived God and a predeter- 
 mined moral law. They brought home the treasure they 
 took with them. Compassless I, I go out into an uncharted
 
 The Making of a Poet 179 
 
 darkness, a sea without a star; I know not even if God is 
 there or if there is a God. I strive but to see what is there 
 what newer vision of supernal hope, or the eclipse of all 
 hope, infernal night, and the coming of final despair. " 
 
 The writings of D'Alembert and Laplace, of Cuvier and 
 of Bichat, stimulated his ardour. Days grew to weeks, the 
 weeks to months. His first quiet studiousness became a 
 fury of enthusiasm which, without food and without sleep, 
 hurried his spirit from volume to volume, and urged his 
 transported mind through one untracked or forbidden arena 
 of thought after another. 
 
 From the astronomer's figures and the anatomist's lec- 
 ture-room he passed to man's history. Enriched by his 
 survey he had come back once more to the laboratory and to 
 the anatomist's plates, devoting himself to each study in 
 turn with a specialist's care and the prophetic fervour of a 
 mystic seeking the vision of God. Man was identical with 
 Nature, yet greater than Nature and in man's soul, there- 
 fore, not in Nature, were the clearest hieroglyphics of God. 
 Yet in nature he might find a key by which to approach 
 these hieroglyphics. There was his first maxim. 
 
 But where are those hieroglyphics most accumulated and 
 most concentrated? 
 
 At the university and at Gratz he had worked at the his- 
 tory of the Middle Ages, Aquinas and Abelard and Dionysios 
 were not less familiar than Plato and Empedocles. To these 
 he now added the religions of other races and earlier times 
 the lost faiths of Mithras and Isiris, the Vedas and the 
 A vesta, recently made accessible by the researches of An- 
 quetil-Duperron and Schlegel. He re-traversed in imagina- 
 tion the leisured spaces of Egypt and the remoter East 
 visualizing as in a spectral pageantry the kingdoms and half- 
 fabulous empires that shift and move from the Oxus to the 
 Tigris, from the Tigris eastward to the Ganges and westward 
 to the Ionian Sea.
 
 i8o Schonbrunn 
 
 If he failed now, he told himself, it would be the last 
 failure. Vanquished in this final elan of the soul, it would 
 be forever. 
 
 Months passed. The midnight within him and around 
 him stood black and silent as the midnight above the polar 
 seas. In history the hideousness of man's annals alter- 
 nately nauseated or appalled him. In religion the puerility 
 of the creeds amazed or terrified his reason. What satirist 
 from another planet could invent so savage an indictment 
 against the human race as the records of any single reli- 
 gion, Druidic, Persian, Hindu, Christian, afforded? And in 
 philosophy the timidity or avarice of the temporizers, the 
 professional men at the universities, the defeats of the 
 brave, the martyrs to Truth, added to the gloomy influence 
 of history and religion. 
 
 Could a spirit chained to such a planet, portion of such a 
 race, ever hope to discover a truth worth knowing? And 
 the God of that history and this fabric who is He that sits 
 on high and watches the drama in this blood-dripping am- 
 phitheatre of a world? 
 
 The last horror invaded him. It rose within him at dawn 
 and by night it closed around him, resistless as a flood tide. 
 
 " It is not my own disaster not my own. It is the failure 
 of man. It is the failure of God. ..." 
 
 "If God is against me," cried Mohammed in one of his 
 blackest depressions, "I will appeal to the djins. " And in 
 a similar onset of discouragement and defiant despair we 
 find Rentzdorf writing, "My journey to Damascus? Each 
 morning that journey recommences. For Saul of Tarsus 
 in an hour the conflict was ended. He accepted another 
 man's vision and was at peace. But I ? God's own vision 
 of God's end that I seek, that only, and now I think the 
 God within me is blind. From His eyes, not mine, the 
 scales must fall." But at another time and in another 
 mood he writes :
 
 The Making of a Poet 181 
 
 "I clamour still for an exterior faith, for some hope to 
 which I can cling, for some creed in which I can believe. 
 Fool! What hope has God except despair? And in what 
 credo does the Most High believe? Who has drawn out 
 into articles His Confession?" 
 
 VI 
 
 Unannounced, the vision at length broke in Rentzdorf's 
 mind. His soul's voyage was ended. From the deepest 
 depths, the all-denier had climbed to the summit, the all- 
 affirmer. The scales, in his own daring metaphor, fell 
 from God's eyes, and the universe which but yesterday was 
 an enginery of unpurposed pain, confused as a madman's 
 dream, stood out in ordered beauty, a temple lit by a single 
 all-illumining thought. 
 
 This thought which informs his later writings, above all 
 his Prometheus, Rentzdorf has expressed in various aspects, 
 ethical and metaphysical; but their unifying conception 
 is that of an all-suffering, all-striving God der leidende, 
 strebende Gott. Anguish that is the first trait in the new 
 portraiture of the world-soul. God is no longer the dreary 
 Omnipotent of the creeds. In a pain-racked universe a 
 struggling pain-racked Deity seeks by incessant strife and 
 by creations of ever-ascending beauty and power to deliver 
 Himself and nature from the suffering which is Being's 
 essence, to attain the quiet which is Being's grave. 
 
 " Bist du uberwinden ? " says a character in one of Rentz- 
 dorf's latest books. "Art thou oppressed by the tempests 
 of pain which in never-ending circles rave round this planet? 
 God's is that suffering. Is thy spirit made frantic by the 
 cries of madness-driven hunger and rage which shrill through 
 the undated eras from the deeps of vanished forests and the 
 caverns of undiscovered seas? God's is that hunger, and 
 that rage is God's. And yonder, out yonder in the midnight,
 
 1 82 Schonbrunn 
 
 in those star-galaxies which hang like the frost-jewelled 
 gossamer of the skies, in those rushing suns and their black 
 and retinued orbs, dost thou surmise the theatres of the 
 same fury and the same pain? Yea, and in Time's abyss, 
 where world on world lies sepulchred, and, in the havoc of 
 the aeons, sunk systems moulder beside their extinguished 
 suns, doth thy spirit, darkly conjecturing, brood over the 
 embryons and first-beginnings of universes of anguish and 
 dark eternities of woe? All is God's. The fury and the 
 strife are His: and His that inextinguishable anguish and 
 the woe." 
 
 Elsewhere Rentzdorf faces and answers the question of 
 the Vedas "What moved Prajapati, the High God, out 
 of the dark sleep of nothingness to create the worlds?" 
 "Suffering moved Him, suffering which is Being's essence, 
 andjthe desire to end that suffering and, with it, Being itself. 
 For this is the tragic character of Being and of Being's God, 
 that only by destruction can He create and only by creation 
 attain His own and Being's goal dark Annihilation's 
 ecstasy." 
 
 But if the world is moulded in affliction, if a suffering God 
 to assuage His suffering created the universe, whence arises 
 its beauty, its structured grandeur, and the multitudinous 
 magnificence of its unending pageantry? 
 
 The Beauty of the universe, Rentzdorf answers, springs 
 from the mirage which arises within God's spirit when, in 
 the agonia of His unending strife, He visions the attainment 
 of His goal the beginning beyond the end. For as God 
 approaches nearer to His deliverance from Being, so He 
 shapes the worlds in higher beauty ever nearer to the pat- 
 tern of that deliverance. Before great Beauty we long to 
 die, because our soul is then caught up into God's and dis- 
 cerns the Reality, His and Nature's end. 
 
 For a period Rentzdorf was harassed by doubts. "Is 
 this thing of God, " he asked, "or is it not of God?"
 
 The Making of a Poet 183 
 
 Gradually doubt vanished. 
 
 Time had recovered its majesty. Earth was reinvested 
 in mystery. Man's life recovered its argument; art its 
 wonder. 
 
 The religions of the past Osiris, Jahve, the Buddha, and 
 the religion of Calvary, the Stoic's creed, Plotinus, the 
 Tabriz mystic's resuscitation of Islam these and other 
 faiths are rejected by reason even as religions for this earth, 
 and what imagination, Rentzdorf asks, can tolerate even 
 the greatest of them as the religion, not only of this earth, 
 but of the spheres that out yonder wander undetected 
 around other suns? Yet in each and all of these faiths he 
 discovered anticipations, strange foreshado wings, sudden 
 far-borne illuminings of his own vision, fragments as of a 
 scattered dream-tragedy. 
 
 "And that faith or that vision? In this, in this, " he said 
 with an awed and shuddering heart, "in this has there not 
 at last arisen, after the unreckonable seons, populous with 
 power and beauty, has there not at last arisen a religion 
 under whose sombre, dread, yet all-alluring dominion the 
 mind can imagine world on world finding peace? " Already 
 on this earth dim annunciations from the past were borne to 
 him, dim yet certain harbingers from every region; already 
 on this earth race after race as it attained its zenith was for 
 one instant, if only in dying, vouchsafed the tragic insight, 
 the power to arraign. Assyria, Hellas, Rome, India, the 
 Middle Age, each in turn had hovered on the verge of the 
 Tragic Vision. 
 
 "Time's last word?" he muttered. "Indeed, in very 
 deed, is this God's inmost thought in man's soul enun- 
 ciated?" 
 
 And again, in a second all-transcending hour, the vision 
 came to him. It was a July midnight. Thunder moaned 
 in the distance. In the woods round Mohacz the leaves 
 above the stems, pillars of ebon gloom, shivered with the
 
 184 Schonbrunn 
 
 presentiment of the coming storm. Harassed and with 
 working thought, he had quitted the oppressive rooms of 
 the chateau for the cool fragrance of the forest. Despair 
 was on him again, when suddenly, as if the physical storm 
 had burst, there was all about him and within him a supernal 
 light. And again he spoke the supreme affirmation. God 
 of very God, in that night silence and storm anguished in 
 his anguish, strove in his striving, was victorious in his 
 victory. Beyond the thunderous canopy he heard the fire- 
 torrent of the suns roar through the spaces. Then within 
 his spirit there came a mighty hush. Like a cloud anchored 
 at evening he saw the total universe hang in iridescent 
 mystery. 
 
 Then thought snapped. Vision was all. 
 
 A frightful exultancy and depression marked the follow- 
 ing days. The artist in him was wrestling with the thinker. 
 How was his art to compass any expression of his faith? 
 A singular fear of death assailed him; and, with it, the fear 
 of leaving his vision unrealized and unstated. 
 
 " Fear? What is it that I fear? " he said, rising in sudden 
 illumination above this mood. "If not by me then by 
 another this shall be uttered. The God that is to be how 
 shall He remain hid? If not to me then to another He 
 would have revealed Himself. Fear? Why should I fear? 
 There is one thing only a man should fear lest God should 
 fail!" 
 
 Yet as the days passed and quiet replaced exaltation and 
 reason the fever of the mind, as piece by piece in templed 
 wonder the system of dynamic pantheism rose before his 
 imagination, it was the truth, the sincerity, not the excel- 
 lence or the inspiration of his vision which concerned Rentz- 
 dorf , examining it, testing it in every fashion, applying it to 
 ethics, applying it to logic, to metaphysic, to psychology. 
 No man could have been more impatient of that braggartism 
 and self-laudation which, in modern times, disfigure the
 
 The Making of a Poet 185 
 
 writings of Nietzsche as well as the histrionic egoisms of 
 Wagner. Rentzdorf had still the good breeding of the 
 eighteenth century. 
 
 From a thousand fluctuant schemes for giving an art- 
 form to his central thought he at last concentrated his 
 powers on one. This was the Prometheus myth. Re- 
 jecting as pedantic and obsolete the form of a trilogy, yet 
 compelled by the vastness of the subject, the personages 
 and the material, to paint on a wide canvas, Rentzdorf 
 divided the drama in two parts Prometheus the Fire- 
 bringer and Prometheus the Death-bringer. Into the former, 
 working at white heat, he wove, in inspiration upon inspira- 
 tion, a picture of earth and man's life as it presented itself 
 to the highest-erected minds in man's past and in his own 
 era a word-picture of Time and God, as in the days of his 
 despair and soul-wrestle Time and God had appeared to 
 himself. In the Second Part, Prometheus the Death-bringer, 
 distributed into four colossal Acts, he depicted in terrible 
 scene on scene the conflict of earth's former gods against the 
 new vision of God. There, in the breast of Prometheus, the 
 God that had been was at war with the God that is to be. 
 The interest of the Second Part centred in the transformation 
 of Prometheus from the Life-bringer into the Death-bringer, 
 from the Titan or demi-god who, in antagonism to the 
 Zeus-God, rapt in cold omnipotence, wishes to re-clothe 
 earth in joy and peace into the seer or visionary hero who 
 looks beyond this earth and beyond the universe of Being 
 to a state higher than Being and the God of Being. 
 
 VII 
 
 A modern critic, John Halford, has pointed out that 
 Rentzdorf's Prometheus the Titan might be described as a 
 world-drama having for its central subject "The Tragedy 
 of God. " And it is not only the boldest and most original
 
 1 86 Schonbrunn 
 
 of Rentzdorf 's own works, but, as Halford in the same essay 
 affirms, it is perhaps the profoundest work of that era; for 
 Werner in his speculative dramas ended in mere Romanism, 
 and Goethe, in the Second Faust, imparts to us no new 
 vision, but simply blends into a wayward unity the ideals 
 of Dante and the ideals of a later utilitarian age. Frederick 
 the Great's activities in his last years anticipate the close 
 of the Second Faust. But in Rentzdorf 's drama a new por- 
 traiture of God and of the universe is at least essayed. 
 Nevertheless, the Prometheus of Rentzdorf has, as Halford 
 acknowledges, the defects, if it has also the merits, of 
 /Eschylean tragedy. Its men and women are shifting 
 masks of God; the motives or passions which impel or 
 dominate them are flashes of the world-soul's will. 
 
 All in the drama is on a huge scale and full of shadowy 
 magnificence the vocabulary, the style, the verse-forms, 
 the characters, the scenery. In this respect it suggests in 
 literature only the Oresteia or Lear; in art, the Medici chapel 
 or the greater symphonies of Beethoven Rentzdorf's own 
 friend and in some respects his follower. 
 
 The opening scene of Part I presents an immense plain 
 covered with the havoc of war the ruins of cities and 
 villages, the smoking debris of palaces and temples. Night 
 is falling. In the distance the trumpets of a conquering 
 host ring out joyously in pursuit of a vanquished and re- 
 treating foe. Gradually they die away into the twilight. 
 Night deepens and total silence possesses the scene. In the 
 foreground stands a half-demolished altar and near it a 
 pillar blackened by fire. Beside this pillar the young war- 
 rior-poet Kallias, wrapped in a soldier's mantle, looks down 
 on the dead still sweet face of a boy of fifteen his brother. 
 Like himself he had risen in revolt against Hybristides, the 
 tyrant whose distant trumpets a minute ago broke the 
 twilight silences. The mad blind lust for revenge rages in 
 Kallias; but all is shadowed by the thought On whom is
 
 The Making of a Poet 187 
 
 he to avenge the fallen boy? "Man's misery is complete; 
 earth cries to earth in anguish. And the Zeus-God, the 
 creator and affiictor, where in His throne? On the tyrant? 
 Yesterday by this temple on the forest edge I saw the hawk's 
 beak rise red from the womb of a hare with young ; the hare 
 and its brood have peace. The hawk's torment when in 
 life endures. Let Hybristides live!" 
 
 In Kallias and in his courage and in his dream-purposes 
 Rentzdorf had wrought a study of the youthful Bonaparte, 
 touched by Hamlet, dulled and unnerved in every act by his 
 life-hate and life- weariness. But Prometheus enters and 
 all is resolution, all is burning energy. Prometheus is not 
 man's foe; he is not even the foe of Hybristides ; he is the 
 enemy of God, the deathless antagonist of the Zeus-Creator 
 who, secure of his own eternity and self-centred in his 
 changeless omnipotence, sees world on world roll on in 
 agony from the first embryonic throb of being and of pain 
 to the last protesting cry of blind accusing madness-driven 
 decay. To destroy the Zeus-God, to re-create on a new 
 plan earth and all the worlds, to glut Being's rage with 
 everlasting continuous power and light and joy this is 
 Prometheus's enterprise, and in the first abrupt trochaics of 
 his challenge the spectators, Magyar and Austrian alike, 
 easily discerned the defiant ardour which, in their own era, 
 had thrilled the great spirits of the Revolution Mirabeau, 
 Danton, Vergniaud, and the Girondins. Earth's last illu- 
 sion was not withered. 
 
 This First Part of the drama ends in titantic gloom. 
 Freedom's hosts are everywhere vanquished; Kallias and 
 Prometheus, the mortal and immortal antagonists of the 
 Zeus-God, are fallen. Kallias and his companions-in-arms 
 have been massacred by the mob, hounded on by the priests; 
 Prometheus, in rage and mad surprise, has sunk, death- 
 defiant and God-defiant, under the earthquake and the 
 thunderbolt ; and on this earth and in all the spaces of the
 
 i88 Schonbrunn 
 
 worlds it is Night, Night eternal, and the lamentings of 
 the dying, the moans or accusing grief of the living, rise 
 round the funeral pyres of the dead. 
 
 The midnight and the despair are not the midnight and 
 the despair of the defeated host only in tragic overthrow; 
 but the midnight and despair of Time itself and the worlds. 
 
 This prodigious gloom, as of worlds in eclipse, still pos- 
 sesses the stage when the spectators reassemble for the 
 Second Part. But the tortured cries of the dying, the loud 
 or muttered grief and rage round the pyres of the dead 
 have ceased. Yet a voice is heard, low, solitary, but in- 
 finitely majestic, infinitely sorrowful ; and gradually, as the 
 eyes become accustomed to the night, a vastness within the 
 vastness is discerned, a Presence, a shape colossal yet un- 
 certain in its outlines, aweing the heart in proportion as it 
 allures it by a sense of unsolved and insoluble mysterious- 
 ness. It is the Zeus-God. It is the Zeus-God, not in 
 insulting victory, not the possessor of a frigid unending 
 omnipotence; but speaking like a god in anguish, suffering 
 yet unconquered, agonizing yet unbending from his path. 
 
 Prometheus, long since buried under the avalanche, is now 
 storming his way back to the upper air. A new war and 
 new suffering are near. And not in resentment but in 
 strange terrible sympathy, held by the awful gloom, the 
 spectators listen to the Zeus-God's apologia and lament. 
 
 "What is thy suffering beside my suffering, and the an- 
 guish of a million million worlds beside mine? For I am 
 the inventor of Death, and the discoverer of Life am I. 
 Yea, to deliver these my universes from their suffering and 
 my soul from its anguish I created and I create. In me is 
 fulfilled the tragic purpose of the worlds ; the Doom's begin- 
 nings and the Doom's ending. The malediction of my 
 worlds is heavy upon Me; yet the voice wherewith they curse 
 Me is my voice. For I am the sin of my worlds, and their 
 redemption am I ....
 
 The Making of a Poet 189 
 
 "And for him who yonder has sunk overwhelmed, yea, 
 for Prometheus, my best-loved, rebel of my rebel-thought, 
 doom of my tragic doom, what is your compassion beside 
 my compassion or your wrath beside my wrath? But he 
 shall rise again. Made strong by my thought, and by the 
 secrets of the grave instructed, he shall arise. Even now he 
 is here!" 
 
 Lightnings at the word split the shroud of universal 
 gloom, lightnings that coalesce into a light, into a wide- 
 streaming, sunny, and beneficent radiance; and steeped in 
 immortal youth, in wonder and immortal felicity, this earth 
 is seen, this earth is seen outstretched, clothed in all her 
 zones in the splendour and everlasting tranquil joy of Pro- 
 metheus's ideal and Prometheus's dream. 
 
 Vanquished, the Titan has accomplished that which, 
 a victor, he would never have accomplished. But the curse 
 of transiency still oppresses. To remove this curse Pro- 
 metheus prepares himself for this last war the war which 
 is to give eternity and reality to this fair and deceitful 
 semblance of a vision. 
 
 But there is a change in Prometheus. He speaks the old 
 challenges, the old watchwords; but his strange, troubling 
 yet fixed and most haunting cadences announce some darker 
 thought or unresolved doubt, numbing his purpose. His 
 voice, the spectators discern with a shudder, is nearer to the 
 voice of the Zeus-God, his dread adversary. 
 
 "It is impossible," says Axel Petersen in his critique of 
 the play which appeared two days later in the Mercure de 
 Vienne, "to narrate the suspense, the alternations of sur- 
 prise and questioning wonder and admiration which this 
 Second Part of the drama created in us. Gradually we un- 
 ravel Prometheus's secret; we understand his hesitation. 
 He has discovered that the Zeus-God in seeking to destroy 
 mankind has acted not in caprice and hate but in compas- 
 sion and in love; that Kallias, the mortal poet, in the First
 
 190 Schonbrunn 
 
 Part of this tremendous work, possessed an insight denied 
 as yet to the immortal son of Clymene ; that from the high- 
 est life the extremest death-desire is born ; and that the mark 
 of the tragic vision and the attainment of Being's consum- 
 mating glory is the intensity with which the human soul, 
 in art before a great tragedy, in action before some mighty 
 passion frustrated, arraigns Being itself and Being's God." 
 
 In the last war, more furious and if possible wider in its 
 destroying rage than the first, Prometheus is again van- 
 quished, and this time forever. It is Annihilation's vic- 
 tory. His immortality becomes mortal, and as he sinks in 
 eternal night, the world-doom and the God-doom, Being's 
 total ablation, are clearly foreboded ; yet even in that horror- 
 striking moment, it is upon the Zeus-God that the spec- 
 tators' hearts are concentrated, and in the chorus which 
 concludes the entire drama they hear at once the dirge for 
 Prometheus and the paean and death-song of the Zeus-God, 
 also, of the Spirit of the Universe itself. 
 
 "Behold the courses of the evening, how they gather 
 above the sunset, squadron behind squadron arrayed in 
 their glory! What splendour! What brightness! Their 
 forms outnumber the forest in multitude, and their hues, 
 the mine crimson and emerald, amethyst and gold. But 
 the sun goeth down, and their glory is withered. So shall 
 I sink, so shall I, the everlasting God, sink and go down; 
 and the cloud-pavilions, my worlds, shall be dispersed and 
 vanish away. But I know whither I go, voyaging beyond 
 Being to my timeless rest; yea, I know whither I go. 
 
 "Behold, I show you a mystery within a mystery. I 
 perish and my worlds perish. Their anguish is ended, and 
 on the pathways of infinitude their dust is no more seen. 
 But I am the anguish of my worlds, and their dust am I 
 which has vanished. I am their strivings ; and their death- 
 agonies am I. Behold, I show you a mystery within a 
 mystery. The anguish and the dust die not, and the suffer-
 
 The Making of a Poet 191 
 
 ing and the victory are not in vain. For, transfigured, I 
 pass, and the drama of Being is ended and the Tragic Doom 
 is fulfilled." 
 
 "What, in plain prose, is the final impression left on the 
 mind by this extraordinary work?" says Axel Petersen in 
 the critique already quoted. "What is the dramatist's 
 message? What at last is the unifying idea of this play, 
 astonishing the mind by its myriad-sided suggestiveness, 
 here startling us by a trait drawn from the Zend Avesta or 
 the remoter, more mysterious East, there by a phrase that 
 upcalls the lost religion of Mithras or the better-known 
 faiths of Judaea, Persia, Egypt, Babylonia, Hellas? Amid 
 all this dazzling, knowledge-steeped variousness of ideas 
 and rich and tapestried imaginings, one purpose shines to 
 give God a newer voice and to give man a newer vision. 
 And I, for one, welcome the poet-mystic's daring, and praise 
 his high endeavour; for and here I speak not for myself 
 only but for many in Vienna and for many in Germany 
 it is not new governments, but a new vision of God that this 
 age is now waiting for. Our hearts are sick of dreams and 
 the irrealizable promises of revolutions; sick too of the 
 refurbishing of old institutions and the promulgation of new 
 laws. Prometheus in this tragedy realizes these to the ut- 
 most; earth and this universe under his brief dominion 
 leave no Utopian vision and utilitarian hope unfulfilled. 
 And what at its height is his prayer and the prayer of the 
 worlds? It is for the earthquake-rent Caucasus. It is for 
 the lightnings of his God-adversary. To what end has he 
 raised existence to its height, unless that out of the ecstasy 
 of Being the darker, mightier ecstasy of Annihiliation may 
 arise?"
 
 CHAPTER VII 
 
 A VIENNESE SUPPER PARTY 
 
 OHORTLY before ten o'clock Rentzdorf, unable any 
 O longer to control his impatience to see his mistress, 
 quitting the Opera, called a hackney coach. 
 
 As he was about to enter it he involuntarily glanced at 
 the driver. 
 
 ' ' What ! " he exclaimed. ' ' Caspar ? Is it Caspar ? ' ' 
 
 "Yes, sir, it is Caspar Karstens. " 
 
 Rentzdorf looked with stupefaction at the man and then 
 at the horse. Its wretched leanness pierced even the un- 
 clipped coat, thick as a fur. The harness was patched, tied 
 in places with string, and everywhere rusty and worn. Yet 
 before the war this man was one of the smartest drivers in 
 Vienna. 
 
 But there was nothing to be said, and both men knew it. 
 It was war. 
 
 "To the Rothenthurm, sir?" 
 
 "No; the Palazzo Esterthal." 
 
 As they trotted through the narrow streets, here lighted 
 with oil lamps, there dark, silent, and deserted, a watchman 
 passed, chanting his refrain 
 
 "Horet was ich euch will sagen, 
 Die Glock' hat zehn geschlagen." 
 192
 
 A Viennese Supper Party 193 
 
 The melancholy sound, heard m childhood, heard in 
 youth and early manhood, affected Rentzdorf singularly. 
 His mind had for months been accustomed to the bivouac 
 silences or turmoil, punctuated at intervals by bugle calls 
 or the distant movement of troops. 
 
 They were now skirting the broad park which lay to the 
 east of the Hofburg. His thoughts concentrated in sudden 
 violent passion on his mistress. Distinct as Artemis bathing 
 on a moonlit night in Thessaly, her figure burned there before 
 him in pallid, unearthly splendour. It was on such a night 
 and within those very walls of the old palace of the Habs- 
 burgs that he had first met her three years and a half ago. 
 
 It was in 1806. A series of brilliant festivities celebrated 
 the new title of "Emperor of Austria" which, forestalling 
 Napoleon's design, Francis II. had assumed. The disasters 
 of Ulm and Austerlitz seemed already forgotten. Vienna 
 had recovered her gaiety and her magnificence. Strellein, 
 the equerry to the Empress Ludovica, had revived those 
 quadrilles on horseback which, a generation earlier, Maria 
 Theresa had made fashionable. Like the other fetes in- 
 vented by that great sovereign, those quadrilles were 
 adapted to her own tastes and to her own handsome person, 
 and they had not outlived her ten years. Their revival by a 
 foreign princess pleased the Viennese. It gave the gazettes 
 the opportunity of recalling Austria's victories over Freder- 
 ick and Prussia's measureless rapacity. 
 
 It was on a June night, sultry and still, that Rentzdorf 
 first saw one of these dances. At Mohacz he had finished an 
 act of his Prometheus, and, in singular exaltation, he had 
 come to Vienna to see Johann and Bolli. 
 
 His surprise when, in the Rittersaal, he saw the horse- 
 women arrange themselves for the quadrille, had in a mo- 
 ment become interest, then delight the flare of the torches, 
 the music, the rhythmic beat of the hoofs, the youth and 
 grace of the riders; and, as the dance proceeded, his delight
 
 194 Schonbrunn 
 
 had become a fixed dream through which devolved the 
 images of life's extremes of beauty and of daring, of woman's 
 beauty and of war; and, every faculty alit, he saw or seemed 
 to see actualized the very shapes which in the woods at 
 Mohacz he had been brooding the frieze of the Parthenon, 
 the temple decorated by Scopas, the forms of tragic myth 
 and drama. And it was whilst he stood there, bound by the 
 triple spell of music, woman's grace, and visionary thought, 
 that, still in this trance-like state, his blood rushed out like 
 fire towards one of the riders; and in that passage of time, 
 most like a dream, a passion began in Rentzdorf's spirit 
 which swept into itself every faculty the senses' thrill, the 
 imagination's glory, the will's energy, the intellect's soaring 
 scrutiny. 
 
 Love may or may not arise at first sight; but in the rela- 
 tions of a man to a woman the transition from friendship, 
 however intimate, to passion, however incipient, is abrupt 
 and well-defined. Friendship, love, passion Rentzdorf 
 experienced all for that unknown horsewoman during the 
 brief space that the dance lasted. 
 
 The riders that night were in three groups, fifteen ladies 
 in all, drawn from the foremost families of Vienna and 
 Presburg. Five dressed in pale pink rode grey horses, five 
 in light blue rode black horses, and five in white or ivory 
 silk rode horses of a deep bay or roan colour. 
 
 When in a figure of the dance her horse reared danger- 
 ously, her eyes under her short veil flashed a smile to Johann 
 and Toe, beside whom Rentzdorf was standing. Master- 
 ing her horse, she instantly took her place in the stepping, 
 curvetting, circling throng. A mist of music environed her. 
 That was the moment in which friendship became passion. 
 It was in that moment also that he saw that she was in white, 
 riding a bay. 
 
 The act, swift as lighting, by which she had mastered the 
 bay had strung her figure to the utmost, outlining every
 
 A Viennese Supper Party 195 
 
 contour from stirrup to knee, from hips to shoulders and 
 wrists. Not in his dreams nor in creative ecstasy of poetry 
 had Rentzdorf seen a shape more fair. 
 
 "Three and a half years ago and a June midnight .... 
 It was yesterday." 
 
 The vision had disappeared. He heard the clatter of his 
 hackney's hoofs. Around him the darkness of Vienna 
 streets, and in front there loomed the grim outline of the 
 Molker bastion and the Molker Thor. 
 
 II 
 
 The supper-room of the Palazzo Esterthal was, like the 
 other apartments, furnished in a style of sombre and faded 
 magnificence candelabra and massive ornaments in bronze, 
 deep crimson hangings in damask, whilst the panelling, 
 tables, and chairs were of the dark woods familiar in the 
 courts of Naples and Madrid. Even the modern paintings, 
 including one of Amalie herself and one of her husband wear- 
 ing the uniform of Ferdinand IV.'s Guard, both executed at 
 Naples by a follower of Ribera, were in the Spanish style. 
 
 Rentzdorf reached the palace at about half-past ten. 
 In the hall, as was the custom in Vienna, he gave his sword 
 to a servant before entering the supper-room. 
 
 The company, amounting still to some fifty or sixty per- 
 sons, was more numerous than he had expected. At a 
 glance he took in its character; diplomatists, secretaries, a 
 minister, and other representatives of various State depart- 
 ments and their satellites. Except the old Count and two 
 generals of Joseph II. 's period, not a soldier was present. 
 
 Such a company in Amalie's house would have bored 
 Rentzdorf at any time; to-night it was exasperating to 
 excess. 
 
 "To see her, to be near her," thought he, "bored even 
 with her boredoms!"
 
 196 Schonbrunn 
 
 It was not the rose, but it was at least the rose's shadow. 
 
 Rentzdorf walked straight towards Amalie, forcing a 
 dignitary who was about to kiss her hand to step aside with 
 a bland, unfriendly smile. 
 
 This was Minister von Stiegerling, who in his civic capa- 
 city had been permitted to remain in Vienna. There was, 
 the wits alleged, an additional reason. Napoleon delighted 
 to honour the man to whom he owed the glories of Ulm and 
 Austerlitz; for Stiegerling it was who, in October, 1805, had 
 persuaded the shifty Francis II. to make his quarter-master 
 Mack commander-in-chief, and it was Stiegerling whose 
 corruption or incapacity was responsible for the condition 
 of the army in that fatal year not a battery with its equip- 
 ment of horses, not a regiment or squadron which had more 
 than two-fifths of its officers with the colours. Disgraced 
 by Stadion, this man had, in February, 1808, recovered his 
 prestige, and now, it was rumoured, his was the secret force 
 behind the sinister and rapid advance of Metternich. 
 
 Rentzdorf had always regarded Stiegerling with mistrust 
 and contempt. To-night he answered his false compli- 
 ments with cold ceremoniousness ; but the minister, lifting 
 up his powerful frame and large face simmering with fat, 
 turned again to Amalie, though still addressing Rentzdorf, 
 and said in his authoritative but curious tenor voice : 
 
 "You will permit me, sir, to finish what I was saying to 
 her Illustriousness ? For I was observing that what our 
 gracious Emperor desires is not men imbued with new ideas 
 and subversionary theories, but men faithful to the tradi- 
 tions which in the past have made Austria glorious, and, 
 in the future, shall keep her great. In a word," he said, 
 dropping suddenly into his famous "homely" manner, 
 "what Francis II. wants in his subjects are simple loyal 
 hearts. Mushroom empires depend for their prestige on 
 newfangled titles and dignities. Austria is old 
 
 A sound that was like a groan of ironic assent interrupted
 
 A Viennese Supper Party 197 
 
 the reed-like voice. Rentzdorf, glancing in the direction of 
 the sound, saw Count Johann, Alexis Rasumowski and 
 Max Dietrich, Lan-Lan's brother, with a bevy of ladies 
 standing under a full-length portrait of the Archduke Maxi- 
 milian. All were gazing, with eyes brimming with laughter 
 or scorn, straight across at Stiegerling. 
 
 "It is a company of the Bianchi defying the Neri, " 
 Amalie said laughingly to Rentzdorf. "And you, Herr von 
 Stiegerling, you are a finished Corso Donati. " 
 
 "Madame," was the answer, "you doubtless praise me 
 beyond my poor merits; but I am unversed in Florentine 
 history." And, unperturbed, he continued: "Such, I say, 
 are the men that our good sovereign needs not the so- 
 called men of ideas, andfrondeurs," he interjected, with an 
 adder-like glance from between the black narrow slits of his 
 heavy-lidded eyes in the direction of Count Johann. 
 
 And with an unctuous smile he again took Amalie's hand, 
 and cited for the hundredth time the courage of the Cister- 
 cian monk who at Wagram had carried the sacred wafers 
 in a pyx from one death-haunted spot to another of the 
 battlefield, administering them to the wounded of both 
 armies. 
 
 He then bowed deeply, and, with a viperish smile to 
 Rentzdorf, he very slowly quitted the room, turning at the 
 door to give some instructions to his under-secretary, Ger- 
 lach, a studious-looking personage in spectacles, with dirty- 
 ish grey hair and a thin, unhealthy beard, who at one time 
 had been a professor at Jena. For Stiegerling was a man of 
 culture ; year by year on the 9th of May he sent a wreath to 
 Schiller's grave; he had devised in 1807 the visit of August 
 von Schlegel to Vienna. He had even hoped at one time to 
 induce Kant to quit Konigsberg for the Austrian capital. 
 
 The pressure around Amalie increased; and Rentzdorf 
 was turning away when immediately on his left he encoun- 
 tered a slim figure in white, tall, with a pale face, sparkling
 
 198 Schonbrunn 
 
 eyes, clustering brown curls, and a voice that trembled a 
 little. 
 
 "Nusschen?" he said questioningly. 
 
 Since he had left Vienna the girl had become a woman. 
 
 "Yes, it is Nusschen," came a laughing answer; and Toe 
 stood beside her, the two confronting him. "Will you 
 dance with us to-night?" 
 
 But a masterful hand was laid on Rentzdorf 's arm. 
 
 "I must rescue you from these sirens," said Johann. 
 "You must in any case have something to eat. Even poets 
 cannot live on your blandishments only, " he said to the two 
 women. 
 
 And sitting down with Rentzdorf at some distance he 
 poured out his wine, taking it from a servant in the Esterthal 
 livery. 
 
 "Why did you come to this house?" he asked in an under- 
 tone. "That parasite of Stiegerling's is just the fellow to 
 pass the word." 
 
 Rentzdorf 's dark penetrating eyes rested for a moment on 
 Count Johann's. 
 
 "There is no danger. I cannot be arrested without an 
 order from Bonaparte, and, by morning, unless this peace 
 is signed, I shall be on my way to Buda again. " 
 
 He spoke in the same low tones as Count Johann; but the 
 latter, feeling himself observed, said aloud: "You heard 
 Stiegerling the Magnificent? It is an insult to the Floren- 
 tine to call those piteous ineptitudes Machiavellian; is it 
 not so, your Excellency?" 
 
 He turned abruptly and faced the man whose shadow he 
 had felt approaching. 
 
 It was the noted jurist, Theodor Maas, an Aulic Council- 
 lor. His squat, bristly fingers had several rings on them. 
 Though not fifty, his dry, shrewd, clean-shaven face was 
 already covered with countless thread-like wrinkles that 
 ran in circles across his brow and down his cheeks where,
 
 A Viennese Supper Party 199 
 
 on either side of his long nose and thin irregular lips, they 
 met the wrinkles of his chin, and whenever he spoke every 
 wrinkle darted and moved till the whole face shook. He 
 spoke habitually in rasping, husky, but very deliberate tones, 
 and now, ignoring Count Johann's remark and greeting 
 Rentzdorf with a vinegary effusiveness, he asked shrilly : 
 
 "Anything more known of that queer affair at Schon- 
 brunn? What? Nothing? Not even at the embassy?" 
 
 "No," Count Johann said curtly; and to Rentzdorf he 
 added, " Maas knows more secrets than any man in Vienna, 
 yet he is always in search of news. " 
 
 The councillor grinned complacently, and with a gro- 
 tesque affectation of frankness, said to Johann: 
 
 "Now who will tell me why everything in Austria is done 
 in this hugger-mugger fashion? Nobody knows whether 
 we are at peace or war, whether our good Emperor is with- 
 holding from his children a pleasant surprise until he can 
 announce it in person in our streets, or whether Bonaparte, 
 to save appearances, desires to leave Schonbrunn before his 
 humiliation is known. For example, this evening in the 
 Leopoldstadt I heard " 
 
 "Away with Stadion! The will of Metternich is the 
 will of God," interjected the same mocking voice that had 
 interrupted Stiegerling. 
 
 "Ah, ah ! " exclaimed Maas, bringing the stubby forefinger 
 of his right hand vertically down upon the palm of his left, 
 and he seemed about to say something murderous; but 
 changing his intention, he strutted from the spot. 
 
 Count Johann was the outspoken enemy of the Metter- 
 nich faction, and he had been the first to satirize Gentz's 
 fatuous proposal of a new capital. He had denounced not 
 less indignantly the Metternich policy of a censored theatre, 
 a gagged press, universal espionage, and the fortress or the 
 dungeon as the only political arguments worthy of a strong 
 government.
 
 20O Schonbrunn 
 
 "Our good Emperor, " he said, when the Aulic Councillor 
 was out of hearing, "is withholding from his children not a 
 pleasant surprise but another damnable surrender. Two 
 such crows as Maas and Stiegerling would not have croaked 
 in tune unless they had scented the corpse of Austria's 
 honour. My bluff was nearer the mark than I knew. We 
 may know before midnight. But yonder Toe and Nusschen 
 are making signals of distress. Finish your supper, and I 
 will bring them to you. The crowd is dispersing. " 
 
 In a second or two the Countess Markowitz took the seat 
 vacated by her brother-in-law. 
 
 Rentzdorf turned to her gladly. 
 
 The Countess, though a motherly woman, was "literary" 
 and of advanced tastes, and in her Thursday reunions her 
 circle regularly discussed Prometheus and the Essays but 
 they discussed also Werner's Templars and Kotzebue's 
 Incas. She was a Saxon, and though bearing one of the 
 greatest names in Austria had the pretension to look down 
 upon Vienna from the heights of Dresden asstheticism. 
 To-night this idiosyncrasy appeared almost immediately. 
 
 "Does not Daruka, " she said, "add just the touch of 
 barbaric sumptuousness that one instinctively seeks in a 
 Vienna salon? This is the fifth dress she has worn to-day, 
 each gorgeous as this. Nobody has a chance of looking 
 anything else but dowdy." 
 
 Rentzdorf looked in the direction indicated by the Coun- 
 tess. The dress of Daruka, Princess Ternitchsky, was 
 certainly "barbaric," but splendid a blood-red tunic em- 
 broidered in black and gold above a white satin skirt draped 
 with black lace terminating in a heavy gold fringe; a green 
 sash, also embroidered and fringed, was knotted about her 
 waist, and on her left arm a silver serpent spotted with 
 opals and with eyes of topaz and jet coiled itself, whilst into 
 her hair, which was black and abundant, two long ropes of 
 pearls had been twisted, resembling at a distance luminous
 
 A Viennese Supper Party 201 
 
 spots of milk thickly sprinkled upon ebony. This was the 
 Circassian alluded to by Amalie in her talk with Toe that 
 morning. Prince Ternitchsky, her husband, was said by 
 some to have bought her as a slave in Tiflis; by others, to 
 have won her at the gaming-table, her father, a Circassian 
 chief, having, after excessive losses, staked first his slaves, 
 then his homestead, then his wife, and last his daughter. 
 But the tribe by the threats of death or mutilation had com- 
 pelled Ternitchsky to marry her. Vienna had at first re- 
 fused to receive her ; but a duel or two had imposed respect 
 or silence on his friends and Daruka's "savage" naivete and 
 goodness of heart established her position. From being re- 
 fused she became the fashion. Her outlandish pronunciation 
 of the Viennese dialect, her quaint idioms, her appetite for 
 sweetmeats, her delight in stories of primitive revenge, es- 
 pecially stories of unfaithful women punished by devilish 
 tortures eyes torn out, fingers and toes amputated joint 
 by joint became the rage. 
 
 But at that moment Fritz Wollmoden, a nephew of the 
 plenipotentiary, came forward to introduce to the Countess 
 Markowitz his newly married wife, a Saxon also, round- 
 featured, but bursting with youth and health, and lightly 
 clad as a mountain nymph. Toe and Nusschen meantime 
 had fallen into the clutches of Alexis Rasumowski and Count 
 Johann was powerless to rescue them. 
 
 Rentzdorf was for some minutes left undisturbed. He 
 rose and was about to move to another part of the 
 room, but he sat down again, letting his eyes pass from the 
 faces around to the portraits of the Spanish school on 
 the walls, pausing in troubled fixity on that of Amalie. It 
 showed her as a girl of seventeen, a figure of youthful, up- 
 springing grace in a simple black mantilla; yet no one could 
 look on the picture and not ask Who is she ? To be kissed 
 by those lips has earth or heaven any more entrancing 
 dream? But Rentzdorf had the curse, if also the reward, of
 
 202 Schonbrunn 
 
 imagination; he could never see this picture without also 
 conjuring up her life in Naples as Esterthal's bride 
 the licentious court, the theatres, the Cytherean dances, 
 the moonlight parties on the bay. 
 
 From the portrait Rentzdorf looked to Amalie herself. 
 She was standing with her back to him, but with her face in 
 profile; for, a second before, she had made a quick move- 
 ment to answer an importunate guest a movement which 
 dragged the pale and lustrous softness of her dress into 
 myriad folds about her waist and knees. 
 
 "God!" he muttered involuntarily, "how beautiful!" 
 
 He felt the blood congest his temples, then an icy tremor 
 crept over him; morbidly oppressed in the magic of her 
 beauty there was something demonic and malign. 
 
 "And yet the thoughts I have thought from woman are 
 the only thoughts that God has thought. The things I 
 have felt from woman are the only things that God has 
 felt." 
 
 Yes, he told himself, he knew in his mistress to-night the 
 seduction as well as the terror; he knew the true nature of 
 the forces latent in woman's soul and in woman's body the 
 resources of nature garnered there, fulfilling the world-soul's 
 plan, stronger than lightning because they are born of the 
 lightning, or than war. What shall resist them? 
 
 Twice in his life he had experienced war in its most daunt- 
 ing and harrowing shape; he had seen the frozen hillsides 
 and valleys of Austerlitz, and the wheat-fields of Wagram 
 in which, as evening fell, not the corncrake's call, but the 
 maledictions of tortured men made frightful the twilight. 
 He had heard on the puszta or sun-baked steppes of Hun- 
 gary the thunder making of the elements a mimicry of 
 devastation and war. But in the breathing calm of that 
 woman's figure he divined forces dread and sublime as the 
 elemental forces of tempest and revolution; for in her loveli- 
 ness, pale and erect, was the very end, the goal, whither
 
 ,A Viennese Supper Party 203 
 
 across aeons of terror and elemental fury nature had 
 striven. 
 
 in 
 
 It was eleven o'clock, but some twenty people were still 
 present. 
 
 The departure of the Ternitchskys had been followed by 
 the inevitable chatter about that interesting manage. Was 
 it true that in Rome Prince Ternitchsky, to save the life of 
 the enamoured Canova, had "lent" Daruka to the sculptor, 
 exactly as Alexander had "lent" Campaspe to Appeles? 
 
 "Where does Daruka get those perfumes?" Madame 
 Wollmoden asked in her fresh girlish voice, fanning herself 
 aggressively. "It makes my head ache to be near her." 
 
 "We shall teach you those mysteries in Vienna," Coun- 
 tess Markowitz said indulgently. "I too had headaches 
 when I first came from Dresden." 
 
 Max Dietrich narrated Daruka's retort to Radetsky at a 
 boar hunt, and her naive impressions of Bonaparte "Dat 
 your world-conqueror? Dat little toad? You should see 
 my father." The words had become a caricature, then a 
 joyous song. 
 
 Young Wollmoden, anxious to distinguish himself, inter- 
 vened. "They say at Rome that Bonaparte's mother ex- 
 hibits herself to British tourists for three gulden a head. " 
 
 "Bonaparte's mother?" Rasumowski murmured to a 
 lady with a sleepy voice displaying a well-fleshed forearm by 
 doubling back her elbow. "If it were his sister Pauline ' ' 
 
 Count Johann, unable to master his anger, said with 
 harsh deriding emphasis, "Our motherland exhibits her 
 dotage to all Europe. Who pays her?" 
 
 He rose, and as he parted with Rentzdorf said in the same 
 voice. 
 
 "This is Vienna in a nutshell. You know it again?" 
 
 "I shall see you later?" Rentzdorf asked.
 
 204 Schonbrunn 
 
 ' ' At the Rittersaal ? Yes. ' ' 
 
 The talk streamed on, gossip and anecdote, anecdote and 
 gossip. 
 
 "Bonaparte himself, I am told, bores women," the lady 
 with the drowsy voice remarked. 
 
 "No wonder," Rasumowski retorted quickly; "he buries 
 so many men. " And overjoyed at his own mot, he repeated 
 it, stressing the innuendo. 
 
 His yellowish brown complexion, broad face, wide-set 
 eyes, shining like the back of a beetle, revealed the Tartar 
 peasant original of his house ; but his infectious good-humour 
 was irresistible, and Rentzdorf laughed right out when 
 Rasumowski, determined not to be ignored by the poet, 
 said straight to him 
 
 "What is it like to be under grape-shot for thirty-five 
 minutes, eh?" (Rentzdorf 's regiment had had to face this 
 ordeal at Eckmiihl.) " Is it as bad as a thunderstorm ? We 
 had an awful one in Vienna the night before Wagram. It 
 lasted seven hours. I slept through it all, but nobody made 
 me a general for my coolness. Hard, I call it, eh? It's 
 always the way in Austria. Intrepidity is unrecognized 
 except in the ranks of our enemies. See? Eh?" 
 
 But Toe now turned with decision to Rentzdorf. 
 
 "Sit here," she said, pointing to a canape", "and talk to 
 Nusschen and me. You have not said a word to us yet. 
 And yonder comes Amalie!" 
 
 Toe's eyes were radiant; her cheeks flushed. Rentzdorf 
 had noticed that she appeared to have an understanding 
 with Count Johann. Was it marriage at last? 
 
 At a distance the rumbling bass voice of Count Marko- 
 witz was heard intoning. 
 
 "That which makes a great strategist," he was saying, 
 "is not courage; it is the power to form decision after deci- 
 sion amid the firing of guns and muskets, amid the cries of 
 mortally wounded men and horses, and to make those de-
 
 A Viennese Supper Party 205 
 
 cisions securely and collectedly as a mathematician seated 
 before a problem in his study. The Archduke Charles ' ' 
 
 rv 
 
 A quarter of an hour later Count Estherthal was sitting 
 at the foot of the chief table fast asleep. Markowitz's 
 rumbling voice and somnolent aphorisms had produced this 
 effect. The old Count had, with stubborn courtesy, re- 
 sisted the drowsiness invading him; he had closed first the 
 right eye, then the left, in the hope of relieving the strain 
 but the platitudes unwound themselves endlessly, and he 
 had at last closed both eyes simultaneously, and, to Toe's 
 infinite amusement, fallen fast asleep. 
 
 "Now we can escape," she whispered to Nusschen, and 
 taking the girl's arm she slipped behind Markowitz's chair, 
 noting with comic dismay the resemblance of his square 
 shoulders to his brother Johann's, and said to him with 
 gravity 
 
 "Padrino needs rest. He has to act as Amalie's escort 
 later." 
 
 Count Markowitz rose reluctantly and was followed by 
 the three or four other guests who still lingered. 
 
 Toe's manoeuvre left Rentzdorf and Amalie to themselves. 
 The latter got up and put out the candles nearest to them, 
 thus surrounding their end of the table with a zone of 
 obscurity. 
 
 " Now we are alone. Dearest, dearest. ..." 
 
 Rentzdorf did not answer. A remark of Toe's had dis- 
 covered to him that Count Ferdinand, Amalie's husband, 
 had, less than six weeks ago, passed a fortnight in Vienna 
 and in this house. Amalie at the time was writing to him 
 every second day; but of her husband's visit she had said 
 not a word. Why? He had striven to throttle the foul 
 suspicion, but it had returned and re-returned, and now, 
 fanned by a tyrannous imagination, possessed him utterly.
 
 206 Schonbrunn 
 
 An hour ago there was not on earth a more radiant glory 
 than the glory which environed his life; now a pit in Male- 
 bolge was not more loathesome and dark. An abominable 
 toast given at a mess after the campaign kept rattling in his 
 brain "To the husbands of our fair ones in Vienna ! May 
 they enjoy the repose our fatigues have granted them." 
 "To the husbands of our fair ones!" a voice had shouted 
 in drunken hilarity. "They have a better time than we 
 lovers ever imagine. Crede experto. " 
 
 "To-night, to-night!" Rentzdorf muttered to himself in 
 desperate misery. " Oh, the irony of it . . . . To-night!" 
 And yet, he asked himself in an outburst of cynicism, what 
 was it that he had expected in Vienna, and what was it that 
 he had found? One of the most beautiful women in Austria 
 sat waiting for him to make love to her. What more could 
 the heart of man desire ? True, five weeks ago this lady had 
 received her husband under this roof and into her bed. 
 What was more natural? True again, it proved that for 
 three years she had day by day been lying to him. Again, 
 what was more natural? All women are liars. It is a 
 commonplace. There was not a man or woman of the court 
 circle in Vienna or Naples who would not have stood aghast 
 with indignation or derision that he should in such a mistress 
 have expected any other conduct. 
 
 And murder, the authentic blood-lust, was on him. The 
 torrent of insults which in crimes of jealousy are the prelude 
 to violence was suffocating him. 
 
 Suddenly he burst into words "Is it not singular? This 
 earth and all modern life are gangrened with falsehood ; but 
 in Vienna no one lies. Society is infamy's sojourn, but in 
 Vienna there are only pure women and brave men not a 
 single liar anywhere. You and I, Amalie, liars both; how 
 can we live in such a city of righteousness, and how can we 
 look in each other's eyes and see the lies curling and en- 
 gendering there?"
 
 A Viennese Supper Party 207 
 
 It did not seem his own judgment that framed nor his 
 own voice that spoke the hideous words, but the judgment 
 and the voice from the Irene Apponyi period. 
 
 But seeing the misery in her lover's eyes, hearing it in his 
 voice, Amalie was resolved to be very patient. 
 
 "If I were the thing you suspect, Heinrich, " she said, 
 forcing down her emotion, "could I have met you thus 
 to-night? Or if I imagined you believed in your own sus- 
 picions, do you suppose I should sit here a second longer? 
 False to everyone else, these three years to you, to you 
 alone I have never spoken a word save the truth. Why 
 should I begin to lie to you to-night?" 
 
 And in a gentler voice she continued 
 
 " If I did not tell you myself, it was because in my happi- 
 ness I had forgotten. I wished to write to you at the time ; 
 but even in a cipher how was I to risk betraying him? His 
 life might have paid for my rashness. There was daily a 
 talk of war. I was distracted by my own anxiety." 
 
 "Why did he run that risk ? " Rentzdorf broke in. " For 
 what and for whom?" 
 
 Amalie looked at her lover. 
 
 "Not for me, " she answered in tones through which there 
 shot a gleam of laughter. Yet the next instant she was 
 trembling and a vivid blush swept over her pale cheeks. 
 
 "It was for Adelheid Ortski," she said in a low con- 
 strained voice. 
 
 Even now Amalie von Esterthal could not speak the name 
 of her husband's mistress, simply, as she would have spoken 
 another woman's name. 
 
 Dumbfounded, Rentzdorf sprang to his feet. It was not 
 difficult for him to divine the humiliation it must have cost 
 her to speak these words. 
 
 "Chichitza?" he exclaimed involuntarily. "Where was 
 my Lord Paget?" 
 
 She made a vague gesture.
 
 208 Schonbrunn 
 
 "At Troppau, trying, in prospect of a renewal of the war, 
 to arrange a rapprochement between England and Prussia. 
 Chichitza's own indiscretion had brought her into danger. 
 You had not heard?" 
 
 "I have heard nothing." 
 
 She told him in a rapid imperfect manner the exploit 
 against Napoleon of which Lord Paget's mistress had been 
 the heroine; the theatrical purchase of a dagger in the Gra- 
 ben, "destined for the tyrant's heart," and of Bonaparte's 
 famous comment, "The lady confounds the parts of Judith 
 and Rahab. " 
 
 Rentzdorf listened like a man who issues from a cavern 
 full of the uncouth shapes of darkness and the hovering of 
 obscene wings and suddenly stands under the sun-steeped 
 azure and sees around and in front of him the sands and the 
 myriad-twinkling waters of the sea. But even whilst joy 
 struggled with remorse in his heart, his imagination had 
 swept on to the root cause of to-night's painful scene, and 
 of the mutual uneasiness or suspicion which had disfigured 
 other days and other nights. It was their sundered lives he 
 living in his rooms, she in this palace as Esterthal's wife, 
 compelled on state occasions to preside at his table, her 
 goings out and her comings in, her daily actions, the very 
 dresses she wore, exposed to his arbitrament. This too 
 added a morbid element to the misery of each parting, deep 
 enough in itself. For all this there was one remedy to 
 leave Vienna together! And in the vortex of their great 
 passion, greeting the sun each day together, what a glory 
 transcending glory awaited them! 
 
 He turned to her. His words of adoration and the pic- 
 tures of their love-life together which her own imagination 
 conjured overwhelmed her. 
 
 She sat with bent head. 
 
 "Heinrich! You hurt me. To-night! How I have 
 waited for to-night, and now it harrows my very soul ....
 
 A Viennese Supper Party 209 
 
 To be together? Ah God, as if you did not know my heart's 
 cry. I lie down at night. I never sleep till in imagination 
 you take me into your arms. Never a morning I wake but 
 I wish you beside me, long for you, stretch out my arms 
 for you with a delicious horrible craving. For ever, for 
 ever. But that is the heaven which you and I shall never 
 reach. " 
 
 She broke off with a cry of abrupt stifled anguish. Then, 
 more calm, she resumed "For how is it to be done? I ask 
 myself this a thousand times ; but there is never an answer. 
 Besides, if you cannot trust me now, how could you trust 
 me then? Would marriage keep me faithful?" 
 
 It was a flash of resentment ; it was a flash also of the dis- 
 concerting candour and humour which marked Amalie von 
 Esterthal the candour, for instance, which had edged her 
 replies to Toe that morning. Suddenly the resentment 
 vanished and her voice became dolorous in its appeal as the 
 slow dropping of tears. It was vain, she pointed out, for 
 Rentzdorf and her to speak of marriage. To them that was 
 for ever denied. Her husband had all the superstitions as 
 well as the courage of his caste. He was cruel, profligate, 
 treacherous, and proud; but in his religion bigoted as a 
 Dominican or a Carthusian friar. 
 
 " To go away together," she concluded, "that is not for us. 
 We may die together Ah!" she said with a sudden inspira- 
 tion, "it came to us a year ago. In the Sporelberg do you 
 remember ? If we had but obeyed, if we had but taken that 
 path then " 
 
 Her voice had sunk to a whisper. 
 
 And suddenly in thought Rentzdorf was standing beside 
 her on a ledge amongst the tormented basalt crags of the 
 Sporelberg. The last hour of their last afternoon together 
 had come, for there in a chalet in the Styrian Alps they had 
 passed three weeks in a continuous bliss which seemed less 
 like that of mistress and mortal lover than that of spirits in 
 
 14
 
 210 Schonbrunn 
 
 ecstasy. Together they had lived Rentzdorfs faith; they 
 had lived the vision of his Prometheus, day transcending 
 successive day; but that afternoon, confronted with the 
 return, he to the army, she to the social routine of Vienna, 
 a reaction and an immense sadness possessed them. 
 
 "Life's meaning? God's meaning?" Rentzdorf had said 
 in vehement gloom. "Nor life nor God has any meaning 
 save this; Fame, la gloire, we can leave to Bonaparte; and 
 yet, you and I, if all this instant were to end, would not be 
 forgotten utterly. Earth would remember us; earth in her 
 deep centre would remember us, Amalie, for the things that 
 you and I have felt together and the thoughts that you and 
 I have thought together." 
 
 Startled, she had stood for some seconds with down-bent 
 head and with intent face, as though listening to some inward 
 summoner. 
 
 "Yes," she had answered at length, "if it were to end 
 now? And why should it not end now? " 
 
 In an instant the death-impulse was on both. Speech- 
 less yet panting, as in some fearful conflict in their sleep 
 they clung together, each terrorstruck for the other's safety, 
 yet each in desire seeking the other's destruction. The 
 odours of her hair and of her neck maddened him by their 
 seduction; he clasped her closer to his breast, and thus they 
 stood on the dizzy edge. Uncounted fathoms below them, 
 a thread of falling azure, raved the torrent of the Aar. 
 
 The crisis had not lasted many minutes, perhaps not even 
 seconds; but every detail of that wide landscape had particu- 
 larized itself upon their memories upon hers, a piece of 
 schist about two inches from the brink, that seemed to 
 crackle in the sun, and far below a lake that looked no bigger 
 than a tent-roof; upon his, the chaos of tumbled rocks and 
 mountain summits and overhead the lazy hovering of a 
 vulture on the watch. Not a quarter of an hour ago he had 
 laughed her into "for peace' sake," the assertion that she
 
 A Viennese Supper Party 211 
 
 saw that same vulture; for her eyes, despite their dark and 
 luminous beauty, were short-sighted. 
 
 "Is it for us, " he had thought, "that this sentinel vulture 
 waits, he and his invisible companions?" 
 
 And, agonized, he had struggled to see her face, that was 
 to be the vulture's prey. But surprised, blind, struggling, 
 she had resisted. In her the death-desire raged on; and, to 
 his horror, he had felt it again on himself once more. To the 
 seduction of the precipice was added the seduction of her 
 embrace; her entwining arms dragged him to the edge; her 
 lips, ice and fire, clung to his; and to his single cry, her 
 name "Amalie?" she had whispered the answer "It is 
 now, beloved. Death; it is now. " 
 
 Her voice in the ecstasy of that death yearning had been 
 her voice in the ecstasy of love yearning. 
 
 Five heart-beats this lasted; the next, as though some 
 noxious vapour infecting his brain had dissolved, he 
 wrenched her back from within a foot of the edge, and 
 mortally pale, stood beside her, noting even then the fixed 
 flush on her brow, the surprise and angry darkness in her 
 eyes. 
 
 "Reaction from passion's excess, or this vision's exult- 
 ancy," Rentzdorf reflected, "she had willed death that 
 afternoon, there on the ledge of the Sporelberg. To-night 
 in Vienna, here in this palace, she wills it again. But that 
 other way why does she not will that other way? Ah, 
 my God, do I myself will it ? Do I myself will it? Or is all 
 this but one of the shifting masks that the ultimate anguish 
 in things wears to-night?" 
 
 The tenderest or the most passionate love never brings a 
 man and a woman nearer than two streams each of which 
 between its own banks seeks by its own path the sea.
 
 212 Schonbrunn 
 
 Rentzdorf and Amalie von Esterthal were sincere; yet 
 to-night neither had spoken all the truth to each other. 
 She, on her side, left unexpressed a throng of half-uncon- 
 scious wishes or fears the wish to retain her rank, and, 
 above all, her personal independence. The right to visit 
 and be visited by "the world" she despised because she 
 possessed that right it was an encumbrance and a bore, 
 but she feared lest, if she lost it, its value should assume giant 
 proportions. Then there was padrino. She liked him in 
 himself, the stubborn unyielding representative of a caste. 
 She liked him also for his chivalrous cult for her dead mother. 
 Tacitly too she dreaded lest, if they fled together, her lover 
 should weary of a bond which, in its exacting violence, is 
 more testing than marriage. On the other hand she ex- 
 perienced, in bad moments, the married woman's distressing 
 jealousy of the unmarried lover. This very night Nus- 
 schen's girlish enthusiasm for Rentzdorf had surprised, 
 pleased, then disturbed her. Rentzdorf, on his side, equally 
 dissimulated the inmost sources of his impatience or his 
 misery. He idolized her with a passion too extreme or not 
 extreme enough. 
 
 "For that is the passion consummate," he told himself 
 savagely, "when the delights of the woman we love, even 
 if they ought to be our Hell, are our Heaven. But that is 
 the impossible, that is the unseizable. " 
 
 He turned to her, mastered by a fiercer yearning, the life 
 yearning, the death yearning. All the suppressed passion 
 of the day scorched in his blood. Never had the beauty of 
 her person been more enthralling. The earth her body 
 pressed would have turned to roses in his lips. 
 
 "Amalie!" 
 
 But she sprang back. 
 
 "Hush!" she whispered. "Be careful." 
 
 He followed her glance to the distant table where the old 
 Count still sat. He had stirred in his sleep.
 
 A Viennese Supper Party 213 
 
 "Padrino?" Amalie called out softly. "Padrino?" 
 
 There was no answer. The quiet breathing continued. 
 The sleeper's posture had not changed. He sat with droop- 
 ing head, his chin on his breast, his hands laid along the 
 arms of his chair. The sleeping figure of the old warrior 
 and diplomat affected Rentzdforf . It had the pathos of all 
 helpless suffering things; but something in the patrician 
 features suggested his son, Amalie's husband, and the spell 
 was broken. 
 
 His mistress had risen. 
 
 Laying her finger on her lips, she glided to a curtained 
 recess which opened out of this room. This recess or room, 
 which looked on the cedar avenue, was richly furnished, but 
 in a more modern taste. On state occasions, when the 
 Archduke dined with Count Ferdinand, the curtains were 
 removed and the host and his imperial guest, and perhaps 
 two other guests of princely rank, sat here together, sepa- 
 rated from yet one with the company in the supper room. 
 It was the Habsburg tradition. Charles V. at Innsbruck 
 had often sat thus with Titian. 
 
 Rentzdorf sprang forward to where she waited, a glitter- 
 ing sorcery with her white arm outstretched, holding back 
 the curtain. 
 
 Twilight shrouded the recess. Through the window on 
 the right they could see the cedars and the steep gloom of the 
 night sky. Amalie drew her lover to a sofa that stood under 
 a fresco in Guide's manner on the further wall. 
 
 "Our voices will not disturb him here. Beloved, my 
 beloved. . . . " 
 
 He shuddered at her caress. The passion in her blood 
 shot like a fluid magnetism tingling into his own. 
 
 "We will talk of the future to-morrow," she whispered. 
 "To-morrow I will give you my answer. To-night oh 
 let me kiss you." 
 
 He drew her to his breast.
 
 214 Schonbrunn 
 
 "I am answered already, Amalie. There is neither past 
 nor future. This is the everlasting Now of God's desire 
 and God's dream, in you, in me. The rest is nothingness. " 
 
 "Dearest, dearest," she murmured, looking up at him. 
 "What hours we have lost days and weeks and months 
 torn from us; and if we had them all that all would be so 
 little. It has been like death. This morning for the first 
 time I saw the autumn woods. And look at my hands; I 
 have forgotten to care for them or for anything." 
 
 He kissed her finger tips one by one, lingering over the 
 exquisitely set nails. He kissed her wrists; he kissed her 
 arms to the hollow of the elbows. 
 
 "Beloved, " she said, "oh, my beloved, this is very heaven 
 of heaven, merely to breathe, merely to feel your touch; but 
 when you are not there I am no better than the sea-shell 
 that lies on the shore and waits for the tide to fill all its 
 winding and secret recesses. I am the shell; your coming 
 is the tide. . . . " 
 
 He interrupted her. 
 
 "No, no; let me speak," she pleaded. "When you are 
 not with me I have neither thoughts to utter nor feelings 
 to cry out, except suffering and ennui. Do you remember 
 that night at Semmering in the gardens?" 
 
 She alluded to one of those assignations when to their 
 rapt thought time was interrupted, and together they felt 
 the river of the worlds sweep through their trances. But the 
 river was God; and the sea towards which it hastened was 
 Being's annihilation. Her words were the utterance of a 
 woman's passions, but they were also the enfevered grati- 
 tude of a woman driven desperate by scepticism to her 
 deliverer, to the poet-visionary who had revealed to her a 
 new God a God in herself as in the worlds. 
 
 Her words, her accent, her burning caresses, were a trans- 
 port unendurable. This woman who bent over him, in- 
 toxicating him by the mist of odours from her hair, her
 
 A Viennese Supper Party 215 
 
 shoulders, her total person, this was no longer woman, but a 
 diviner, more ethereal substance, assuaging the world-soul's 
 thirst raging in his blood. Beauty herself in all its radiance 
 supernal was at this moment unmasked to his senses and to 
 his soul. 
 
 VI 
 
 A heavy sound broke in on their bliss-steeped dream. It 
 was like the fall of armour. Both started to their feet and 
 stood listening. 
 
 The sound was not repeated. 
 
 "It is nothing," Amalie said. "A servant closing a 
 door." 
 
 She drew him to her side again. 
 
 "Ah," she said hoarsely, "it was death, that moment; 
 living God's death, dying God's life. ..." 
 
 Her eyes smouldered. She locked and unlocked her 
 fingers into his. 
 
 " I cannot let you go, " she said again. " My whole being 
 thrills to you; every fibre aches for you. I cannot let you 
 go; every vein tingles for you. I cannot let you go. O 
 God, Heinrich, Heinrich. ..." 
 
 She flung herself down in prostrate abandonment. She 
 lay thus for many seconds. Then a frightful weeping con- 
 vulsed her. It was the everlasting parting. He knew it; 
 and in his own sombre brooding her grief was his God's 
 anguish for the beauty which He forever creates and for- 
 ever destroys. 
 
 " It must be past midnight, " he said at length. "When 
 ought you to be at the Rittersaal?" 
 
 His own emotion pierced through the quiet words. He 
 looked at the beautiful woman in self-abandoning grief and 
 passion; but in such intervals the soul which is most pros- 
 trate is the most exalted, highest, holiest.
 
 2i6 Schonbrunn 
 
 "I need not go at all." 
 
 There was a feverous energy in her voice, on her brow, 
 in her eyes the working of restless thought scheming the 
 prolongation of this spiritual anguish and bliss. 
 
 "Listen," she said eagerly, and she raised her head; but, 
 at the sight of his face, with a happy tormented sighing she 
 pressed her mouth repeatedly to his, speaking amid kisses 
 as amid falling roses. "There is a way. Yes; yes. For at 
 least two hours I need not be at the Rittersaal. The ball 
 will go on till five. Listen. Go into the hall, put on your 
 sword, and send Schwartz to order the carriage for one or 
 half past one. Then go to my room as though to fetch my 
 domino; but, by accident, leave your sword in my room. 
 You will then say good-night to padrino and to me; and, 
 closing the hall door loudly, go back to my room and wait 
 there." 
 
 She sprang to her feet. 
 
 "You wonder!" he muttered. But on her account not 
 quite at ease in his mind, he asked. "Who is the servant on 
 duty after midnight?" 
 
 " Patzsch's son. Fritz is still with the Landwehr. As for 
 the others. . . ." 
 
 A shrug completed her meaning. 
 
 The necessity for these precautions was at times humiliat- 
 ing; but, at that period, the caste system, more rigid in 
 Vienna than in any other city of Europe, made a man-ser- 
 vant hardly a man, and a woman a scarce emancipated 
 slave. 
 
 "Go! "she entreated. "Go!"
 
 CHAPTER VIII 
 NAPOLEON'S DREAM 
 
 IT was past midnight. 
 Not a breath stirred the trees in the gardens behind 
 Schonbrunn. The palace was in darkness. In front, to- 
 wards the left, the woods rose in black and winding masses, 
 motionless, profound. In the huge square a fountain flung 
 up the ghostly pallor of its waters, and even that fretful 
 sound, though low, appeared an intrusion in the stupendous 
 silence. The bivouac fires which twinkled at irregular in- 
 tervals north, east, south, and west, burned fitfully as dis- 
 tant sinking tapers, and, like the fountain, made intenser 
 this impression of the intrusiveness and transitoriness of 
 any motion, of any life. 
 
 Universal nature seemed entombed in her own first 
 thought. 
 
 Motionlessness, darkness, silence, immensity and away 
 to the eastward the glimmering flats of the Marchfeld, 
 where, amid the ruins of Austrian villages and homesteads, 
 the dust of those who had fallen at Aspern mingled with the 
 dust of those who, centuries ago, fell with Ottocar and with 
 Rudolf, with Kara Mustapha and Stahrenberg. 
 
 Seven or eight guests had dined with Napoleon. The 
 murderous attempt of that morning was by tacit consent 
 ignored. The Emperor was silent and preoccupied. Now 
 
 217
 
 218 Schonbrunn 
 
 and then, as a mark of regret or reconciliation, he pressed a 
 dish upon the Prince de Neuchatel. Once the conversation 
 fell on the incidents of the ride and on the encounter with the 
 two Greek priests. Rousing himself, the Emperor con- 
 demned the Austrian recruiting system, which, with a blunt 
 astuteness "thoroughly Austrian, " tore the blacksmith and 
 the carpenter rather than the ploughman and the labourer 
 from village and town. "And the folly of it! A Black- 
 smith can till a field or hold a plough but no labourer can 
 at once replace the carpenter at his bench or the blacksmith 
 at his forge. " On the other hand, he praised the Austrian 
 soldiers "the best in the world if they had leaders." 
 Rapp, with a touch of the bluff frankness which had ruined 
 his advancement, observed that the Emperor had already 
 said this of the Russians. 
 
 "You are always thinking of the Russians," Napoleon 
 said tartly. "You have never forgotten Austerlitz and the 
 Prince Repnin. " 
 
 No courier had arrived from Totis. Champagny in 
 Vienna was still closeted with Liechtenstein; and as the 
 evening proceeded the Emperor's uneasiness and irritability 
 increased, and his uneasiness communicated itself to his 
 immediate entourage and in some inscrutable way to the 
 entire household. Men who remembered the infernal ma- 
 chine and the conspiracy of Cadoudal averred that in those 
 days Napoleon had been calmer in 'a much more trying 
 ordeal. 
 
 "Not one of us is the man he was before this accursed 
 campaign," Hulin said that evening to Rapp. "Where is 
 it to end, and how? Every bayonet with a point is beyond 
 the Pyrenees. We have had to fight this entire campaign 
 with the guns. And Spain is Hell. Death, disease or cap- 
 ture is the choice, and always in the end death." And 
 continuing with a touch of Rousseauism common in the 
 Republican and Napoleonic armies, "We are hated in
 
 Napoleon's Dream 219 
 
 Vienna. Andre*ossy admits it. And we are hated in Ger- 
 many, and in Europe. What an unhappy fate for France! 
 Yesterday the Christ of nations; to-day the Judas; yester- 
 day the world's forlorn hope; to-day the world's execration. 
 You are a Frenchman as I am, Rapp. Was it for this the 
 Girondins walked to the Scaffold like hero-martyrs? Was 
 it for this we fought Valmy and Jemappes?" 
 
 At about half past eight before setting out for the Schloss 
 Theatre, Napoleon had again sent for Corvisart and for 
 Savary and questioned them separately and in private upon 
 their visits to the young Thuringian. 
 
 "I have broached many subjects with him," Corvisart 
 assured the Emperor, "but I can find no grounds for de- 
 claring him insane. He seems a lad of unusual culture and 
 earnestness. Upon every subject except one he converses 
 most reasonably." 
 
 "And that is?" 
 
 "His divine mission to kill yourself, Sire." 
 
 Napoleon looked intently at the shrewd grey features of 
 his physician. But again they betrayed nothing. 
 
 With Savary the interview had lasted longer. 
 
 Rough-mannered to his equals, overbearing or churlishly 
 condescending to his inferiors, taciturn in general society, 
 unable, it was said, to forget even in the most brilliant 
 assembly the haunting eyes of his victims, the Due de Ro- 
 vigo was, in his master's presence, invariably awkward, too 
 brusque or too subservient, using, or omitting to use, the 
 words "Sire" and "Majesty" with the maladroitness of a 
 man afraid of being suspected of republicanism, yet deter- 
 mined not to set an example of cringing. 
 
 " Does the assassin express no sorrow at leaving his family, 
 his friends, his sweetheart for ever? None for his own fate? " 
 Napoleon had enquired in a detached indifferent tone. 
 
 "He repents of nothing, regrets nothing," had been the 
 sullen answer.
 
 220 Schonbrunn 
 
 "He is young to die." 
 
 "He is old in his readiness, Sire." 
 
 "Yes, yes. I know these hotheads. A fast will tame his 
 spirit and bring him to his senses. Give him nothing for 
 twenty-four hours." 
 
 "Sire, he refuses to eat. " 
 
 "How? What do you say?" 
 
 "Your Majesty, he refuses most constantly, alleging 
 that he has eaten enough before he dies." 
 
 "It is a Roman answer, " Napoleon exclaimed after some 
 seconds' meditation; and with the word this interview too 
 had terminated. Attended by his suite, the Emperor had 
 then started for the theatre. 
 
 The piece, set up by Denon at the last moment, was Zin- 
 garelli's Romeo and Juliet. Originally, to celebrate the 
 peace that it was confidently expected would be signed that 
 morning, the Emperor had selected his old favourite, The 
 Triumph of Trajan, and Luce de Lanival's new piece, The 
 Death of Hector, which, though ridiculed as "a head- 
 quarters drama," he had himself rewarded, on its first 
 representation ten months ago, by a pension of ten thou- 
 sand livres. But the protracted negotiations had now 
 made both pieces appear inopportune; and after rejecting 
 all Denon's suggestions Napoleon had at last consented 
 to permit a Piedmontese singer recommended by Eugene 
 Beauharnais, the Viceroy of Italy, to appear before him as 
 Romeo. 
 
 When the curtain rose the Emperor had called Berthier's 
 attention to the small number of Viennese present. 
 
 "Are they in hiding? Or are they preparing another 
 coup, since the Thuringian's has failed?" 
 
 "No," the Prince de NeucMtel had answered. "It is 
 only the changed bill. The Viennese are exigent. They 
 cannot endure a debutant in a familiar piece. " 
 
 The young tenor, excited by the presence of Napoleon and
 
 Napoleon's Dream 221 
 
 his staff, had sung the part as though he were never to sing 
 again. Napoleon, though bored at first and apparently 
 asleep, had gradually begun to listen with a kind of painful 
 attention. Romeo's slim figure recalled Friedrich Staps's; 
 his voice in the duel with Tybalt had the same angry pathos 
 and the same ringing energy ; death was in that voice, death 
 yet unconquerable will. The famous lament by the tomb of 
 Juliet, one of Zingarelli's few inspirations, had moved him. 
 Had not a miniature been found on the youthful assassin? 
 Had not he too a mistress? 
 
 On his return from the theatre the Emperor had worked 
 for an hour and a half with MeneVal, dictating along with 
 other letters a private despatch, to start before midnight, 
 to Pouche", his minister of Police at Paris. It was the letter 
 in which, after altering the date from the i$th to the I2th 
 October, he insinuates Staps's madness, but in a postscript 
 as well as in the letter itself charges Fouch with the utmost 
 secrecy. An article in the Moniieur which gave an account 
 of the parade on the I3th was framed upon the instructions 
 that filled the remainder of the letter. The Emperor in that 
 article was said to be in exceptional health ; his long ride was 
 described and his conversation with the two Greek priests 
 narrated at length. The article was in the Due d'Otrante's 
 best style. It concluded: 
 
 " May all Frenchmen take advantage of the wisdom of our 
 gracious sovereign who, amid the dangers of a campaign, 
 has leisure to direct his mighty mind to the tobacco plan- 
 tations of England and the potato-cultivation of Lower 
 Austria." 
 
 If Staps had hoped by the price of his own blood to 
 purchase a glory like that of a Brutus or a Charlotte 
 Corday he would, Napoleon had resolved, be most cruelly 
 undeceived. 
 
 One of Napoleon's swiftest couriers had started with this 
 letter at about eleven.
 
 222 Schonbrunn 
 
 ii 
 
 Midnight had struck before Napoleon dismissed his secre- 
 tary and retired. 
 
 Alone in his room a reaction, sudden as that which as- 
 sailed him on the night of Ebersdorf, at once set in, and, 
 shattered as his nerves were by the events of the afternoon, 
 he had the less power to resist the onset. He was irritated 
 and astonished, for on retiring he had had no thought but of 
 sleep. He had been accustomed to treat sleep as if it were 
 one of his aides-de-camp, ready to obey orders; and sleep 
 had been a faithful satellite. On the 6th of July, at the bat- 
 tle of Wagram, Rustum had spread a bearskin on the ground 
 and he had snatched seventeen minutes profound slumber, 
 and risen with a joyous exultancy to give the order for 
 Macdonald's stupendous charge. 
 
 "To-night why the devil cannot I sleep to-night? Ah, 
 Liechtenstein, and no answer from Totis, and it is nine 
 hours since Nicas started. " 
 
 Instead of undressing, he flung himself down on a sofa 
 and began to think. 
 
 "The ambassadors will find me with my boots on," he 
 reflected grimly, and a momentary appeasement swept over 
 him. 
 
 The room, decorated in white and gold and pale blue, was, 
 except the adjoining cabinet, the only room in Schonbrunn 
 which had a fireplace. The others were heated with the 
 unsightly stoves universal in Austria. A small table had 
 been placed beside the sofa where Napoleon sat, and at 
 intervals he tapped on it with his fingers, nervously, yet in 
 rhythm, in a kind of tune. 
 
 But suddenly he got up, and with his hands behind his 
 back and his head sunk between his powerful shoulders be- 
 gan to walk up and down. He wore the same coat that he 
 had worn in the afternoon, but, instead of the star, the red
 
 Napoleon's Dream 223 
 
 ribbon of the Legion of Honour. He seemed lost in thought 
 yet every now and then he stopped and looked at some ob- 
 ject in the room, now at a medallion portrait of Maria 
 Theresa, now at a pastoral in the style of Fragonard, now 
 at a portrait of the Duke of Lorraine, Maria Theresa's big, 
 honest, good-natured, stupid consort, and close to it the 
 ironic countenance of Maximilian in Durer's marvellous 
 sketch; now at other pictures, or at other ornaments of 
 elegance or price. 
 
 "It is the Tugendbund, " he muttered brusquely. 
 
 The words expressed the net product of his aimless prowl- 
 ings about the room. For everything that he had ascer- 
 tained from Savary or from Corvisart of the young fanatic's 
 history his birth, his education, his ambitions, and the 
 scenes amid which he had lived went to confirm this one 
 theory beyond all the others that had hovered before 
 Napoleon's imagination during the interrogatory of that 
 afternoon. It was the Konigsberg patriots, not the Jesuits, 
 who this time had placed a dagger in the hands of this 
 youthful Ravaillac. 
 
 Always profoundly interested in history and in the effects 
 of the past upon the present, Napoleon had listened atten- 
 tively amidst his pomp and festivities at Erfurt to the 
 legends and facts of the region around. Thuringia was a 
 coagulated mass of German legend and German sentiment. 
 
 "How practical!" he exclaimed, fired into admiration of 
 an enemy. "How possible!" 
 
 For here in this Bond of Valour and sentiment of nation- 
 ality was the authentic antagonist of his own world-policy. 
 He strove to disintegrate nationality where it was strongest 
 in Germany in Prussia, for instance, in Suabia, in the 
 Rhine country and by the Elbe. The Tugendbund, on the 
 other hand, by its appeals to the heroic past, to Charle- 
 magne and Arminius, to the Ottonides and the Hohenstau- 
 fen, to Maximilian, to Luther, even to Wallenstein and to
 
 224 Schonbrunn 
 
 Frederick, strove to create national sentiment where no 
 national sentiment existed; to transform local patriotism 
 mto German patriotism by violent and instant action cal- 
 culated to strike the imagination, such as that of Schill, 
 Brunswick, Katt, and recently that of the Tyrolese. 
 
 "Brunswick and Schill have failed; I have the Tyrolese 
 in my grip," Napoleon reasoned, "but now the patriots 
 play a more desperate card. Do they seek in their madness 
 to give their cause a martyr? I will baulk them. " 
 
 Nevertheless he did not see very clearly how this "baulk- 
 ing" was to be done. Staps's retort, blurred at the time by 
 Bonaparte's preconceptions about England, stood out in 
 menacing significance, "If I fall, there are ten thousand 
 behind me to take my place." 
 
 The history of Corsica is the history of conspiracies, and 
 the theory that Staps had acted alone, that his appeal to 
 those behind him might merely spring from the boy's faith 
 that the ardour of others was like his own ardour, Napoleon 
 did not consider worth investigation. 
 
 "No; it is the Tugendbund." 
 
 An incident of the preceding winter now occurred to 
 Napoleon in corroboration of his own hypothesis. 
 
 "Why has a Jena succeeded a Rossbach?" ran one of the 
 pamphlets which in November Fouche had placed under his 
 eyes just as he was about to start for Spain. "Because the 
 army of Frederick has ceased to be a national army. French 
 patriotism can only be vanquished by German patriotism. 
 When we speak of love of country we must once more 
 accustom ourselves to the ideas of sacrifices and of death." 
 
 And the pamphlet had proceeded to comment indignantly 
 on the decay of German national sentiment. It derided 
 the cosmopolitanism of which German writers boasted. 
 Against the famous "cosmopolitans," Lessing, Herder, 
 Jacobi, and Goethe, it quoted from their own writings the 
 most dishonouring and dishonourable maxims, such as,
 
 Napoleon's Dream 225 
 
 "Of all forms of pride national pride is the most absurd." 
 Alcibiades' cynical apologia had, it alleged, been cited with 
 approbation by Lessing, "That is my country where it is 
 well with me." Euripides's nobler sentiment, lauded by 
 Jacobi, was also held up to mockery, 
 
 S.TTO.S fjxv aijj a-itrtf irepa<ri/>s 
 aTracra 5e yQuv avdpi yevvattp irarat 
 
 "To the eagle the universal air is open; 
 And to the freeman, the universal earth." 
 
 The pamphlet had concluded with a virulent diatribe against 
 Napoleon in person, "The betrayer of the princes in the 
 Confederation of the Rhine, the betrayer of Prussia; but, 
 indeed, whom has Napoleon not betrayed? What pledge 
 the most solemn did the Consul Bonaparte not violate? 
 What promise the most sacred has the Emperor Napoleon 
 ever fulfilled? Sardinia, Venice, Rome, Spain, victims in 
 turn of his black treachery these are the witnesses, these 
 are the accusers! In France itself Bonaparte has sworn 
 fidelity to every constitution and broken every oath thus 
 sworn. He has conspired against every constitution of his 
 country in turn and now conspires against the human race 
 itself, and, hell in his heart and chaos in his head, he rushes 
 on blindly to his own destruction or the havoc of a world. 
 
 Distrusting Fouche, Napoleon had caused an independent 
 translation to be made; he had discovered in Fouche"'s 
 version several discrepancies. Nothing had been inserted, 
 nothing omitted, but several phrases in the paragraphs 
 against himself had been envenomed. Here a word had 
 been transferred, there point had been given to an epithet 
 and epigrammatic force to the straggling German periods 
 of the original. This he attributed to Talleyrand, for 
 Fouche"'s own style was cloudy and prolix. 
 
 In Germany, the response to the fiery summons had been 
 instantaneous. The thrill, the expectancy of a new life, a 
 is
 
 226 Schonbrunn 
 
 new future, had passed from end to end of the Fatherland. 
 The old, the young, all that was free, all that was noble, had 
 uprisen around Schill or followed his enterprise with beating 
 hearts. Women had caught the infection. At Magdeburg 
 they had exchanged their trinkets of gold and silver for 
 those of iron and steel. Amongst the dead after Schill 's 
 last stand lay a young trooper; but when the helmet was 
 removed a mass of tresses had rolled out covering the dead 
 warrior's shoulders. It was a woman. The centuries were 
 grey, but in 1809, when all literary Germany was studying 
 the recently discovered Nibelungenlied, the heroines of Ari- 
 osto and Tasso were being imitated beside the Elbe. 
 
 Such was the pamphlet, such the ideas, the memories, 
 the voices that to-night at Schonbrunn in the palace of the 
 Habsburgs assailed Napoleon ; and as the testimony of their 
 import, the dagger of that morning lay in a cabinet against 
 the wall. 
 
 "Restoration of religion?" he reflected savagely. "The 
 league of virtue ... a nation's bond of valour . . . 
 by my murder? En verite, a nation of ideologues, madmen, 
 and dreamers, these Germans!" And half aloud in his 
 excitement he cried, "If Davout had but caught Stein at 
 Brunn! But, general or marshal, they are always late." 
 
 At Brunn, sixty miles north of Vienna, the great exile, 
 crossing the snowy ravines of the Riesengebirge in a sledge 
 in the wintry darkness, had in the beginning of the year, 
 found refuge. There, in frequent communication with 
 Stadion and the Emperor Francis, he had lived during the 
 campaign so fatal to Austria and to the nascent hopes of 
 German patriotism and German nationality. In July, the 
 Third Corps under Davout was on him; but, warned of 
 danger, the exile had escaped to Troppau just in time ; for 
 had Davout found him at Brxinn his fate would have been 
 the fate of Schill and of Palm. 
 
 But Napoleon never wasted mind-force upon what might
 
 Napoleon's Dream 227 
 
 have been. The "is" was absorbing enough. He stopped 
 by a window, and stood staring into the blackness. The 
 panes, backed by the inky darkness of the moonless night, 
 reflected his own face like a mirror of polished ebony. 
 
 "To-morrow it is peace or war, and to-morrow is already 
 to-day. " 
 
 With lightning rapidity he ran over in imagination the 
 armies at his command at Gratz, Linz, Brunn, around 
 Vienna itself, and in his rear, stretching from the mouth of 
 the Scheldt to the headwaters of the Danube and the Rhine. 
 
 "They date my greatness from Toulon. Bah, I have to 
 recommence my fate every hour. Every day is with me an 
 1 8th Brumaire. But I shall set out for Paris to-morrow 
 night." 
 
 He yawned; he felt sleep invading him now; but instead of 
 undressing, he once more threw himself on the sofa. 
 
 A singular lucidity was all about his mind. The body 
 seemed to rest only to permit the intellect to perform its 
 functions the more perfectly. He did not close his eyes, 
 knowing from experience how useless in such moments of 
 insomnia that device had proved. Annoyed at last by the 
 light in the room, he got up and walked rapidly to the door. 
 Rustum was on guard, but sound asleep. Napoleon looked at 
 the round fat features of the Mameluke. They had a cer- 
 tain resemblance to his own as seen in the hollow of a spoon, 
 and expressed so thorough a self-content that it became con- 
 tagious and he smiled. 
 
 "Yet what a life has been Rustum's. Well-born, yet a 
 slave since childhood; his mother, his sisters, made slaves 
 also by the same evil chance there he lies, the happiest man, 
 the soundest sleeper in my army, enjoying everything, dis- 
 turbed by nothing. " 
 
 He dropped the portiere, and attempted himself to reach 
 the candelabra. It was too high for his short legs, but get- 
 ting on a chair he blew out three of the lights, leaving only
 
 228 Sch6nbrunn 
 
 one burning. As he got down the branch of the candelabra 
 by which he had steadied himself snapped in his hand. 
 
 Napoleon nearly lost his balance and might have had a 
 bad fall. Enraged at the contretemps, he was about to 
 smash the candelabra; but he turned away with a shrug. 
 
 "False," he muttered, "a sham, like everything else in 
 Vienna and like everything else in Germany sham patriot- 
 ism, sham agriculture, sham fortifications." 
 
 The bedroom had in the preceding summer been occupied 
 by one of the archduchesses, and had been refurnished in 
 the French style, but instead of the real bronzes of Versailles 
 an imitation inwood had been substituted, to save expense 
 and perhaps- also to encourage the Viennese world by royal 
 example to patronize the Tyrol, where the peasants of the 
 Grunerwald manufactured those imitations with amazing 
 skill from the wood of the Siberian pine, a tree that grows 
 only on the edge of the glacier. 
 
 The accident gave a new direction to Napoleon's thoughts. 
 The owner of four magnificent and richly upholstered pal- 
 aces, full of priceless works of art, the plunder of three 
 nations, he experienced for this grandiose poverty of Schon- 
 brunn a plutocratic contempt almost like that of a wealthy 
 visitor who has broken a gim-crack ornament in a sea-side 
 lodging. The rooms were multitudinous but small; the 
 rococo and Chinese decorations faded; the pictures bad; and 
 then, the incredible barbarity of those statues used to heat 
 the grand staircase ! 
 
 "It is I, the successor of Charlemagne, it is I who have to 
 show even kings how to be kings, and emperors how to keep 
 house." 
 
 But to-night he could not keep up his blague. To-night 
 Schonbrunn seemed haunted. The very name " The Gru- 
 nerwald " had an ominous sound. There in February last a 
 French division under Lefebvre had laid down its arms to the 
 Tyrolese. And now in the stillness of this dreary hour he
 
 Napoleon's Dream 229 
 
 seemed to hear voices about him and the sound as of ghostly 
 laughter. He could distinguish the very voices Met- 
 ternich, Bubna, Schwartzenberg, Liechtenstein, Stadion, 
 Francis himself: 
 
 "Bonaparte the successor of Charlemagne? Ha! Ha! 
 Ha! Bonaparte to instruct the Habsburg princes in elegance! 
 Bonaparte! Ha! Ha! Ha!" 
 
 It was fancy, but it was a singular and disconcerting 
 fancy, for it compelled him, here in the palace of the Habs- 
 burgs, to remember the line of provincial attorneys or 
 poverty-stricken officials from whom he himself was sprung. 
 
 " Men are ruled by toys ! I would not say that before the 
 mob, but in a council of wise men one may speak the truth." 
 
 It was his own voice speaking in the Council, defending 
 his creation of dues, comtes, peers, the Legion of Honour 
 and the memory tranquillized him. 
 
 "Bah, " he reflected, "if birth gave men brains or women 
 beauty . . . but though the Habsburgs are fertile as 
 rabbits, they have produced in three hundred years only 
 one woman of sovereign beauty and only two men above 
 mediocrity Charles V. and the Archduke, my rival." 
 
 He stretched himself on the sofa, and putting one foot 
 on a brocaded chair of grey and gold, he closed his eyes and 
 deliberately composed himself to sleep. 
 
 The fire was sinking. The ashes of the huge log rustled. 
 The unburnt remainder would smoulder on for an hour or 
 two, he thought, and of their own accord his eyes now 
 closed. In his favourite phrase, "he had shut all the 
 drawers of the cabinet of his thoughts. " 
 
 Nevertheless, he was conscious of the tremendous silence 
 and of the objects in the room, amid which the high-bred 
 ironic features of the great Maximilian loomed portentous. 
 Once he opened his eyes, but with a frown that left a fold 
 above his eyebrows, he instantly closed them again. 
 
 It was sleep at last, profound, dreamless as the sleep that
 
 230 Schonbrunn 
 
 he had known amid the cannonade of Wagram. He lost 
 all .sense of time. Hours might have passed or days or 
 merely seconds. 
 
 in 
 
 All at once he was wide awake, or seemed to be awake 
 and it was a ghastly awakening. His heart was beating 
 faintly as though each throb were to be its last, and from 
 head to foot he felt torpid, icy cold, and oppressed by an 
 immense dread. 
 
 Yet for several seconds he did not stir, endeavouring to 
 find the causes of these sensations. Had he eaten to ex- 
 cess? He had eaten his usual dinner, drunk the single 
 glass of wine that he permitted himself daily, and to conquer 
 his fatigue before setting out for the theatre he had drunk 
 a cup of coffee. 
 
 "Ah, it is that seizure this afternoon tha same effects 
 as in August"; he concluded. "I might have anticipated 
 this. " 
 
 He struggled to get up, but almost instantly an exclama- 
 tion of surprise escaped him. Right in front between him 
 and the wall to the right of the fireplace, though he could not 
 explain how a human body could stand thus and stand there, 
 he saw the figure of a boy, blonde-haired and blue-eyed, 
 with a face of great softness and charm. It was his would- 
 be assassin, Friedrich Staps, now sleeping his last sleep, 
 if he slept, in the Leopold Bastion hard by the arsenal. 
 Napoleon surveyed his visitor with curiosity, attracted, as 
 always, by intrepedity. 
 
 "For what has he come here?" 
 
 He felt none of the horror, at least consciously, that Staps 
 had evoked in him that afternoon. 
 
 But a second visitor now stood beside the first not less 
 boyish in appearance, and dressed in much the same fashion ; 
 but in every other respect widely different; for this was a
 
 Napoleon's Dream 231 
 
 dark-complexioned youth, the face a long oval, the eye dis- 
 turbing in its restless hawk-like scrutiny, the figure erect, 
 and face and figure alike fascinating and troubling in the 
 extreme. 
 
 As the two boys, their hands clasped in friendship, thus 
 stood confronting him, Napoleon's attention fixed itself 
 upon the second. 
 
 "Tiens!" he said suddenly. "How curious! It is my- 
 self as I was, long ago. What the devil am I doing here? " 
 
 It was grotesquely impossible. 
 
 But in an instant he was in Corsica. It was summer. 
 The exquisite fragrance of the wild flowers, abundant in the 
 valleys and even in the gorges, was all about him, a fra- 
 grance he had never forgotten and on Sainte He*lene was 
 still to remember. 
 
 " Ah, I recollect. Stay a moment, ' ' he said to his visitors. 
 "We should understand each other stay." 
 
 He walked rapidly to an escritoire and unlocking a drawer, 
 then a secret inner drawer, took out a small thin book. In 
 places it was interleaved. The margins also were covered 
 with his own handwriting, a very marked but still legible 
 hand, with rapid and frequent changes, as though it varied 
 with the tension or relaxation of his mind. He turned the 
 pages hurriedly and stopped at the following words: 
 
 "What a frightful hour is this in my country's history! 
 A nation of twenty-five millions pours itself in a torrent of 
 ruin on its smiling shores. France! Woe to thee, France, 
 thou nation of slaves and despots! Ah, if the oppressors of 
 my land had but one breast, with what joy, with what ar- 
 dour would not I plunge my dagger into that bosom. ..." 
 
 Yes, he himself, he himself at eighteen, exactly as he now 
 stood there hand in hand with Friedrich Staps, he had writ- 
 ten those words, and in every tingling nerve he had felt the 
 resolution which still burned in those words. 
 
 He turned joyously to the two figures ; the dazzling wine
 
 232 Schdnbrunn 
 
 of youth and the fervour of his own heroic enthusiasms leapt 
 and glowed in his veins. 
 
 "What? It is for this you have come? I remember! 
 That dream of liberty! A dead tyrant is the noblest sacri- 
 fice we can offer to the gods! Let us sit down and talk 
 together, you and I. Soyons amis, Cinna!" 
 
 In the bizarre chaos of a dream Bonaparte had mixed his 
 manhood's favourite passage from Corneille with his naive 
 delight at meeting his own boyhood again. And embracing 
 in his invitation the Habsburg portraits on the wall : 
 
 "Tyrants and tyrannicides, let us sit and confer together." 
 
 But as if in anger at this levity, or as if their mission were 
 fulfilled, the two spectral visitants seemed to recede and 
 to dissolve before his eyes, and in a second a kind of spectral 
 light alone was left to betray where they had stood. 
 
 A profound dejection seized Napoleon; and with a sicken- 
 ing presage about the heart he turned to the pages in his 
 hand and not in joy now but like one who longs yet fears to 
 disturb the sanctuaried majesty of death, he read on. And 
 on an interleaved fragment the words sprang up before him, 
 "Man, man, enslaved howthou art degraded; but how 
 noble when fired by the ardour for freedom! Forgive me, 
 forgive me, O God, but everywhere on this earth suffering 
 and sorrow are the lot of the just man ; yet the just man is 
 Thy image. " 
 
 It was his prayer at nineteen, his, there in Corsica, there 
 in his native land, not twenty years ago. To-night that 
 same prayer must have been this young Thuringian's 
 before he stretched himself on his plank bed for his last 
 sleep. And on the same page, aureoled in glory as he him- 
 self had written them then and as his prisoner had spoken 
 them that afternoon, he saw the names of Tell, Brutus, 
 Miltiades, Regulus. 
 
 "Prodigious contradiction! Then and now! What a 
 tragedy! " he said, without knowing exactly what he meant.
 
 Napoleon's Dream 233 
 
 And swift as falling leaves other passages in his own 
 hand-writing confronted him portraits of tyrants side 
 by side with portraits of traitors. Now it was his terrible 
 denunciation of Buttafuoco, the betrayer of Paoli. "From 
 Bonifacio to the Corsican cape, from Ajaccio to Bastia, 
 there is but one voice and that voice is raised to curse your 
 name. Your friends conceal themselves; your kindred dis- 
 own you; in this hour even the prudent man is swept on 
 headlong in this torrent of indignation. What are your 
 crimes? Let me unfold them to you. ..." 
 
 The sentences which followed were sometimes awkward 
 but it was the awkwardness of the young gerfalcon which 
 has not yet felt the azure. The sentiment was audacious or 
 inflated, but its burning sincerity could not be questioned, 
 and Napoleon felt the perspiration burst on his brow as he 
 read on, and guaged the emotion raging in Staps and in 
 thousands of young Germans by the emotion which had 
 raged in himself when he wrote, "I see but the phantom 
 dagger: I hear in my sleep but the tyrant's death-cry." 
 
 For Corsica substitute Europe, for a rock flung like a 
 torn spear-head far into the Mediterranean substitute a 
 continent, and was not this the wrath and hate and 
 scorn which he himself inspired in every breast still cap- 
 able of the love of country, still capable of the love of 
 freedom? 
 
 He in his youth must have been obsessed with this ardour 
 and with this despair. "Will no one," ran one passage, 
 "be found with valour enough to leave his poignard in the 
 heart of the oppressor?" "The gods spare the tyrant," 
 ran another, "Heaven's lightning does not smite him, but 
 it is to leave him to the sword of the just man." "A ty- 
 rant," he read again, "is the noblest sacrifice we can offer 
 on the altar of freedom. " And the portrait of the tyrant 
 thus delineated by himself at eighteen was the portrait of 
 himself at forty, that portrait as it was now outlined,
 
 234 Schonbrunn 
 
 clumsily or incisively, in every pamphlet or brochure of the 
 Tugendbund. 
 
 ' Napoleon read no more; but thrusting aside the book he 
 turned as though about to address his phantom visitors; 
 but there was not a trace of their presence. Even the 
 spectral radiance had vanished and the only light in the room 
 was that of the solitary guttering candle in the candelabra. 
 
 "Yes, yes, " he mused. "It was so. It was so. In my 
 youth I thought these things." 
 
 A horrible strangling emotion came over him, grief the 
 lost enthusiasms of youth, man's hopes an emotion that 
 should have been tears but was only a sterile attempt at 
 tears, a sorrow profound, immense, and tender as that which 
 still invaded him when in the distance he heard in the twi- 
 light the bells for vespers and thought of Corsica. 
 
 Suddenly he was speaking to Josephine, then to Berthier, 
 then to Corvisart, then to Duroc in clamorous, earnest 
 protest, and a paralysing, a conscious horror had gripped 
 him by the brain, had gripped him by the heart. It was the 
 terror which he had felt after he had pointed to the star 
 that afternoon. It was the terror of madness, and with 
 it the distinct ghastly certainty that if he remained alone 
 for ten seconds longer his brain would burst and he would 
 drop to the floor a gibbering maniac. 
 
 Decisive always, Napoleon, by a frightful effort of will, 
 broke through his torpor and stood on his feet. The dream- 
 reality and the real dream had alike vanished. He was 
 broad awake now, but his hands still trembled and the icy 
 horror lay all about his heart. Rushing to the portiere, he 
 stood for a second over his sleeping valet. 
 
 " Rustum ! " he called out sharply in an unnatural, strained 
 voice, high-pitched and shrill. "Rustum!" 
 
 The Mameluke slept the sleep of the camel-driver, who in 
 Syria can only be roused by thumping his head on a stone. 
 And Napoleon raised his spurred heel as though to waken
 
 Napoleon's Dream 235 
 
 him in that savage fashion, conspicuously kind though he 
 always was to his servants. The Mameluke, however, 
 opening his eyes, stood up smiling, confronting his master. 
 But at the fearful expression on Napoleon's countenance 
 the smile was struck dead. 
 
 "Call Corvisart. No, stay, call the due de Friuli. But 
 light more candles. Quick, you imbecile! What do you 
 stand staring at?" 
 
 "Me sleep, your Majesty," Rustum said in a frightened 
 voice, as he passed with a taper from sconce to sconce. 
 
 "To whom do you tell that? Do I not know it? No; 
 not Corvisart. Send the due de Friuli here." 
 
 He examined the escritoire. The key had not been in the 
 lock. He glanced at the fireplace. The log had tilted for- 
 ward a little, but from the shape of the embers the whole 
 occurrence could not have lasted many minutes. 
 
 IV 
 
 Some minutes later, when Duroc in the uniform of the 
 cuirassiers of the Guard entered, Napoleon was walking 
 from corner to corner of the room, now gesticulating, now 
 muttering to himself, now taking pinches of snuff one after 
 the other, and sneezing violently and repeatedly. 
 
 Duroc was a good-looking man of seven and thirty. His 
 manner was grave; his distinction of bearing very marked. 
 Like Davout, he sprang from the noblesse; but the latter, 
 a Burgundian, affected a harsh and surly bearing, whilst 
 an Auvergnat, expressed in his voice and in his gestures a 
 conscious refinement and polish. But, courtier or con- 
 fident, Duroc had never ceased to be a soldier, and at this 
 moment he looked a soldier every inch of him, for he had 
 interpreted the summons as a summons to a council of war, 
 assembled at this untimely hour to deliberate upon Aus- 
 tria's rejection of the ultimatum.
 
 236 Schonbrunn 
 
 The first glance at Napoleon undeceived him. It filled 
 him, however, with anxieties of another sort; for his affec- 
 tion for the Emperor, as we have seen, was deep and 
 personal, and Corvisart after the Opera had spoken to him 
 in private of the seizure of that afternoon and its possible 
 consequences. 
 
 "The Emperor must have a change, and that quickly," 
 the physician had declared, "and he ought to have plenty 
 of sleep. He should not have gone to the theatre to-night 
 nor worked with Me'ne'val afterwards. He laughs at my 
 warnings; he may listen to you." 
 
 And Corvisart had stated his diagnosis of the Emperor's 
 condition, using the terminology of the period, the psychol- 
 ogy of Condillac which divides the body into separate 
 temperaments nerveux, bilieux, etc.; and the mind into 
 separate faculties will, imagination, judgment, feeling, 
 appetites, etc. 
 
 "Until now the Emperor's imagination has been con- 
 trolled by his will; but if once his imagination throws 
 off that will, mighty as it is well, you saw him this 
 afternoon." 
 
 It was, therefore, with a sickening sense of alarm that 
 Duroc found the Emperor still fully dressed and evidently 
 in a state of febrile agitation. The cause he could not 
 even surmise, and Napoleon left him scant leisure for 
 conjecturings. 
 
 "I am making the world better," he said, sweeping Duroc 
 at once into the vortex of his ideas. "I am making the 
 world better," he repeated, as though to drive a text into 
 the mind of an auditor. "How could I toil thus, or live an 
 hour of such a life as mine, if I had not that belief? Think 
 of my work ! In France I put down the Terror, the greatest 
 act of vengeance and beneficent justice ever carried out by a 
 single mind. This even my enemies admit. I restored 
 religion. I made Paris the capital of a new civilization.
 
 Napoleon's Dream 237 
 
 adorned her with magnificent buildings, rilled her with 
 treasures and works of art. Commerce thrives, and after 
 giving France the greatest law system since Justinian's, I 
 have this very year thrown the Sorbonne's lumber of medi- 
 aevalism into the dust-heap and given France the Univer- 
 sity. But they complain I have made France a barracks, 
 gagged the press, and silenced the tribune. Ringed in by 
 sleepless hate, mined in every province by conspiracy, how 
 else was France to be saved ? And by my creation of a new 
 military State I have re-vitalized the discredited ideas of 
 authority, kingship, and empire. Thus I have saved the 
 Revolution and imposed respect upon its adversaries. 
 And for Europe what designs I had, what plans! In 
 Spain I have abolished torture and put down the Inquisi- 
 tion, and made hordes of lazy friars tillers of the ground. 
 In Italy Milan is free and Florence is rising from her ashes. 
 At Campo Formio I lanced the abscess of which Venice was 
 dying. I have exterminated the brigands of the Campagna 
 and Calabria. I united Sicily to Naples, its geographical 
 and historical complement. But the Papacy? The Pa- 
 pacy is still as in the days of the Borgias, the stone thrust 
 into Italy's side to keep the wound open; but I am deter- 
 mined to pluck out that stone. If Pius VII. will not act 
 like a man of sense he must be treated like any other danger- 
 ous fool. But what a task is Rome itself! I can drain the 
 Pontine marshes, but to give an heroic or even a reasonable 
 soul to that Roman rabble that I cannot do. ... Ger- 
 many owes me not less than Sicily, Italy, and Spain owe me. 
 You talk, you others, of the fall of the Bastille. ..." 
 
 Napoleon seemed to be addressing Hulin, Augereau, and 
 the Jacobins, and he waited for three seconds as though 
 expecting some answer from these invisible listeners. He 
 went on with a rush: 
 
 "The fall of the Bastille? Germany was covered with 
 Bastilles. I gave Germany my Code, and on the day I flung
 
 238 Schonbrunn 
 
 open her law-courts a thousand Bastilles fell. I would have 
 done as much for England. There I would have established 
 a republic; given Ireland a constitution, Scotland her 
 ancient kings, and revivified English jurisprudence by my 
 Code." 
 
 Duroc did not blench. His ignorance of England, of 
 English history and institutions was colossal as his master's. 
 
 "And yet they seek to murder me!" Napoleon ex- 
 claimed. "England, Rome, Italy, Austria, Prussia, five 
 leagued assassins, hunt me down! Ah, Duroc, if my murder 
 could but set Europe free or realize the benefits I would have 
 bestowed on mankind, how willingly would not I offer my 
 breast to their poignards! And had that dagger reached 
 my heart this morning, dying, I could without blasphemy 
 have uttered the prayer of Jesus, 'Father, forgive them, 
 for they know not what they do. ' " 
 
 The sentiment did not strike Duroc as either forced or 
 false. He was accustomed to sudden displayals of this 
 trait in Napoleon's character. He was puzzled, however, 
 to account for the manifestations of such feeling to-night 
 and at this hour for, on retiring, the Emperor had shown 
 not a trace of such a frame of mind. 
 
 "Your enemies," he said rather formally, "will have to 
 force a way through many devoted breasts before their 
 daggers reach yours, Sire." 
 
 Napoleon seized the word. 
 
 "My enemies? But who are now my enemies? It is 
 the peoples; it is the oppressed whose miseries I wished 
 to alleviate. It is the down-trodden whom I wish to up- 
 raise. Everywhere it is the same story in the Tyrol, in 
 Catalonia, in the Illyrian provinces, and in Portugal, Hun- 
 gary, and Poland, and throughout Germany from the 
 Oder to the Rhine, the slaves I would have set free lift 
 their manacled hands and with a curse dash them in the 
 face of their liberator. And why, mon Dieu, and why?
 
 Napoleon's Dream 239 
 
 The coalized kings I could have resisted, their allied govern- 
 ments I could one by one have subdued; but the coalized 
 peoples how am I, how is France to make war upon the 
 peoples? And that boy this morning, Duroc, that miserable, 
 that fanatic, he came as their emissary, blind, armed with a 
 blinded people's mandate!" 
 
 "Your Majesty ..." Duroc expostulated; but with a 
 gesture of denunciatory fury Napoleon went from the event 
 straight to its cause. 
 
 ' ' And the perverters 01 the peoples ? They are the priests 
 forged with English gold, and amongst the peoples them- 
 selves, it is superstition, bigotry, it is ignorance fed year by 
 year with English lies. And how successful! In Spain, in 
 the streets, by yelling monks and priests, and in the hiding 
 places of the guerillas by countless pamphlets, I am pro- 
 claimed as Anti-christ, Satanias. They make puns on my 
 name, Napoleon, Appolyon, Hell's agent. The deluded 
 rabble believe, and with such priests and such peasantry do 
 your noble English fight side by side! In the Tyrol, the 
 emigre* Chastelar, on whose estates men ate grass, is a hero, 
 and the capuchin Haspinger and the innkeeper Hofer 
 complete the triumvirate; and, by God, not three weeks 
 ago, this noble peasant and this exemplary priest would 
 have shot dead my envoy, violating the most rudimentary 
 principles of war, had not a train of artillery hovered into 
 sight with matches lighted!" 
 
 "Chastelar, not Hofer, was the instigator," Duroc said 
 reassuringly. "Your Majesty rewarded his intended 
 victim." 
 
 Napoleon made a gesture of impatience. 
 
 "And of what is it they complain, these Tyrolese? What 
 is it to those herdsmen, farmers, wood-carvers, and shop- 
 keepers, whether they pay their taxes at Munich or Vienna ? 
 I rescue them as I rescued Pavia, Verona, Milan, and Padua 
 from the Austrian bureaucrats ; I take them into my system ;
 
 240 Schonbrunn 
 
 they are permitted to serve in my armies ; I give them laws, 
 religious tolerance, enlightenment ; they share the glories of 
 the French arms, and merit this, for they are brave. Yet 
 they rise up against me, preferring to my freedom their 
 hereditary bondage to Austria!" 
 
 With a sudden gleam in his eyes, as though aware of the 
 irony implicit in the concluding phrase, Napoleon turned 
 aside with the sardonic comment: 
 
 " It is encouraging, all this, is it not, and gratifying to the 
 world-emancipator? Men talk of the wrongs of the op- 
 pressed; let us talk a little of the wrongs of the tyrant, if I 
 am a type of the oppressor! But I have aimed too high. 
 To a superstitious race, you can bring enlightenment; 
 and to a misgoverned people, justice ; but freedom, national 
 independence! That is the one gift you never can bestow 
 upon a nation. That can be won only where Leonidas and 
 Themistocles won it the field of glory. The greatest 
 wrong I could do to the Tyrolese, the greatest wrong I could 
 do the Spaniards, would be to withdraw my armies. " 
 
 He offered Duroc his snuff box, and when the latter 
 coughed for the passages in Schonbrunn are cold and 
 Duroc had just risen from a comfortable bed Napoleon 
 made him stand by the fire, whilst he himself, his hands 
 twisting and untwisting behind his back, resumed his 
 monotonous pacing of the floor. 
 
 His next words came from a region of ideas into which 
 Duroc could not penetrate. 
 
 "Why do men trust so confidently," Napoleon began in 
 a low and melancholy voice, "that posterity in its judg- 
 ments will be wiser than our contemporaries? History can 
 only be corrected by itself, and history, most of it, is ca- 
 lumny, voluntary or involuntary. More lies are told hourly
 
 Napoleon's Dream 241 
 
 from want of intelligence than from deceit. How few have 
 the seeing eye, the understanding heart ! Look at the story 
 of the Caesars. How do we know that Tacitus was not a 
 pedant, a cuistre, and Tiberius a magnanimous ruler? The 
 latter's countenance is a countenance worn by much anger 
 and pain. Yet who seeks to pierce behind the paragraphs 
 of the Annals ? And in modern times what murderous 
 facilities for calumny has not man invented! And these, 
 these my enemies have employed against me. What have 
 they not said? What have they not made the peoples 
 believe of me? This morning was a proof of their success. 
 What did that hot-head say? Ten thousand daggers in the 
 hands of ten thousand fanatics like himself all pointed 
 against one man's breast!" 
 
 The mask of calm was preserved; but as Napoleon pro- 
 ceeded the concentrated trembling intensity of his words 
 seemed to shake the walls and, vibrating in the nocturnal 
 stillnesses, to die away only in the most distant rooms of the 
 palace. 
 
 "Never a day's, never an instant's respite in the war of 
 lies, besmirching my government, my ministers, my mar- 
 shals, my soldiers, my family, my brothers, my wife, my 
 sisters. The lie! It is still the' instinctive weapon of the 
 vile, and it has still been England's weapon against me! I 
 am at her mercy. Her putrid eyes have discovered my 
 weakness; for I and my government are one. Who strikes 
 at me strikes at France. She herself is immune, and, 
 coward-like, how the hypocrite nation has used her advan- 
 tages: Ten years since Egypt ten years of truceless 
 obloquy, lies and still more lies ! Not a day on which they 
 have not gone forth from England like flies from a carrion 
 by the road, accusing me of secret murders, unnameable 
 actions, incests, perjuries, fratricidal rage yes, great God, 
 if I were a spirit from the foulest stye in Hell it would 
 dishonour for ages the greatest nation on earth to say of me 
 
 16
 
 242 Schonbrunn 
 
 the things that England says ! Why, to-night, at this dead 
 hour, you can almost hear her printing-presses groaning 
 in labour with the hell-brood that to-morrow shall be 
 scattered to every capital in Europe Paris, Berlin, Peters- 
 burg, Stockholm, Dresden, Rome, Seville, Madrid and here 
 in Vienna itself ; yes, here in Schonbrunn." 
 
 There now came a sudden look of devilry into Napoleon's 
 face, a glint as of lightning into his eyes, and on his lips 
 quivered a fugitive mocking smile. 
 
 "And at Schonbrunn, Duroc? My servants are loyal, 
 tried, faithful; how comes it that every act I perform and 
 every word I say is known in London ten hours afterwards ? 
 Tell me, Monsieur le due de Friuli. " 
 
 But before Duroc could formulate a syllable, a thunderous 
 look replaced the smile, and making his spurred heel ring 
 on the floor Bonaparte exclaimed with extraordinary 
 energy : 
 
 "Make peace with England? I will never make peace 
 with England until I have brought on her a humiliation 
 greater than the humiliation of Prussia, or until I myself 
 am dead in battle or like Bajazet, chained not in a Mongol 
 cage but in a fouler dungeon an English prison-ship!" 
 
 Then, with marvellous skill, adapting to his mood the in- 
 cidents of his dream, at once justifying himself and pillory- 
 ing his enemy, he said in a singular voice: 
 
 "I began my life as a hater of tyranny. The death of 
 tyrants was the meditation of my boyhood. I have lived 
 and shall die a hater of tyranny; but the tyranny against 
 which in my manhood I wage ruthless war is more repulsive 
 than any which seared my youth. It is the world-tyrant, 
 England that nightmare power which throttles genius or 
 superior thought wherever it dares lift its head. 'England ! ' 
 the name is wormwood to me!" 
 
 He stood with working brow, silent. 
 
 "This globe is the fief of England! It corrodes my very
 
 Napoleon's Dream 243 
 
 soul, Duroc. Men do not think; they will not understand. 
 Assyria's harryings of her subject provinces, Rome's calcu- 
 lated cruelties, are less abhorrent than this hypocrite empire. 
 Where is it to end? In a little while on this planet itself, 
 no freeman will have an inch of earth on which he can stand 
 without asking permission in English ! I tell you, it cor- 
 rodes my very soul. If I fall, I shall fall in one of the 
 greatest causes humanity has undertaken, earth's last stand, 
 this earth's supreme effort to bring England down! 1 ' 
 
 Duroc, uncertain whether he was listening to the outlines 
 of a new war, of a resumption of the Boulogne enterprise 
 now that peace with Austria was secure, or whether it was 
 merely Napoleon's exasperation, seeing England behind 
 the Tugendbund and the dagger of Staps as he saw England 
 behind the revolt in Spain and the Tyrol, became infected 
 by Napoleon's emotion. 
 
 "Bring England down, Sire! Your Majesty is on the 
 very brink of success! Your blockade is already sapping 
 her strength; wages have everywhere fallen, prices every- 
 where risen ; already her rich men are discontented, the mid- 
 dle sort impoverished, the poor starving ; and discontented, 
 starving, and impoverished men are ever ready to rebel. 
 Why, your Majesty, there are already reports of rioting in 
 Lancashire ! Seven English banks have failed since August ; 
 her navy is mutinous; she has had to open her prisons to 
 get volunteers for the Peninsula, yet this year's harvests 
 rot in the fields!" 
 
 Duroc stopped, waiting to see the effect of his words. 
 
 But a change had taken place in Napoleon. The mag- 
 netic energy had forsaken him. Plunged in gloomy abstrac- 
 tion he seemed to listen yet not to hear. And indeed his 
 minister's arguments were calculated to depress rather than 
 to inflate the Emperor's pride. Napoleon had an instinct 
 for fact. He had gauged the resources of England. The 
 "starvation" war, le blocus, had lasted three years and in
 
 244 Schonbrunn 
 
 the English line he perceived not a trace of yieldingness. 
 Duroc's picture of impoverishment and discontent might or 
 might not be accurate of the British Isles; it was irrefutably 
 and damnably true of France. Twice a day his courier 
 from Paris added fresh hues to that picture. 
 
 "England on her knees ! " It was an insult to his reason ; 
 nevertheless he did not contradict his minister. Faith is 
 power, and faith is contagious ; Duroc's might communicate 
 itself to others. 
 
 ' ' My right wing from the Scheldt to the Oder and along the 
 Baltic to the Neva is now secure, solid as adamant. Prus- 
 sia and the Czar are my firm allies. To Spain, my left wing, 
 I will send Massena to-morrow to hold Wellington in check 
 or overwhelm him at Lisbon; whilst I in Paris, my centre, 
 control the whole. This is my war of Europe against the 
 islanders. And yet," Napoleon said suddenly, sitting down 
 and resuming his pensive tone, "and yet something within 
 me tells me that I shall fall in that war. On such nights 
 as this and in such hours I forefeel the future. My end is 
 fixed, and that end is disaster. I have ceased to augur of 
 success or failure. I ask only When will it come? How 
 and in what shape? The bullet which struck me at Ratis- 
 bon is one way; that dagger this morning " 
 
 It was Duroc in his amazement or affection who in- 
 terrupted the Emperor. 
 
 "He was a mere fanatic, Sire; a schoolboy made crazy 
 by reading ..." 
 
 "A schoolboy!" Napoleon exclaimed, casting off the 
 momentary prostration, "I tell you, Duroc, that dagger is 
 the preliminary flash announcing a storm in which you, I, 
 and France itself shall be overwhelmed!" 
 
 It was genuine prophetic insight ; for behind the enthusi- 
 asm of the Tugendbund and the resolution of Scharnhorst 
 and Gneisenau was the rising of Germany; Leipzig, Hanau, 
 the passage of the Rhine, Laon, and Montmirail, then Elba
 
 Napoleon's Dream 245 
 
 and Sainte Helene; but, as often in Bonaparte's history, 
 prodigal of such instances, its significance was obscured to 
 himself as to others by the scepticism of the period. Yet at 
 this moment he seemed indeed to discern the future there 
 palpable in front of him, actual as the present or the past, 
 and his mind grappled for an instant with the eternal 
 problem Is the future in very deed actual as the past? 
 
 Bonaparte had little patience for such problems, though 
 to-night, mixed with the omens and events of the day and 
 his dream or vision of a few minutes ago, it left a singular 
 expression in his eyes. 
 
 "Sire, you need rest," Duroc now pleaded; "Austria's 
 reply may be here at any moment. This day has tried you. 
 You need sleep." 
 
 ' ' Rest ? ' ' Napoleon answered. ' ' I sleep, but I never rest. 
 Alone or in company, eating, walking, riding, driving, I am 
 always at work, forging my way through plans and problems 
 to solutions and decisions. You, Duroc, Corvisart, Ber- 
 thier and the others I know what was in your thoughts 
 to-night; but you are all wrong. I shall never go mad. 
 My brain is of iron. For ten years I have governed France 
 and Europe; and for ten years I have been my own finance 
 minister, my own war minister. My home and foreign 
 ministers simply expressed my will. Yet whatever I have 
 done myself has been well done, whatever I have entrusted 
 to others has been bungled. My budgets are miracles of 
 success. I could not be my own admiral, and at sea I 
 have a Trafalgar to remember. No ; the limitations to my 
 power of sight or hearing I have experienced; but never 
 the limitations to my power of work; not until now ..." 
 he said to himself. "But now I seem doomed to experience 
 every humiliation . . . Well!" he cried suddenly in 
 an indescribable voice, "Destiny turns against me; I will 
 turn against Destiny! Yes, I will be the antagonist of 
 Destiny!"
 
 246 Schonbrunn 
 
 The Corsican accent had returned to his voice but the 
 expression of his face was loftier. Bonaparte's mind, 
 which always worked at several ideas simultaneously, had 
 worked to this issue that comparison of his life to a tragedy 
 which he had made before the due de Friuli entered. 
 
 "The antagonist of Destiny!" 
 
 To Duroc's somewhat precise military mind the phrase, 
 even from Napoleon, was startling, and he looked at his 
 master in furtive doubt and incredulity. Annoyed, Napo- 
 leon turned on him swiftly. 
 
 "Why do you look at me like that? What is in your 
 mind? Answer!" 
 
 Duroc made a protesting gesture. 
 
 "Nothing, Sire; indeed nothing." 
 
 But the tone was ineffective, and did not deceive Napo- 
 leon for a second. 
 
 "I know your thought but, mon pauvre Duroc, you are 
 wrong. For this is how you reason. You imagine what it 
 would mean if you, Berthier, Corvisart, or Rapp spoke in this 
 way, acted in this way; and you, mon pauvre Duroc, you 
 become afraid of me and for me. But you are wrong. I 
 tell you, I will never go mad, Never!" 
 
 Duroc became perfectly pale. 
 
 "Madness?" Napoleon went on, resuming the tragic, 
 whispering tones. "No; I could not bear that. Poor 
 Pfeister ! You remember? How horrible it was, how horri- 
 ble! That a man, nature's paragon, should thus sink . . . 
 Ten million deaths were better. But I will never go mad. 
 Whatever my enemies say of me, never believe that I am 
 mad, Duroc." 
 
 Napoleon was referring to a persistent rumour circulated 
 in France, Germany, and Spain, in Paris in the subterranean 
 Royalist press, in English and even in such northern news- 
 papers as the Scots Examiner, hinting or openly declaring 
 that Napoleon had in August been struck with madness.
 
 Napoleon's Dream 247 
 
 The Edinburgh rag had cited instances of insane monarchs, 
 especially Ivan the Terrible, whose hideous crimes it com- 
 pared to Bonaparte's. Esquirol, the great Spanish alienist, 
 had certainly been summoned to Schonbrunn. For the 
 valet Pfeister? It was unlikely. For, asked the Examiner, 
 is Napoleon so attached to a mere body-servant as to bring 
 a physician six hundred miles in the midst of a campaign to 
 treat him for a nervous breakdown ? 
 
 Duroc saw and seized an opportunity of retrieving the 
 blunder of his unfortunate word or too visible thought. 
 
 "Sire, " said he, "it matters nothing to a great man what 
 we think of him or say of him, we others. It matters only 
 to ourselves. It is not the great man, but we, who are 
 affected if we feed our souls with lies instead of truths. 
 What can the muddy vapours above the marsh matter to 
 the sun?" 
 
 "Yes," Napoleon answered with a short laugh into 
 which all his cynicism and enthusiasms had filtered, "that 
 is very well when we are dead. It matters nothing to 
 the dead man lying underground what we remember or 
 what we forget. But living, it matters supremely to our- 
 selves, to the soldier as to the politician who has work 
 to do amongst men. No; calumny is strong. To-night I 
 said, did I not, that if I had to live my life over again I 
 should not swerve one inch from the path I have trodden, 
 that I regretted nothing, repented nothing? It was an 
 error. I repent my acts of pardon." 
 
 Duroc, steadying his finger-tips on a table beside him, 
 did not at once answer. 
 
 "Your Majesty," he began, "you wrong your mildness. 
 You have never regretted an act of mercy." 
 
 But an adder-like thought darted through his mind and he 
 stood silent. Intrigue, rancour, jealous suspicion, were in 
 the very air at Schonbrunn. Marshals, generals, courtiers, 
 lackeys, all were infected. Upon Napoleon, a Corsican, a
 
 248 Schonbrunn 
 
 nature formed by century on century of the Vendetta and by 
 deeply ingrained mistrust, Duroc had witnessed its effects. 
 Bessires had damaged Lannes; and more recently Berthier 
 and Murat had damaged to Napoleon's own hurt the great- 
 est soldier in his army, Davout, the hero of Auerstadt and 
 of Eckmiihl. And the question rose in Duroc's mind, 
 "Have not I too my enemies? And have not I been re- 
 sponsible again and again for Napoleon's acts of pardon? 
 Have my enemies been plying him this evening? Is that 
 the meaning of this untimely summons that the meaning 
 of these soliloquizings? Does he suspect that I, suborned 
 by Vienna or Weimar, wish him to pardon Staps? " 
 
 To suppose Duroc capable of such treachery would have 
 been monstrous; but to a mind like Napoleon's, consumed 
 by suspicions, surrounded by spies, nothing was monstrous. 
 
 And now in spite of himself Duroc averted his eyes before 
 the searching cold scrutiny not unmixed with surprise in 
 Napoleon's steady gaze. Then he made his decision. 
 
 " Sire, there are instances when leniency is a crime. I am 
 not always on the side of mercy. Two months ago I urged 
 you not to pardon Madame Oudet. The wrong to the 
 Emperor, to yourself, you may forgive; but the wrong to 
 France how is that to be forgiven? In will if not in act 
 this boy is a murderer, guilty amongst the guiltiest. " 
 
 A profound sigh escaped Napoleon; and to Duroc's 
 astonishment he flung himself on the sofa in a posture 
 of deep dejection. 
 
 "You do not search the heart very deeply, mon pauvre 
 Duroc. When the wrist falters and the aim is missed, 
 whether the weapon be a poignard or a musket, who dares 
 affirm that the first faltering was not in the mind? The psy- 
 chologues leave all that unexplored. But an unsteady or ir- 
 resolute hand, I affirm, points to an unsteady or irresolute 
 will. If this youth's resolution had been steadfast this 
 morning, steadfast as he protests, why did it fail him just
 
 Napoleon's Dream 249 
 
 when it ought to have been at its highest? I would not 
 have failed, I had twenty Savarys and Berthiers rushed 
 between me and my enemy. " 
 
 Here Duroc lost all trace of the workings of the Emper- 
 or's mind and of the connection of his ideas. Napoleon, 
 to whom the figures of his dream had now become a portion 
 of the tissue of actual experience, integral and organic, was 
 now attempting to exorcise the notion that he was a tyrant ; 
 he was seeking to erase the fancy that the young Thuringian 
 hated him as he, the young Corsican, had hated the tyrants 
 of his country. 
 
 "The hazard in things," Napoleon exclaimed, speak- 
 ing in a voice which Duroc had rarely heard since the 
 Hamlet-like soliloquizings of the long evenings in the Tui- 
 leries during the Consulate. "Youth's ignorance and the 
 hazard in things! That wretched lad is but one mo^e 
 instance. Genius may be consummate at twenty ; but know- 
 ledge of the human heart comes only by experience and 
 in acquiring that experience what perils must not youth 
 encounter! In each individual of merit the woes of the race 
 are rehearsed. We read a book, and, mistaking the hem- 
 lock for the grape-vine, 'It is Heaven's very voice, ' we say. 
 We hear a speech; we arise and obey the divine summons, 
 and with a whirr and snap Fate's trap closes on us! ... I 
 was early instructed in misery; I have not forgotten the 
 errors I made, and nature's harsh chastisements. Rous- 
 seau, when I was sixteen, was my first guide to chaos. Then 
 came my hero-worship for Paoli. Yet we had a cause in 
 Corsica; the tyranny against which we rose was tyranny 
 indeed. " 
 
 There was a sudden ring in his voice. In imagination 
 Napoleon was confronting his two spectral visitants, 
 challenging their criticism. 
 
 He resumed. 
 
 "I, betrayer of Liberty? It was not I who betrayed
 
 250 Schonbrunn 
 
 Liberty but Liberty that betrayed me. I detected the 
 imposture, saw through its deceptions more quickly than 
 others that is all. Man's last dream, I said? It shall 
 also be man's last disillusionment. Men are not equal. 
 Nature and the human soul protest against that monstrous 
 creed. Even at sixteen I was not its dupe. God is distinc- 
 tion. The mob and its virtues God despises, and fills the 
 mob's trough ; but with the solitary great man He converses 
 in the cool of the evening. But sometimes His words are 
 swords." 
 
 After a silence of several seconds he resumed "In place 
 of Rousseau's shadow-creed, the equality of men, I deter- 
 mined to put a substance. I resolved to give to man's life 
 new energies, new vigour; to resuscitate the ancient virtues, 
 but to mould them into a new heroism. La carriere ouverte 
 aux talents the path of glory to him who can tread it! 
 That was my message, that was my Koran. In Italy at six 
 and twenty I inscribed that message on my banners; and 
 with what a huzza of joy the young men of France bounded 
 to the call! Montenotte, Lodi, Rivoli, Arcola the glory 
 of it, Duroc, the splendour, the intoxication, and the power! 
 From the Tagliamento we looked towards Vienna the 
 gleam of our lances was enough, Austria made peace; 
 and conquerors still, we swept in our revel of war to the 
 Pyramids and the Nile. We returned; and after the burn- 
 ing desert we faced the Alps and their snows; and at 
 Marengo the watch- word that I had given to France became 
 the watch-word of a world. ' ' The path to glory to him who 
 can tread it!" 
 
 He paused. He looked around. Duroc sat as if in stone. 
 Only the midnight silences answered Napoleon. 
 
 He went on with his singular reverie. Yet at this point 
 the Emperor's rhetoric, a kind of aphoristic grandilo- 
 quence, partly Corsican it can easily be traced in Paoli 
 and in the correspondence of Pozzo di Borgo partly nur-
 
 Napoleon's Dream 251 
 
 tured by the study of the Roman historians, always rhetori- 
 cal even when most terse, now took a tinge of ironic yet 
 anxious questioning. 
 
 "It was a creed for Achilles and the ancient world, but 
 not for modern France. For Asia I had too little faith; for 
 modern Europe too much. The heroic eras are behind us. 
 The day for the "doing of great things" is over. Berna- 
 dotte, you said this afternoon, "is envious, but not a 
 traitor." Who taught you that envy was a crime? In the 
 generous heart envy itself becomes generous. The glory of 
 Miltiades keeps Themistocles awake at night and by that 
 envy the victor of Marathon, though dead, fights at Salamis. 
 I would have made Europe know again those lost virtues, 
 valour, the high and spiritual valour and liberty of soul 
 which sank with Hellas and Rome. The freedom I offered 
 France was a more dazzling freedom than ever shone upon 
 Rousseau's dream. My wars they denounce my wars! 
 Men do not understand. Men do not think. My wars 
 have been the overflowing of the Nile; a devastation, but a 
 devastation from which Europe would have arisen new- 
 born. Talleyrand sniggered to the Czar at Erfurt that 
 Russia was a barbarous nation governed by an enlightened 
 ruler, France an enlightened nation governed by a barbar- 
 ian. I welcome the epigram. A la bonne heure ! Did not 
 Charles XII. love to compare himself with Alexander? Yet 
 what idea upbore Charles XII. 's wars except the aggrandize- 
 ment of Sweden? Alexander's wars had in them an idea. 
 He upreared by the Nile a city to his own godhead and 
 crossed the Tigris to Hellenize Asia. My wars too had an 
 idea une idee wide as humanity. I would have given 
 all men a French mind. A new civilization should have 
 dated from me, and A.N. instead of A.D. become the rubric 
 of the centuries . .' . Ah, if I could but have ten more 
 years, Duroc, or even five. Much could be done in five. 
 But no; it is useless, tragic and useless. I have come into
 
 252 Schonbrunn 
 
 the world too late. Man's instinct for the heroic is gone, 
 atrophied by two thousand years of priestcraft and hypo- 
 crisy. Genius and greatness lie dying, or " Napoleon 
 stopped, then with a sudden grotesque inspiration added 
 " suffocated under bales of English wool and Lancashire 
 cotton!" 
 
 But his laugh was unpleasant, even terrible. 
 
 The mention of England, Duroc had observed, always 
 made Napoleon's thoughts, so to speak, "inarticulate." 
 Yet even to the worn-out Themistocles jargon the Emperor 
 to-night had given a new and vitalizing touch. 
 
 "I was then the man of destiny," Napoleon went on. 
 "Eh bien, I said, 'let us abjure heroism.' And I made 
 myself practical. I said to feudal Europe, to moribund and 
 decrepit Austria, to Germany and to Prussia, 'Your 
 patents of nobility are obsolete; dry-rot consumes them. 
 Behold, I show you a new nobility. He that has once 
 been wounded in battle shall have one quartering; he that 
 has been wounded twice, two quarterings ; and he that hath 
 twenty wounds shall sit .down to table with any Hohen- 
 zollern, Habsburg, or Wittelsbach of you all.' Heavens! 
 What an uproar! From the Volga to the Thames haro 
 against the blasphemer! A score of purple-faced monarchs 
 and their slaves bellowed against me 'Brigand, cut-purse, 
 enemy of religion, monster of vice!' I made myself em- 
 peror, and the monster of yesterday was Monsieur mon frere 
 of to-day. And the haughtiest of them vied with each 
 other in offering their" daughters to my brothers, to my 
 stepson, and even to my valets. My gospel of heroism 
 they rejected. I made myself a monarch amongst mon- 
 archs, and at their own game quickly surpassed them. 
 My usurpations! My lawlessness! See the Hohenzollern, 
 Romanoff, and Habsburg vultures round dying Poland! 
 . . . And in this very palace, in this very room, what was 
 the pet scheme that Joseph II. and his empress-mother
 
 Napoleon's Dream 253 
 
 meditated day and night? It was to pawn Belgium for 
 Bavaria and make of Munich another Warsaw. Yet the 
 Jacobins, men like Hulin and Reynaud who ought to know 
 better, grumble in secret 'Why is he not like Washington? 
 Why make himself Emperor?' Washington! That Yan- 
 kee deacon with his paltry one and a half millions scattered 
 over millions of square miles, one man a mile, a new nation, 
 a new land, severed by leagues of ocean from everywhere, 
 whilst I, in France, this immemorial monarchy, its traditions, 
 prejudices, hopes, enmeshed in foreign policies of a thousand 
 years . . . Washington and Napoleon ! It is a theme for 
 the eloquence of headmasters ! Men of sense will not even 
 give it a thought!" 
 
 VI 
 
 The silence had now:a tinge of the supernatural, and be- 
 gan to affect Duroc. This room and the whole palace 
 seemed haunted by the dead kings and emperors, princes 
 and princesses, who had loved their loves and hated their 
 hates here. The cessation of Napoleon's voice accentu- 
 ated this effect, though like ghostly echoes its vibrant 
 accents still seemed to linger about the corridors. 
 
 And in Duroc's soul there were echoings also a life- 
 scheme by him who had framed it, a life-scheme which he 
 himself, Duroc, had lived through fourteen years that were 
 like fourteen centuries; for to himself, as to Desaix and 
 Rapp, Bonaparte had given a religion. Desaix or Lannes 
 was the Khalid, the Sword of God, to this new Mohammed; 
 Arcola and Marengo, the battles of Bedr and Damascus. 
 All, in an incredible panorama whilst Napoleon was speak- 
 ing, had been driving past Duroc's eyes, taken up as into a 
 mountain. "A tyrant? This man a tyrant?" thought 
 Duroc. "He is a hero, and has brought back the secret 
 of heroism that was lost to the world with Roland and 
 Charlemagne!"
 
 254 Schonbrunn 
 
 And as though conscious of the very terms in which Duroc 
 formulated that silent, fervid thought, Bonaparte's whole 
 figure relaxed, and in a voice of almost playful charm, 
 prefaced by a smile which gave a beauty to his lips, and to 
 his countenance that tragic serenity seen only in certain 
 Greek sculptures of the heroic period, he went on : 
 
 "Did Andre*ossy tell you? In Vienna here, in this city 
 which I could raze to-morrow and draw a plough across 
 its site as Rome did Carthage, or reduce to a cinder-heap 
 as Genghis did Samarcand in Vienna here it was dis- 
 cussed two days ago by a committee of the elite whether, 
 without inviting me, they dared invite my aide-de-camp 
 Montesquieu to some assembly in the Rittersaal that is to 
 be held to-night. Yet it is by my permission that these 
 preux chevaliers even enter that Rittersaal! But I, it 
 seems, I have not the necessary number of quarterings. 
 My valet de chambre possesses them!" 
 
 Here Napoleon's smile became laughter. He seemed in 
 his joy at this exhibition of human fatuity to be on the point 
 of pulling Duroc's ear. The latter even felt the fingers of 
 the Emperor's hand before that hand had left the back of 
 the sofa which it was tapping. 
 
 "These high-born mountebanks! In Vienna is not 
 imbecility at its zenith? But with my Toison d'Or I will 
 end all that as I ended that worm-eaten absurdity the 
 Holy Roman Empire. Tiens, see here." 
 
 The Emperor went to a cabinet and took out the first 
 copy of the new Order executed in Paris from a design of 
 Lejeune, Berthier's aide-de-camp, and received at Schon- 
 brunn some days ago. Still standing by the cabinet, Napo- 
 leon examined the copy critically. A slight frown showed 
 itself on his brow at once. He had at first sight been 
 pleased with Lejeune's design; but to-night its ostenta- 
 tion outraged his common sense if not his taste. Still, he 
 handed it to his minister without comment.
 
 Napoleon's Dream 255 
 
 "You do not like it? " he said instantly. 
 
 "Your Majesty as ever reads my thoughts justly." 
 
 "But what is the matter with it? Dites, dites! but it is 
 not necessary. I know. I know. " 
 
 He thrust the glittering gewgaw back into its case, lined 
 with purple velvet, and shut the cabinet with a snap. 
 
 "N'en parlons plus. Let's say no more about it.'* 
 
 The new Order of Chevaliers was, in the conception of 
 its inventor, to supersede or abase the Order instituted four 
 centuries ago by Philip of Burgundy, blending so happily 
 the ideas of mythology, commercialism, and mystic sym- 
 bolism. Emperors, princes, kings, great barons had worn 
 the ancient Order. It had gleamed on the breast of Egmont 
 and of Horn as they walked to the scaffold. The new 
 Order was an equally happy blending of Napoleon's habi- 
 tual grandiosity in such matters and Lejeune's habitually 
 offensive swagger. Lejeune, Berthier's aide-de-camp, over- 
 excited by his adventure in the Tyrol, had drawn the 
 French eagle grasping in its talons both the Golden Fleeces 
 of Spain and Austria, whilst from its beak hung suspended 
 the Fleece of France. To describe the design with Gentz as 
 "a blasphemous parody," is folly or sycophancy; but the 
 new Order had the fatal demerit of arrogance, and a few 
 months later during the negotiations for the marriage with 
 Marie Louise it was tacitly withdrawn. 
 
 ' ' What a childish affair is this ' high ' politics, is this ' great ' 
 history! " Napoleon said, reverting to the Rittersaal episode. 
 "Ragamuffins shouting nick-names to each other these are 
 the solemn historians and the great politicians ! I have lived 
 in the palaces of my enemies as no Bourbon or Habsburg 
 ever did; and when I ride through Vienna, Austria shoots 
 out her underlipand grunts "parvenu!" England, when I 
 make her millions quake from shore to shore, hypocrite 
 England screams out 'ogre' and 'anti-Christ.' Mon Dieu, 
 Duroc, who will deliver me from my future biographers?
 
 256 Schonbrunn 
 
 Above all, who will deliver me from my encomiasts? From 
 such mud, the biography I wish is a biography in which every 
 sentence shall be the reverse of the truth ; a biography in which 
 I shall be described as surrendering at Ulm, or as defeated 
 at Austerlitz ; that I beheaded Talleyrand, and at Tilsit, on 
 the raft, secretly strangled the Czar; burnt down Versailles, 
 demolished the statues in the Vatican que scais-je?" 
 
 Duroc was aware that this was not Napoleon's habitual 
 manner in speaking of biography and of history. Only 
 three weeks ago, for instance, upon the occasion of a secret 
 embassy from the new King of Sweden, he had said to 
 Blenstetter the envoy : 
 
 " The Swedes have done well to depose Gustavus IV. Let 
 his successor profit by this example. Let him see in this 
 one more proof that, whilst I live, the surest presage of 
 disaster to a monarch is England's alliance. I am not 
 entirely satisfied with your new sovereign's policy. It is 
 timid, and unworthy of the name he bears. Why does 
 he not read history? It is the only philosophy, and should 
 be the instructor of kings." 
 
 But, more tactful than Rapp, gifted also with a finer 
 discernment than that slightly wooden individual, Duroc 
 asked for no reconciliation of the contradiction; perhaps 
 he himself saw that the contradiction was only apparent, 
 that the History of which Napoleon had spoken to-night was 
 History viewed from a transcendental standpoint, and that 
 to Blenstetter three weeks ago he was speaking of a homelier 
 affair. 
 
 A singular and beautiful light flickered and sank, but 
 rose again in Napoleon's eyes. The brooding introspection 
 vanished. That beauty and terror which, in Bolli's phrase, 
 made Napoleon's eyes "unlike those of any other mortal" 
 flamed in them. Napoleon was about to speak of war; and 
 the hero-gaze of the leader of armies for a moment had 
 displaced Corvisart's nervopath.
 
 Napoleon's Dream 257 
 
 "The ancients said in Homer, 'Nothing that crawls is 
 more wretched than man.' I say, 'Nothing that crawls 
 is viler than man,' and I have had experience enough and 
 opportunity enough ; and a despair, blacker than the black- 
 est defeat, comes over me at times contempt, a corrosive 
 rage of contempt for the human race. To-day has brought 
 me one of those moments ... I can turn to that Tugend- 
 bund pamphlet and embrace the portrait of myself the 
 world-redeemer become the world-destroyer in loathing of 
 that which once I would have saved. But in war is purity. 
 What is the hideousness of war beside the hideousness of 
 peace? Men do not understand. War is a flame; peace 
 corrupts. War is incorruptible, ethereal as the elemental 
 fire. The sufferings of war? Never more than one life 
 pants out its agony on the battlefield. It is the regarding 
 eye that sees the united misery. In that sapper crushed 
 under a gun-carriage yesterday a tragedy bloody as Wag- 
 ram was rehearsed. What battle of mine ever led to such 
 concentrated tortures as the blundering British stumbling 
 into that pest-house of Walcheren? War? Life is war. 
 In all my battles never more than one man fell. I do not 
 underrate the individual suffering moi. It is to under- 
 stand such suffering that I visit my battlefields after the 
 victory. My enemies in their caricatures draw me as 
 gloating over the wounds, the amputations " 
 
 Duroc made a gesture of indignation. 
 
 "Sire, your Majesty these infamous cowards ..." 
 
 "What does indignation serve? You have seen the 
 English newspapers. And why do I visit my battlefields? 
 I visit them because I wish to see what this individual suffer- 
 ing means. I visit them because to the dying who lie there 
 in my cause, dying for me, it is a consolation or a joy to see 
 me. What am I in my old coat? A symbol, I suppose, a 
 symbol, Duroc. Francis II. who watches his battle from a 
 windmill ten miles away, and George III. who drivels up 
 17
 
 258 Schonbrunn 
 
 and down Hampton Court gardens and never saw a battle 
 even ten miles away, do not believe in this. How are they 
 to believe in it? How are they to understand what it is to 
 see one of those magnificent grenadiers stretched on the 
 ground amid the wreckage of a fight, roaring with agony, 
 suddenly spring to his feet, shout your name, 'Vive 1'Emper- 
 eur!' and fall dead, his face resplendent with happiness, if 
 happiness be enough to describe the light which lights up 
 that face " 
 
 "I have seen it," Duroc said in a husky voice, deeply 
 moved. "I have witnessed it, your Majesty." 
 
 A sudden sound startled him, and startled Duroc. The 
 same interpretation traversed their minds simultaneously. 
 
 "It is Austria's answer." 
 
 There was an instant change in Napoleon's figure. The 
 relaxed posture disappeared ; energy in every muscle, every 
 nerve strung, and in his eyes the battle-light, he was looking 
 across the lines of war already. 
 
 But quicker than Duroc he saw the error that both had 
 made, turning every sound into the order of ideas dominat- 
 ing the mind. 
 
 It was the footsteps of a sentinel, but it was also the 
 striking of an hour, and the interchange of voices, challenge 
 and answer. It was not a midnight visit, but merely the 
 relief of the guard stationed throughout the palace at ten 
 o'clock. 
 
 The Emperor and his minister were silent for several 
 seconds. Neither alluded to the error; nor did either by 
 any words affect to dissemble or make light of the error. 
 
 VII 
 
 " What is the hour? " the Emperor asked negligently when 
 the various chimes, harsh or silvery, had died in the rooms 
 or along the corridors and the supernatural silence once 
 more crept over the palace.
 
 Napoleon's Dream 259 
 
 "Two o'clock, Sire. In three hours day will break." 
 
 Napoleon showed no sign of taking the hint. Between 
 him and Duroc there had intervened one of those charming 
 moments of intimacy which, at least superficially, resembled 
 the easy-goingness of two old friends sitting late, each 
 certain of the other's tolerance; each feeling that he could 
 speak or be silent, and in speech or silence find and give 
 pleasure. Bonaparte had his feet on the sofa, his right 
 hand along its back, his chin sunk on his breast. Duroc, 
 at a sign from his master, had seated himself on a kind of 
 stool or settee with gilt legs and brocaded top. At Schon- 
 brunn as in the Tuileries the etiquette of the new French 
 court, in spite of all De Remusat's efforts, was a blending 
 of common sense and grotesque rigidity. Etiquette implies 
 gross superstition and demands the sacrifice of time. How 
 was the son of an attorney to see a sacred act in the un- 
 buttoning of his chemise, or the victor of Austerlitz to 
 find leisure for the six entries which caricatured even human 
 absurdity at the levee of Louis XIV.? 
 
 "Why do the Habsburgs crowd their houses with clocks? 
 In their do-nothing empty hours, I should have thought 
 they would have been glad to forget the waste and passage 
 of time. The hobby is hereditary as the under-lip. At 
 Madrid I found Joseph in a palace that ticked like a watch- 
 maker's shop. " 
 
 He laughed to himself, quietly, thinking suddenly of the 
 pasty of watches which Charles V.'s cook presented the 
 Emperor at Yuste. 
 
 "Poor old Joseph," Napoleon went on, "what an absurd 
 figure he cuts in the Escurial! What an absurd figure he 
 cuts in any position except that of a surveyor of taxes 
 or a confidential clerk! There, however, he sits, with his 
 crowned head, and his royal cares never cost him a sleepless 
 hour. Wellington might throw a cordon of horse around 
 the Escurial any night and capture le bon Joseph snoring
 
 260 Schonbrunn 
 
 beside his Dulcinea. Think of his face and hers, Duroc, 
 prisoners in their nightgowns in the English camps! And, 
 morbleu, I should not miss him! It would be merely a 
 queen's pawn or at worst a bishop off my chess-board." 
 
 Napoleon rubbed his white, fat little hands in glee, 
 laughing immoderately at his own malice. 
 
 " B ut there is no danger, "he went on. " Joseph may sleep 
 sound. He was always a famous sleeper. Yes, I remem- 
 ber. After my father's death, though I was the younger, I 
 had to act as the elder brother to the family; see to every- 
 thing and everybody, the house, the mulberry patch, Louis, 
 Jerome, Elisa, Pauline mon Dieu, yes; and, I sometimes 
 think, I have had to play the elder brother to the whole 
 human race ever since. Before I was sixteen all my family 
 was on my hands; before I was twenty-two, all Corsica; 
 then all France; now all Europe, and to-morrow " 
 
 Duroc saw the excitement return to Napoleon's face, and, 
 remembering Corvisart's counsels, he became uneasy again. 
 He himself needed rest. A hundred cares awaited him. 
 The Grand Chamberlainship, his Carolingian office, was a 
 little ridiculous, but the duties it involved were serious. 
 That afternoon they had been made harassing by the ab- 
 sence of Raynouard, a brave amongst the brave, and by the 
 sudden illness of the chamberlain of the day. Still, he 
 reflected, Champagny or Liechtenstein might at any mo- 
 ment appear bringing the treaty for Napoleon's signature. 
 
 Napoleon, resuming his amicable pensive tones, inter- 
 rupted his musings. 
 
 "We went to the same school at Ajaccio, Joseph and I; 
 and as children we slept in the same bed, and night by 
 night Joseph's head no sooner touched the pillow than off he 
 went and never stirred till morning. I could have slept too, 
 but I preferred to lie awake listening to the leaves or to the 
 surf, working and scheming how to be top of the class to- 
 morrow if I were not top to-day, studying my rivals, con-
 
 Napoleon's Dream 261 
 
 ning my tasks, history, geography, arithmetic, French. 
 Thirty-five years ago! Where were you then, Duroc?" 
 
 "In 1775, Sire? I was three years old, and at Lucon, 
 I suppose. Anyhow, it was the year of Louis XVI.'s 
 coronation. I remember the bonfires and the ringing of 
 bells." 
 
 Napoleon jerked the words from his lips: 
 
 "And to-night here we sit in the palace of the Caesars, 
 you and I, at that time two of the most insignificant little 
 boys in all Europe ..." 
 
 Duroc was about to protest. 
 
 "Here we sit, you a duke, I an emperor, in the palace of 
 the Habsburgs and we are at the same game still, each of 
 us, a writhing knot of collegiens, struggling to get to the 
 top of the class. Desaix is dead and Lannes, let out of 
 school a little earlier. I ask no holiday and get no holiday. 
 My generals and marshals come to me for leave of absence ; 
 but to whom am I to apply for leave of absence? Destiny 
 and the inexorable nature of things that is my superior 
 officer. Yet I know a spot, Duroc, a valley above Bastia, 
 full of wild flowers and shut in by rocks from the sea. 
 There, if I were to imitate Charles V. or Diocletian, there I 
 could still be happy. There in my garden of mulberry 
 trees and vines I might have leisure at last to read La 
 Mecanique Celeste. " 
 
 He seemed lost in recollection. 
 
 "You do not know that book, you others? It is a great 
 book. Laplace sent it me exactly nine years ago last April ; 
 but it wants three consecutive months to read it, and I, I 
 have never had three consecutive hours." 
 
 Napoleon pleased his own vanity, perhaps his just pride, 
 by distinguishing himself from his officers, as well as from 
 contemporary sovereigns, by the superiority and variety of 
 his intellectual interests. If men like Johann Markowitz 
 and Rentzdorf in Vienna or Gcethe at Erfurt, measured his
 
 262 Schonbrunn 
 
 literary judgments and his scholarship, there were always 
 characterless old fops like Haydn and Wieland, nature's 
 valets, prepared to lackey the great man's "versatility." 
 
 "Yes, there I could read Laplace and write the history of 
 my grenadiers. What a subject-matter! No one else will 
 do them justice, for I alone understand them. We have 
 stormed through our lives together. We have watered our 
 horses in every river from the Nile to the Tagus, from the 
 Baltic to the Sicilian Sea; and in the future ... If I had 
 but ten more years, Duroc . . . Nature meant me to be a 
 writer of books, " he said, abruptly reining in his thoughts. 
 "It was my earliest ambition. It shall be my latest. I 
 could still write dramas if I had leisure. I confided the 
 plot of one to Raynouard the other day." 
 
 The tone was or seemed to be inviting; but Duroc's 
 face remained stony. He recollected Lauriston's descrip- 
 tion of the three hours' interview with Napoleon, walking 
 up and down in front of his tent on the evening of the 5th 
 July, the first day of Wagram. Perhaps, too, he feared lest 
 Napoleon should at this dread hour confide to,.him, also, 
 the plot of his unfinished tragedy. 
 
 Duroc was not destined to be bored for long. Napoleon 
 had a surprise for him. Till now he had talked with his 
 face partly in profile to Duroc; but now turning suddenly to 
 face the latter, Napoleon, as though dismissing all these 
 empty speculations, said with emphasis. 
 
 "But I have no son, Duroc." 
 
 Had he dropped a hand-grenade the explosion could not 
 have startled Duroc more effectively than these six words; 
 the most momentous state secret of the cabinets of Europe 
 was ushered in for discussion. 
 
 "My interest in France is therefore a life-interest," 
 Bonaparte went on. "It is precarious. The hazard of a 
 bursting shell, a spent shot such as did for Lannes . . . 
 Hence these conspiracies; yes and the present interminable
 
 Napoleon's Dream 263 
 
 negotiations. If I am to paralyse the hopes of a royalist 
 restoration I must have an heir." 
 
 "Sire, your Majesty's confidence moves me." 
 But to himself Duroc, all fatigue banished, put question 
 on question. What was Napoleon's inmost purpose in this 
 communication? The Emperor's face was serious, even sad ; 
 but it revealed nothing. Nevertheless, the communication 
 could not be accidental. Of what new scheme of policy 
 were these words the prelude? Duroc's mind hurried to 
 the answer. He knew the alternate advances towards and 
 retreats from a divorce during the past two years. A son 
 had been born to Napoleon, and only recently Madame 
 Walewska had become enceinte here at Schonbrunn. This 
 had disproved one falsehood and removed one obstacle. 
 He knew of the overtures to Alexander, foiled by the Czar- 
 itza's prompt intervention and the marriage of Alexander's 
 sister to the Duke of Oldenburg. But like every member 
 of the inner court circle he knew also of the persistent 
 rumour of a secret clause in the present negotiations, 
 demanding for Napoleon the hand of an archduchess. 
 This demand, it was said, had first been made in a manner 
 highly dramatic or melodramatic. During one of his 
 hunting expeditions the Emperor attended only by Rustum, 
 had entered a forester's hut. A distinguished-looking 
 stranger had entered almost at the same moment, and 
 there, it was said, Napoleon's demand had first been made. 
 For the stranger was the Archduke Charles. 
 
 "What is he up to now?" thought Duroc, and every 
 semblance of friendship vanished. He became an adversary 
 watching an adversary's moves. Nothing was in his mind 
 but a vague hostility to Bonaparte's tortuous methods, 
 methods excused so often by such phrases as "It is in the 
 blood, he cannot help himself. He is a Corsican. " Cen- 
 turies of private justice or private vengeance have made it 
 a second nature in the race to mistrust the straight road,
 
 264 Schonbrunn 
 
 to leave even your friends in ignorance of your true 
 designs. 
 
 Napoleon, as though he had forgotten his minister, but 
 had not forgotten his own ideas, said pensively: 
 
 "My family might be an incalculable aid to me but my 
 family is one of my greatest chagrins. They owe every- 
 thing to me, and what story of sudden fortune in the 
 Arabian Nights surpasses or equals the fortunes of my 
 brothers and sisters? Yet they have no gratitude. My 
 brothers conspire against me openly, my sisters intrigue in 
 secret, Lucien, the ablest, defies me. He has abjured 
 France, and when last I heard of him he was in England 
 in England, Duroc, my deadliest, most malignant enemy! 
 And why, ye gods? Because he rendered me a service on 
 Brumaire, and, his head swollen with vanity, he imagined 
 that by his aid also I had won my victories. And now, 
 instead of taking part with me in the greatest epic action of 
 all time, he moons about like a discontented school-usher, 
 writing lame alexandrines on Charlemagne. Charlemagne! 
 What has he to do with Charlemagne, dead exactly a thou- 
 sand years ago, when I am living and here? And what has 
 he, my brother to do with the writing of epics when he 
 might be living one every hour of every day? And the 
 others are as absurd, destitute of common sense even in 
 the pursuit of their egoism. I know the things that imbe- 
 cile Joseph says of me. I made him King of Spain; but he 
 would raise Spain against me and join Wellington to-morrow 
 if Wellington would leave him king! And the fool can- 
 not even beget a son to succeed me nothing but daughters ! 
 And Jerome, mon Dieu, Jerome! Westphalia is the young- 
 est kingdom in Europe, but it has every vice that dis- 
 figures the oldest. Jerome was yesterday starving in the 
 streets of Marseilles, yet he campaigns with a larger retinue 
 of harlots and bandboxes than ever followed a Bourbon to 
 disaster. How would your ideologues reconcile these con-
 
 Napoleon's Dream 265 
 
 tradictions with Montesquiou? As for Louis that is the 
 bitterest. Louis, for whom at Valence I denied myself 
 everything, keeping both of us on my lieutenant's pay. 
 What privations! I never set foot in a cafe, I brushed my 
 own uniform that it might last longer. This for his sake 
 who now does everything he can to thwart me and justify 
 the vilest calumnies of my enemies. But let me not speak 
 of him. You know, Duroc, you know how well he succeeds 
 in making her life a burden to the good, beautiful woman he 
 has married. Ah, why did you permit it? Why did you 
 make it necessary?" 
 
 Duroc looked and felt extremely uncomfortable. Napo- 
 leon was alluding to Hortense Beauharnais. Ten years 
 ago she had had a girl's infatuation for Duroc himself; 
 but at that time no man suspected the coming Caesarism, 
 and despite Bonaparte's advice Duroc had refused Jose- 
 phine's daughter, and marrying Elmira d'Atchez, the heiress 
 of a Spanish banker, he had found with her a domestic 
 misery as great as Hortense's with Louis. 
 
 "And my sisters!" Napoleon said again, but this time 
 with good-humoured sarcasm. "My sisters! Well, Paul- 
 ine has a heart of a sort. She asks for nothing but a few 
 thousands a year and in her conduct, well, the princesses 
 of the old regime have set her an example that she imitates 
 too successfully. She leaves me alone. Would to God I 
 could say that of the other two! But I tell you, Duroc, if 
 I discovered to-morrow that Caroline my youngest and once 
 my favourite sister, if I heard that she had taken this fana- 
 tic into her embraces and in the act placed this dagger in his 
 hand, whispering, "For my brother's breast; be bloody, 
 bold, and resolute!" I could not, I swear, repudiate the 
 allegation. She has done things as hideous. Metternich 
 circulated the epigram that Caroline had the head of Crom- 
 well on the loveliest shoulders in Italy. Such fatuities are 
 worthy of a diplomatic profoundeur ; but she is heartless ; has
 
 266 Schonbrurm 
 
 infinite ingenuity; she is ambitious and grasping beyond 
 belief. Still, I have a kind of regard for her; there is char- 
 acter in her evil. But Elisa, the living parody of myself, 
 whom I rescued from St. Cyr on the very day of the prison 
 massacres! Her I find unendurable. I never see her, and, 
 unless I am compelled, I never write to her. She is Joseph's 
 sister, not mine; worse I cannot say of her. Tuscany has 
 neither military nor political significance, but the Semiramis 
 of Lucca will have a court which apes the Tuileries and, 
 since it cannot have military brilliance, it must, if you 
 please, have literary lustre. And, mon Dieu, what a crew! 
 Every man whom I have banished from France or forbidden 
 to live in Paris finds hospitality with my sister Fontanes, 
 De Stael, Re*camier, La Harpe, Boufflers, Chateaubriand, 
 who since his return from the East has more than ever the 
 hang-dog look of a conspirator who has just come out of 
 the chimney, and her latest triumph, that fiddler Paganini, 
 who must have brought his devil's skill from the devil only. 
 My sisters!" 
 
 He took snuff, sneezed heartily, and began to walk up and 
 down. 
 
 "Had Alexander a brother? Or Caesar sisters?" Napo- 
 leon demanded abruptly and stopped in his walk, glancing 
 back sideways over his shoulder at Duroc. 
 
 The latter hesitated, then answered in some embarrass- 
 ment: 
 
 "Sire, I do not know. I have forgotten my ancient 
 history, and my duties to your Majesty leave me little 
 time for reading. Daru could tell us." 
 
 "Caesar, I think, had no sisters. He had a daughter, 
 married to Pompey. " 
 
 Napoleon broke off, and spat on the floor, and, as if by 
 that symbolical act he had rid his mind of all his relatives, he 
 stopped in front of a mirror and began to examine his 
 features.
 
 Napoleon's Dream 267 
 
 The due de Friuli, seeing Napoleon thus absorbed, 
 thought this a favourable occasion for him to spit also. 
 Accordingly he rose and in the Versailles manner spat, not 
 on the carpet, but in a corner of the room, then sat down 
 again and looked at his master. 
 
 VIII 
 
 The latter was still examining himself in front of the 
 mirror. Evidently the results were not satisfying, for 
 with a discontented grimace Napoleon looked at his hands; 
 they were small, well-made, white, and plump, but the 
 finger-nails were long and unpleasant-looking, and a dirty- 
 ish yellow in colour. 
 
 He began to walk up and down, still in the proximity of 
 the mirror. 
 
 "Since Constant showed me how to shave myself," he 
 observed at length, "I have never felt clean. Is it a sign of 
 age or ill-health when the beard pushes so rapidly?" 
 
 "I should say it was a sign of vigorous health, your 
 Majesty. " 
 
 Duroc was not the dupe of the question about shaving. 
 There was something else in the Emperor's mind. 
 
 Napoleon had again returned to the mirror and resumed 
 the contemplation of his face and figure. 
 
 There was no resisting the impression, he reflected; 
 the notion during his stay at Schonbrunn had occurred to 
 him obstinately. In other years, say from the days of 
 Arcola to those of Marengo, even to those of Austerlitz, 
 that is, from his twenty-fifth to his thirty-fifth years, it 
 had been his mother's face which invariably started forward 
 to meet him in a mirror, a Corsican face, lean, bony, aqui- 
 line, almost haggard, but possessing its own beauty, lit up 
 by a burning energy, dominated by the brow, the very 
 throne of intellect, and an intent, scrutinizing, almost terri-
 
 268 Schonbrunn 
 
 ble gaze. Now, however, it was no longer that face which 
 started to meet him, but another face, indolent-looking, 
 round, overlaid with fat, unattractive, the forehead a 
 meaningless lump of flesh, and in the eyes no longer the 
 ardent intensity of gaze but a look like that of a vicious 
 horse. It was his father's face. Recently also he had to 
 his surprise rediscovered in himself his father's tastes and 
 his father's habits. His father's maladies had plagued him 
 long since. 
 
 " Talleyrand is right. The club-foot is blind to greatness, 
 but he has insight into corruption. In the dregs of exist- 
 ence the highest genius finds its level." 
 
 Bonaparte had no doubts in his own mind about the 
 superiority of what is usually styled "glory" to what is 
 usually styled "love"; but he was not less certain that real 
 love and real glory are exceedingly rare. In his own life 
 he had only experienced real love once; he was not con- 
 vinced that he had ever aroused it in any woman. He 
 asseverated indeed, "I have conquered hearts as well as 
 kingdoms"; but he was always a little ashamed of his own 
 effrontery. It kindled the same embarrassment as the em- 
 barrassment when he, the Corsican attorney's son spoke or 
 wrote in the style of the French kings of "mon peuple." 
 
 "But now? This eighteen-year-old girl? What are my 
 chances?" 
 
 He was not a man to linger over suppositions. Assuredly, 
 he told himself, looking at the reflection in the glass, there 
 was little in that stumpy figure, those legs that waddled 
 under the shaking fat, that huge head set low on the power- 
 ful shoulders, and that dwarf-like enormity of chest 
 there was little in all this to attract the candid eyes of a 
 young girl. Yet it was just this attraction that mattered; 
 maturity created for itself illusions of various kinds rank, 
 great power, genius, wealth but once within four walls, 
 te'te-a-te'te with a young girl, a great soldier, after the first
 
 Napoleon's Dream 269 
 
 fifteen minutes, lost the aureole of his victories, an emperor 
 that of power, and a young girl's glance became more dis- 
 concerting than the bristling gleam of ten thousand spears, 
 and the manoeuvring of three hundred thousand men on a 
 battlefield a slight task compared with that of banishing the 
 look of boredom or vexation from her eyes. 
 
 Suddenly Napoleon threw off his disguise. In Napo- 
 leon's character, the impatience which made it intolerable 
 for him to be on his guard against assassination sprang 
 from the same root as the headstrong outspokenness which 
 again and again made him disclose secrets in conversation. 
 His immense power saved him from the consequences of 
 these indiscretions; but in a weaker man they would 
 have been counted defects. Flatterers or dupes have 
 even attributed them to calculation and a superior 
 cunning. 
 
 Even in his frankness, however, Napoleon revealed his 
 mind in his own way. He made no formal exposition; he 
 simply began to "think aloud," permitting Duroc to over- 
 hear his thoughts. 
 
 "Indeed it is hazardous for a man of my age to marry a 
 girl of eighteen. Such a wife expects you to dance to one 
 tune only, to understand her whims which she neither 
 understands nor attempts to understand herself. Soldiers 
 have not the time. What a frightful fate is Marmont's! 
 He was as a son to me and I tried to save him from that 
 marriage. Yes, soldiers ought only to marry women of a 
 certain character and a certain age, as Davout did years 
 ago and as Augereau has just done. Women of thirty, 
 sedate in temper, make the ideal soldiers' wives. But a 
 child of seventeen, Duroc?" 
 
 Duroc had the distinct impression that Napoleon wished 
 to be contradicted; that he was stating the case at its 
 worst in order to refute it. He knew the two marriages. 
 Marshal Davout, due d'Auerstadt, afterwards prince
 
 270 Schonbrunn 
 
 d'Eckmiihl, had in 1803 married Rose Leclerc, sister of 
 Pauline Bonaparte's first husband. The manage was 
 everywhere famous as the happiest in the French army. 
 Augereau, due de Castiglione, in his turbulent, half-pirati- 
 cal youth had married a beautiful Spaniard; but he had 
 long been a widower and a few months ago had married 
 again. 
 
 "If it is hazardous in a soldier," Napoleon went on, 
 "how much more hazardous in a soldier who is also the ruler 
 of a great empire? I have a myriad anxieties; can seldom 
 be alone; am exposed at any moment to start on a com- 
 paign it is to court disaster!" 
 
 With an air of dejection Napoleon flung himself on the 
 sofa again and in low friendly tones continued: 
 
 "If Josephine could have had a son, old comrade, how 
 simple and beautiful it all would have been. For, despite 
 everything, I love that woman. Mon Dieu, only six days 
 ago, at a vile story in the English press, I was about to start 
 for Strassburg, torn with rage and longing. Yes, I love her. 
 But a childless marriage is no marriage. How can there 
 be a 'home' without the laughter of children? Josephine 
 knows this and is unhappy, and I know that she knows this 
 and I am wretched as she is wretched. But my work for 
 France is only half completed if I leave the nation no 
 security; if my death is to kindle civil war and again let 
 loose the Terror. Yet how am I now to secure that stabil- 
 ity, except by grafting the new dynasty upon a firmly- 
 rooted stock? General Bonaparte could choose where he 
 would. Napoleon I. is no longer free. Cruel dilemma! 
 To repudiate the woman who better than any other under- 
 stands my character; to take to my breast an inexperienced 
 girl, the daughter of an old, corrupt, and haughty house, 
 nurtured amid curses on my name, her father the monarch 
 I have most deeply injured, numbering amongst her immedi- 
 ate kindred Marie Antoinette, whom I am supposed to
 
 Napoleon's Dream 271 
 
 have beheaded, and Marie Caroline, whom I have cer- 
 tainly dethroned. What an abyss covered with flowers! 
 It is a moving darkness only . . . yet it is in my 
 fate ..." 
 
 Doubt vanished from Duroc's mind. Napoleon had 
 resolved to marry the archduchess. 
 
 Marie Louise was not beautiful, but at eighteen her face 
 had a definite charm, a union of artlessness and perversity 
 not infrequent in girls who have been trained in convents. 
 She was tall; her figure was shapely. Her sensual mouth 
 curved upwards at the corners in a way which gave it a 
 striking resemblance to the mouth of Pauline Borghese; 
 but she had beautiful ears, small and finely whorled. 
 Pauline's were flat, "the ears of a monkey on the head of 
 an angel," and therefore hidden always by bandelettes. 
 To suppose that Bonaparte was uninfluenced by the high 
 birth and sensuous charm of the archduchess is to take the 
 thing that is not for the thing that is. There was still a 
 remnant of Lucien de Rubempre in the all-adventurer, the 
 all-conquerer. To the Emperor the Habsburg marriage 
 was not more dazzling than had been the Beauharnais mar- 
 riage to the general; but it was as dazzling. 
 
 Duroc's mind, working in these directions, listening to 
 the profound silences, was suddenly traversed by a bizarre 
 idea. Was it credible that in the selection of Romeo and 
 Juliet Napoleon had intended to suggest in the feud of the 
 Montagues and Capulets the evils that might result from 
 the feud of the Bonapartes and Habsburgs? On momentous 
 occasions Napoleon did nothing without intention. At 
 Erfurt, as Duroc very well knew, every play staged by 
 Dazincourt, Denon's predecessor, had been selected by 
 the Emperor; he knew very well that Athalie had been re- 
 jected lest it should prompt some German Joash; that 
 Mithridate had been selected because the Pontic king's 
 unyielding hatred of Rome portrayed Bonaparte's unyield-
 
 272 Schonbrunn 
 
 ing hatred of England; that Mohamet similarly had been 
 chosen because of the famous verses 
 
 "Les mortels sont e"gaux, ce n'est point la naissance, 
 C'est la seule vertu qui fait la difference. 
 II est de ces esprits favorise's des cieux 
 Qui sont tout par eux-m&nes et rien par leurs aieux." 
 
 He knew that imperial orders had even been given to the 
 actors and actresses Talma, Lafon, Saint Prix, and mes- 
 demoiselles Gros, Duchesnois, Patrat, and Rose Depuys to 
 pronounce certain passages applicable to Napoleon with 
 unusual solemnity and emphasis. 
 
 Nevertheless, Duroc felt that a direct allusion to the 
 play of to-night or an overt comparison of Napoleon to 
 Romeo would at once shock the Emperor's sense and good 
 taste. He therefore said tentatively: 
 
 "Sire, your Majesty is still the youngest monarch in 
 Europe " 
 
 "The Czar is eight years younger, " Napoleon interjected 
 curtly. "Yet I would know happiness, Duroc. I have 
 had enough of glory; I would know domestic happiness, old 
 comrade if at nine and thirty happiness is still possible to 
 man. " 
 
 Inadvertently Napoleon had made himself a year younger 
 than he was generally supposed to be. Duroc observed 
 this and drew his own inferences, but said nothing. 
 
 "My talk with M. Goethe at Erfurt made me read Wer- 
 ther again. There you have youthful love drawn by a 
 master hand. Those others, they do not know what youth- 
 ful love means. They have never felt it, how then can they 
 depict it? Look at that piece to-night. Nothing could 
 be more untrue to nature, nothing more loutish and unclean. 
 How can an Italian like Zingarelli, the countryman of 
 Petrarch and Tasso, permit that buffoon Shakespeare 
 thus to sully, thus to disfigure the most sacred of our senti-
 
 Napoleon's Dream 273 
 
 ments? But a nation like England, dead to political honour, 
 is dead also to sensibility and to moral honour." 
 
 Rancour had returned to his voice, but in a lighter tone 
 he resumed: 
 
 "Eh bien, in this play, Juliet is an innocent girl of fifteen 
 or sixteen. What are her ideas and her language upon love? 
 They are the ideas and language of a street- walker ! Are 
 English girls indeed like this? We have the authority of 
 the greatest English poet and the applause of the British 
 mob to testify that this is their character. But the whole 
 race is demi-savage still, and I had no more compunction in 
 arresting ten thousand of them at the rupture of the Peace 
 of Amiens than I would have had in arresting the ten 
 thousand Cossacks who cut off the ears and noses of their 
 prisoners at Austerlitz. Outside science, what writer of 
 refinement except Richardson has England produced?" 
 
 Duroc mentioned Ossian. For in 1809, in Vienna as in 
 Dresden and Paris, Fingal and Temora were still the vogue 
 and at the baptismal font gave names to a generation 
 of Mai vines and Oscars. 
 
 Napoleon's answer was categoric. 
 
 ' ' Ossian is not an Englishman : he is a Gael. If Ossian had 
 written in French I would have made him a prince. But 
 your Shakespeare," he said with a brusque laugh, "I would 
 have made him a groom. His ideas reek of the stables." 
 
 And to Duroc's astonishment, for during the performance 
 the Emperor for the most part had appeared listless or half- 
 asleep, Napoleon cited two of Juliet's speeches to prove the 
 coarseness or brutishness of Shakespeare's mind. 
 
 The criticism was just. Duroc could not defend the 
 excerpts. 
 
 "It is English, your Majesty," he said with a shrug. 
 "The women of that nation drink beer and brandy. My 
 cousin, M. le comte d'Herisson, has lived amongst them. " 
 
 "Yes, but why has Zingarelli reprinted the outrage? 
 
 18
 
 274 Schonbrunn 
 
 Youth is the age of noble illusions. Each day a new world 
 of enchantment opens before the mind. He who destroys 
 this enchantment is an enemy of the human race. And 
 youthful love how beautiful it is, Duroc! Ethereal, 
 flying everything gross, standing at the holiest distances 
 from its adoration. Its existence is that of the phcenix. 
 It lives for days upon a smile. A word transports it to the 
 highest heaven, drives it into solitude, to devour in jealous 
 seclusion the memory of its own bliss. " 
 
 Napoleon's face had become extraordinary in its mo- 
 bility ; letting himself go, his countenance, his eyes, his lips, 
 expressed every nuance of the emotions which rapt him 
 anger, tendresse, exaltation, reverie, scorn, the blackness of 
 hate. Duroc thought of those watches whose glass faces 
 reveal the works. 
 
 "Even Werther sometimes errs in this respect. Goethe 
 promised me to amend the paragraphs. I am told that 
 Werther is laughed at in England? The savages in New 
 Caledonia would laugh at it also. The women are all 
 Juliets there ! Youthful love ! ' ' 
 
 He spoke a woman's name. Duroc could not hear it 
 distinctly. 
 
 Napoleon walked twice across the room, sunk in reverie, 
 then said: 
 
 "We knew together, she and I, the true, the hallowed 
 sentiment. And what was our sanctifying hour, uplifting 
 us to the crystal heaven of felicity? I will tell you. old 
 comrade, for I live it now, and it is twenty-four years ago. 
 It was a morning in June. We were sitting in an arbour. 
 The summer dew was still on the grass. I could see each 
 print her light foot had made on the silver lace across the 
 lawn. The murmur of bees was around, and the scent of 
 myrtle and syringa was in the air. Once a butterfly settled 
 near her hand. I too could have mistaken that hand for a 
 flower. Time fled, struggling with our heart-beats in speed.
 
 Napoleon's Dream 275 
 
 The sun climbed, touching first her hair, then the damask of 
 her cheek. We scarcely spoke, but sitting a little way apart, 
 we now and then ate a cherry from the same branch. And 
 my ambition then, Duroc? The ravening ambition that 
 Europe now curses? My ambition was to die young, to 
 die unknown, wept only by her." 
 
 Duroc shifted uneasily in his chair. He was embarrassed ; 
 he was "out of it. " He felt like Sancho Panza listening to 
 some high-pitched harangue of Don Quixote. He had no 
 memories of this kind. He had never sat beside his maiden 
 and in still rapture eaten cherries from the same branch. 
 He saw that it would be fatuous to ask for explanations, 
 still more fatuous to murmur assent. Therefore he said 
 nothing, but sat with a military precision, attentive. 
 
 A swift change in the Emperor's demeanour relieved him. 
 
 " Now, " Napoleon resumed, " I shall die old; diseased and 
 used up, and go down like a ship amid the roarings of a 
 tempest that is the execration of a world ! But Austria shall 
 accept my terms or I will grind it to powder under my heel. 
 I have been at Schonbrunn four months. I have dwelt 
 much upon the past, pondering the future. Strange ideas 
 have come to me. What is past, present, and future to men 
 such as I am ? A chaos out of which we hew colossal shapes. 
 I am only in part the result of my environment. I should 
 have achieved greatness had the Bastille never fallen, had 
 the Bourbon monarchy still stood. For I have integrated 
 my ideals, " he went on, with an abrupt diversion of manner 
 and employing an energetic metaphor derived from his early 
 studies of d'Alembert and the higher mathematics, "Un- 
 like the eagle which sheds its beak, I have conserved every 
 role, metamorphosed indeed, but vital in me and vitalizing 
 still. I began as a royalist officer and an Ajaccian patriot. 
 But Corsica was small; France was no mother-country of 
 mine, but France was great, and, at that hour, bleeding to 
 death. I resolved to save France and on Vendemiaire
 
 276 Schonbrunn 
 
 and at Rivoli I set her above danger. But I could not 
 rest. My fate drove me onwards. Other men have luck 
 Marmont, Ney, Junot, Mass6na. Such good fortune is 
 unstable and exterior; but my fate is from within, present 
 and resistless. It watches whilst I sleep; and whilst I am 
 absent in thought or dull, it brings my plans to a glorious 
 issue. Thus I entered Egypt a soldier, but returned the 
 Man of Destiny. I legislated for Europe. I made myself 
 Emperor, still integrating my ideals; for royalist officer, 
 Corsican insurgent, Jacobin commander-in-chief, Man of 
 Destiny, legislator and emperor I am them all. But now? 
 I nowhere see the end, and I might as well attempt to stay a 
 planet with my finger as seek to check the onward-rushing 
 of my fate." 
 
 "At Gottingen, " Napoleon resumed, after a brief silence, 
 "and at Berlin, the professors style me the modern Attila, 
 Genghis, Timour, que scais-je? Let them beware lest I 
 become the thing they name! Something in me here " 
 
 He touched his breast. 
 
 "Something here is at work. Nothing shakes my fore- 
 bodings. My enemies may force on me an unheard-of 
 r61e. Others before me have written out their life-hate 
 in ink; I will write mine in blood. The world reads 
 their satires and trembles. Mine shall strike them with 
 madness. " 
 
 "God forbid, your Majesty." Duroc broke in vehe- 
 mently. " This shall never be. You are the instrument of 
 Providence, Sire." 
 
 "God? Providence?" Napoleon sharply interrupted 
 with a shrug and a sidelong look at his minister. " I get on 
 very well without those fantasies ces ide*es-la. What is it 
 you intend by that word 'God,' you others? Hein? Let 
 us talk of that a little. " 
 
 Sitting down, he looked at Duroc in sardonic curiosity. 
 
 "Your Majesty, I did not of course mean "
 
 Napoleon's Dream 277 
 
 To Duroc, the feast to the Supreme Being had repre- 
 sented, under all its travesty, a living idea. He found it, 
 however, singularly difficult to express to Napoleon in what 
 way he regarded him as the instrument of Providence. 
 
 "We use the word 'God' so glibly," Napoleon said pen- 
 sively. "I am not guiltless on that count myself in my 
 public utterances, for example, or when I write to my bish- 
 ops or to that old fox Pius VII., or to that imbecile Fesch, 
 my step-uncle, whom I have just made Archbishop of 
 Lyons. But to-night, Duroc, at this dead hour, what is 
 that word between you and me? The occasions when 
 it is worth while speaking the truth are rare; the men 
 capable of understanding it are rarer, and rarest of all 
 are the men whom one respects enough to speak the truth 
 to them. God, we say, is not this table, this sofa, not that 
 forest, nor those mountains, not the stars nor yet the ether, 
 not you, nor Rustum, nor Josephine, nor I. He is not 
 even William Pitt. Enfin, what is He? He is the Abso- 
 lute, these German ideologues affirm, the Infinite, the Un- 
 changing, the Unconditioned. All 'nots, ' row on row of 
 negatives! In fact, if we are to believe the religions and 
 the philosophies, He is everything except everything that 
 is! I should look upon myself as an idiot, if in my negoti- 
 ations with Austria I swerved a hair's-breadth to right or 
 left for such chimeras. As for God's so-called omnipotence 
 I could in ten minutes conceive ten more perfect universes. 
 No, Monge and Lagrange are right. Matter is its own 
 explanation, its own reason, its own cause, its own final end, 
 its own destiny in a word as I am. " 
 
 "I cling to immortality, Sire to a meeting au-dela, in the 
 hereafter." 
 
 "With whom?" was the startling answer. "Your 
 wife?" 
 
 Duroc laughed awkwardly, and in his awkwardness said 
 a cruel word which was not spoken before it was regretted:
 
 278 Schonbrunn 
 
 "Lannes, perhaps." 
 
 "Ah!" 
 
 Deeply agitated, Napoleon struggled to speak, half rose, 
 sank back tearing at the arm of the sofa. 
 
 Duroc had touched too raw a wound. 
 
 "Yes," Napoleon said with a heavy sigh, "I should like 
 to meet Lannes again for a short time; but not forever, 
 not even Lannes. And would he be glad to meet me at all, 
 Duroc? Would he be glad to see the man for whom he died, 
 Duroc?" 
 
 Duroc observed that the hand which was tearing at the 
 embroidery had begun to tremble. 
 
 "Lannes? Lannes? Not glad to see you, Sire? I 
 know he would be, your Majesty." 
 
 "As for that'seeing of God face to face," Napoleon went 
 on, caught in the meshes of his first idea, and always eager 
 to reason against any unreason, "to what end? I ask my- 
 self. What are we to do when we have once seen Him? 
 And what are we to think of a God who for a thousand 
 million years will make Himself a gazing-stock to His crea- 
 tures? I have had the stare of men for ten years and 
 already I begin to be a little sick of it. " 
 
 There was an abrupt silence. 
 
 "It is late, old comrade, " Napoleon said, stifling a yawn. 
 "We both need sleep." 
 
 Duroc got up at once. 
 
 "Sire, I wish your Majesty a refreshing night." 
 
 "Remain!" 
 
 It was the Emperor, not the "old comrade," who spoke 
 that command. 
 
 Duroc came back. 
 
 "Who presides at the court-martial to-morrow?" 
 
 "What court-martial, your Majesty?" 
 
 Duroc's mind in the whirl of immense problems of State 
 and thought had drifted far indeed from the obscure German
 
 Napoleon's Dream 279 
 
 boy who that morning had so nearly placed his name, not 
 beside the hideous glory of Ravaillac, but within the im- 
 mortal splendour which falls on the names of Brutus and of 
 Tell. 
 
 "Have you forgotten? The court-martial which tries 
 that madman." 
 
 The minister hesitated. He knew very well that the 
 court-martial, its members, and its president, would be se- 
 lected by one man only; he knew also that the judicial form 
 and procedure, the witnesses to be summoned, the judges, 
 the place, the hour, the sentence, and the manner of its 
 execution, would be determined by that same man; but 
 in a second he perceived that, as in the cases of d'Enghien 
 and Palm, Napoleon wished to remain in the background. 
 
 "The due de Rovigo, Sire," he answered at length, "or 
 General Hulin." 
 
 Napoleon's face remained unmoved. 
 
 Savary? Hulin? 
 
 The names were ominous. 
 
 Hulin had presided over the midnight tribunal which 
 condemned the Due d'Enghien, and throughout the sinister 
 scene Savary had stood behind the president's chair, affecting 
 the judges, affecting the scanty spectators, like a portentous 
 shadow of the implacable watcher in the Tuileries, waiting 
 whilst the crime moved to its consummation. 
 
 Napoleon's face betrayed nothing of his thoughts. 
 
 "The due de Rovigo General Hulin," he said at length, 
 with an ambiguous glance at Duroc; "Mais oui." 
 
 But detaining Duroc by a mere attitude rather than by a 
 gesture, Napoleon said again: 
 
 "See the prisoner yourself. Savary 's patibulary counte- 
 nance terrifies the unexperienced. Rapp is honest but 
 obtuse. You, on the other hand, have sensibility; you 
 have finesse. Reason with him; speak to him of his father 
 and mother, of the books he reads, his hopes, his sweetheart.
 
 280 Schonbrunn 
 
 Get him to confide in you. Has he accomplices in Paris, 
 in Vienna, or anywhere? Upon that head I am not satis- 
 fied. I must know all." 
 
 In an altered voice he added: 
 
 "It is as easy for me to kill this boy as it is to speak the 
 word. Yet to-night, I am perplexed, drawn this way and 
 that by more conflicting purposes, by more intricate specu- 
 lations than the night before a battle. Yet he too must ful- 
 fil his destiny. He has elected himself my antagonist. 
 Who knows? For him this is perhaps the greatest. Death 
 is never the worst of evils." 
 
 "It is the goodness of your heart that makes you pause, 
 Sire. I will see the prisoner, but I think we shall discover 
 nothing. " 
 
 "My heart has nothing to do with this," Napoleon an- 
 swered drily. "It is my reason; it is my will. I consider 
 what is wisest and most auspicious for this subtle war which 
 to-day my enemies have unmasked. That is all. They 
 are poisoning the wells. It is a dangerous device even in 
 war." 
 
 Duroc, as Napoleon had just said of him, had sensibility 
 and kindness, but to-night, all seemed as nothing beside 
 the drama and mighty purposes of which he had been made 
 the spectator and the confidant. The assassin's guilt was 
 manifest. After so heinous an attempt, what was the death 
 of an obscure German lad? His blood would scarcely stain 
 more of mother-earth than a mouse's. To hesitate? It 
 was as though, in some onset of irreflective pity, one were 
 to hesitate to kill a tiny but noxious insect. Let the God 
 who made such insects take care of them.
 
 CHAPTER IX 
 
 THE MASKED BALL 
 
 MEANWHILE, in Vienna itself, within the old palace 
 of the Habsburgs, the masked ball organized by 
 Count Andreossy continued its course. At midnight it 
 was already crowded, and the guests had increased rather 
 than diminished in numbers as the night wore on. They 
 now included several of the greatest names in Vienna. 
 
 Vienna, even in captivity, was still the centre of European 
 elegance and of the arts. Men and women in her public 
 assemblies had the consciousness that higher than this spot 
 none could look ; that towards Vienna and her f tes all other 
 cities looked Petersburg, Berlin, Paris, London. 
 
 Andreossy, as governor of Vienna, had devised this ball, 
 and its success pleased his vanity. He had always been 
 a persona grata in Viennese society of the first rank ; he now 
 heard or overheard his "amiability" celebrated; he heard 
 or overheard such assertions as "After all, Andr6ossy 
 is a gentleman; whilst Murat or Hulin or Bernadotte " 
 (former governors or ambassadors) " Well, from such mush- 
 rooms what except mushroom manners could one expect?" 
 The ball, in addition to this sop to his vanity, scored for 
 Andreossy a political victory over his rival, Maret. The 
 latter had remained the journalist he was when Napoleon in 
 1799 "discovered" his powers and won his limitless if indis- 
 
 281
 
 282 Schonbrunn 
 
 creet devotion. He had still the journalist's eye for a sen- 
 sation, however coarse or compromising, and when in the 
 negotiations with Liechtenstein there occurred the ominous 
 hitch of September 22nd, he urged his master, by the seizure 
 of the commander-in-chief of the Austrian army, to force 
 Francis II. to his knees. Napoleon refused point-blank 
 but he did not intervene when Maret, in the presence of the 
 Austrian envoys, insinuated blusteringly If the Austrian 
 commander had not come to Vienna as a hostage, why then 
 had he come at all? 
 
 Andre"ossy, annoyed by Maret's grossness, had derided his 
 plan. 
 
 "Detain the ambassadors, " he said to Napoleon. " It is 
 what Austria and your enemies wait for, Sire. A hundred 
 Palafoxes will start from the ranks of Germany; Hungary 
 will become an armed camp; and in every fortress we shall 
 have a siege of Saragossa." 
 
 As a means of allaying the uneasiness that the indiscre- 
 tions of the old redacteur of the Moniteur had created, 
 Andr6ossy proposed his own plan. Let the requisitions and 
 house-to-house searches, he urged, be relaxed or suspended ; 
 let the great families, by a feeling of security, be enticed 
 back to the capital, and the belief in an immediate signature 
 of the treaty be encouraged; above all let Napoleon's plans 
 for paralyzing Austria's issue of paper money be kept 
 the most rigorous secret. Francis II. 's vacillating ami- 
 ability, his naive pleasure in hearing himself styled "the 
 Father of his people, " would then make it certain, Andre"- 
 ossy argued, that he would accept Napoleon's terms; for he 
 would never have the resolution to face the city's and the 
 nation's disappointment. 
 
 Andre'ossy, by this counsel, had done, he considered, a 
 real service to Napoleon and a service that he alone could 
 have rendered. 
 
 The first part of the scheme had been a success. During
 
 The Masked Ball 283 
 
 the following weeks numbers of the smaller nobility and 
 several of the greater families had returned to the capital. 
 The peace became a foregone conclusion. The date and 
 terms, it was understood, alone were in dubiety. 
 
 In his project of a court ball, Andreossy encountered 
 greater difficulties. He was, it is true, the temporary mas- 
 ter of the Hofburg, the Imperial palace in the heart of the 
 city, as Napoleon was the master of Schonbrunn, the 
 Imperial palace outside the walls, and, as master of his 
 palace, he might issue what invitations he pleased. But 
 how was he to induce the Viennese to accept those invita- 
 tions? What Austrian would attend a banquet or a dance 
 in the royal palace when the master of that palace was in 
 exile at Totis, a hundred and twenty miles away? 
 
 "We shall see," Andreossy thought with a shrug. 
 
 The situation by its very niceness attracted him. It 
 gave him the opportunity of displaying just that social tact 
 which neither Napoleon nor any man in his suite possessed. 
 
 He had set to work at once. As a preliminary he had had 
 the hospital for the wounded in the Hofgarten removed. 
 Two regiments quartered till now in the precincts were 
 moved to the Leopoldstadt. Finally, as by an oversight, 
 a large portion of the Imperial plate was restored to the 
 treasury. 
 
 Andre"ossy then proposed of himself that an Austrian 
 committee should be nominated; that this committee, hav- 
 ing secured the approval of Totis, should control every 
 invitation, subject only to Andreossy 's scrutiny "a mere 
 formality. " 
 
 "After all, it is no longer a secret," he said gaily to 
 Sturmer. "Vienna is not empty if you are in it. How 
 are you all to pass the time? The wines, if not plentiful, 
 will be, like the ladies, of the very first quality. And what 
 else matters?" 
 
 At Vienna, as at Buda, boredom had reached its height.
 
 284 Schonbrunn 
 
 Was a banquet or a dance at the palace, it was asked, any 
 greater scandal than the archbishop of Vienna and the 
 heads of the religious orders assembling in St. Stephen's 
 two months ago to celebrate the Corsican's birthday? 
 
 The Emperor Francis II. gave his consent and that con- 
 sent was a command. Neither Nugent nor Count O'Reilly 
 nor Metternich had said a word in opposition. Metternich, 
 indeed, twenty years afterwards, claimed as usual that in 
 Andre"ossy's banquet he had "foreseen" Napoleon's design; 
 but in no contemporary record or gossip is there a trace of 
 this foresight. 
 
 The Austrian committee, probably with Andre*ossy's 
 connivance, secured an initial victory. It decreed that, 
 whether the peace were signed or not signed, the ball on the 
 1 3th October should not be a court ball, Hofball, but 
 simply a "ball at the court, " Ball bei hof; and that it should 
 take place, not in the Redoutensaal, built by Charles VI., the 
 father of Maria Theresa, but in the Rittersaal, constructed 
 a few years previously by Francis II. himself; that the 
 invited guests should be only the e*lite of Austrian society or 
 such representatives of "foreign nations" as had the neces- 
 sary number of quarterings. 
 
 This decree ruled out as "undesirables" nearly every 
 outstanding name in Napoleon's entourage. Marshals and 
 generals, dukes, princes, counts, and barons, members of 
 the Legion of Honour, members of the Senate and Corps 
 Legislatif, were erased pell-mell amid the guttural or 
 crystalline laughter of Viennese ladies of fashion. 
 
 "Parvenus to a man, ma cherie!" 
 
 On Wednesday, the nth October, a whisper went the 
 round of the city that Napoleon himself had been "black- 
 balled" "English clubs" were becoming a fashion in 
 Vienna as in Petersburg. A sting was added to the jest by 
 the postscript that the committee had arrived at this de- 
 cision very unwillingly; for, by the marriage of his stepson,
 
 The Masked Ball 285 
 
 the " black-boule* " was connected with the great House of 
 Wittelsbach! 
 
 It was imbecile; it was childish; yet for the moment it 
 pleased Vienna. It seemed the revenge of the old regime, 
 here in Marie Antoinette's early home, amid the society 
 that had never ceased to resent her martyrdom. "You 
 may insult, imprison, impoverish, or guillotine us," it seemed 
 to say, "but you cannot become one of us. You are 
 brave soldiers, but you are of another caste than ours; you 
 are parvenus, that is, pariahs." 
 
 To some of the French it was simply puzzling; to many it 
 was annoying; to others galling; but the fact was incontro- 
 vertible. 
 
 With the marshals and generals who chose to be affronted, 
 and still more with such of their wives as had come to 
 Vienna, Andre'ossy had need of all his boasted tact and social 
 diplomacy. 
 
 "Que voulez-vous? It is a Viennese affair," he said 
 suavely, his hands thrown wide, his broad smooth counte- 
 nance wreathed in deprecatory smiles. ' ' Poor devils ! Pride 
 in birth is their fetish; ours is glory. In Paris, beauty or wit 
 is a woman's passport to good society; but in Vienna? It is 
 fifteen quarterings, three lovers, and thirty thousand a year!" 
 
 More perspicacious observers amongst the French them- 
 selves, men like Favrol and Latour-Maubourg, made the 
 comment that glory was no longer the prerogative of the 
 Revolutionary armies; that those same Austrians who, in 
 Andreossy's phrase, still worshipped the obsolete feudal 
 fetishes, claimed Aspern-Essling as a victory and Wagram 
 as "a drawn battle." 
 
 Napoleon himself was not displeased. His malice was 
 piqued. It brought home to his officers, these marshals, 
 dukes, counts, and generals, their dependence on himself; 
 he had made them ; this was a rebuff to their ingratitude and 
 their eagerness to forget their creator.
 
 286 Schonbrunn 
 
 The riot at the Opera had, on the very night of the ball, 
 caused Andre"ossy some alarm; but long before midnight 
 that alarm was dissipated. 
 
 His fete was a complete triumph. 
 
 II 
 
 Rentzdorf and Amalie had remained together in her 
 rooms in the Palazzo Esterthal to the latest possible hour. 
 
 They had heard the heavy notes of St. Stephen's strike 
 midnight. Now it was striking two. 
 
 "You must go," she said reluctantly. "Already to- 
 night is to-morrow." 
 
 It had been arranged that when they separated she was 
 to drive straight to the Rittersaal, he to cross Vienna and, 
 using his privilege as an unmarried officer, put on civilian 
 clothes, and rejoin her an hour and a half later for the end of 
 the court ball. 
 
 "Unless " she now said, as she released her lover. 
 
 "The guet-apens of Vienna come after that of Bayonne? " 
 Rentzdorf said moodily. "No; it is unthinkable. There 
 is a limit to Bonaparte's treachery. I shall see you in an 
 hour." 
 
 The words which Amalie had suppressed were the words, 
 "Unless there is war, and, as a preliminary, Liechtenstein, 
 you, and every other officer of his suite are made prisoners. " 
 
 "What did that riot at the Opera portend?" she asked, 
 walking to and fro in the odorous dusk of her room. 
 
 "Nothing. I saw it begin and saw it end. It was the 
 usual strawfire; Gallic effervescence. Dearest, I am per- 
 fectly safe." 
 
 Rentzdorf spoke more confidently than he felt. He 
 loathed Metternich's insinuations of contemplated foul 
 play; the hero in himself responded to the hero in Bona- 
 parte; he knew his essential greatness, but he knew also the
 
 The Masked Ball 287 
 
 temptation of Liechtenstein's presence in Vienna. The 
 Habsburg Commander-in-chief, the greatest cavalry leader 
 of Austria, was in the enemy's camp. 
 
 Silent, he walked beside her to and fro in this room, 
 listening to the vast stillness of night or to the imperceptible 
 murmur of the trees; "her trees" he called them, hers, for 
 day by day, week by week, in summer's luxuriance or in 
 winter's disarray, her eyes at dawn rested on their foliage 
 or their stems. 
 
 To Rentzdorf nothing could dim the sanctitude nor 
 lessen the seduction of Amalie's chamber those carpets, 
 which, like Calypso in her grotto, smelling of amaranth and 
 lilies, she trod night by night in unembarrassed nakedness; 
 that furniture, those cabinets, those vases and ornaments. 
 Incensed by her breathing, this square of space had grown, 
 like a dress she had worn, a mystic extension of her person 
 and of her life. 
 
 " Is it not frightful, Heinrich? You and I, born into this 
 era; our entire life maledict by war. " 
 
 Shuddering, she drew him closer to her side. 
 
 "Be patient with me," she said in a beseeching yet 
 steady voice. "I am made of fears to-night. This bliss 
 has been too great. The death-thirst, born of the highest 
 life-thirst, God's death-thirst mine, yours, do I not know it 
 now, Heinrich, do I not know it now?" 
 
 She leaned her face on his shoulder. The modelling of her 
 shoulders, the curve of her neck, that beauty in every part 
 of her, each part a wonder in itself, heightened by its 
 relation to the symmetry and wonder of her whole body, 
 wrought on him its terrible seduction, starting in his mind 
 that question formulated long ago, "God destroys this, 
 in world on world, irreparably what must then be the 
 anguish of God? I who know my own anguish, what can I 
 know of His?" 
 
 He made an involuntary movement.
 
 288 Schonbrunn 
 
 "Do not go yet," she pleaded, misinterpreting the 
 gesture, and with a swift look into his face she drew him 
 gently to the window and leaned beside him out into the 
 night. 
 
 At first all was formless indistinctness masses of trees 
 and beyond the trees a blackness even more substantial 
 that might be houses and fortifications, might be sepulchres. 
 And to her over-wrought imagination the chaos of gloom 
 prolonged itself unendingly. Darkness was not merely the 
 dead earth's shadow, but the symbol of some profounder 
 blackness, wide as nature itself and the beginning of things. 
 
 "And down there," she said sombrely, looking towards 
 the bastion which, as their eyes became accustomed to the 
 darkness, outlined itself on their right, "two men sit who 
 move your fate and my fate as they will ; to-morrow peace, 
 or to-morrow war." 
 
 "They have no such authority, Amalie. This that we 
 know, this that we are, this that living we shall be, what 
 power outside itself can touch or change it, Amalie?" 
 
 Silent, he stood beside her silent, her white resplendent 
 arms and beautiful clasped hands emerging from the fringing 
 lace of her sleeves. In the garden below the stillness and 
 rest were so extreme that the leaves that fell in clusters by 
 day had now ceased to fall. The trees were visible thrones 
 of slumber. The scents of the shrubs, of the rose-beds and 
 heliotrope, already fading and blackening, came in a tide of 
 morbid sweetness, mixing with the incense of her shoulders 
 and of her hair. 
 
 "Dearest," she said suddenly, "dearest; listen oh, 
 listen!" 
 
 Above the darkness of the garden rose a faint prolonged 
 call; then another and another; then, most spectral-like, 
 detaching itself from a sycamore, an owl glided in the 
 direction of the sombre heavy masses westward. 
 
 "They come here from the Wiener wood?" he asked.
 
 The Masked Ball 289 
 
 "Not always; in early winter when hunger drives them. 
 I never hear them hoot," she said with a happy tremor in 
 her voice, "without thinking of Monza. I used there, a 
 white owl myself with large eyes, as I saw myself once in 
 a glass, to watch at night hour by hour. That was in my 
 spindle-legged, short-frocked days." 
 
 "Your . . . ?" 
 
 " I was a Lombard maiden," she answered, mimicking 
 the voice of Madame Campi as Rhodumunda. "Would 
 you have loved me then? Hold me to you. I am cold. " 
 
 She pressed herself against him in a slow languid caress. 
 
 "Would you have loved me then?" she repeated. 
 
 And as in a mystic pledge of death she wound her arms 
 about him ; mouth to mouth she whispered : 
 
 "In an hour! How I love you! No; let me kiss you. 
 In an hour, and in that hour I shall have lived each second 
 of these two hours, a thousand times, made them years in 
 my thought." 
 
 But her embrace, despite her courageous words, was, in 
 its struggling hysteric violence, like an embrace by a grave 
 into which both were falling. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Under the open sky Rentzdorf stood for some seconds 
 hesitating. It was now half-past two. The distance from 
 the Palazzo Esterthal to his lodging in the Rothenthurm 
 was, by the ramparts, nearly three miles; but, across the 
 inner city, less than two. He did not wish to be seen at 
 the Rittersaal until at least an hour or an hour and a half 
 after Amalie's arrival. To summon a hackney in this 
 part of the faubourgs was to invite scrutiny. He decided 
 to walk to his lodging and, having changed his clothes, to 
 drive to the Hofburg. 
 
 He started at a rapid pace and entering the inner city by
 
 290 Schonbrunn 
 
 the Molker bastion, he struck south-eastward across the 
 Graben. 
 
 Rentzdorf knew no moments in which his mind yielded 
 itself so absolutely to his religion, to the Tragic Vision of 
 God, as those moments in which he had just forced himself 
 from the awe and dominion of his idolized mistress. 
 
 "Art's eternities?" he reasoned. "This that now I feel, 
 this that now I know, alone is worth enternalizing. What is 
 God's highest total presence in her, in me, if it is not this 
 passion that I struggle to utter, this ecstasy that I shudder 
 tore-imagine?" 
 
 Like chords of a mystic music summoning other chords to 
 aid them in forming some still diviner harmonies, earlier 
 unforgettable hours came down the years calling to this 
 hour hours which he and his mistress had fixed in their 
 memories, now by the gift of a flower, now by a book or a 
 jewel; at other times simply by the hour's own natu- 
 ral setting, the stillness of summer woods, a garden, a 
 room in an inn, a moon-rise by a lake, the day's chance 
 environment. 
 
 "Amalie . . . Amalie von Esterthal. " 
 
 The repetition of her name was like a synthesis of the 
 hours passed by her side. Yes ; it was in such hours, remem- 
 bered thus, that he could darkly hazard the answer to the 
 transporting obsessant question, "What is Being?" Yes, it 
 was in such hours as these that the still more dread ques- 
 tion, "What is God?" subtly possessed the entire soul 
 and the entire universe, and redissolved all in the bliss that 
 was before Being arose. 
 
 "This," he said impatiently, yet in awe, "this is to be 
 God; to know this; to feel this. " 
 
 Yes; it was to such hours as these that he could say, "Be 
 thus for ever; thou art so fair. " For him, for her, to know 
 in their own fierce but unestranging sorrow the world-soul's 
 sorrow, the Calvary of Being, then, struggling, resisting,
 
 The Masked Ball 291 
 
 bleeding, to be torn inexorably asunder this was earth's 
 meaning, God's meaning; for her, for him, this was the 
 manifestation of the tragic thought which underlies the 
 worlds. 
 
 He raised his head. An oil lamp by a window threw a 
 grudging light across the narrow street. 
 
 Unawares he had passed St. Stephen's square. Another 
 church, St. Peter's, he knew it by its dome overburdened 
 with gilding and ornament now loomed up a little behind 
 him on his left. 
 
 " I must have taken a wrong turning." 
 
 Annoyed yet amused, Rentzdorf retraced his steps. 
 
 It was an unfamiliar part of the city. Those side streets 
 in which the lamps were placed at wider and wider distances, 
 the low-arched doorways, made a sinister impression. Now 
 and then a stooping figure slid past him, looking neither to 
 right nor left. It was one of those, he thought, who in 
 sleepless misery wait the day and see it rise and are not 
 glad. 
 
 Man's burden, the struggles of the human race no 
 ethical leader or professional philanthropist ever felt that 
 burden with more imaginative sympathy than Rentz- 
 dorf. 
 
 He regained the main street and resumed his course. He 
 was now in one of the oldest quarters of the town. Bundles 
 of wood, according to the Viennese custom, lay heaped in 
 front of the doors ; here and there the pavement was merged 
 in the street ; sometimes he had to walk between tenements 
 plunged in total darkness or through narrow passages that 
 seemed built for sin or crime. 
 
 From under an arch at the end of a cavernous passage he 
 emerged into an open space. A high wall rose on his right ; 
 beyond, in the darkness, some dimly outlined gables and a 
 tower. 
 
 It was Santa Maria, the famous Dominican church.
 
 292 Schonbrunn 
 
 Within its precincts, one of the graves was the grave of 
 Irne Apponyi. 
 
 Rentzdorf felt his face change. An immense sorrow stole 
 up to him like a visible mist. 
 
 "In questa tomba oscura ..." Overhead the starless 
 night; then remembrance and the heart's cry to the in- 
 attentive dead questioning, expostulating, in bitter, 
 accusing, or exculpatory appeal. 
 
 "Brought to rest there, moveless for ever, she that was 
 once so fever-quick in all her movements ; corruption, she 
 that was once so fair. Unhearing, unanswering nothing- 
 ness ..." 
 
 It was too great, too august for pity. 
 
 "What hand pushed me this way to-night? Incongru- 
 ous?" he reflected. 
 
 1 ' To stand thus by the grave of a dead mistress, the kisses 
 of a living mistress still hot on my lips, incongruous? Yes; 
 as life is, as death is. " 
 
 "Crimson-dyed with these two women's blood," he 
 muttered to himself, resuming his walk. "All my art-life; 
 crimson-dyed with these two women's blood, all my thought- 
 life." 
 
 He sank in reverie. 
 
 "If she too were dead?" 
 
 Rentzdorf wheeled round as though a hand had been 
 laid on his shoulder. 
 
 "No, no, no, no . . ." 
 
 He felt now, he knew now the horror that had pulsated 
 in his mistress's voice an hour ago. Her gloomy words, 
 "We shall have the courage to destroy each other ..." 
 came back to him, weaving themselves into the texture 
 of his own speculations. 
 
 All great art, poetry or music, all great history, is tragic, 
 because the inmost nature of the universe is tragic. The 
 more, therefore, a poem or a symphony, a statue or a
 
 The Masked Ball 293 
 
 painting partakes of that world-anguish, the "greater" it is, 
 that is to say, the truer the more vital it is, for it is saturated 
 most deeply with Being's essence. 
 
 "Yes," Rentzdorf concluded, "that is the meaning, or 
 there is no meaning. " 
 
 He walked on. 
 
 A mass of trees in the West, impenetrable and dark, rose 
 suddenly on his right not half a mile distant. It was the 
 Prater. In front and on his left stretched the glimmering 
 levels, league on league, of the Marchfeld and the illimitable 
 plain beyond, and far on the horizon, just above a mist- 
 bank heavy and cold, burned a lonely splendour the 
 waning moon. 
 
 He stood rapt. 
 
 "God, how strange, how beautiful!" 
 
 The torturing pent-up emotions, thought-irradiated, 
 searched the profoundest mysteries the all-beginnings and 
 the all-endings. The beauty of woman, the beauty of 
 nature, the beauty of night, soul-ecstasy, sense-ecstasy, were 
 rays that, converging, darted from the eternity named the 
 past into the eternity named the future. 
 
 "Time? Eternity? What are they? They are words 
 by which our minds portray God's severance from God's 
 goal, nothing more. " 
 
 But in such moments as this, that goal was, as in a mirage, 
 attained; attained in him, attained in God. He sank in 
 yet profounder reverie. 
 
 An intoxicating vision tore him from his reverie Amalie 
 von Esterthal stepping from her domino, the lustre of her 
 arms, her shoulders, her bosom, a blinding loveliness, sur- 
 passing the lustre of her own gems. She was for him the 
 reality, realitas realitatum; and yonder in the Rittersaal she 
 waited. 
 
 He struck sharply for his lodging in the Rothenthurm, now 
 not four minutes distant. He waked his sleepy servant and
 
 294 Schonbrunn 
 
 half an hour later, in the Spanish dress of the seventeenth 
 century, black embroidered velvet, white silk stockings and 
 sword, Rentzdorf was recrossing Vienna on his way to the 
 Hofburg. 
 
 IV 
 
 To Rentzdorf the pile of buildings which composes the 
 Hofburg, the royal palace of the Habsburgs, had by famili- 
 arity lost much of their antiquarian interest. 
 
 As a boy accompanying his mother, and in his youth as a 
 student at the university, he had been familiar with its 
 rooms, with the court and hall of the Switzers, the Arch- 
 duke's tower, and with vault or window, square or donjon, 
 rich with memories drawn from the crusades or later 
 centuries. 
 
 But the Hofburg had more personal associations. 
 
 In its winter riding-school he had first seen his mistress ; he 
 had met her at its fetes and at its balls; he had visited 
 with her its art treasures, and in jest or in earnest, they 
 had at length fixed on three objects as the symbols to them 
 of all that the palace and its heroic or romantic past had 
 come to mean the sword and gauntlets of Charlemagne, 
 Tasso's manuscript of the Jerusalem, and the Leda of Ben- 
 venuto Cellini. The tragic dynasty itself, the Habsburg 
 men and women, their crimes or madness, their energy or 
 their dullness, rarely came into their talk. Yet to Rentz- 
 dorf himself the Habsburgs of the sixteenth and seventeenth 
 centuries had still, as the protagonists of oppression, a kind 
 of blasting splendour, best personified perhaps in Wallen- 
 stein's genius and sinister magnificence. 
 
 There was a griding crash. The hackney had stopped 
 close to the row of brilliantly lit windows. A crowd still 
 loafed about the main entrance, mixing with the link-boys 
 and servants.
 
 The Masked Ball 295 
 
 At the foot of the grand staircase a door opened and a 
 burst of voluptuous music set his blood on fire. 
 
 "What will she wear?" 
 
 A figure in Magyar uniform, but evidently a French 
 officer, was striding along a passage, humming the air. On 
 seeing Rentzdorf he stared suspiciously at his costume, 
 seemed about to speak, but changing his mind at Rentz- 
 dorf's glance, resumed his patrol. 
 
 The next minute, irritated by the incident, which re- 
 minded him of Austria's humiliation, Rentzdorf stood in the 
 Rittersaal itself. 
 
 Pillars of polished granite with Corinthian capitals 
 supported the frescoed roof of this imposing room, now 
 flooded with the soft resplendence of a thousand lamps and 
 candelabra that repeated their flames in crystal lustres as 
 in irridescent mirrors. An estrade ran down one side. On 
 the opposite side, between the pillars, a conservatory full of 
 flowering shrubs drew the eyes imperceptibly into the sap- 
 phire tranquillity of the night, uniting thus with nature 
 this, the most artificially refined scene in Europe or the 
 world. Everywhere about the room were flowers, massed 
 in the orchestra, half-concealing the musicians, crowded 
 on the front of the estrade, hanging in festoons and garlands 
 from the frieze carnations, gardenias, ropes of violets, 
 azaleas, and innumerable roses, all levied upon the Imperial 
 hothouses of Schonbrunn itself, from Prague, Innsbruck, 
 and the historic gardens of Znaim and Semmering; and, 
 mixing with this cloud of natural fragrance, the per- 
 fumes of a hundred women's dresses; and on the leisured 
 space of the wide floor the picturesque costumes of the 
 men Magyar, Pole, Slovac, French, Austrian; and every- 
 where the radiance of diamonds and the gleam of naked 
 shoulders. 
 
 A waltz was in progress. 
 
 Under Damirors direction the dancers were arranged
 
 296 Schonbrunn 
 
 in two elongated circles or ellipses, taking in nearly the 
 whole of the wide floor, but the circles moved in opposite 
 directions. In the outer, the dancers moved from left to 
 right; in the inner, from right to left. 
 
 "A posture of the body it is in such a dance the posture 
 of a soul," Berthold Stahrenberg had once said, and to- 
 night, watching the languor and fury of this waltz, Rentz- 
 dorf had opportunity enough of testing the accuracy of 
 Bolli's psychology . 
 
 Whatever of distinction was left in Vienna or Austria 
 itself was here, and here also were the froth and the lees 
 of the most reckless society in Europe, its grossness, its 
 fatuity, its luxury, its vanity. Baron X., in a short velvet 
 coat bordered with silver fox, as well-known for his amours 
 as for his gambling debts, Rentzdorf recognized at once ; and 
 dancing not very far behind him, in the arms of one of the 
 Kinskys, that same Baron X.'s wife, the decoy for young 
 men of assured wealth, her head flung back as though 
 asleep, rousing herself now and then from a luxurious 
 dream to take the step. Then in rapid succession he 
 saw Prince Z., an elephant erect on the stout legs of a dwarf, 
 owner of seventy thousand acres; Madame A., who lived 
 frankly the life of Catherine II. ; the duellist Y., bully and 
 society blackmailer, paid "in kind," not money, dressed 
 in Polish costume, with yellow boots, in his biretta a 
 diamond aigrette; Count Purgstall and his Scottish wife, de- 
 scribed on her advent in Vienna as "the sister of Dugald 
 Stewart" and provoking the comment, "Qui diable est Du- 
 gald Stewart?"; the Countess Potocki, celebrated for her 
 house full of tame leopards, monkeys, grizzly bears, and 
 human dwarfs; Count Humbert, Ambassador to Naples dur- 
 ing Amalie's stay there; Baron von Stiegerling; von Sturmer, 
 afterwards celebrated as Francis II. 's representative at 
 Sainte Helene; Princess X., one of the "three princesses" 
 of Metternich's circle.
 
 The Masked Ball 297 
 
 Decidedly Andreossy's ball was a success, thought Rentz- 
 dorf ironically. 
 
 "Perish the world in fire, but let Vienna waltz," was a 
 current version of a medieval friar's indignant cry. "The 
 trumpet of the Judgment morn Vienna would think it an 
 invitation to the waltz." 
 
 Nevertheless, Rentzdorf 's ironic mood quickly dissipated 
 and before the drifting forms he lost sight of individuals as 
 before a forest swept by winds; he saw only the vivid tor- 
 menting unassailable beauty of the whole of those white 
 and glowing arms and bosoms, those sparkling or tarnished 
 eyes. Woman's beauty, in evil or in good it was still 
 nature's supremest achievement, Time's most alluring 
 mystery, here on this planet and now. 
 
 Two dancers, quitting the outer circle, stopped near him. 
 The lady, tilting her chin to see more clearly under the 
 black velvet of her mask, said to her partner as she fanned 
 herself: 
 
 "When I die I mean to be buried like Countess Beresanyi 
 I shall have nothing but men asked to my funeral, all 
 young, all laughing, and each with an assignation that 
 night with one of his three mistresses. " 
 
 "What a sphinx you are!" came the heavy answer. 
 
 "A sphinx? Within ten minutes you have called Stadion 
 a sphinx, Bonaparte a sphinx, Speranski a sphinx, Metter- 
 nich a sphinx. Am I too a sphinx?" 
 
 "Assuredly; and the most charming riddler of all." 
 
 The mask, quitting her partner, advanced with a quick 
 step towards Rentzdorf, but checking herself brusquely she 
 took her partner's arm. 
 
 "How? Can you read riddles in the dark then? Mine, 
 for instance, could you read mine? You know the penalty 
 of failure." 
 
 " Let me risk reading your riddle! I would not miss that 
 adventure no, not for all the ambassadors of all the powers."
 
 298 Schonbrunn 
 
 "Dance with me, then," she said with an ambiguous 
 laugh. 
 
 She held out a jewelled hand, and, her head thrown 
 languidly back, her carmined lips uplifted, with a bound 
 she dashed into the outer circle and the maze of whirling 
 skirts. 
 
 Rentzdorf looked after them. 
 
 "Can it be she?" he thought. "And Amalie here!" 
 
 He searched both circles of the waltz. He could see 
 Amalie nowhere. 
 
 He had recognized, or imagined that he had recognized 
 behind the mask, the dark eyes, the tormented mouth and 
 wayward grace of Adelheid Ortski. 
 
 "She too?" he asked. "My God, she too here to-night? 
 All to-night is incongruous as a midsummer dream." 
 
 The music rushed on; the soaring violins were like cries 
 of delicious anguish ; the beat of the 'cellos like the throb- 
 bing of human hearts. On the polished floor he saw with 
 a curious intentness the reflections of the dancers in pale 
 colours, shadows of shadows. 
 
 Quitting the Rittersaal, he sauntered into one of the 
 adjoining apartments. 
 
 In a long narrow room, adorned with two rows of white 
 marble pillars with gilded capitals, some sixty or seventy 
 men and women sat or reclined on sofas and low chairs. 
 There were groups of ten and groups of two, but all were 
 eating, drinking, and talking or flirting. 
 
 At a table near the entrance with three other Russians 
 he saw again Alexis Razumowski's broad yellowish face and 
 heard again his creaking voice. 
 
 "The chief thing in a masked ball is to speak before 
 you think. Go on talking. Say anything, say everything ;
 
 The Masked Ball 299 
 
 pell-mell, witty or foolish, wise or dull! To raise a smile 
 or a laugh is the all-in-all! But you Germans never can 
 and never will do this. You are like the English ; you must 
 think before you speak." 
 
 Rentzdorf avoided this group and went into a room on the 
 right. Here servants in black and gold liveries were 
 handing about cold meats, iced drinks, candied orange, 
 coffee, and champagne. The conversation was in French; 
 but during the earlier part of the evening, in order to ac- 
 centuate the Austrian character of the ball, it had been in 
 German. Here a universal languorousness pervaded the air ; 
 the music was at a distance and heightened the effect. 
 
 In a niche, by an Artemis in marble, a woman of thirty or 
 thirty-five in a black velvet mask lay lazily fanning herself : 
 her head rested on silken cushions, her eyelids were lowered, 
 and one foot in its satin slipper, thrust carelessly forward, 
 accentuated the lines of her form. For her felicity she 
 seemed to desire nothing except to be alone with her mem- 
 ories or her dreams. Near her, two other women stood, un- 
 masked, talking to each other in low voices. A man in the 
 blue and red uniform of the Austrian chasseurs approached 
 them. Another group of five was composed of two cava- 
 liers and three women. One cavalier, a man of fifty, had 
 the look of an Assyrian dark, sleepy eyes, curving nose, 
 and on his protruding chest a thick black beard. Horses, 
 dogs, hounds, hunting had been discussed in turn. The 
 conversation had now settled on Bonaparte. Had M. 
 Uvarow, an Austrian official asked, addressing a young 
 Russian, heard the Cardinal Pignatelli's mot about the 
 flatterer who traced the Bonapartes to a Greek family of 
 princely rank the KaXojxepot? 
 
 Uvarow, a giant with wide-set tranquil eyes, waited, 
 silent. He had not heard the mot. 
 
 "Well," the Austrian went on, happy to place his anec- 
 dote, "when M. 1'abbe Pignatelli was told of this discovery,
 
 300 Schonbrunn 
 
 he remarked at once that he did not know about Napoleon 
 himself, but he was certain that his sister the Princess 
 Borghese must belong to the KaXo^ep6t." 
 
 Uvarow, after some seconds' reflection, laughed, a big 
 earth-shaking laugh. But to the ladies the narrator had to 
 explain lazily that meros ([xspo?) meant a part, so that 
 c meant the same as Bonaparti, whereas me"ros 
 meant thigh, and /caXofjiepoc, Pauline's putative 
 ancestors, meant "the beautiful-thighed. " 
 
 Suddenly a woman's voice in low charmed surprise called 
 Rentzdorf's name. 
 '"Come here!" 
 
 It was Lan-Lan. 
 
 She had in her left hand a tiny silver plate, with the 
 Habsburg arms in gold and lapis lazuli on the edge, and 
 on the plate the fragments of a pastry which she was eating 
 one of those condiments the reverse of "simple, " in which 
 all fruits and all sweet tastes touch the palate at once 
 pineapple, clove, peach, caramel, honey, strawberry. 
 
 Kessling seated near her sofa, jumped to his feet. 
 
 "Ha, poet, I've not seen you before. What news from 
 the seat of war?" 
 
 Kessling had the mania, fostered by his riches and his 
 rude vitality, of treating every acquaintance as if he were 
 an old friend and every woman of rank as if she had at one 
 time been his mistress. 
 
 Rentzdorf sat down beside Lan-Lan and Bolli. The 
 latter was wearing a short Spanish cloak of dove-wing vel- 
 vet trimmed with ermine, white silk vest, breeches, and 
 stockings, and on his shoes broad silver buckles. "You 
 are in luck anyhow, " Bolli said in a sort of apology for his 
 satellite's crudeness. "Here is a living poem; Lan-Lan 
 eating burnt almonds and cream cakes. " 
 
 To Lan-Lan this evening had been a triumph. Her 
 costume had outshone Princess Daruka's, and after a steady
 
 The Masked Ball 301 
 
 survey of Lan-Lan's superb natural coiffure, bound by a 
 fillet studded with diamonds, with one large pearl sus- 
 pended by a tiny gold chain on her brow after a not less 
 steady survey of her face, of her arms, and the opulent yet 
 harmonious curves of her figure, the Circassian, with a deep 
 breath, had uttered the fatidical words; 
 
 "It is she who is Zuleika to-night, not I." 
 
 And she had applied to Lan-Lan, Att'r's verses describing 
 the queen of oriental passion. 
 
 A listless voice with cadences which sounded oddly in 
 French, addressed Bo Hi. 
 
 Rentzdorf turned to meet the morbid glittering eyes, 
 the nervously working features of the young Polish diplo- 
 matist, Caspar Czartorisky, nephew of Prince Adam Czar- 
 torisky the statesman. The face, set in a cloud of soft dark 
 hair, was instantly arresting, but even to strangers the 
 effect quickly passed and only its weakness and over-excit- 
 ability remained to disturb rather than to engross the 
 mind; one turned with relief from the Slavonic pictur- 
 esqueness to the steadier energy and depth of the German 
 faces around. Yet Caspar Czartorisky was typical of a 
 phrase through which the German and the European mind 
 was passing spiritual energies which, widowed of their old 
 inspirations, had not yet found a new; nascent life-weari- 
 ness, sometimes affected, sometimes sincere. But in Czar- 
 torisky all was tinged with an outre sentimentalism. He 
 had declaimed passages of Ossian and Werther in front of a 
 skull, and in imitation of the Emperor Otho, he had slept 
 with a dagger under his pillow. He had found peace and a 
 home in Vienna in its picture galleries, its parks, its 
 romantic environs and its libraries, and above all in Mo- 
 zart's music, which he styled the very soul of the soul of 
 Vienna "Tame de 1'ame Viennoise. " 
 
 "For myself," said Bolli in answer to a remark of the 
 young Pole, "I find a woman more desirable just because
 
 302 Schonbrunn 
 
 she is subject to these infirmities decay and death. I 
 would even imitate that troubadour whose mistress was 
 struck with leprosy What? Is the conversation growing 
 too decadent for your taste?" Bolli said, addressing Count 
 Markowitz, Johann's brother, who, in an immaculate 
 stock, grey coat and star, had unexpectedly risen to his 
 feet. 
 
 "Let us have no quarrelling to-night," Lan-Lan said in 
 her soft, lazy but authoritative manner. "Viennese we 
 are, and Viennese let us be not Russians or English; 
 no, not even Poles, " with a smile to Czartorisky. 
 
 "Oh, to-night," the latter answered chivalrously, "War- 
 saw is too happy to be a suburb of Vienna. " 
 
 Lan-Lan's syntax when she spoke French was not faultless, 
 but she never hesitated for a word, boldly interspersing, 
 sometimes with a picturesque charm, German or Viennese 
 idioms. 
 
 "Save in words of wisdom spake she not unto them," 
 said Bolli; "but if in the presence of Wisdom I may adven- 
 ture a word, I should like to ask his Illustriousness, Count 
 Markowitz . . . Pardon me," Bolli said, interrupting 
 himself and turning to Rentzdorf. "You guess the issue? 
 Markowitz before you came was on his hobby; he is still 
 the very phcenix of Vienna, he and the incomparable 
 Mack! When was there an age in which that taunt, decad- 
 ence, has not been flung at insight by stupidity?" And to 
 Markowitz he said, "Meaning on this earth there is none, 
 except beauty. That conviction is our faith, our church, 
 or, if you like, our religion and our God. Is your God a 
 better? And in spite of our decadence, Rentzdorf's, Lan- 
 Lan's, Czartorisky's, and mine, our regiments did not so 
 badly at Aspern, n'est-ce pas?" 
 
 " Do you know whither this will lead you? Do you know 
 whither you are going? " Markowitz said solemnly. 
 
 Bolli looked at him, ironic, and answered disconcertingly :
 
 The Masked Ball 303 
 
 "Perfectly." 
 
 "Perfectly?" 
 
 "I will repeat the word in six languages if it will make my 
 meaning plainer. " 
 
 Rentzdorf looked at Bolli. This was not the man he had 
 seen at Buda in July last. What was this change which 
 the three months had worked? Lan-Lan too was altered. 
 A smile lay on her lips, but there was a feverous melan- 
 choly in her eyes and each time she met Bolli 's glance her 
 white lids perceptibly lowered. 
 
 "Everybody now wishes you to be something else than 
 you actually are," Lan-Lan's younger brother, Max Die- 
 trich, said in the pause. He spoke in an awkward, self- 
 conscious, but modest and very winning manner, and when 
 Bolli looked at him encouragingly and Lan-Lan dropped her 
 air of sisterly condescension, he went on, "It spoils Napo- 
 leon to me. He wants everybody to be cut after a certain 
 pattern. " 
 
 "Right, " said Bolli. "If he could make Europe a moral 
 drill-ground he would appoint Markowitz his moral chief- 
 of-the-staff. " 
 
 At a repeated tapping made by the master of the cere- 
 monies' wand on the floor in the adjoining room Lan-Lan 
 said to her brother, "What is it? Maxi, will you go and 
 see?" 
 
 Max got up leisurely, not sorry to display the magni- 
 ficence of his uniform and the gallantry of his carriage. 
 
 "The figure dance!" he called back a second later. 
 
 VI 
 
 There was a general movement in the company towards 
 the Rittersaal. Bolli took Rentzdorf's arm, detaining him. 
 
 "Let's stay a little. God, but it is good to see you again! 
 We in Vienna have been walking amongst precipices for
 
 304 Schonbrunn 
 
 days, for months. One is named war; the other and the 
 ghastlier descent, peace. " 
 
 Rentzdorf looked at the handsome, reckless, dissipated 
 features, the high, square forehead, the ardent eyes. A 
 mean or cowardly thought had never found lodging or 
 comfort there. What then was it that harassed him? 
 
 "I pray it may be war to-night anything, anything 
 rather than this hideous, humiliating, unspeakable peace. 
 War is like brandy; it saves one from thinking. It even 
 gives a meaning to this unmeaning Austria and this unmean- 
 ing earth. The world-soul's strife? Shiva dancing high 
 above the roaring agonies of worlds! That is the best 
 thought I have derived from your book, Heinrich. I 
 repeated it the night before Wagram. War? Bonaparte 
 has his limitations, but, by God, what grandeur! What 
 heroic vitality!" 
 
 "Only the limited are strong, Bolli," Rentzdorf said, 
 humouring him and attributing his state of mind to the 
 excitement of the hour, perhaps to wine. 
 
 "That is what I cannot get Johann to see! He has the 
 Markowitz taint. He will drag in morality, the good will ; 
 as if any one knew, outside the Markowitz barracks, what 
 good or evil really is. I quarrelled with him this morning; 
 now that you are here we shall understand each other 
 again." 
 
 He looked in friendly anxiety into Rentzdorf 's face. 
 
 The latter stepped aside. 
 
 A lady with a beautiful, white, oval chin passed and 
 smiled up to Bolli. He bowed deeply. 
 
 " You do not know her? Ah, you have been away. It is 
 Frau von Seckenheim; newly married; a Suabian. " 
 
 It was the lady whom Rentzdorf had observed reclining 
 alone, sunk in her dreams. 
 
 But there was a sound like the click of fans, a burst of 
 music, laughter, talk.
 
 The Masked Ball 305 
 
 "The minuet is over. We must go in for the figure 
 dance. " 
 
 Taking Rentzdorf 's arm, he sauntered with him into the 
 Rittersaal. 
 
 VII 
 
 The figure dance was, like Damirol's scheme for the 
 waltz, designed to be seen as well as danced. It was a 
 modification of the tarantelle as danced in Naples some 
 ten years before by Lady Hamilton, and in Paris by Josephine 
 Beauharnais, Madame Tallien and Madame Re"camier 
 slower, more majestic, and though so arranged that several 
 couples or groups could dance it simultaneously, not less 
 passionately voluptuous. It had been styled, not infelicit- 
 ously, the Austrian tarantelle ; la valse tarantelle. 
 
 Amalie, on the estrade, surrounded by a brilliant crowd, 
 was looking at the dancers. Toe, Lan-Lan, and Nusschen 
 were now close to her, dancing together, moving in a slow 
 cadenced rhythm. 
 
 "Whose is the music?" Rentzdorf asked. 
 
 "Weber's," said Bolli. "He is quite young, but can do 
 this kind of thing supremely well." 
 
 Suddenly, on seeing Bolli, Lan-Lan quitted the circle, 
 and, with a glance at Toe, led Nusschen towards Amalie. 
 
 Bolli at the same moment stepped forward to Lan-Lan 
 and in apparent consternation "Lady, you have dropped 
 your pearl." 
 
 Lan-Lan put both her hands to her brow, then to her 
 snowy bosom. 
 
 "What made you say that?" she demanded. "Hein? 
 What made you?" 
 
 The smile on her lips was like sunlight on the crimson of 
 a rose. 
 
 "Pardon! in the effulgence of your brow I could not see 
 the pearl."
 
 3o6 Schonbrunn 
 
 " I am so hot, " she'said aloud; her eyes steady, she whis- 
 pered, "Take me into the gardens. Not that way, here, 
 under the trees. What is the hour? Day must be nearer 
 than I thought. The sky is sapphire." 
 
 VIII 
 
 In the tarantelle meanwhile Amalie had taken Lan-Lan's 
 place. In an instant Rentzdorf was in a dream, a dark 
 enchantment. Life's end was Time's end, and Time's end, 
 the soul's destiny, was to hear that music, gazing on those 
 exquisite forms Toe's flexuous grace, Nusschen's vital 
 youth, his mistress's entrancing presence. 
 
 The measure of the dance had heightened. It became 
 intenser, wilder. More than twenty groups were now on 
 the floor, some in threes some in twos. The women's forms 
 to his imagination seemed less a material essence than a 
 celestial song, creating new harmonies, more impassioning, 
 more soul-enthralling, as they danced on now advancing, 
 now receding, in wreaths, in circles, an intertwining loveli- 
 ness without end. 
 
 "This it is, beauty's very soul, its dread inaccessibility 
 that it is. Can this power exist latent in those bodies yet 
 not know its effects upon the heart? No; by God, yes, 
 they do know." 
 
 In confirmation of his words the dancers by an uncon- 
 scious or purposed interchange of thought appeared to 
 have conceived a design by which they could display their 
 supreme grace a figure in which each manifested the per- 
 fections of her body at once in movement and in sculptural 
 repose. It was a figure of a difficulty so extreme that to 
 fail in it creditably was a success, to succeed a triumph. 
 
 Breathless he waited. Could they succeed? 
 
 A cry of deep but suppressed admiration escaped him 
 and was repeated in several voices around. The success
 
 The Masked Ball 307 
 
 was as bewildering as it was complete. Nearer the dancers 
 came and nearer, circling round and past each other, like 
 light upon light. No music had ever penetrated his soul 
 more intimately, no symphony had ever worked in him a 
 transport more ineffable; yet this was sight. 
 
 In a second they swept past him, revolving; his blood 
 felt the indescribable magnetism. A pungent yet delicate 
 perfume that he seemed to know and yet not to know 
 remained in his nostrils. 
 
 "Beauty and mystery ..." 
 
 Close beside him Caspar Czartorisky in his most affected 
 manner was declaiming to three or four listeners: 
 
 "No woman's face ought to show so royal a joy. It 
 challenges the gods to envy. Had Paris on Mount Ida 
 a fairer vision ? Who is she, that demi-deity with the hair ? 
 Countess Esterthal ? What ? ' ' 
 
 "Tshut ..." came the answer. "You have evidently 
 just come from Warsaw." 
 
 Rentzdorf moved away. 
 
 Suddenly he was aware of a fast-spreading confusion, 
 here, there, everywhere. The dance had been inter- 
 rupted; the orchestra silenced. The dancers were stand- 
 ing in bewildered groups. The spectators on the estrade 
 alone seemed to know the cause of the disturbance. 
 Their looks expressed astonishment, impatience, anxiety, or 
 excited joy. Amongst the dancers, several preserved the 
 position in which the disturbance had first arrested them. 
 Some had one foot still raised; others had stopped in 
 the midst of a sentence; one lady, stooping to detach a 
 fallen wreath that clung to her skirt, still held it in her 
 hand. Others stared at M. Damirol seeking an explana- 
 tion. Then came questions, exclamations of annoyance 
 or amusement, and some oaths. 
 
 All at once the confusion was interrupted by a single 
 sound. It was a wild hurrah, repeated, and repeated again.
 
 308 Schonbrunn 
 
 "Long live the Archduke Maximilian! Es lebe der Erz- 
 herzog Maximilian! Hoch! Hoch! Hoch!" 
 
 The master of ceremonies strode excitedly towards the 
 orchestra. It broke into Haydn's anthem, the Austrian 
 national hymn, made more solemn by the death of the 
 composer not many months before "Gott erhalte unsern 
 Kaiser ..." 
 
 At that solemn melody there was a wild rush from the 
 gardens and from the rooms surrounding the Rittersaal. 
 What could it mean? Each as they arrived stopped and 
 stood bound as in a charm. 
 
 Even at such a moment Rentzdorf was forced to notice 
 Bolli and Lan-Lan. They came in very slowly. On Lan- 
 Lan's face was a set flush ; a tress of her hair loosened on the 
 left temple imparted to her something maenadic, world- 
 defiant. A delicious recklessness was in her bearing, 
 forming a bizarre contrast with the richness of her dress 
 and the magnificence of her jewels. The diamond fillet 
 was still on her brows, but the pearl had fallen or been 
 unhooked from its edge. 
 
 But at a louder shout he turned to the corner of the 
 room whence the excitement emanated. There a crowd 
 had gathered round the three men whose entrance had 
 caused the uproar. In one he recognized instantly the 
 discomposed, turbulent countenance and blackguardly, 
 high-bred air of the Catiline of Vienna, the Archduke 
 Maximilian, the hero of the bombardment. He had 
 the Habsburg peculiarities, the heavy refinement, the 
 breed, the cruelty, something of the madness. In his mad 
 attempt to defend the city there had been no patriotism. 
 His mistress, Julie von Hofstenger, had been captured in 
 the hunting-lodge dedicated to those nocturnal orgies 
 where, with the debauched companions of his revels, he 
 rehearsed the suppers of the Borgias. Yet like his brother, 
 the Cardinal, and like the two Emperors, his uncles, he was
 
 The Masked Ball 309 
 
 a fanatic of the new music, passing whole days lulled by 
 Mozart's melodies and Julie's autumnal charms. But that 
 other beside the Archduke, a man with grey hair and beard 
 and vice-worn or care-worn face who was he? 
 
 A man behind Rentzdorf, in civilian costume but with 
 the Order of Maria Theresa conspicuous on his breast, had 
 been observing the sinister figure, and now said "He 
 looks like a man who has sold his country and has the price 
 in his pocket, and is now troubled with the question 
 Have I asked too much? Should I have asked still more?" 
 
 The excitement mounted. Men wearing various foreign 
 orders, men in uniforms covered with stars, seemed to start 
 from the ground. Women in silks and satins, rushed 
 this way, rushed that way, and jostled against each other, 
 yielding or overbearing. 
 
 Gradually the chaos of emotion became a cosmos, became 
 a joy, became triumph. Tears and hysteric laughter; 
 then the regulation screams and faintings of women, but 
 even these had a sort of sincerity. Men and women clasped 
 each other's hands and stood silent; others, locked in 
 embraces, laughed and cried together and, without visible 
 embarrassment, unclasped each other to clasp others. 
 
 At last the confused shouting became an articulate cry, 
 "The peace! The peace is signed! Long live Austria! 
 Long live our Emperor! Long live the Archduke Maxi- 
 milian!" and again the band broke into the national hymn. 
 
 The gesticulations of the master of ceremonies, aided by 
 the stewards, at last succeeded in restoring a temporary 
 order or semblance of order. 
 
 Bolli, crossing the floor, came up to Rentzdorf. "It is 
 over then?" he said in a curious voice. "Well, it was to 
 have come." 
 
 There was no gladness in the tones yet no resentment; 
 the man to whom chance offers the opportunity of perfecting 
 a crime might have had that voice, that manner.
 
 310 Schonbrunn 
 
 Rentzdorf by his own emotion knew now how intolerable 
 the suspense had grown to himself as to his mistress. Her 
 joy after the haggard anxieties of the months broke in his 
 heart ; but he knew in that same moment how much he was 
 a German. 
 
 Standing silent by Bolli his mind groped at the meaning 
 of this event, this certainty after so much dubiety. Peace 
 not war. But upon what terms ? 
 
 And as in a kaleidoscope he saw Bonaparte with Prussia, 
 the Rhine, with Central Germany, Saxony, Bavaria, the 
 Tyrol, with Italy, with Austria, with Russia as his allies 
 or his vassal states. In world-history what single man 
 had possessed a power so portentous? Could any man 
 stand so high and not fall from sheer dizziness? He saw 
 Napoleon's face in marble quietude, the eyes, the resolute 
 chin. Nothing could jar that calm neither disaster nor 
 triumph. 
 
 "In action the most astonishing portent that the Aryan 
 race has produced. Christ is the glory of the Semitic; so 
 is Hannibal. But this man? Will his name indeed in the 
 centuries supplant Christ's?" 
 
 Bolli's hand was on his arm. 
 
 "Yonder comes Johann: he will give us the authentic 
 details." 
 
 Rentzdorf turned. The next instant Johann was beside 
 him. The latter's features, always very dark, had a stern, 
 repressed expression, but under the mask it was easy to 
 detect his fearful emotion. He stared about him like a man 
 v r ho, coming suddenly from darkness to intense light, sees 
 all things too distinctly and too confusedly. Nothing was 
 in perspective. "Let us get out of this, " he said to Rentz- 
 dorf, ignoring Bolli. 
 
 In a deserted side-room the curious gloomy sentimental- 
 ism which in the Austrian nature contends with Teutonic 
 apathy showed itself. In rapid words in answer to Bolli's
 
 The Masked Ball 311 
 
 questions, he sketched the terms of the Treaty three 
 millions of their most faithful subjects torn from the 
 Habsburgs; three million square miles of territory torn 
 from Austria; a war indemnity of three millions. 
 
 "But that is nothing. It is this marriage ..." 
 
 " The marriage? It is true then? " 
 
 Both of Johann's listeners paled frightfully. 
 
 "My country, oh God, my country!" Johann said 
 furiously. "There is no longer a Germany. Men shall 
 say to-morrow Here stands a French fortress once named 
 Germany. Her rivers are in bonds. The Rhine mirrors 
 the faces of voluntary serfs. Slaves by a tyrant's permis- 
 sion crawl on their mother-earth and dig Germany into a 
 grave for a nation's honour. Upon what shall the return- 
 ing sun look? Austria Hell and death ! Austria?" 
 
 He grasped at his sword. 
 
 Rentzdorf misunderstanding his purpose, seized his 
 arm. 
 
 " Leave me, Heinrich. " 
 
 He wrenched himself aside, and, sitting down, placed 
 the blade against his knee. He tugged, he pulled, but the 
 proved steel did not break. 
 
 With an oath he sprang erect, and putting his foot on the 
 blade close to the hilt : 
 
 ' ' Break ! Malediction on you, break ! ' ' 
 
 With a griding horrid crash, like a creature in pain, the 
 blade snapped. 
 
 Johann stood staring dully and stupidly down at the 
 fragments. 
 
 "An emperor gave it to my father the morning after 
 Hochkirchen; and, of the same house, an emperor to-day 
 has shattered the honour of Austria more irretrievably 
 than that sword is shattered." 
 
 Bolli with a haggard face walked to and fro muttering to 
 himself. Under his slender hooked nose a patch of powder
 
 312 Schonbrunn 
 
 on his chin covering a slight razor-cut, hung to the place 
 like a plaster. 
 
 There was a momentary blaze of anger, if not of scorn, in 
 Rentzdorf's eyes. This patriotic effervescence grated on 
 him harshly. 
 
 Was patriotism this? 
 
 Yes, sentimental it might be and even theatrical, yet 
 the hope of Germany was just in such despair and in such 
 authentic wrath as this.
 
 CHAPTER X 
 NAPOLEON'S ADDRESS TO HIS GUARD 
 
 QATURDAY, the I4th October, was the anniversary 
 O of Jena, a date sacred in the annuals of the French 
 armies. 
 
 Nevertheless, every attempt at celebration had sputtered 
 out. If the subject had been discussed at headquarters no 
 instructions had been issued. The soldiers themselves were 
 for the most part indifferent or hostile. After six months 
 on the Danube, three of war and three of insufferable tedium, 
 war- weariness had become epidemic. The single will which 
 Napoleon attributed to every army had declared itself, 
 and it was the will not for the celebration of past battles, 
 but for the celebration of immediate peace. 
 
 Since 1806, the Old Guard had been recruited from the 
 veterans of many corps, and at Enzersdorf, as around 
 Schonbrunn, there were hundreds of grenadiers who had 
 fought at Jena with Napoleon or with Davout at Auerstadt. 
 These men were as jealous for the glory of the Third Corps 
 as those of the Fifth were jealous for the glory of Lannes 
 and the capture of Hohenlohe's division at Prenzlow, 
 and, this morning, in default of Turkish fire and salvoes of 
 artillery, they talked. 
 
 "It was just such a raw and foggy Saturday morning as 
 this," said one of Davout's grenadiers to a conscript of the
 
 314 Schonbrunn 
 
 Young Guard, "but instead of the Danube and Enzersdorf 
 we had the Saale and Hassenhausen. Just after daybreak, 
 I was squat on a ridge; I had taken off one of my boots to 
 get rid of the pine-needles when I saw well, 'twas Iik6 a 
 bit of lovely colour, pink and white and pearl and blue on 
 the mist coming straight at me. Quick as lightning, 
 'By God, they are charging us!' thought I; and old Bliicher 
 it was and his hussars, coming bang on us, like bewigged 
 devils out of the fog." 
 
 "To-day is Saturday, Jules, that was a Thursday," said 
 a disconcertingly quiet voice on the narrator's left. 
 
 "You were there, perhaps?" 
 
 "No; but I was at Jena the same morning. It couldn't 
 be Thursday at Jena and Saturday at Auerstadt, only 
 three miles away, could it?" 
 
 "Well, our twenty thousand beat sixty thousand Prus- 
 sians, Bliicher and all, which is more than you did at Jena. 
 Saturday or Thursday, though le petit bougre himself was 
 with you." 
 
 "Right you are. Vive Davout, vive le Troisieme Corps ! " 
 shouted a dozen voices. 
 
 Of all the marshals, Davout at this period commanded the 
 greatest confidence amongst the rank and file. Every 
 survivor of Auerstadt had seen him that October morning 
 rushing from regiment to regiment, his face blackened 
 with powder, his coat in tatters, persuading, exhorting, 
 encouraging, or terrible in his rebuke compelling his men 
 to be steadfast, to stick to their positions, and not to waste 
 a cartridge. 
 
 Then more argument and more narrative. 
 
 It was between seven and eight o'clock. The sun hung 
 as a disc of dull orange above the levels of the Marchfeld; 
 but white mists still trailed along the Danube, here draping 
 the steep banks, forest-crowned, there veiling the dripping 
 tarpaulins of barges laden with corn and fruit, or the cluster-
 
 Napoleon's Address to His Guard 315 
 
 ing masts and pennons of the many-languaged, many- 
 hued craft from every port between Ratisbon and Rustchuk. 
 Near Enzersdorf, four miles to the west of Vienna, where 
 this talk on Jena was going on, the twenty-third company 
 was dribbling into camp from reveille drill. As they 
 marched they sang, as men sing who are happy or in high 
 spirits. The rat-a-tat of kettledrums heightened the 
 gaiety. 
 
 "Buvons, enfans de la patrie, 
 Abattons les bouteilles, abattons! 
 Bai-aisons les belles femmes, bai-aisons!" 
 
 The new-comers fraternized with the grenadiers about 
 the bivouac fires, the faces again became the masks of bore- 
 dom or bad temper, of gaiety, or vigilant anxiety such as 
 marks the faces of men who cherish some fierce but pre- 
 carious hope. 
 
 A grenadier, stretched out by himself with his back 
 against the stem of a chestnut, watched the scene. To the 
 talk of Jena and Auerstadt he had at first not even listened, 
 but a look of listless curiosity gradually illumined his hag- 
 gard, sunburnt features. He made no effort, however, to 
 approach the group. 
 
 He was a Champagnard and his name was Pierre Lestocq. 
 Like the other "veterans" of the Guard, he was not more 
 than six and thirty ; but his long drooping moustaches were 
 already grizzled. Severely wounded at Znaim, he had just 
 recovered when he was struck down by "hospital" fever, 
 and though dismissed two days ago as "cured," he knew in 
 his heart that he was "done for. " 
 
 "And I'm damned glad of it, " he had said to a comrade. 
 "I've had my fill of war and peace." 
 
 Stubbornly resisted at first, this life-weariness as well as 
 war-weariness had become oppressive as sleep in his limbs 
 at the end of a long forced day's march.
 
 316 Schonbrunn 
 
 Pierre Lestocq was one of thousands of French soldiers 
 whose lives at this epoch had, in sheer crude truth, been but 
 a battle and a march. Seventeen years ago the cannon- 
 ade of Valmy had ushered in a period of almost incessant 
 warfare, in which Aspern and Wagram were the most recent 
 episodes. These were the men whom the Revolution had 
 made Frenchmen, giving them the consciousness that the 
 soil they tilled, the land for which they fought, was in very 
 deed theirs, that France was not a stepmother any longer, 
 but a true motherland. Lestocq himself had in him some- 
 thing of Lazare Hoche's temper, but nothing of Hoche's ge- 
 nius for war; nevertheless to him, as to Hoche, the discovery 
 of a tattered copy of Rousseau's Contrat Social had brought 
 as it were a message from on high. 
 
 "You speak of the ancien regime?" he would say to the 
 younger conscripts, jibbing at the ceaseless wars. ' ' What did 
 that do for you? It murdered your father by forced labour 
 and your mother by hunger. And what has the Revolution 
 done for you? It has made you men; given you and me 
 something to live for or to die for. Oh yes, I've seen 
 ugliness enough during a battle and after it, blood and grim 
 death enough; but I have seen nothing so terrifying as the 
 things I've seen in peace on the edge of a wood. I was a 
 boy then and I daresay I thought them 'funny.' They 
 are hell to my memory now; hell to me in my dreams. Did 
 you ever see the teeth and lips of dead men who had eaten 
 nothing but grass for three months? A battlefield is nasty, 
 desperately nasty; but, fichtre, it's beautiful beside that 
 sight. To die in battle is to die a wolf's death, if you like, 
 but, wolves or not, we know what we're dying for." 
 
 Yet Pierre Lestocq was not by any means a "born" 
 fighter. He had "time to be afraid." After fifteen years 
 of war he had still to goad himself into the firing line. 
 "Curse on you!" he would say to himself when the order 
 to charge flashed along the ranks. "Would you die a free
 
 Napoleon's Address to His Guard 317 
 
 man, or live and go back to serfdom?" And in the mele'e, 
 when the bullets, like a roof of death, came lower and lower 
 down over him, he had to repeat the adjuration, "Curse on 
 you, would you live forever?" 
 
 It was the Champagnard peasant's version of Turenne's 
 adjuration to his own terror on the morning of Nordlingen, 
 "Tu trembles, carcasse, et tu tremblerais davantage si tu 
 connaissais ou je te porte. " 
 
 II 
 
 In the group of veterans and conscripts nearest to the 
 tree under which Pierre Lestocq was lying, the talk of Jena 
 had fizzled out most rapidly. 
 
 A short, lean, merry-eyed infantryman pronounced its 
 epitaph : 
 
 "Jena! Nom de Dieu, what I want to know is when le 
 petit bougre means to sign this peace and let us see France 
 again?" 
 
 He was a Picard, wiry and agile as a monkey, and as ugly. 
 
 "Yes," said another, "we'll celebrate his Jena in Mont- 
 martre when we get there." 
 
 Wooden huts and white tents dotted the ground for a 
 circuit of a mile. On the flat roof of a granary built of 
 brick, to the left of the bivouac fire, officers' linen was dry- 
 ing. A quarter of a mile away, close to one of the streamlets 
 into which the Danube at this part divides, stood a saw-mill. 
 Now and then the grenadiers round the fire looked lazily 
 in its direction, watching the automatic motions of their 
 comrades lifting a tree-trunk, holding it to the saw and then 
 flinging down the planks. On the sand beside the Picard 
 a piece of rusty sheet-iron served as a trencher for several 
 haunches of raw horseflesh. These were cut into shreds 
 and dropped from time to time into the savoury mess stew- 
 ing in front of him.
 
 318 Schonbrunn 
 
 Lifting the lid of a saucepan the Picard made a comic 
 grimace, replaced it, and, poking a conscript in the ribs, 
 demanded : 
 
 "It's seven months to-day since I left Joinville. Why 
 don't you go and make le petit bougre come to terms with 
 these accursed Austrians? But its le petit bougre 1 s way," 
 he went on philosophically. "He knows what passes in a 
 soldier's mind; he knows what we can and what we cannot 
 do; yes, and how much we can bear. Nom de Dieu, at 
 Boulogne just when every man of us spat at the sight of salt 
 water, piff ! comes the word, Not to London this time, mes 
 enfants but to the Danube and Vienna! That's his way. 
 Oh, he's great, great and sudden!" 
 
 He turned to his saucepans, hissing between his teeth 
 a parody of the Qa ira: 
 
 "Bloody your bayonets, brothers, 
 Bloody your bayonets, ho! 
 Bloody your bayonets, brothers, 
 Or down to hell you'll go." 
 
 Napoleon's armies had ceased to sing the great songs of the 
 Revolution but under the parodies the tunes and something 
 of the old inspiration smouldered. 
 
 "Shut up!" cried a good-looking Gascon, raising himself 
 on his elbow and surveying the Picard angrily. '-'Can't 
 you let a fellow sleep?" 
 
 A girl's voice between two neighbouring tents interrupted 
 the altercation: "Plums, ripe plums! Apples and apri- 
 cots and peaches." 
 
 She was a Viennese, blonde-haired and blue-eyed, a 
 favourite with the twenty-third. She wore the long redin- 
 gote anglaise then fashionable in every class; her smiling 
 face looked out from the depths of her huge cylindrical hat 
 like a pixie's from the bottom of a well. She had neither the 
 vivacity nor the effrontery of the French vivandiere and now
 
 Napoleon's Address to His Guard 319 
 
 as though fatigued she put down her basket and began to 
 fasten a shoe-strap. A pattern in crimson silk was worked 
 on her black stockings. 
 
 There was an instant rush to her assistance; hustled, 
 breathless, laughing, blushing, she sat down and let a dozen 
 hands adjust her shoe. 
 
 Yet the fruit did not sell. Dysentery was in the camp, 
 and an order of the day had forbidden the consumption of 
 any fruit except that served out as rations. Lotte was 
 turning away in a pique; but one of Letort's dragoons caught 
 her waist and attempted to reach the red lips at the bot- 
 tom of the cylindrical cap. The grenadiers, who regarded 
 Lotte as their perquisite, sprang to their feet. 
 
 "Bayonet him! NomdeDieu! Does he think Lotte's a 
 sack of beans for his horse? A la lanterne!" 
 
 The marching song of the men accompanying a waggon of 
 wheat to the granary diverted them and they joined lustily 
 in the refrain: ( 
 
 "Marie, trempe ton pain, 
 
 Marie, trempe ton pain, 
 
 Marie, trempe ton pain, 
 
 Dans 1'eau claire. " 
 
 It reminded them of Paris; for it was Jouy's own travesty 
 of the most famous scene in La Vestale. Suddenly the 
 homesick chorus stopped. 
 
 "Thunder, what's that?" 
 
 It was a bugle: the sound rose a mile away, clear and 
 sweet, cleaving the morning stillness. 
 
 Had Bessieres, the commander of the Guard, unexpect- 
 edly returned? The grenadiers strained their eyes through 
 the mists. A gunner, with stern eyes and well-cut features, 
 seated in the waggon, stood up on the shafts and stared also 
 through the fog. 
 
 Again the bugle-call rose, sharper, more threatening
 
 320 Schonbrunn 
 
 and much nearer; and instantly, to the right and to the 
 left, it was answered; nearer and yet nearer came other 
 answering calls, that sprang, as it were, from the very 
 earth close beside the excited men. And now towards the 
 Danube, across the levels, human figures were seen running 
 between the tents towards a certain point. The gunner 
 sprang from the shaft, spat on the ground, and putting his 
 hands to his mouth, rent the air with a yell: 
 
 "Vive 1'Empereur! Vive 1'Empereur! Vive 1'Emper- 
 eur!" 
 
 He sprang forwards. Every man followed. In an in- 
 stant the black sanded flat about the tents was a desert. 
 The Picard glanced frantically from his saucepans to his 
 flying comrades; darted after them for a yard or two, 
 then back again to his saucepans; but at the blast of a 
 trumpet that to his ears seemed like the trumpet of the 
 Judgment Day, he thrust the pans firm in the flames, 
 jammed on the lids, and rushed with the others. 
 
 They did not rush far; for yonder, enhaloed, as it were, 
 by those trumpet-calls as by a rainbow arch of glory rising 
 above him, yonder sat Napoleon, tranquil, on the white 
 charger Solyman. 
 
 He was wearing the famous grey coat, old as his hat, 
 its flaps dropping below his spurs the coat that on winter 
 nights in Poland they had seen whirled about him by the 
 blast, wrinkled and white with ice and frozen snow. 
 
 Before the Emperor had uttered a word every man knew 
 that the wish of his heart was fulfilled. Their war-weari- 
 ness was ended; their homesickness cured. The Peace 
 had been signed. 
 
 Chasseurs and fusiliers, light horse and heavy guns, 
 voltigeurs cuirassiers, lancers, sappers, gunners, grenadiers, 
 and pontoonists yonder he sat, the realization of each 
 man's wish personified. Companies and squadrons, tum- 
 bling out of workshops, mills, booths, from wooden bar-
 
 Napoleon's Address to His Guard 3 21 
 
 racks or from canvas tents, fell into their places, fastening 
 bandoliers or straps a thick wall, a field crested with 
 gleaming brass or crested with shakos, with black hair or 
 crimson aigrettes or feathered hats. 
 
 Ill 
 
 Pierre Lestocq, the sick grenadier, got slowly on his feet. 
 The transport, the joy throbbing around him, affected him; 
 but it affected him as the cry "Fight on!" might affect the 
 soldier who has got his death-wound, and knows it. Yes, 
 he was dying; but, by God, he was glad to have lived, and 
 Napoleon the religion in which he had lived was yonder ! 
 Everlasting rest the religion in which he could now die 
 that too was near. 
 
 And north, west, south, and east, at Znaim, Gratz, Brunn, 
 Linz were his co-religionists the legions to whom Bonaparte 
 was as a fate, the legions whose devotion was to him not less 
 as a fate a religion, that is to say, a wish, an ideal, a pur- 
 pose, a watchword, for which a man is prepared to fight to 
 the death, name it "Liberty, " name it "France, " or simply 
 "the greatness of man." 
 
 Pierre listened, dazed, breathless; imagining rather than 
 seeing the Emperor's face. Shout after shout rent the air. 
 
 ' ' Vive 1'Empereur ! Vive 1'Empereur ! ' ' 
 
 A vast silence followed. Napoleon was speaking. At 
 first, for the beating of- his arteries, Pierre could not hear 
 a syllable. 
 
 Again, an immense shout, a shout of passionate, long 
 expected joy and deliverance ; then once more an abrupt and 
 complete silence. The Emperor had raised his voice, and, 
 listening intently Pierre could distinguish the shrill, raucous 
 Corsican accent softened by distance. Napoleon, as al- 
 ways, was speaking rapidly, not rising in his stirrups, as 
 when he made a harangue to his army or distributed the
 
 322 Schonbrunn 
 
 eagles in the Place de Carrousel, but sitting well down 
 in his saddle. Nevertheless, the unpremeditated sentences 
 ordered themselves into cadences. 
 
 "Soldiers! Your standards in the spring of this year 
 flew from Paris to the walls of Vienna in thirty-one days. 
 You fought on your march eleven pitched battles and 
 twenty-seven combats. You scattered or destroyed an army 
 of five hundred thousand men who, whilst you in Spain 
 were hunting the English leopards to the sea, had dared 
 to insult your frontiers. Soldiers ! To-morrow you return 
 to Paris and to France. Will your journey in peace be more 
 rapid than that by which you marched across your defeated 
 enemy to Vienna?" 
 
 Many did not at once seize the point ; but in an instant the 
 insinuation that they had marched through the ranks of 
 their enemies as if they were nothing leapt from mouth to 
 mouth. The soldiers burst into a roar of enthusiasm and 
 laughter, amid which the cries of "Vive 1'Empereur!" 
 rose piercingly, like joyous sword-points flung on high. 
 
 A sarcasm, taunting but indignant, at the perjury and 
 perfidy of the Habsburgs followed. God's vengeance had 
 struck Austria down, Napoleon said, and then by three or 
 four rapid touches the campaign was made to live before 
 the soldiers' eyes. 
 
 "In April you fought five battles in five days. It is 
 named the campaign of Ratisbon. In May you scattered 
 at Aspern and at Essling an army of a hundred and eighty 
 thousand men." 
 
 And then he cited incidents of the fight and of the weeks 
 at Lobau ; but individual names were not mentioned ; he was 
 speaking to the army, and the deeds of the army made his 
 theme. Yet, as if under compulsion, he named his stepson, 
 Eugene. In June, on the anniversary of Marengo, Eugene 
 had gained the victory of Raab. Twelve days later at 
 Gratz, the 84th regiment had displayed a heroism not sur-
 
 Napoleon's Address to His Guard 323 
 
 passed in the annals of war. There, for fourteen hours, 
 Gambini, with only seven hundred bayonets, had held at 
 bay an army of ten thousand Croats. 
 
 "Such are your victories. And in the pause between 
 those victories your engineers astonished the world by erect- 
 ing in fifteen days three bridges across the broadest, deepest, 
 and swiftest river of Europe. Our detractors have taunted 
 us with the bridges of Caesar and of Trajan. But the bridge 
 which in four days Caesar threw across the Rhine could not 
 have borne the weight of a single gun. Your bridge of 
 sixty arches across the Danube was broad enough to permit 
 three carriages to cross abreast, and yet strong enough to 
 support the weight of four hundred cannon. But, they say, 
 you are not the first. Trajan too, they allege, threw a 
 bridge across the Danube. In this your detractors speak 
 history; but though he chose a point where its course is 
 slow and its banks narrow, it yet took the Roman engineers 
 three years to build it. You built your bridge in three 
 weeks ! Who henceforth shall dare to compare the bridges 
 of Caesar and Trajan with that structure of yours which rose 
 with the solidity of iron and the speed of fire in order that 
 my legions might cross it to their harvest of glory on the 
 fields of Wagram and Znaim?" 
 
 The tumult became a frenzy, enthusiasm passing and 
 returning, replicated from man to man; tears, laughter, 
 cries ; men gesticulated ; men embraced each other, or stood 
 apart, silent and unmoving as trees. 
 
 Pierre Lestocq, in a zigzag line, staggered forward. He 
 was now trembling in every limb; in all his frame was a 
 mortal faintness, a mortal lightness. He reached the stem 
 of a second tree and then a third. The trodden grass, the 
 listening crowd, the distant hills, Napoleon's face, all dis- 
 appeared. It was the pas de charge of the Guard that he 
 heard. Napoleon was leading them. A glory was in the 
 air. He stood fiercely erect. Heroisms and splendours
 
 324 Schonbrunn 
 
 flamed around him. Life's greatness had closed in a 
 wrestle with death's greatness. 
 
 "Vive 1'Empereur!" he shouted between his clenched 
 teeth, and like a suffocating sob, the echo "Vive 1'Em- 
 pereur!" died in his throat. 
 
 His head dropped on his breast; he struggled against the 
 engulfing darkness, and, as in a light-halo, he saw again 
 Napoleon's forehead, the seat and very throne of god-like 
 power and will. 
 
 "Vive 1'Empereur!" he shouted. 
 
 Death was grasping at his face. There was a sound in his 
 ears as of up-rushing waters; a sensation in his brain as if 
 innumerable curtains of darkness were closing in upon him, 
 like an enemy with rapid and precipitate rushes. Still 
 struggling, he sank, stiffening himself out on the earth, his 
 shoulders propped on the tree trunk. 
 
 Meanwhile the immense silence had again come down 
 upon the listening soldiers. The Emperor had resumed his 
 harangue. 
 
 "Thus to your past glories you have added this glory 
 the right to have it said of you by your country and by 
 posterity, 'He was of the Army of the Danube and of Ger- 
 many.' They shall point to the trophies of this war, to 
 that enduring monument now rising in your city, that city 
 which is already the capital of the world, a monument 
 forged from the cannon captured on the fields of Ratisbon, 
 Eckmuhl, Aspern-Essling, and Wagram; they shall point out 
 to each other objects of art that shall adorn your public 
 buildings, and they shall say, 'These are the spoils of per- 
 jured Austria!" 
 
 Suddenly Napoleon's voice changed. The pallid mask 
 of his face remained unaltered; but his eyes, blue now as 
 the blue of the sky reflected in sword blades, filmed, and 
 their look became blacker and intenter. In the silence the 
 champing of a horse's bit was as distinct as though that
 
 Napoleon's Address to His Guard 325 
 
 packed arena were an empty hall, or a reaped field across 
 which a peasant was trudging in the morning stillness 
 to his day's work, and in that awed silence were heard the 
 words, stern, yet cadenced like a lament: 
 
 "Soldiers! On your homeward march you will pass the 
 graves of your comrades. Salute them as I salute them. 
 They sleep the sleep of their glory. Their names shall 
 stand on the monuments of their country. You yourselves 
 by your bivouac fires have told their history. Their deeds 
 are graven forever in the memories of men. Many things 
 pass ; glory such as this endures. In age after age, when the 
 living shall most wish to live greatly and to feel and to speak 
 greatly, they shall single out your actions and the actions of 
 your dead comrades and find that greatest life in the praise 
 of your battles." 
 
 The hush of awe, the tears, the surprise, the silence of 
 stupor, then the frantic burst of shouting, attested the 
 power which, after ten years, Napoleon's "fire-streaming 
 words," as Grillparzer described them, still possessed over 
 the French mind. The awe which had stilled the listeners 
 was an awe at once for the living who spoke and for the dead 
 who had died for him. A funeral cortege followed by the 
 grey spectres of the fallen had seemed to pass yet what a 
 splendour environed it! 
 
 Napoleon's bulletins and his harangues might exaggerate 
 or distort the achievements of his armies, but they were 
 winged in every word with the heroism which had won 
 them. The man who had the genius to win their battles 
 had also the genius to describe them. 
 
 Satisfied with the effect, Napoleon turned his horse, and, 
 surrounded by his suite, rode slowly towards Schonbrunn. 
 
 IV 
 
 Yet crowds, as though Napoleon and his white charger 
 were still there, lingered about the spot; then slowly in knots
 
 326 Schonbrunn 
 
 of two and three or ten and twelve began to disperse, com- 
 menting on the peace, guessing at its terms, commenting on 
 the harangue; excited, laughing, gesticulating. The eyes of 
 many were wet. A few were sombre and silent. 
 
 Amongst the first to fly back to his saucepans and the 
 bivouac fire, was the Picard. 
 
 "Did I not tell you?" he cried excitedly. "Just as 
 at Austerlitz. That's le petit bougre's way. You think 
 you are going to Peking or to Moscow? Piff! The 
 word is Paris! 'Baisons, enfans de la patrie!' Nom 
 de Dieu! Where's my frying-pan? Oh that hell's pup 
 dragoon ..." 
 
 The saucepans were still there but the frying-pan was 
 gone. Incredulous, he searched frantically in every direc- 
 tion ; he did not seem to have been absent five seconds. 
 
 Hot and flurried, now erect, now stooping, "Jules! 
 Pierre!" he called. "What the devil! Why don't you 
 answer?" 
 
 Jules was invisible. 
 
 The Picard glanced swiftly at the figure of Pierre Lestocq 
 outstretched in his long grey coat, his shoulder against the 
 tree, his heavy cap thrown forwards on his brow. His 
 left arm hung loose. A dead leaf had fallen between the 
 thumb and finger of his right hand. He did not stir. It 
 was impossible to see his expression, but the attitude was 
 that of deep rest. 
 
 "Asleep, and the Emperor speaking! Fichtre, that's 
 odd!" 
 
 Ferretting everywhere, his eyes at last caught sight of the 
 frying-pan thrown under the flap of a tent door; but its 
 savoury contents were gone. Gone too was Lotte, gone 
 the three evil-looking camp-followers, two male, one female, 
 who like gnomes had seemed to emerge from the earth 
 during the soldiers' first absorption in Napoleon's presence. 
 Could the thieves have been those two bitches?
 
 Napoleon's Address to His Guard 327 
 
 His face cleared a little. If it were not the cavalry who 
 had the laugh on him, it would matter less. 
 
 The crowd rapidly thickening round the fire gave him 
 little time to pursue his investigations. Some demanded 
 food, some drink, some tobacco; some took snuff; all 
 talked. 
 
 The inmost meaning of the incident alone was endurable. 
 
 "The Peace!" 
 
 Yesterday it had seemed a commonplace, a certainty, 
 each man's secret wish; to-day it seemed a miracle, an 
 incredible thing, because it had happened. Time was 
 needed to understand it. And already the bitterness which 
 in life lurks at the bottom of every sweetness was making 
 itself felt. 
 
 " Peace? And for how long? To France to-morrow; but 
 how long to stay there?" 
 
 France and the army had been promised peace after 
 Austerlitz, and within three months there was war with 
 Prussia; they had been promised peace after Jena, and 
 within one month there was war with Russia; they had been 
 promised a long, a sure, a lasting peace after Tilsit, and 
 within seven months there was war with Spain; and from 
 the Sierras they had hurried to the Danube. 
 
 "But this time?" 
 
 Jacques Dupont, the gunner with the stern eyes and 
 finely cut features, and two grenadiers came back to the 
 fire. The Picard, for reasons of his own, said nothing about 
 the frying-pan. The four sat down. 
 
 "Our Emperor has pluck, " said the gunner, "that's what 
 I like in him. Intrepidite that is his name! And I am 
 just^beginning to take in his idea, to realize his plan. Gigan- 
 tesque mais oui! Paris the capital of Europe. The old 
 families not our enemies; and other nations, Spaniards, 
 Germans, Swedes, Russians, Poles, Magyars, not our ene- 
 mies either, but competitors with France in the race for glory.
 
 328 Schonbrunn 
 
 Not birth any longer no matter whether you are noble or 
 peasant, German or Finn manhood and genius is the 
 thing all is one in the race for glory. Nom de Dieu, but 
 it's gigantic! And, by God, he may succeed." 
 
 Jacques Dupont was a Norman, transferred after Ratis- 
 bon from Davout's corps to the Old Guard. He had the 
 authentic Viking look, rather tall, erect, lean and sinewy, 
 with steel-blue eyes, close-cut hair, tightly shut cruel mouth, 
 forced into prominence by the cheek-strap. After General 
 Dupont's surrender at Bayleu he had, in the universal 
 stupefaction and loathing, wished to change his name; but 
 recognizing the futility of such a disguise, he had determined 
 to wipe out that disgrace by his own actions, and, by his 
 own valour, to restore the lustre of the name he bore. He 
 loved glory as the Picard loved a breakfast; he was as cer- 
 tain of promotion as the Picard was certain to remain in the 
 ranks. As a matter of history, he came out of the carnage 
 of Leipzig four years later as the captain of this same 
 company. 
 
 "Where do you and I come in, and the rest of us that's 
 what I want to know?" the Gascon grumbled. "Your 
 great man it's all very well; but where's his greatness 
 without us? That puzzles me. He's Emperor, lives in a 
 palace " 
 
 "And we shiver in a hut on rotten straw when we can 
 get it?" Dupont said quietly. "That's right enough: the 
 thing is to sleep sound. He's Emperor, but he can't eat 
 more'n three meals a day." 
 
 The others listening, nodded acquiescence, yielding to his 
 natural authoritativeness. 
 
 "Nom de Dieu, yes," the Picard joyously asseverated, 
 "but you are a savant, Jacques. That's well said. " 
 
 And happiness and excitement raising his mind to an 
 unaccustomed height, he went on, "He can eat no more'n 
 we do, that's flat and one girl's like another, and with
 
 Napoleon's Address to His Guard 3 2 9 
 
 her he can do no more'n you or me. It's funny, oh, it's 
 funny! That's fraternity and equality, I call it. And 
 they say now there's neither a heaven nor a hell just 
 nothing. Nom de Dieu! 'Marie, trempe ton pain, ah! 
 ah! ah! dans 1'eau claire!'" 
 
 "Where's Pierre?" Dupont asked in his quiet, com- 
 manding way. Contrast had drawn him to the Cham- 
 pagnard. 
 
 "Can't you see? Yonder asleep. Poor devil. He has 
 earned it. A bayonet in his shoulder-blade, then typhus 
 he's had his guts' full!" 
 
 The grenadiers looked in the direction indicated. The 
 new-comer, an old "brave" of tipsy habits, illiterate, dirty, 
 but with the cross, looked longer than the rest. 
 
 ' ' Pierre's lying rather queer, ' ' he said, getting up. " How 
 long's he been like that?" 
 
 He had seen dead men lie thus on many battlefields. 
 
 But before the Picard could answer four cavalrymen, 
 arm in arm, came swinging along, their spurs jingling 
 pleasantly. Their company was to move towards Linz 
 next day: now the order was countermanded. The Picard 
 eyed them suspiciously, but there was not a trace of mock- 
 ery or irony on their fine faces. No: the two drabs of 
 camp-followers, not the dragoons, had stolen his mess. 
 
 "Pierre! Pierre Lestocq!" one of the troopers called 
 suddenly. "But this is good! Sacrebleu, I thought he had 
 croaked at Molk. Pierre, mon vieux, Pierre, old boy!" 
 
 Two of them, as their accent proved, came from the same 
 province; the first speaker from the same village as Pierre. 
 Bending over him, he put his hand affectionately on his 
 shoulder. 
 
 " Pierre mon vieux ..." 
 
 He started back. The grenadiers slouched slowly for- 
 ward. All became unexpectedly silent. The old "brave" 
 with the beery countenance knelt down beside Pierre.
 
 33 Schonbrunn 
 
 "He's croaked," he said briefly and stood up, brushing 
 the earth from his knees. 
 
 "Dead?" 
 
 In the surprise, accustomed as they were to death, a 
 sound that came from the direction of Nussdorf or Vienna 
 escaped their notice or left them unmoved. But a second 
 sound came clearer and deeper. They looked at each other, 
 then at the dead man. 
 
 ' ' What's up now ? What's that firing ? ' ' 
 
 There was no answer. 
 
 A staff officer on a fine English grey rode past. He 
 turned his freckled, sunburnt face towards the group, sur- 
 veyed it quietly and sped on. The hue of his uniform was 
 lost in the mist on the road towards the city. 
 
 The grenadiers looked after him. What message was he 
 carrying at that speed? 
 
 In the camp itself, to the promiscuous singing and shout- 
 ing, a burst of military music was added, drums and bugles, 
 clear and shrill; and all in the morning light, a sparkling 
 squadron of Nansouty's cuirassiers, the October sun on 
 their helmets and swords, trotted gaily across the level 
 northward of the camp. 
 
 "I saw yesterday that Pierre had got his dose; yes, I 
 did," the Picard asseverated. "I never believed he'd see 
 the night through. Well, what's to be done now? He 
 can't lie there. Here, lend a hand, boys!" 
 
 The dragoon, Pierre's fellow-villager, a big, soft-hearted 
 fellow, stepped aside. 
 
 Six grenadiers, at the Picard's summons, came forward. 
 Two planks were hastily constructed into a bier, and bending 
 over the dead man, they lifted him to their shoulders, bearing 
 him towards some wooden sheds that rose close to the river. 
 
 The last glittering sound of Nansouty's bugles and drums 
 came softer and softer as the squadron moved towards 
 Schonbrunn.
 
 CHAPTER XI 
 
 ON THE TRACK OF A CRIME 
 
 THE court-martial for the trial of Friedrich Staps was to 
 assemble in the arsenal that same afternoon, Satur- 
 day, the 1 4th October, at four o'clock. Complete secrecy 
 was enjoined. No member of the commission was to be 
 informed of its object until the prisoner was before his 
 judges. The Emperor reserved to himself the right of 
 confirming or annulling the sentence of the court. 
 
 A peremptory note from Napoleon had, at an early hour, 
 instructed Savary to use every second of the interval in 
 tracing out the movements of the accused since his arrival 
 in Vienna. "The due de Rovigo," ran the missive, "shall 
 also endeavour to ascertain whether in the city itself, or in 
 the surrounding villages, the prisoner has any relatives, 
 friends or acquaintances who may have acted as his abet- 
 tors if not as his accomplices." 
 
 There was a postscript. 
 
 ' ' The due de Friuli shall have access to the prisoner at 
 any hour. " 
 
 This at once alarmed Savary. Duroc, "the man who 
 never shed a tear, " was, nevertheless, a Don Quixote in the 
 devices he invented for the mitigation of Bonaparte's 
 severities. This command could only mean the Emperor's 
 intention of pardoning his assailant.
 
 33 2 Schonbrunn 
 
 Disturbed and irritated, Savary determined to take the 
 first part of the work in hand personally. At Schonbrunn, 
 especially since the middle of August, he had felt himself 
 and his work to be under surveillance. His most trusted 
 agents had been tampered with either by Fouche, anxious 
 to countermine his mines, or by the Emperor himself, 
 infected with the disease of setting one army of spies to 
 watch another in every capital city and in every camp or 
 headquarter of Europe. 
 
 "But in this business," thought Savary, "I will see with 
 my own eyes, hear with my own ears." 
 
 He at once despatched a courier to Rapp requesting him 
 to meet him at the arsenal at ten o'clock. 
 
 Meantime, he summoned his confidential chief and with 
 him went over the results of the investigations pursued 
 during the night. The prisoner's account of himself had 
 been verified. A young man answering his description had 
 lodged for ten days at the Goldener Adler inn near Nussdorf . 
 Two witnesses had seen him on the Schonbrunn road, 
 another had observed him in a small cafe in Vienna. Several 
 additional clues had been followed up; four arrests had 
 been made; but the police had discovered nothing that 
 really implicated the detained persons in the dastardly 
 crime. 
 
 Savary looked up sharply from a dossier he was examining. 
 
 "These arrested persons," he demanded, "do they know 
 why they have been arrested?" 
 
 The chief, who had the dress and beard if not the counte- 
 nance of a Greek merchant, answered by a mournful re- 
 proachful shake of the head. How could his master imagine 
 that after so many years he would neglect so rudimentary 
 a precaution? 
 
 "You have done well," Savary replied, imitating Napo- 
 leon's manner. 
 
 His attention once more riveted itself to the dossier.
 
 On the Track of a Crime 333 
 
 ii 
 
 "Fanatic or hired agent, this young fool is unfit to live, " 
 he said impatiently to Rapp when, an hour later, they met 
 at the arsenal. "No recanting should get him a pardon. 
 His brain will become a magazine of lies against you, me, 
 or any one. He will have our reputations and even our 
 lives in his power." 
 
 Rapp's considerate but not very penetrating glance rested 
 on Savary's close-set, foxy eyes; then, averting itself, wan- 
 dered to the iron gloom of the arsenal walls. 
 
 " His majesty is not such an ass, " he said bluffly. " Why 
 should he suspect you or rne?" 
 
 Savary did not deign to answer, and, after a rapid explan- 
 ation of his design, and a sketch of the story of a French 
 noble in search of a young German as a "courier" on a 
 journey to Pomerania or some other foggy region, he and 
 Rapp proceeded to the Burgplatz to hire a carriage. 
 
 Both officers wore forage caps and the undress uniform of 
 colonels of the Guard, without orders or decorations. 
 
 In the "Old City" the streets were thronged. Rumours 
 of the Peace had already spread. 
 
 In the square before the royal palace workmen with their 
 sleeves rolled up were piling upon carts and barrows wreathes 
 and evergreens, shrubs and flowers. They were the deco- 
 rations of last night's ball. 
 
 French sentinels with bayonets fixed still marched to and 
 fro in front of the main entrance. 
 
 A row of hackney coaches stood in front of the garden 
 railings. The drivers, seeing the two officers on foot, began 
 to wave their long whips. The lean wretched-looking 
 horses, "too lean even for soup, " stood with drooping heads. 
 Their sides were striped with red flesh. The sinews of 
 their necks were in places uncovered and looked like raw 
 wounds.
 
 334 Schonbrunn 
 
 Savary, after haggling over the fare, engaged the likeliest 
 hack. 
 
 "Let me sit this side, may I?" Rapp asked, taking the 
 left-hand corner of the carriage. " My right arm this morn- 
 ing aches like hell. " 
 
 Every officer in the army knew of the sabre-cuts in Rapp's 
 right arm and of Napoleon's famous remark. 
 
 " It is this Danube air, " Savary answered. "I too begin 
 to feel rheumatic." 
 
 Ill 
 
 Their enterprise was not without danger. In the north- 
 ern villages Vandamme's savagery had made the French 
 unpopular. Stragglers disappeared with a frequency which 
 only murder could explain. Nussdorf, the chief "river- 
 port " for two hundred miles, was crowded with loafers and 
 fugitives from justice or from injustice Slavs, Magyars, 
 Poles, Croats, Slovaks, Serbs, Roumanians. 
 
 "If the Emperor wishes this to be a real secret," Rapp 
 observed as they reached the open country, "he acted very 
 unadvisedly in writing so precipitately to Fouche. Every- 
 thing shows that this youngster had neither confidant nor 
 accomplice." 
 
 "You never can tell," Savary said with a shrug. 
 
 He began to busy himself with his notes. 
 
 Even at this early hour, outside. Vienna, knots of villagers 
 or citizens in holiday attire succeeded each other on the 
 highway. And now in the city from which they were re- 
 ceding the bells were ringing the boom of St. Stephen's 
 huge bell, heard by the Turks two centuries ago; the 
 mellow-toned St. Eustathius; St. Peter's in the Graben; and 
 finally St. John's. 
 
 "One would suppose these damned Germans had con- 
 quered us, not we them," Savary said morosely; and he
 
 On the Track of a Crime 335 
 
 turned back and looked at the city which in the morning 
 light spread in tranquil loveliness to right and left. 
 
 Rapp's Alsatian blood resented the remark, as well as 
 the tone in which Savary made it. It seemed intended to 
 wound. 
 
 "The truth will out, " he said curtly. "We are afraid to 
 remain a day longer. " And touched by a vague sentiment 
 he let his eyes wander over the Wiener woods. 
 
 Everywhere as they drove northwards they encountered 
 the traces of war and the destruction wrought by war the 
 red gashes in the soil dug by artillery; the fire-blackened 
 gables of roofless farms; a deserted hamlet; a squalid 
 assemblage of huts named a "field-hospital," and at the 
 doors of the huts or in a trodden field, a few wretches, 
 maimed or sick, crawled to stare at the noise of their 
 wheels. 
 
 "It is war; yes, it is war," Rapp thought and shrugged 
 aside the temptation to think. 
 
 Savary, his right arm along the edge of the carriage, was 
 sitting with knit brows, his note-book in his left hand. 
 Whenever the two men were together the difference in their 
 temperaments was certain to assert itself. Rapp despised 
 the "police de caquetage" and was already bored by this 
 morning's business. Savary was in his element. His am- 
 bition was on the alert. If this incident got out of his 
 hands what capital might not Pouche* make of it? But if 
 he succeeded 
 
 To Napoleon, Savary had long ago become, in the Jesuit 
 phrase, "like a stick in the hands of a man," and the gloom 
 of his nature made him naturally the executor of his mas- 
 ter's baser will. His fidelity was his ugliest virtue. "At a 
 word from me Savary would stab to the heart his own 
 father." The mot had been coined by Talleyrand, but it 
 expressed Napoleon's conviction. 
 
 As the carriage bent away from the Danube, the roofs
 
 336 Schonbrunn 
 
 of Nussdorf were visible on their right. Savary in a very 
 short time ordered the carriage to stop, and, dismounting, 
 dismissed the driver and the two officers proceeded on 
 foot to a picket stationed a quarter of a mile away where 
 Vandamme's main body had, to avoid the fever, been quar- 
 tered on the high ground. They enquired the way to the 
 Goldener Adler. The sentry pointed to a few houses hidden 
 by trees less than a mile distant. A shorter road ran 
 across the open fields. 
 
 They crossed two fields, and all at once found themselves 
 in a country lane. 
 
 "This does not look the place where a murder would be 
 planned, " Rapp observed. 
 
 Savary seemed not to have heard the remark. 
 
 The air all round was sweet, as though gardens or scented 
 wild-flowers were near; behind, on the wooded heights, 
 the noonday stillness brooded. In front some grey strata 
 of quiet clouds slept on the horizon. The hedgerow on their 
 right rose through a spreading undergrowth of brambles 
 and hemlock to a height of eight feet; here and there a 
 solitary spray of woodbine gleamed in safe inaccessibility. 
 Near its farther end the lane passed a coppice of hazel and 
 birch, the haunt of nightingales in summer; and through a 
 gap on the left they saw a meadow where, in times of peace 
 the kine would have been ruminating udder-deep in the lush 
 grass. To-day these meadows were a tangled wilderness 
 of dead nettles and fennel. Half a mile away, on the 
 last spur of the Wienerwald, was a herd of goats, watched 
 by a boy, whilst full in front, clearly visible in irregular 
 lines of white walls, red tiles, or thatched _roofs, straggled 
 the village they were seeking. 
 
 IV 
 
 A walk, or rather a march, of a few minutes brought them 
 out in front of the Goldener Adler. Its sign-board, the
 
 On the Track of a Crime 337 
 
 double-headed Austrian eagle, gold upon a russet ground, 
 swung unmoving above the rusty, weather-beaten porch. 
 The garden spread in a luxuriance of weeds behind the 
 house; in front, on a patch of grass, a deserted dove-cot, 
 rotten and falling to pieces, stood on the top of a pole; 
 near it, a heap of refuse and two dismantled carts. 
 
 A more evil-looking hostelry could hardly be imagined, 
 even in Austria. Murder might have here its fixed resi- 
 dence. Trap doors inside, a secret passage or two, and 
 beyond it, the broad tide of the Danube that would sweep 
 away every trace of the crime forever. 
 
 "This looks just like the house in which a murder might 
 be done, eh, mon ami?" Savary said sourly. 
 
 It was his answer to Rapp's remark in the lane. 
 
 Rapp looked at him, but did not retort; for before his 
 eyes had arisen the figure of a German boy, footsore and 
 weary, turning aside after a long day's tramp to seek rest 
 in this lonely inn. " Mon Dieu, " he asked himself, "medi- 
 tating murder, did he select for his last halting-place a house 
 that seemed dedicated to murder?" 
 
 Savary, meanwhile, had tapped sharply on the door 
 with his sword-hilt. 
 
 There was no answer. 
 
 "Are you sun-struck?" he asked Rapp; then, coming up 
 close to him, he whispered: "A word of counsel. There is 
 no sense in showing too much policy merely to be told lies. 
 A little manly maladroitness often elicits the truth. You 
 take my meaning?" 
 
 There was shrewdness in Savary's estimate of his com- 
 panion. Conscious of his own frankness, Rapp was just 
 the man to throw off his natural manner, and, aiming at 
 over-subtlety, ruin all. 
 
 "I will obey, monsieur le due," he answered with ironic 
 ceremoniousness. 
 
 At the end of a dark passage they found the guest-room,
 
 33 8 Schonbrunn 
 
 raftered with oak, low, badly lighted, and smelling of stale 
 tobacco and beer. A grimy wooden crucifix rose in a corner ; 
 a cup of holy water stood at the door. Above the fireplace 
 there were outlined two clean spaces where two fowling- 
 pieces had once hung. The edict of disarmament had ex- 
 tended even to such weapons. The stillness was unbroken 
 even by the buzz of a fly. 
 
 Savary's second imperative knock on the wooden table 
 was answered after a time by the sound of heavy footsteps, 
 and the landlord appeared. 
 
 He looked from one to the other of his two guests. A 
 cunning expression came into his eyes, and his mouth, 
 clean-shaven, with a long, hateful-looking upper lip, closed 
 abruptly, as though only the "iron pear" would open it 
 again. 
 
 "At your service, genltemen. What can I do for 
 you?" 
 
 Savary, instantly taking in his gaol-bird appearance, and 
 judging it impolitic to pretend to have entered such a 
 hostelry for food or drink or lodging, stated his errand 
 briefly. 
 
 "Stabbs?" the landlord muttered, seeming to search his 
 mem ry, "Stabbs? Donnerwetter, what sort of a name is 
 that? Ach, der knabe Friedrich Stips? Him I know; 
 yes-s, nice lad; quiet as a mouse." 
 
 Savary, as though inadvertently, moved his hand to 
 the hilt of "his sword. 
 
 He had stayed at the inn, the landlord continued, some 
 eight days, no, ten yes, from a Wednesday to a Friday he 
 had paid his bill. He had no friends in Vienna that he knew 
 of, and he received no letters; but he had seen him writing; 
 he had also heard him reciting to himself like a play-actor. 
 
 "What then brought him here? Has he a sweetheart 
 in Nussdorf or in the neighbourhood? Did he frequent 
 women?"
 
 On the Track of a Crime 339 
 
 "A sweetheart? Women? What am I that I should 
 know what company my guests keep outside my house? I 
 am too busy, your honours. " 
 
 But interrupting himself, "Ja, ich komme; coming! 
 coming!" he unexpectedly shouted, and without a word 
 of apology, going to the door, he answered along the dismal 
 passage questions that no one had asked and gave orders 
 that obviously had no meaning in this place, or a meaning 
 that the two officers were not intended to understand. 
 
 "Why then did he come to Vienna? " Savary insisted in 
 bad German, but affecting the Viennese accent. "Erfurt 
 is a hundred and twenty miles away." 
 
 "Does he come from Erfurt way?" was the cunning 
 rejoinder. "Your worships know more of him than I do. " 
 
 Savary saw that he had made a false move. 
 
 "We must loosen this dog's tongue," he said in French, 
 turning brusquely from the landlord. "For if he does 
 not speak we shall have to arrest him, and the affair will be 
 in every pot-house throughout Austria to-morrow. " 
 
 He ordered wine and the two officers sat down. 
 
 During the landlord's absence Savary began a stealthy 
 examination of the apartment. A sign from Rapp stopped 
 him. Through a small square hole cut in the wall, a pair of 
 jet-black eyes, hard and bright as steel, were watching 
 every movement of Savary's. 
 
 The sight of those eyes gave Rapp a feeling distinctly 
 unpleasant. On the track of murder, they might in this 
 lonely neighbourhood find themselves the victims of mur- 
 der. Why had they ever started upon this useless enter- 
 prise without an escort? Why had Savary's over-caution 
 dismissed the carriage and left them unprotected in this 
 cut-throat's den? And for the second time that morning
 
 34 Schonbrunn 
 
 he remembered the frequency with which Vandamme's 
 stragglers disappeared in this very neighbourhood. 
 
 The landlord returned with a bottle of wine, ostenta- 
 tiously wiping away the dust and cobwebs with a dirty 
 cloth. 
 
 Savary invited him to drink. 
 
 "You are far from rivals, " he said civilly. " Has the war 
 interfered with your trade?" 
 
 "Not much to complain of, my prince. Times are 
 hard; but, for my own part, I am very contented and very 
 happy," was the answer. And with a kind of insolent 
 familiarity, mixed with deference, he began to expatiate 
 on the war, on duty to the fatherland, the greatness of the 
 French Emperor; but also on the greatness of Austria, and 
 above all, on the greatness of Carinthia and its capital, the 
 ancient city of Klagenfurth "The waterfalls of the Miirr 
 are the gates of Paradise." 
 
 Rapp was interested. To Savary, however, this garru- 
 lity did not seem natural ; the patriotism was obviously false. 
 It- was all the talkativeness of a man who wished to gain 
 time. For what? 
 
 "Where do you come from?" he asked, resuming his 
 harsh and arrogant manner. 
 
 "Carinthia, my prince. The city of Klagenfurth, as I 
 have just told you, gave me birth. " And he began to dilate 
 on his past life. 
 
 The inn-keeper, though not born at Klagenfurth, was 
 a Carinthian, Fedor Zagnitz by name. His father and 
 grandfather belonged to the race of mountaineers who, on 
 the very edge of the Carnic glaciers, earn a savage livelihood 
 as wood-cutters, rolling the pines down the mountain side 
 into the waters of the Drave far below. But Fedor and 
 his three brothers had tired of this life, and with a few 
 kreutzers in their pockets had made for the plains. And 
 after various adventures confessable or unconfessable in
 
 On the Track of a Crime 341 
 
 Hungary and Styria, all four had ended as inn-keepers, 
 two at Klagenfurth, one at Villach, the fourth, Fedor, the 
 youngest, here at Nussdorf. 
 
 "How are we to bring this drole to the point?" Savary 
 asked in a French patois that he used in speaking to his 
 police. 
 
 "Let us be frank with him," Rapp answered; and with- 
 out waiting for Savary's assent, he stated their errand in his 
 own way. They had come expressly to enquire into the 
 character of this Friedrich Staps. The peace had been 
 signed, and a French officer of great rank was setting out at 
 once for Pommern, and desired a bright young fellow as his 
 interpreter and courier. Staps had seemed a likely youth 
 what did the inn-keeper know of him? 
 
 "And is that all your errand? " the inn-keeper ejaculated, 
 his black eyes glistening. "Why I thought you were 
 princes; yes, and I saw myself as ambassador to Klagen- 
 furth announcing the great Napoleon's clemency; yes, and 
 I saw my two brothers' faces yellow with envy as they 
 eyed me. 'Thunder,' they would say, 'is not Fedor still 
 the lucky penny of the family?" 
 
 He sprang to his feet with a wild laugh, and swinging to 
 the window, stood biting his nails and staring through the 
 dirty panes; then, as though by chance, he flung himself 
 on a stool immediately between his guests and the door. 
 
 The criminal in him appeared uncaged, yet Rapp ob- 
 served that his eyes, even when standing by the window, 
 watched every motion of Savary's; he observed too the 
 fellow's powerful wrists, the black hair coming down the 
 arm to the very knuckles, suggesting wild beast strength 
 and agility. 
 
 Savary, who with difficulty had curbed his temper, got 
 on his feet; but Rapp, made cool by the danger, adhered 
 to the plan agreed upon. 
 
 "What have you to say? This lad should begin his
 
 34 2 Schonbrunn 
 
 duties and start on his journey to-night, or to-morrow 
 at daybreak unless, of course, we discover from you any- 
 thing to his discredit." 
 
 The inn-keeper's insolent mocking glance rested alter- 
 nately on the two Frenchmen; and thrusting his thumbs 
 into the armholes of his waistcoat, he asked leisurely, 
 "And it is a long journey this that His Highness your 
 friend is going upon?" 
 
 The thought darted simultaneously through Rapp's 
 mind as well as Savary's "This ruffian knows of Staps's 
 arrest." There was no mistaking the emphasis that had 
 been laid on the words "a long journey." 
 
 Savary's chagrin was extreme. 
 
 He saw his whole scheme crumble; he saw Staps re- 
 prieved, or Germany by his death furnished with a martyr 
 immeasurably more pathetic than Schill or Palm; he saw 
 Fouche's triumph; whilst he himself was further removed 
 that ever from the Ministry of Police. 
 
 "It is no business of Fedor Zagnitz, " the landlord re- 
 sumed ; "but the lad is sickly, as you might say, and if your 
 great friend were travelling, say towards the Tyrol " 
 
 "We should not want a German," Savary interposed in 
 a voice thick with the emotion against which he was con- 
 tending. 
 
 "No, of course not, my prince," was the startling retort. 
 "You'd find plenty of Germans Bavarians, for instance, 
 on the spot dead, if not living, eh? eh? Plenty of Ger- 
 mans, ha! ha!" 
 
 The outburst of savage hate astounded Rapp. Did this 
 hideous rage express the true feeling of Germany for 
 France? Had he been in error in imagining that the young 
 Thuringian had no active accomplices "save God"? Or 
 was the hate masked in this brutish peasant's breast an 
 example of all Germany? 
 
 But the inn-keeper, as though contented with this taunt-
 
 On the Track of a Crime 343 
 
 ing allusion to the Franco-Bavarian surrender in the pre- 
 ceding summer, now changed his bearing. Probably he 
 himself had been working out the situation, and tacitly 
 gave up the enterprise against two officers of distinction 
 as "risky." 
 
 "You asked about women, did you not?" he remarked, 
 with a show of friendliness. "Well, the lad had a sweet- 
 heart. I have so many cares, but my memory comes back 
 to me now. Well, as I was saying, I came one day into the 
 lad's room. I found him weeping over a maiden's picture 
 and sitting with his arms like this. " 
 
 The host laid both his arms flat down on the table and 
 buried his face in the sleeve of the right. 
 
 "Ah who was the girl? Was she of Vienna?" Sav- 
 ary asked indifferently. 
 
 " I cannot tell; he never spoke of her, mon prince, never a 
 word." 
 
 But he described the miniature and gave it as his opinion 
 that the maiden was not of Vienna or the neighbourhood. 
 
 "He had the look of a lost dog, " he jerked out at length. 
 "Why should a lad look like that if his maiden were near?" 
 
 Savary nodded, but put some further questions. 
 
 Not another word, however, could he extort, either by 
 frankness or cunning. 
 
 "Is there any good in going on with this?" Rapp said in 
 the patois already adopted by Savary. "We do not want a 
 woman on our hands." And he added in German, "Our 
 young friend will suit the appointment." 
 
 " I am not satisfied , ' ' Savary said slowly. ' ' The Tugend- 
 bund has women in its ranks. This drdle may know more 
 of her than he pretends. Put a question or two about the 
 Illuminati but carefully." 
 
 Rapp stifled the wish to ask Savary to put such futile 
 questions himself. His honest, soldierly intelligence led 
 him to see in all such associations as the Illuminati and
 
 344 Schonbrunn 
 
 the Tugendbund "mere moonshine," or at best conspir- 
 acies to which Savary's or Fouch^'s police for their own ends 
 gave a factitious importance. 
 
 "The Illuminat?" the landlord exclaimed. "Thunder! 
 What's them? The Prince of Carinthia has often supped at 
 brother's tavern in Klagenfurth ; but he is a Serenity, not an 
 Illuminat." 
 
 "Enough! Enough! Show me his room," Savary 
 interrupted, annoyed by Rapp's laugh. "This is no time 
 for jesting," he muttered with a scowl, when Rapp under 
 his breath repeated, "A Serene Highness, but not an 
 Illuminated Highness." 
 
 The host searched the leather pocket of his pantaloon 
 and took out an iron ring garnished with keys. 
 
 Behind him the two officers climbed the rickety stair, 
 covered like the inns of the period, with the filth of 
 months or of years. On the fifth step Rapp turned, he 
 knew not why, and saw on a wooden bench the outstretched 
 figure of a man in the picturesque dirt affected by the 
 Magyars. Further back in the gloom another figure in 
 the same attire sat smoking. A peat fire smouldered on 
 the hearth, and as he twirled his long moustaches he stared 
 into the dull embers. 
 
 Rapp felt for his pistols, and, with a sense of relief, saw 
 Savary make the same precautionary gesture. 
 
 VI 
 
 The room into which they were now ushered had a 
 slanting roof, and they had to stoop in places not to knock 
 their heads against the ceiling. Savary stood with the 
 host. Rapp walked to the window. It was a dormer win- 
 dow and looked across a garden stocked with pear trees, 
 plum trees, currant bushes, and beds still brilliant with 
 marigolds and dahlias. A deal table, green with mould,
 
 On the Track of a Crime 345 
 
 stood under a pear tree; a bird-cage swung from a branch, 
 and in it a grey parrot sat blinking in the sunshine. Beyond 
 the garden lay a level expanse of fields, and beyond the 
 fields gleamed the Danube, broad as a lake, flashing silver 
 and azure in the October sun. 
 
 "Yes," the host said, "the lad should make a good page 
 to a man of condition. His habits, you see, were as dainty 
 as a girl's." 
 
 Flinging back the chintz coverlet, he pointed to the sheets 
 on Staps's bed, their dirt neatly covered by squares of white 
 paper sewn to the under side. 
 
 "Down with the French! To hell with Napoleon!" 
 screamed a weird voice, apparently at Rapp's elbow, and 
 instantly the two officers wheeled round, pistol in hand. 
 
 " "Tis only the parrot, " the landlord said with a sneering 
 laugh. " We're quiet folks here. " 
 
 Rapp and Savary stood listening. 
 
 "God bless the Pope! God's curse on Bonaparte!" 
 
 An eldritch scream followed, then total silence. But in 
 a second or two the low jug-jug of a nightingale's song rose 
 and terminated in another scream. 
 
 Savary stepped to the window. In a cage a few feet 
 distant the parrot was sitting as if carved in stone, its head 
 down, its right eye upturned, apparently deeply satisfied 
 with the effect that it had produced. 
 
 "You have guests who do not love us, mine host?" Rapp 
 observed jestingly. "Where did the parrot learn that 
 singsong?" 
 
 "Ach, not so bad?" was the imperturbable answer. 
 "What is one to do ? Men of all sorts come here, from every 
 port of the Danube between Donauworth and Rustchuk, 
 and that's a thousand miles and more." 
 
 Savary continued to stare out of the window. 
 
 "Who is that?" he sharply asked. "And to whom is he 
 signalling?"
 
 34 6 Schonbrunn 
 
 " Ach, that?" the landlord said, coming up to the window. 
 "That is poor Wilhelm. He got his dose at Aspern. He 
 was bandaging one leg when whiff ! comes a round shot and 
 rips the flesh from the other. Both had to come off in 
 hospital. But he got over it, God knows how. Better 
 dead, I say. Wilhelm, however, does not take that view, 
 and there he is! He used to sing as merry a song, tell as good 
 a story as any man in Nussdorf, and he would stand his 
 drink like a Suabian. Now he's queer. He's queer. I 
 give him a crust for scaring the birds, and that shed to sleep 
 in." 
 
 He pointed to a hovel of dank and rotting planks. 
 
 Near it, prone amongst the refuse and garbage, lay a 
 monstrous figure, horribly mutilated, both legs amputated, 
 waving a huge flapper with both hands; now and then a 
 groan of fatigue or pain escaped him, and with a cry of 
 baffled rage he would lie panting, the flapper inert. Crowds 
 of starving birds sat watching for these intervals, perched 
 on trees, on the wall, on the bushes, or fluttering along the 
 ground. 
 
 "That too is war," Rapp thought, and looked at what 
 to him resembled a monstrous caterpillar. 
 
 "He hates them birds," the host continued with hideous 
 affability. "He used to be kind-hearted enough; but now, 
 as I said, he's a bit wrong here," tapping his forehead. 
 "Seems to make no difference: starling, finch, tit, redbreast 
 or thrush, he hates 'em all." 
 
 "He must have had a black spot in him somewhere," 
 Rapp said suddenly. "Never have I seen a man wounded 
 in battle that did not come out of it a better man than he 
 went in. " 
 
 "Think so?" the landlord said, with his insolent good- 
 nature. "Well, there's no saying. I've seen plenty just 
 the other way." 
 
 Savary, who understood the drift of Rapp's remark,
 
 On the Track of a Crime 347 
 
 looked at him in contemptuous surprise. Was this the 
 place or the time for moralizing on war and peace? 
 
 But now, not less anxious to be rid of his visitors than his 
 visitors to be safely out of this house, the landlord returned 
 to the subject of Staps's habits. 
 
 "Was he religious? Was he an adherent of the Jesuits or 
 other society?" 
 
 "Religious? He used to pray morning and night, if 
 that's religion. There!" he said, pointing to a neat clean 
 rug in front of the bed. " I have heard him at it when every- 
 body else in the house was snoring. I used to pray myself, 
 but that's long ago. God bless you, where's the good of it? 
 A man of sense must pray to himself, aye, and answer his 
 own prayers, or they'll never be answered. What do you 
 think, monsieur?" he said, addressing Rapp. "You look 
 as if you knew'what's what. Why, when I was young, I tried 
 all sorts of praying dodges; I prayed for this, I prayed for 
 that ; but never an answer, big or little. At Klagenfurth I 
 prayed to God to give me two post-horses. Did I get 'em? 
 Instead of getting my two post-horses, three of my cows 
 sickened and died in one day. After that I stopped pray- 
 ing, and tried other ways of getting on in the world. But 
 this made me notice the lad at his prayers. 'We're all 
 alike when we are young,' says I to myself, 'and doubt- 
 less the lad is asking for things just as foolish as I asked at 
 his age.'" 
 
 "Quite as foolish!" was Savary's grim retort. 
 
 He was thinking of Staps's asseveration that he had 
 implored the divine guidance as to the murder of Napoleon, 
 and to himself he thought, "To attack the master of a 
 million troops and the dictator of Europe certainly it 
 wants God Almighty Himself!" 
 
 "Had he any clothes to be sent for?" Rapp asked, struck 
 by a sudden thought. 
 
 "No clothes I ever saw but those on his back. "
 
 34 8 Schonbrunn 
 
 "Is he an educated lad? Had he books? His new 
 master will like him to read aloud to him." 
 
 It was Savary who put this question. 
 
 "Yes," the landlord answered contemptuously, "he 
 read a deal in books. I've got 'em downstairs. I took 
 them out of his room for to keep them for him." 
 
 "Show them to me." 
 
 VII 
 
 A quarter of an hour later Rapp and Savary quitted the 
 Goldener Adler and walked to the Zwei Kronen, the chief inn 
 of Nussdorf. It was close to the wharves and overlooked 
 the highroad from Brunn. 
 
 Savary visited the custom-house, but discovered nothing. 
 He and Rapp crossed the river in a boat without a keel, 
 which rolled excessively and increased Savary's sulkiness 
 and contempt for Austrian civilization. His enquiries pro- 
 duced nothing fresh. 
 
 It was nearly two o'clock before they returned 
 
 As they re-crossed the river they heard in the distance 
 the heavy thud-thud of guns. Savary looked at Rapp 
 enquiringly, but Rapp knew no more than he did. 
 
 Napoleon had not waited for the signature of Francis II., 
 but as though it were enough that he had affixed his seal to 
 the Treaty, commanded Vienna, by the thunder of a hun- 
 dred cannon, to rejoice at his magnanimity. The action also 
 dispelled the rumours that the story of peace was a fake, 
 and allayed the dangerous excitement rising in the city.
 
 CHAPTER XII 
 
 AN EMPEROR AND HIS SECRETARIES 
 
 TO those about him an extraordinary elation marked 
 Bonaparte's demeanour all that day, affecting them 
 exactly as the proximity of a highly charged magnetic 
 battery might have affected them marshals, generals, 
 officers of his suite, officers of the household, pages, aides- 
 de-camp, secretaries, courtiers. 
 
 Berthier's face had an angry congested look, such as it 
 wore only in days of battle, and he gave instructions or 
 orders to his subordinates in a shrill and imperative voice, 
 but with a slight stammer habitual to him in moments of 
 great strain. 
 
 The Emperor himself since his return from the morning 
 ride and the address to his Guards had betrayed nothing, 
 and appeared to feel nothing but an overwhelming energy and 
 capacity for work. His countenance was calm ; in his eyes 
 burned a fixed concentrated light. The oppression as well 
 as the presentiments of the preceding days had dispersed. 
 The apparitions of the past night might, he told himself 
 again, have been an actuality, or they might have been 
 merely a projection of his mind; the essential thing was 
 that he had undergone the strangest ordeal that can affect 
 the heart, and in that ordeal he had conquered. The out- 
 burst to Duroc had made clearer to himself masses of in- 
 
 349
 
 35 Schonbrunn 
 
 choate ideas gathering in his mind for the past three months 
 or the past three years. He had placed the actions of his 
 manhood front to front with the dreams of his youth; the 
 contradiction for a moment had appalled his reason and 
 troubled his will; but the contradiction was only appar- 
 ent for he had analysed his career stage by stage, and stage 
 by stage he had justified that career. 
 
 "But all my career is mystery. How at such an hour as 
 this can the superhuman fail to assert itself? The assassin's 
 dagger may have prepared the way for the phantoms of the 
 night. Who shall assign limits to the possible and the 
 impossible?" 
 
 The whole incident, the epileptoid attack of the afternoon, 
 the vigil, interrupted only by a couple of hours' sleep to- 
 wards dawn, had left merely a painful hyperassthesia. The 
 most ordinary incidents got on his nerves. The evil odours 
 which, at that period, lurked for several hours every morn- 
 ing about the corridors of every great house in Paris or 
 Vienna nauseated him; but he surrounded himself with 
 a cloud of eau de Cologne. The scratching of a quill, 
 or a page hastily turned by one of his secretaries, ex- 
 asperated him; but he refused to give way to these 
 sensations. 
 
 "To work! To work!" 
 
 He repeated the phrase that day a hundred times. He 
 seemed to seek forgetfulness and to find pride in the display 
 of his prodigious energies, now liberated and functioning 
 joyously. He seemed determined to push on every phase 
 of his gigantic plans simultaneously the fortification of 
 Passau, of Antwerp, of Toulon, of Linz, of Ratisbon; the 
 plans of campaign for his armies in Portugal and in Spain ; 
 the giving of a central impulse to the dislocated actions 
 of Soult, Mortier, Victor, and St. Cyr; the canal joining 
 the Seine to the Rhone; the canal joining the Meuse to the 
 Rhine; public buildings in Paris, public buildings in Lyons;
 
 An Emperor and His Secretaries 351 
 
 the scheme to paralyse for ever Austria's unlimited issue of 
 paper money. 
 
 He had begun immediately after the harangue to his 
 troops; he had given elaborate instructions first to Berthier, 
 then to Maret, then again to Berthier and later to Lauriston. 
 He had eaten a hasty lunch and recommenced. From one 
 to three o'clock he had dictated to Men6val alone; at three 
 he had called in the aid of Fain, now Meneval's right-hand 
 man; but, his activity generating new force, he had in a 
 quarter of an hour summoned as secretaries two other aides- 
 de-camp, Montesquieu and Bertrand, and finally Marbceuf, 
 a good-looking, sinewy guardsman of two and twenty, son 
 of the former commandant of Corsica, the early protector 
 of Lastitia Bonaparte. He was now dictating to five secre- 
 taries at once. 
 
 At times Napoleon seemed to find a pleasure in display- 
 ing to others or in proving to himself the range of his 
 faculties. To-day, however, his purpose in summoning 
 five secretaries was practical. He wished to be out of 
 Vienna and out of Germany ; he wished to feel his own hand 
 once more on the reins in Paris and throughout France. 
 He wished to dispatch within twenty-four hours a mass of 
 business and correspondence that in ordinary circumstances 
 would have taxed even his powers of work to dispatch in 
 forty-eight hours. He had an additional incentive per- 
 sonal and moral. This display of conscious strength 
 affected him somewhat as the visit to his grenadiers had 
 affected him that morning. It gave him tranquillity the 
 tranquillity born of conscious and deliberate might. The 
 death of Pierre Lestocq had moved him, and, yielding to an 
 impulse, he had permitted a brief word from himself to be 
 addressed to the regiment by its colonel, "Your Emperor 
 sympathizes with you in the loss of a comrade. His ardour 
 to return to the standards made him quit the hospital before 
 his wounds were healed. He was one of the brave."
 
 35 2 Schonbrunn 
 
 ii 
 
 Four o'clock had struck. In Napoleon's cabinet all was 
 still vibrating energy, invention, intellect, and will. Ideas 
 and plans hurtled in on his imagination more rapidly than he 
 could find words to express them or find hands to take them 
 down. Masses of them were flung out in rapid and elliptic 
 utterances. These were seized by Meneval and his trained 
 subordinates, set down fragmentarily, recast, approved, or 
 torn in shreds and redictated. At other moments Napoleon 
 spoke in a low melancholy voice, as though obsessed by 
 thoughts of a darker complexion; then again, gathering 
 force, his words became rapid and vibrating; or he would 
 suddenly cease his pacing of the floor, and, standing in total 
 silence, he would tug with a spasmodic motion at the braid 
 on the right sleeve of his coat, then after a second or two 
 he would burst into a torrent of violent rhetoric, through 
 which, however, a definite meaning forced itself. The scene 
 and the hour suggested one other scene only, Condivi's 
 vivid description of Michael Angelo's studio, the Titan 
 figure at work in the twilight, the air filled with hot dust, 
 chips, and fragments of marble flying from the chisel like 
 sparks from the iron on the anvil. 
 
 Me"neVal sat near the fireplace on Napoleon's left. Along 
 side of Me"neVal at a table by the south window sat Baron 
 Fain. These had in charge the correspondence with Paris 
 with Clarke, Cambace'res, Decres, and even with Fouche". 
 To Marbceuf were dictated the letters to subject or allied 
 kings, to independent princes and other minor poten- 
 tates of Germany. The two military secretaries, Mon- 
 tesquiou and Bertrand, occupied the opposite corner of 
 the room on Napoleon's right. They were at this mo- 
 ment taking down the day's instructions for the gene- 
 rals in Spain Soult, Gouvain St. Cyr, Augereau, and 
 Suchet.
 
 An Emperor and His Secretaries 353 
 
 Napoleon in a pause glanced at the clock. It was twenty 
 minutes past four. 
 
 The trial of the intended assassin, though not a man in 
 that room except himself was aware of it, must now be 
 ended. Savary might arrive at any moment to announce 
 that Staps had made his recantation or had received his 
 death-sentence. 
 
 "And why is Savary not already here?" he asked himself 
 impatiently. 
 
 For a second or two he ceased dictating, and, apparently 
 idle, stood in gloomy abstraction staring out on the scene in 
 front, on the sinking October sun, the paths strewn with 
 dead leaves, the broad squares of grass, the white statues 
 niched in their walls of solid greenery. Beyond the Glori- 
 ette a flock of starlings passed in whirring flight. They 
 were on their way from their feeding-grounds by the Danube 
 to their homes in the Wienerwald. He turned abruptly 
 aside and resumed his diagonal pacing of the room, glancing 
 again at the clock. 
 
 In the oppressive silence Pain's slightly asthmatic breath- 
 ing was unpleasantly marked. Me'neval's pen continued 
 its steady scratching. His large, calm, bald forehead was 
 held high above the sheet on which he was writing. 
 
 As though by any means to drown these irritations, 
 Napoleon, without indicating the secretary to whom the 
 order was addressed, exclaimed "Send Poniatowski a 
 sabre. I am not done with him and his horsemen. He is a 
 Pole and will value such a gift from me; but strike out that 
 clause about Warsaw. Poland has not yet proved her fit- 
 ness for self-government." 
 
 Two secretaries lifted their heads at once, uncertain to 
 whom the words were spoken ; but knowing by instinct that 
 Meneval had taken the minute, Napoleon turned angrily to 
 one of the two who had lifted their heads it was Bertrand 
 "Demand of Daru what has become of the 34,000 pairs 
 
 23
 
 354 Schonbrunn 
 
 of slippers and the 34,000 pairs of winter boots which he 
 reported to me four days ago yes, and the 45,000 shirts 
 and the 9,000 gaiters destined for Trieste? Not a rag is to 
 be left behind us. War is war. And command him at once 
 to dispatch 50,000 rations of biscuit to Passau." 
 
 Bertrand jotted down the places and figures and began 
 at once to outline the dispatch. 
 
 The Emperor glanced down a draft handed to him by 
 Marbceuf. 
 
 "Good!" he said. "But why do you say, 'I write to 
 Your Serene Highness to inform you '? Why say 'I 
 write'? Does His Serene Highness imagine that you are 
 shouting down an ear-trumpet? Put simply, 'This is to 
 inform Your Highness. ' ' 
 
 And turning to Bertrand, who had not yet finished the 
 order to the governor of Vienna, Daru he gave the unex- 
 pected command: 
 
 "Send for the Prince de Neuchatel. When he enters, let 
 Montesquieu and yourself correct or verify these instruc- 
 tions by my interview with him. Remain ! " he said abruptly 
 to Fain, who had risen to let Montesquiou pass. " Demand 
 of Clarke" (his Minister of War at Paris) "why I have not 
 yet received the detailed report on my order for 120,000 
 muskets on the model of 1777, and of my second order for 
 180,000 muskets No. I Republican." 
 
 "Les droles!" he said to himself, taking a pinch of snuff. 
 "Do they sleep in their chairs in Paris? To whom have 
 you now come?" 
 
 "To the King of Wurttemberg," Marbceuf answered. 
 
 Napoleon frowned. "Ah, Jerome! Let the coquin 
 wait." Jerome's debts and the criminal extravagance of 
 the court at Cassel had compelled him to modify a secret 
 clause in the Treaty. 
 
 At this moment both the folding-doors were flung wide. 
 
 "The Prince de Neuchatel."
 
 An Emperor and His Secretaries 355 
 
 Two pages of the household, in gold and scarlet, appeared, 
 and, between them, through the vertical oblong of dark- 
 ness, Berthier in full uniform entered, scarcely less glittering 
 and dazzling than the imperial chamberlains and pages. 
 
 His carriage and six fine horses waited below, and he had 
 been stopped at the very door. 
 
 Napoleon considered him. A malicious smile broke over 
 his face. 
 
 "We cannot part with you, mon prince. Where is your 
 baton?" he went on, taking him affectionately by the ear. 
 
 "What a comedy!" Montesquiou murmured to Bertrand 
 as he took his seat beside him at a temporary desk made 
 out of a low box in acacia-wood laid on the top of a 
 gilt table. Montesquiou's audacity threw Bertrand into a 
 panic; but to suppress Montesquiou was out of the ques- 
 tion. He had all the levity and all the dare-devil courage of 
 his caste. He was chivalrous, never refused to do a kind- 
 ness that was in his power; and if he were in debt every- 
 where, he was also, whenever he had money, the most 
 open-handed of men. To him certainly Napoleon's bitter 
 sarcasm on the noblesse could not be extended "I showed 
 them the path to glory, but they would not tread it. I 
 opened my drawing-room doors and they rushed through 
 them in crowds." 
 
 ra 
 
 "The mine under the Molker bastion has not exploded. 
 Why ? ' ' the Emperor said, addressing Berthier, as though that 
 information, just semaphored by Daru, were the cause of his 
 interrupting his Chief of the Staff's return to Vienna. Buc 
 without waiting for a reply, he addressed to him a series of 
 rapid questions upon the provisioning of the Eleventh 
 Corps, Marmont's, which, three days later, was to replace 
 the Imperial Guard in the capital.
 
 35 6 Schonbrunn 
 
 "Tell me the 3ist foot, the I4th chasseurs, and the 
 1 9th in what parts of Tuscany are they quartered and 
 the 6th hussars and the 4th Polish lancers? I must give 
 Eugene at least twelve regiments of cavalry. I cannot 
 have Lefebvre's blunder repeated. And a flying column 
 must be sent into Istria. The English on hearing of the 
 peace will at once attempt a descent. " 
 
 Berthier gave the necessary answers. It was an amazing 
 feat of memory; but Berthier was not the "heaven-born 
 chief of the staff" for nothing. 
 
 "Good good!" Napoleon said, still in the affectionate 
 voice which all that day he had employed in talking to him. 
 "And how many rounds of ammunition are there at Gratz? " 
 
 "Eight hundred and seventy-five thousand, but other 
 two hundred thousand are on the way. " 
 
 "Eight hundred thousand? Good God! There ought 
 to be two millions. See to it at once. And when can 
 Macdonald occupy the town?" 
 
 "In five days." 
 
 But this time Berthier's answer was too unhesitating. 
 Napoleon's suspicious ears caught the accent of a premedi- 
 tated or prearranged reply. 
 
 " In five days? Why not in three? Have I forgiven the 
 past, recalled him from exile, afforded him an unparalleled 
 opportunity of glory at Wagram and made him a marshal, 
 to be repaid with ingratitude or sloth? Five days ! " 
 
 A storm seemed imminent; but Napoleon turned with a 
 gesture of impatience to Bertrand. 
 
 "Write! The two divisions of Marshal Macdonald shall 
 be at Gratz in three days." 
 
 The order, as Berthier very well knew, could not possibly 
 be executed. It affected him disturbingly; for it showed 
 that not only in external and negligible affairs but in press- 
 ing and organic things Napoleon had divorced his mind 
 from reality. Nevertheless, not a muscle of his face moved.
 
 An Emperor and His Secretaries 357 
 
 The unfortunate trick of folding his arms across his chest 
 alone betrayed his discomposure. 
 
 Napoleon saw it ; a slight nervous cough, habitual to him 
 in moments of excitement, seized him. He spat angrily on 
 the ground. 
 
 "And Drouet?" he exclaimed, addressing Berthier. 
 "And the three Bavarian divisions? They must have their 
 vengeance on the Tyrolese ; they must themselves punish the 
 rebels; they must themselves teach these swineherds that 
 no one can with impunity revolt against my ally! I am 
 ready to hear their grievances; but they must state them 
 upon their knees. Let me hear not a syllable about their 
 independence, or the continuance of Austria's rule! I will 
 wage eternal war rather." 
 
 Again the nervous cough, caused by an irritation in the 
 bronchial tubes, aggravated by his speech in the Danube 
 mists that morning, seized Napoleon. 
 
 Berthier was about to take his leave, but the Emperor, 
 instantly changing his tone, drew him aside and said in a 
 low voice: 
 
 "You know my plans. Has Barraguay d'Hilliers an 
 organizing head? Can you make use of him? I will 
 retain the nominal command till I reach Passau; but you 
 will leave the Alleegasse at once, and take up your residence 
 at Schonbrunn. Here your power is absolute. But re- 
 member : there is no peace so long as we are in an enemy's 
 country. Relax nothing. I desire each corps to enter, pass 
 through, and leave Vienna every man with his finger on the 
 trigger. The conditions are " 
 
 He stated the details of the evacuation. By November 
 ist, Massena with 40,000 and Davout with 60,000 were to 
 evacuate Moravia, the latter concentrating upon Vienna, 
 the former upon Krems. Oudinot with the Second Corps, 
 24,000 strong, was to be out of Vienna by the same date and 
 concentrated upon Polten and Molk. Then followed a
 
 35 8 Schonbrunn 
 
 second series of instructions, giving the position of each 
 corps up to the I5th December, Berthier now and then inter- 
 polating a variant or a suggestion, every word, including 
 Berthier's corrections, being meanwhile verified or corrected 
 by Bertrand and Montesquiou. 
 
 With a tug at his ear and a friendly tap on the shoulder 
 Berthier was dismissed. 
 
 IV 
 
 In Napoleon's presence, the individuality of other men 
 was effaced. During that interview six men were taking 
 down his commands or ideas or words as rapidly as he could 
 utter them, but Meneval seemed to speak and act like Ber- 
 thier, Berthier like Fain, Fain like Marbceuf, and Marbceuf 
 like Bertrand. Montesquiou alone retained a certain per- 
 sonality, the corrupt cynicism of his mind, the negligent 
 disdain of his manners, making this Mephistopheles of the 
 ante-chamber, even in his youth, one of the most outstand- 
 ing representatives of the noblesse in Napoleon's entourage. 
 
 Me*neVal, meanwhile, had been engaged on a dispatch 
 to the Czar. Napoleon had aided him, now by a word, now 
 by a phrase, jerked in amid his dialogue with Berthier. He 
 now took the draft from M^neval's hands, and, with a grim- 
 ace, began to correct. 
 
 "What is this? It is incredible." 
 
 He tore the draft into shreds and trampled on them. 
 
 Meneval waited, suave and imperturbable. Less down- 
 right than Rapp or Duroc, less sincere au fond, he yet 
 retained in Napoleon's neighbourhood a measure of critical 
 power which he had constantly to disguise. 
 
 "Write!" 
 
 The Emperor sketched the heads of the draft in the 
 following saccade* phrases, 
 
 "To the Czar write, Who has been poisoning the mind
 
 An Emperor and His Secretaries 359 
 
 of Your Majesty? I will never protect a rebel. What! 
 Tyrol in flames, insurrections in Spain, Prussia arming 
 does Alexander think me mad ? Does he imagine that I will 
 imitate the accursed House of Lorraine? Let Francis II. 
 send gold chains to ci-devant emigres or to insurgent peas- 
 ants! If a single Polish rebel seeks refuge in my State I 
 will have him instantly shot or sent in chains to Moscow. 
 The only hope of Warsaw is in the favour of its sovereign, 
 his Imperial Majesty the Czar. Let it look to him for 
 redress. Repeat that I have given Austria most lenient 
 terms. She cedes Salzburg and some trifles beyond the 
 Inn. I have not taken an inch of Bavaria, and in Italy 
 only the region indispensable for my communications with 
 Dalmatia." 
 
 This, Me"neval thought ironically, Alexander L, who has 
 never forgotten Suvarow's campaign and is still sore on 
 account of Italy, is to accept as an accurate description of 
 Austria's surrender of the Innviertel, Salzburg, the best 
 portion of Friuli, Carniola, Trieste, and all Dalmatia and 
 Croatia south of the Save 3,500,000 subjects and an in- 
 demnity of 3,400,000 ! And will Alexander accept the half 
 million wretched peasants of Tarnopol as the equivalent of 
 the 1,500,000 added to Warsaw? 
 
 But Napoleon tricked his partners in war as at cards. 
 Shortsightedness was part of his "greatness." 
 
 "Say also," the Emperor began again, stamping his foot, 
 "that I have been thus lenient out of consideration for his 
 Imperial Majesty the Czar. Add that Madrid is safe, Well- 
 ington in full retreat, and that America is about to declare 
 war on England." 
 
 He turned to Bertrand, Eugene's admirer and flatterer. 
 
 "To the Viceroy, Prince Eugene," he said, "write 'It 
 is fitting that the victor of Raab shall be the subjugator of 
 the Tyrol, and secure for himself the laurels that fell from 
 the brow of Lefebvre. ' "
 
 360 Schonbrunn 
 
 He stopped abruptly. "Quoi done? What is it now?" 
 
 Fain, at the table on his left, had raised his head. The 
 letters to the secondary kings and princes announcing the 
 peace were completed and awaited the Emperor's signature. 
 
 Without sitting down Napoleon took a quill, shook off 
 the ink, then glanced keenly at the headings and at the 
 "Monsieur mon frere" to Frederick Augustus, the big, 
 broad-faced, somnolent King of Saxony; to Maximilian 
 Joseph, King of Bavaria, changing without rhyme or 
 reason the first line of Fain's draft into "Je m'empresse 
 d'annoncer" and handing it to the secretary to re- write, 
 whilst he proceeded to sign the remaining letters to Dai- 
 berg, prince primate of the Confederation of the Rhine, to 
 the Grand-Duke of Hesse-Darmstadt, to the Prince Borg- 
 hese, husband of Pauline, now at Turin, to the Grand-Duke 
 of Baden making the singular flourish that now passed 
 for his name, though only an eye accustomed to decipher 
 Shabestari handwriting could transliterate more than thf 
 "N." 
 
 He returned then to Bertrand's letter to Eugene. 
 
 It had long been Napoleon's whim to make a soldier of his 
 stepson, and he had decided to train him in the art of waf 
 himself. Eugene, though an amiable individual, was as 
 unfit for the part assigned to him by his great step-father as 
 were Joseph or Louis; but he was as incapable of treason 
 as of ambition, and more conscious than the brothers 
 of Napoleon's greatness, so conscious, indeed, that three 
 months hence he, the son of Josephine, was to describe 
 Napoleon's resolution to divorce her as "an honour to my 
 mother. " 
 
 "Write," he said to Bertrand, "write to the Viceroy I 
 charge you especially, first, with the submission of the Tyrol ; 
 secondly, with the duty of organizing the territories ceded 
 to me by this treaty, henceforth to be described by the name 
 of the Provinces of Illyria. You shall yourself remain
 
 An Emperor and His Secretaries 361 
 
 in Vienna until the exchange of ratifications. You shall 
 review at once the Eleventh Corps, which is now under your 
 command, and furnish it from the magazines at Vienna 
 with everything that it requires. The sick and wounded of 
 the Army of Italy and of the Eleventh Corps shall be 
 removed to Gratz and to Loben. " 
 
 Then followed instructions to Generals Rusca and Drouet 
 in regard to the concentration upon Villach and upon 
 Salzburg, Balsano and Brixen, terminating with a sketch of 
 the plan of campaign. 
 
 These instructions, dictated alternately to Bertfand 
 and Montesquiou, the former taking the Tyrol, the latter 
 the newly acquired territories, amounted, even in their 
 condensed form, to 2,500 words, packed with geographical 
 details, directing the movements and numbers, the length 
 of the marches, the positions of brigades, regiments, divi- 
 sions, extending over a vast region whose government, 
 fortresses, its finance and laws, its river, mountains, cities, 
 and plains, were not less clear to Napoleon's mind, un- 
 aided that afternoon by any map, than the inlaid pattern of 
 the costly table at which Bertrand sat writing. 
 
 The torrent of geographical names and military details 
 ceased; and, in the silence broken only by the scratching of 
 the quills, observing that MeneVal's pen was idle, and that, 
 with his bald head and wide perspiring face uplifted, he 
 was waiting for a command, Napoleon, interpreting the 
 look before Me'ne'val had spoken a word, exclaimed: 
 
 "Ah, that absurd business!" 
 
 He sat down and, putting his fingers together, laughed 
 shrilly, jocosely, cunningly. 
 
 "What blockheads your men of letters are! Indeed it is 
 one thing to lead for a single week an army corps of thirty
 
 362 Schonbrunn 
 
 thousand men and another to translate like Delille an epic 
 in twelve books, or write a history in thirty volumes like 
 Lacretelle! This proposal for a monument to me how 
 fatuous in itself ! No man should permit a monument to be 
 erected to himself in his lifetime. At most he may allow 
 his own generation to choose the site; the generation after 
 him may raise the pedestal ; it is the third generation only 
 that should dare erect the statue. Yet what can I do? I 
 have been drawn headlong by the follies of this age. Good 
 God ! These men of letters ! If the secret of stupidity were 
 lost to the world I could find enough in the Institute to re- 
 people a planet!" 
 
 He broke into another strident laugh. 
 
 "They intend nothing but honour to your Majesty," 
 MeneVal said, deprecatingly. "This monument has long 
 been in their minds. It was intended as a surprise upon 
 your return to Paris. This unfortunate dispute about the 
 names has frustrated that intention." 
 
 "Bah," Napoleon said, flinging himself back, "phrases! 
 phrases!" 
 
 Me'ne'val was alluding to a letter received from Paris 
 three days previously, but left for consideration till this 
 afternoon, requesting Napoleon to decide whether he would 
 be styled "Augustus" upon both piers of the triumphal 
 arch, or "Augustus" upon the one and "Germanicus" 
 upon the other, or, again, "Augustus" on both piers and 
 "Germanicus" on the entablature above the key-stone, so 
 that, beginning from the top, it would read, "Napoleon, 
 Germanicus, Augustus, Augustus." 
 
 "But this earth is a children's nursery," Napoleon went 
 on in reflective tones, "and grown men like myself must 
 play with the toys in use there or leave it or leave it! 
 But these messieurs of the Institute ! Daily they move me 
 to anger or to laughter. A year ago I had to reprehend one 
 for comparing me to God, another for asserting that the
 
 An Emperor and His Secretaries 363 
 
 universe was hushed in my presence. The universe! If I 
 frown, will a fly cease its buzzing, or a cricket its song? 
 These phrase-makers! To what depths of imbecility or 
 vileness will not the human mind descend!" 
 
 The cloud dissipated instantly, and he resumed: 
 
 "What do they intend by this request? Fontanes 
 that pompous school-usher, fit only to be a laureate in prose 
 to the Princess Bacciocchi does he think to overwhelm me 
 with his empty words? Augustus? Germanicus? What 
 are these names ces noms-la to inscribe on my triumphal 
 arch? Augustus won an indifferent sea-fight at Actium, 
 but for the rest of his life his sword was sheathed. When 
 Varus lost the six legions, did Augustus hasten from Rome 
 to avenge the insult? Not a bit of it. He wandered up 
 and down his palace wringing his hands and wailing 
 'Varus, give me back my legions; give me back my legions; 
 Varus!' Is that the part for a hero or even for a brave 
 man to play ? And is that a name to inscribe on my monu- 
 ment? As for Germanicus, he owes his fame to his widow, 
 his funeral urn, and the venomous eulogies of Tacitus." 
 
 He looked at Me'ne'val as though expecting or tempting 
 him to argue. Meneval knew better. 
 
 "Sire," he said with extreme deference, "does not M. 
 Fontanes mean merely to express by Germanicus, 'the 
 conqueror of Germany,' not the individual Roman?" 
 
 "Very well. But why not say so in good French? Why 
 use Latin? The Romans when they raised statues to 
 Cassar did not inscribe his victories in Greek ! France is a 
 greater empire than Rome, and possesses a greater lan- 
 guage. Why should it not use its own tongue? I desire 
 French to become the language of a reconstituted Europe, a 
 re-united Europe. I am resolved that Europe shall be one 
 and indivisible; that in the future a man shall say 'I am 
 a citizen of Europe,' as now he says 'of France,' 'of 
 Saxony,' 'of Austria.' Language is the very principle of
 
 364 Schonbrunn 
 
 division. Language sows division amongst men; it fosters 
 that effete absurdity 'the nation' and national spirit. 
 What barbarous alphabets and literatures are the German 
 and the Russian ! They are fit only for a Museum of An- 
 tiquities. But to the religion and culture, to the arts and 
 civilization of the new era I intend to give one language 
 French. Therefore to inscribe my name in Latin is at once 
 to insult the majesty of the French tongue and to thwart 
 my ultimate designs. Is it not so? Is it not so? No, but 
 answer, Meneval, answer!" 
 
 Meneval had no answer. 
 
 Napoleon went on: 
 
 "But the pedant is the pedant still; the same to-day, 
 yesterday, and for ever. He is perpetually on the hunt 
 for comparisons. He cannot see a thing until he has found 
 something like it in a book. History is the instructor 
 of mankind; it is the only philosophy; but History never 
 repeats itself. Because I fought the English in Spain in 
 1808, why must I be perpetually reminded that Louis 
 XIV. 's generals fought in Spain in 1708? What resem- 
 blance is there between my wars and his ? My wars are wars 
 for a new Europe, his were wars for an old dynasty. I 
 came to Spain to put an end to feudal and to priestly ty- 
 ranny; Louis XIV., to fasten on the neck of Spain the yoke 
 of Jesuitism and feudal oppression. Pedantry ! Pedantry ! 
 Why must Canova make me stand naked to posterity's 
 gaze as if I were a Greek boxer? I would destroy every 
 copy of that statue if I could. France and I should be 
 examples to the future, not imitators of the past. Write 
 as I bid you no Latin, no Germanicus, no Augustus; but 
 simply my name and in French." 
 
 MeneVal jotted down a hurried note. 
 
 Napoleon turned sharply to Bertrand, "Demand once 
 more of Daru whether cloth breeches have been supplied to 
 the Second Corps and to the two regiments which a week
 
 An Emperor and His Secretaries 365 
 
 ago sent in their petition. This is not weather for cotton. 
 Does he confound the Danube with the Bay of Naples? 
 And request Admiral Decres to execute at once my orders 
 of the 1 2th. Do you understand?" he said to Marbceuf. 
 "To do them without any more of his 'buts' or 'fors' or 
 'ife.'" 
 
 A smile flickered in Montesquieu's eyes. He disliked 
 the ruddy, loud-voiced sailor, whose prolixity during the 
 recent Walcheren episode had caused frequent explosions 
 in the cabinet at Schonbrunn. 
 
 Excitement and anger, some secret impatience, had 
 replaced the silky, humorous, bantering tone in Which the 
 Emperor had spoken to Me"neval. 
 
 A storm against the Swiss followed the angry tirade 
 against Dam's remissness and Decres' prolixity. Napo- 
 leon was becoming more and more irritated by Savary's 
 continued absence. 
 
 "The Helvetian Republic grumbles because it has to 
 supply me with a miserable 18,000 men, yet England has 
 two Swiss regiments in her pay. Write to these deputies 
 that there shall be no abatement, not a single conscript, no, 
 not a cartridge! And what does Clarke mean?" he said to 
 the same secretary, Fain, for by this time Fain had acquired 
 something of Meneval's dexterity in seizing the Emperor's 
 phrases on their flight. 
 
 He thrust a volume of the Code before Fain's eyes. 
 
 "I see there," he said, pointing with a trembling, short 
 but finely manicured finger to a particular clause, heavily 
 pencilled on the margin, "I see there a law which ordains 
 that any man who receives a deserter or a flag of truce after 
 sunset shall be shot. Good God! Are we still under the 
 Terror? Is the Committee of Public Safety still sitting? 
 Command Clarke to prepare at once 'A Guide for Military 
 Tribunals' permitting the abrogation of this infamous 
 law."
 
 366 Schonbrunn 
 
 There was a lull of a few seconds. 
 
 Napoleon glanced at the time-piece. Nine minutes past 
 five. Why had Savary not arrived ? Had there been some 
 hitch? Some fresh discovery? 
 
 He was about to dictate a sentence to Meneval, but a 
 subconscious process of his mind having worked to its issue 
 he stopped Fain, and dictated a rapid order in addition to 
 the three with which Fain was already struggling. 
 
 "Write also to Aldini at Milan to have a brochure written 
 but not more than fifty pages long. I do not wish a treat- 
 ise that will not be finished before Judgment Day, but a 
 short, pungent article, seasoned with Italian anecdotes, 
 proving that the Papacy is and always has been the enemy 
 of Italian unity. Request him to take as his motto Machia- 
 velli's maxim, ' The Papacy is the stone thrust into the side 
 of Italy to keep the wound open.' Make him paint Julius 
 II. and the League of Cambray hurling France and Austria 
 against Venice." 
 
 Me'ne'val had now completed the letter to the Institute. 
 
 Napoleon glanced along the pages, and, without a com- 
 ment, stooped forward abruptly and scratched his signature. 
 The vicious flourish at the end betrayed something of the 
 writer's mood. 
 
 Me'ne'val was preparing to continue the interrupted 
 letter to Francis II. As yet only the concluding sentence 
 satisfied Napoleon entirely, "Voici done la quatrieme 
 guerre entre Votre Majeste" et moi termine'e. " 
 
 But at that moment the double door was again flung 
 open. A page appeared. 
 
 "The due de Rovigo begs an audience of your Majesty." 
 
 "Where is he?" 
 
 "In the audience chamber, your Majesty." 
 
 "Bring him here." 
 
 He passed swiftly into the adjoining cabinet, which, during 
 Napoleon's residence at Schonbrunn, corresponded to the
 
 An Emperor and His Secretaries 367 
 
 Bureau <T Archives at Trianon or St. Cloud. Two gardes 
 de portefeuilles were on duty as pages. 
 
 VI 
 
 "Eh bien?" Napoleon said impatiently, stopping right in 
 front of Savary and scrutinizing his sallow countenance, the 
 long drooping nose accentuated by the stooping position. 
 "One sees nothing of you, monsieur le due. You have been 
 at work all day? What have you discovered?" 
 
 "Nothing, Sire." 
 
 ' ' Nothing ? Not in Vienna ? Not at Nussdorf ? ' ' 
 
 Savary explained the delay, beginning with the report of 
 his agent early in the morning, ending with his visit to the 
 inn and the villages on the other side of the river. 
 
 Napoleon did not listen. 
 
 "Have my instructions been carried out? Has the 
 prisoner fasted?" 
 
 The conqueror's anxiety astounded Savary. During 
 the day, amid all the variety of his occupations, the singular 
 idea had fixed itself in Bonaparte's mind that if he could 
 not break this boy's will he could not break the will of Ger- 
 many. He might make treaties with every cabinet from 
 the Rhine to the Oder, and from the Baltic to the Tyrol; but 
 unless Germany itself were conquered his battles might as 
 well never have been fought. 
 
 "Has Duroc conversed with him as I commanded?" 
 
 "We did everything, your Majesty, everything," and he 
 added, for he was fatigued and exasperated by the long 
 day's task, "The due de Friuli will himself narrate to you. 
 I outrode him." 
 
 Napoleon said nothing. 
 
 Savary, disturbed by this silence, went on in a hurried 
 apologetic manner: 
 
 "General Hulin informed the prisoner that your Majesty
 
 368 Schonbrunn 
 
 aimed at the regeneration of Europe and of Germany; he 
 reminded him that the greatest of the German princes, 
 nobles, and poets were on your side; that M. Goethe and 
 M. Wieland had accepted the Legion of Honour from your 
 hands " 
 
 "Well, well," Napoleon said impatiently. "What did 
 he answer?" 
 
 "He answered that if this were true they were traitors; 
 that if Schiller had lived he would never have acted thus, 
 and in a formidable voice he repeated, 'They are traitors. 
 Their genius only makes their treason the more atrocious. 
 If I stood alone in all Germany I would still affirm this. 
 They are traitors. I have failed in my attempt; now I 
 have no wish but to die. " 
 
 At these words, Napoleon walked abruptly to a window 
 and with folded arms stood looking out across the gardens. 
 This room, in a projecting facade of the left wing, looked 
 nearly due west. The sun was setting. The blackening 
 woods of the Wienerwald stretched beneath it like a bar of 
 ebony. 
 
 "How small that red and sinking orb appears! How 
 small: and so are the mightiest affairs of men." 
 
 Bonaparte from his twenty-fifth year had been accus- 
 tomed to signing the death-warrants of men ; he had signed 
 many political executions and in war military executions by 
 the score. Violence had succeeded with him. After the 
 extermination of the Jacobins, Marengo ; after the murder of 
 d'Enghien, the sun of Austerlitz; and after the murder of 
 Palm, the victories of Jena, Eylau, and Friedland. 
 
 "But now?" 
 
 Again, spectre-like, he saw the two figures of his dream 
 standing hand in hand before him, there in the falling twi- 
 light. He stared at them fixedly, and sensibly before his 
 very gaze they dissolved. 
 
 But the other? The reality?
 
 An Emperor and His Secretaries 369 
 
 He saw that other still, but in a changing shape the 
 slender figure outstretched on a plank or on the straw of a 
 dungeon watching, haggard-eyed, this same light sinking 
 into night, this sun going down that for him would not rise 
 again, or rise only to set and set eternally. 
 
 Savary's voice put a term to his thoughts. 
 
 "General Lanier is charged with the execution of the 
 sentence." 
 
 "What sentence?" 
 
 He did not wait for the answer, but walking up and down 
 stopped again by the window. 
 
 "That need not be done to-night. To-morrow or " 
 
 "The sooner he disappears, your Majesty," Savary 
 said with sudden energy, "the sooner the danger is over. 
 We should not give the Tugendbund a martyr. If he dis- 
 appears to-night or to-morrow not a trace of his crime or his 
 history will pass the arsenal walls. 
 
 "His relations still live," Napoleon said brusquely. 
 " He has a father. " 
 
 "His father need know nothing, your Majesty. I have 
 provided for that." 
 
 "What do you mean?" 
 
 Savary unfolded his story of the nobleman in search 
 of a courier. He would himself write to the pastor at 
 Naumburg, informing him that his son had accepted this 
 position; and from time to time he would remit, as from 
 Staps himself, modest sums of money such as thrifty young 
 men in Germany, during their Wanderjahre, sent to their 
 homes. 
 
 "You mean that his father is to be made to believe that 
 his son is still alive, and well and prospering?" 
 
 "His father, his relations, and all other Germans, that 
 is, the few who know of his existence." 
 
 Savary went into his plan more fully, Napoleon now 
 and then criticizing it, and rectifying a fact or a detail. Then 
 24
 
 370 Schonbrunn 
 
 with his habitual grimace a twitch of the left corner of 
 the mouth which gave it the expression of a sneer, he said 
 sententiously : 
 
 "It is boldly planned." 
 
 He himself found a kind of pleasure in such duplicity. 
 It appealed to the Corsican in him. 
 
 "Where is the dossier? It ought not to have been left 
 at the arsenal." 
 
 "The dossier is here, Sire. I have not forgotten the 
 blunder made by the Convention." 
 
 Napoleon's surprised but satisfied look was his reward. 
 
 Savary alluded to the unpleasant effect upon public 
 opinion produced by the dossier of the trial of Marie 
 Antoinette, recently exhumed from the archives of the 
 Palais de Justice. 
 
 "It is enough," Napoleon said again. "To-morrow 
 morning before reveille. Let me know how he dies." 
 
 With this command the interview ended. 
 
 The room was now dark. Napoleon stood for some 
 seconds alone in the greyness. He then returned to 
 his secretaries. The letter to the Emperor Francis was 
 not yet dictated. It must be dispatched to-night. /
 
 CHAPTER XIII 
 
 AN IDYLL AT MODLING 
 
 AT ten o'clock on the Saturday morning of the Treaty 
 the curtains of the Countess Esterthal's bedroom were 
 still closed. 
 
 Her sleep had been short, but it had been deep. She had 
 drunk her morning cup of coffee, and now lay amongst her 
 pillows with her arms behind her head, lazily watching her 
 maid. 
 
 The latter in her black dress and white apron with a red 
 border, with a cap like a crimson butterfly perched amid 
 her stubborn black-brown hair, was moving about the room 
 with short, quick, excited steps. 
 
 "Had padrino come down?" Amalie asked. 
 
 "His Excellency went out early; he returned an hour 
 ago." 
 
 "Any visitors?" 
 
 "Oh, yes; a thousand. They are already with His 
 Excellency in the library Count Alvintsky, Field-Marshal 
 Beaulieu, Marshal Siegenthal " 
 
 "That is enough, Tita." 
 
 Amalie knit her brows and turning on her side lay looking 
 at the intense light between the curtains. She loved those 
 brooding morning silences when the sunlight mirrored itself 
 on the furniture of the room, on polished wood or porcelain 
 
 37i
 
 37 2 Schonbrunn 
 
 or gold or silver. In those long and leisured hours she had 
 time to remember and time to reflect, time to read or to 
 meditate. During the campaign she had read morning by 
 morning some pages of Rentzdorf's books. For those 
 books had gradually become to her everything that at 
 Monza her missal and her breviary had been. 
 
 At a sudden brouhaha of voices she started. 
 
 A door had opened, and from this room on the ground- 
 floor came the noise of anger or excitement. 
 
 "Oh," Tita exclaimed, coming to a stop in opening a 
 drawer, " I do hope they will not upset the peace. Marshal 
 Beaulieu looked so ferocious." 
 
 "Do not be alarmed, Tita. He has been looking 'fero- 
 cious ' these seventy years. They are simply fighting the 
 old battles over again." 
 
 The door closed and the sound ceased. 
 
 Tita resumed her task, and her mistress, with a pure 
 sense of joy born of the release from the anxieties of the 
 past months, sprang out of bed and, her arms high above 
 her head, stood for a second rejoicing in her vital strength 
 and youth and radiant health, by a few hours' sleep restored. 
 
 "O earth, mother earth!" she hummed to herself. 
 "Hast thou wheeled again into the flooding, wonder-work- 
 ing light o' the sun?" 
 
 The words occurred in Rentzdorf's Caius Marius, but 
 they always made her laugh. The passage in which they 
 occurred had moved her deeply; but now Rentzdorf had 
 forbidden her to admire them or repeat them or re- 
 member them at all. Quoting them alone, she recaptured 
 at once her early emotion and a sense of joyous, teasing 
 independence. 
 
 "And now I will dress." 
 
 She usually had Tita out of the room during this rite; 
 but this morning the very spirit of mischief possessed her. 
 Tita, crouching in front of the lowest drawer of an antique
 
 An Idyll at Modling 373 
 
 cabinet in white and gold, had at this moment her back 
 turned to her. The crimson butterfly in her hair, Amalie 
 calculated, looked settled for at least twenty seconds. 
 
 For two seconds she deliberated; the next, her night- 
 dress had slipped to the floor, falling in snowy folds about 
 her feet, and she stood erect in dazzling nakedness, survey- 
 ing with her lover's eyes the image of her own gleaming 
 body as it sprang up, like alabaster upon sapphire, against 
 the azure background of the hangings of her bed reflected 
 in the oval mirror in front. So she stood. But at a pre- 
 monitory quiver in the crimson butterfly she leaned quickly 
 sideways, and after a struggle about her shoulders she 
 stood veiled to the knees in the white films of her chemise. 
 
 When Tita rose from her stooping position she saw her 
 mistress, enveloped in a quilted dressing-gown, seated 
 quietly in front of the ormolu table and its oval mirror. 
 
 "Tita." 
 
 "Yes, madame?" 
 
 But Amalie had forgotten why she had called her and said 
 abstractedly : 
 
 "You have not your headache this morning?" 
 
 "Oh, no, madame; I could not have a headache to-day." 
 
 "I will have my hair done at once." 
 
 It was a caress of a sort to feel her maid's cool fine fingers 
 linger in her hair or dart hither and thither amongst its 
 golden warmth, now spreading it over her shoulders in 
 innumerable shining ripples, now twisting it into coils, 
 now into delicate braids. Once, with a swift ambiguous 
 glance, Tita looked boldly into her mistress's blue eyes 
 reflected in the mirror, and by a kind of feminine contagion 
 forced her to laugh, without knowing why. . . . 
 
 ii 
 
 Amalie had dismissed Tita, and was lying on a sofa by the 
 window.
 
 374 Schonbrunn 
 
 The bell of St. Stephen's was tolling for a special service. 
 There was a sacred stillness in the sky, in the faint haze 
 still clinging about the trees, in the russet glow of the late 
 flowering plants. A liquid amber glory pulsated in the 
 upper air. It quivered through the still leaves of the syca- 
 mores, and in mellow golden radiance came to rest on the 
 dark soft green of the moss below. 
 
 She had an hour thus to be alone. 
 
 At such intervals life was prayer; earth itself a temple of 
 which the priest was God. 
 
 Taking up the second part of the Prometheus she passed 
 rapidly to the scene which contains the great paeon and 
 death song of the Spirit of the Worlds, reading it slowly, 
 taking in each cadence, each syllable. 
 
 "Behold, the coursers of the evening, how they gather 
 above the sunset, squadron behind squadron arrayed in their 
 glory! What splendour! What brightness! Their forms 
 outnumber the forest in multitude, and their hues the 
 mine crimson and emerald, amethyst and gold. But the 
 sun goeth down, and their glory is withered. So shall I 
 sink so shall I, the everlasting God, sink and go down: and 
 the cloud-pavilions, my worlds, shall be dispersed and 
 vanish away. But I know whither I go, voyaging beyond 
 Being to my timeless rest." 
 
 The strange, the frenzying joy to be God ! To hear in 
 her own cry or her lover's, God's cry; to stay to listen, and 
 with her soul hovering on her lips in the very flight towards 
 ecstasy, to feel in her pulsing, eddying blood God's blood; 
 in her frightful grief God's grief, His torment, His anguish! 
 This Rentzdorf had given her. 
 
 in 
 
 An hour later, when Amalie descended the broad, sun- 
 steeped staircase, she found "Old Austria" in force in the 
 hall and in the breakfast-room.
 
 An Idyll at Modling 375 
 
 A little pot-bellied man in a general's uniform, with one of 
 the most rakish old faces in Vienna, at once made for her 
 direction. His right eye squinting outwards gave to the 
 whole physiognomy something alert and humorous. 
 
 "Ah, M. de Beaulieu ..." the Countess said amicably. 
 
 It was indeed Beaulieu, famous as the first Austrian 
 commander that Napoleon had thoroughly smashed. He 
 had arrived the night before from Linz, where amid flower 
 gardens and picture galleries he had been living in a not 
 inglorious retirement. 
 
 "Your Illustriousness in Vienna?" he answered, his false 
 teeth ghastly new in his battered, yellow, shrivelled-up 
 countenance. "Then Austria has lost no provinces." 
 
 Beaulieu, in speaking to a beautiful woman, still delighted 
 in the inane gallantries fashionable in the days of Maria 
 Theresa, and if rumours were true, he was a dog that had 
 had his day amongst the women of that Court. 
 
 "What mischief is afoot now?" he demanded, fixing her 
 with his squint eye. "Eh-h?" 
 
 "Why, what mischief? " Amalie said demurely. " I have 
 been eating my breakfast." 
 
 "Gr-r-r . . . Breakfast! Where there is beauty there 
 is devilry, even at breakfast-time. You were at the Burg 
 last night? A pretty thing that for Vienna ! Gr-r-r . . ." 
 
 Amalie moved away towards a group of functionaries 
 and retired officers standing round Count Esterthal. They 
 had assembled that morning, these veterans, ostensibly to 
 consider Vienna and the Empire and the new situation ; but 
 after a quarter of an hour they were bored by patriotism; 
 for their patriotism was the exposition of his own plans by 
 each in turn his plans for Austria's future, his theories of 
 her past defeats, his counsels to the men who could save her, 
 his censure of the men who had caused her humiliation. 
 And with unaffected interest they began to discuss not the 
 nation's but their own ailments, and their own cures for old
 
 376 Schonbrunn 
 
 age, gout, ague, corpulency, deafness, the dropsy. Then 
 first one, then another, had begun to denounce the French 
 their robberies, their insolence, their exactions, the obstacles 
 imposed by the occupation upon personal comforts or 
 personal amusements hunting, driving, riding, shooting; 
 one narrating a fabulous story of the price he had paid for a 
 dozen of wine; another, his desperate straits to make up a 
 pack of boar-hounds. 
 
 Johann, till then unobserved in the background, now 
 came up to Amalie. 
 
 "Why is Rentzdorf not here?" - 
 
 " I will tell you; but come here, " she said quickly. 
 
 At a remark of Alvintsky's, Johann's dark face had 
 flushed. A disagreeable smile like a sneer was on his 
 lips. 
 
 "Come this way, " she insisted in a whisper, adding in a 
 louder voice, "Tell me how do you like the Treaty?" 
 
 Two other visitors, with marks of great deference, had 
 approached Alvintsky, Beaulieu, and Count Esterthal. 
 
 "More spectres from the Seven Years' War," Johann 
 said, eyeing the new-comers. "Great God, where do they 
 all come from ? In Austria no man under seventy should be 
 a colonel, no man a general under eighty, and as for our 
 field-marshals, they should at least be in their ninety- 
 fifth year. Youth has ruined us! Why, Beaulieu is only 
 eighty-four, and Alvintsky not yet seventy-five! Austria! 
 Thy name is Antiquity old institutions, old customs, 
 old families, old forts, old guns, old everything and above 
 all, old generals!" 
 
 "We can beat him yet," Beaulieu was screaming in a 
 shrill and joyous voice. "It is merely the ups and downs 
 of war. " 
 
 "Oh God, those unconquerable heroes!" Count Johann 
 continued. "Those blustering, blundering, bluttering 
 fools! Old Wurmser died of a broken heart and Bruns-
 
 An Idyll at Modling 377 
 
 wick of his wounds; but Beaulieu and Alvintsky! These 
 many-wintered crows will roost on all our sepulchres." 
 
 Through the open window came the sound of male voices 
 chanting in unison, "In exitu Egypt. ..." 
 
 It was a procession of grey friars on their way to the 
 inner city. 
 
 "Your sister is still at Modling?" Amalie enquired. 
 
 " Wilhelmina? Yes, " he said, "unless she considers that 
 this crisis in Austria's history demands her presence in the 
 capital! Why do you ask?" 
 
 Wilhelmina was a kind of female Count Markowitz, but 
 good-natured. 
 
 Amalie's plan was that Toe, Johann, Rentzdorf , and her- 
 self should ride to Modling, pass the afternoon there, and 
 ride back again in the twilight in time for the Opera. 
 
 He listened moodily. 
 
 There behind Amalie, there in imagination stood his 
 impetuous, wilful, entirely beloved mistress in palpitating 
 life, ready to throw her arms about him. "Austria is lost," 
 she seemed to say, "the precious dynasty discredited, but 
 canst thou know misery beholding me?" 
 
 "You will come?" 
 
 "Rentzdorf has an engagement \vith Ludwig Beethoven 
 this evening," he said demurringly. 
 
 "Rentzdorf has an engagement with Amalie von Esterthal 
 this morning and this afternoon and all afternoons ; and you, 
 you similarly with Princess Durrenstein. It is decided? I 
 will answer for Heinrich," she went on, smiling at his 
 obstinacy. "Go and get Toe." 
 
 "I will go and get passports." 
 
 "Is that necessary?" 
 
 "It is safer." 
 
 She went to the stables; visited Rothgar, her favourite 
 mount, saved from the requisition by Andreossy's kindness. 
 It was a fine bay which Toe had described as so much
 
 378 Schonbrunn 
 
 "a gentleman" that even if he stumbled or jibbed it 
 did not hurt the rider, for whatever Rothgar did had its 
 harmoniousness . 
 
 IV 
 
 In man's life the first joy is often scarcely experienced 
 when disquiet begins, born of that brooding joy itself. 
 
 Shortly after noon Amalie retired to her room in an access 
 of troubled and despondent irritability. Her riding-habit 
 lay ready, but she was in no mood to put it on. 
 
 In the hall a messenger had handed her a letter from her 
 husband. Though not at the Rittersaal, he had passed 
 the night in Vienna. He was now with the Archduke Maxi- 
 milian at the Prince de Ligne's, not five miles away. 
 
 "All will begin again," she said to herself bitterly, "all 
 has begun again. That too the Peace has brought me." 
 
 Her thoughts went to Rentzdorf and the scene in the 
 supper-room last night. Would that quarrel if quarrel 
 it were affect these recommencements? Would he toler- 
 ate her continuing to share this house with Ferdinand? 
 And she herself ought she to permit him to tolerate it? 
 
 "For that," she reasoned bitterly, "is the true question. 
 Ought I to, or can I, go on witnessing or imaging his misery 
 night by night?" Her imagination winged by the quarrel 
 set the answer before her in a vivid and terrible enough 
 shape. She beheld her lover stretched in his tent on the 
 night before a battle and saw the steady, fierce melan- 
 choly in his eyes, the curve of the lips; and on his set 
 features she saw descend the same grey despair as had 
 overshadowed them last night. 
 
 Neither Rentzdorf nor herself was made for this life of 
 covenanted deceit. Yet how was it to be remedied? 
 The falsehood in her position in Vienna as Ferdinand von 
 Esterthal's wife could only be exchanged for the falsehood
 
 An Idyll at Modling 379 
 
 of her position as Rentzdorf's mistress in other towns or 
 other cities. 
 
 She began to walk up and down her room, pondering the 
 situation her friends, her brothers' rank in the army; 
 padrino, his age, his dependence on her presence for happi- 
 ness; the burden which she would impose upon her lover; 
 his genius, her own desperate incapacity, her weakness, his 
 strength. 
 
 That very morning, in society's lies, insults, calumnies, 
 and inneundoes against Napoleon, she had heard its insults 
 upon herself and upon her lover if she once took the step 
 to which every craving and every behest of reason urged 
 her flight together. And would it matter so much? she 
 asked f everously . Was she a woman of that sort ? Was she 
 so bound to society? Uprooted from Vienna, would she 
 indeed wither away? 
 
 In that society itself Toe's betrothal to Johann, left 
 uncertain yesterday afternoon, but, as a swift note had 
 informed her, finally ratified at Toe's house less than an 
 hour ago, would render things all the more difficult, impel- 
 ling her to flight. For the question started up in Amalie's 
 mind: How would marriage affect Toe? Would she fall 
 back into the dominion of the Markowitz code? Johann's 
 own character, Rentzdorf had once said laughingly, was 
 tempered by the irregularity of his relations with the 
 Princess Durrenstein. But now? Amalie saw herself and 
 Rentzdorf excluded from Toe's circle. 
 
 "Praying for me!" 
 
 Her laughter was not pleasant. 
 
 The reaction was swift. 
 
 Distinctly she saw that the desire which to-day and all 
 her days ravaged her blood was not the desire to be with 
 Rentzdorf, sharing with him the same rooms, unseparated 
 day and night ; distinctly too she saw that the fear which had 
 harrowed her was not the fear of the insecurity or anomaly
 
 380 Schonbrunn 
 
 of her position; nor was it the recoil from the outstretched 
 finger "See! It is the Countess Esterthal who ran away 
 with a poet!" Her fear was an unconquerable misgiving, 
 derived from the tenacity with which she had adopted the 
 maxim that the deepest, most sacred passion is not proof 
 against the restraint, the bondage, the hourly, daily jarrings 
 of sick nerves, weariness, all the incidents of common 
 life. 
 
 Yes, she reasoned dully each day, out of a world of men 
 and women, to choose and be chosen that in secret was 
 her ideal. 
 
 "If this is so, what then is love?" 
 
 A modern instance occurred to her. The English am- 
 bassador, Lord Paget, had in January last married the 
 English lady in whose divorce he was the co-respondent. 
 
 "And already he leaves her for Adelheid Ortski ! And I ? 
 Of what is it that I am afraid? At bottom it is not of 
 society's condemnation. It is the fear of this passion 
 ending, in him or in me." 
 
 But Amalie had scarcely formulated this theorem when 
 by the flare as of lightnings she saw that the wrong in her 
 own and Rentzdorf's passion, the wrong in her own and 
 Rentzdorfs life, and in all life and in all passion, was a 
 wrong which never could have been right; that their passion 
 was dyed in Being's essence; that, like everything which is 
 beautiful or heroic, it was beautiful or heroic not because 
 of its Tightness or its wrongness, but because it was most 
 deeply dyed in that strife and that anguish which is Being 
 itself and God. 
 
 "And yet, if it could be like this, or like last night for 
 ever! Then to sink in one grave and in eternity know but 
 this again! But for us that can never be, never!" 
 
 Her hand pressed her brow bewilderedly, then back she 
 sank shuddering, biting her handkerchief to suffocate her 
 cries.
 
 An Idyll at Modling 381 
 
 But at another onset of violent weeping she rose impa- 
 tiently, bathing her eyes. 
 
 "What is the matter with me? Something eternally lost 
 weeps in me." 
 
 She moistened her lips with water; her hand shook, spill- 
 ing the water as she set down the glass. 
 
 Her mind in those minutes of conflict and insight had 
 made the circuit of existence. 
 
 "It is the woman that I am plotting against, the woman 
 that I ought to be; the God that is, against the God that 
 shall be." 
 
 A bird's song, liquidly clear, free from all sorrow, a music 
 into which sorrow not only had never come, but never could 
 come, rose in the sycamore outside her window. Breathless, 
 she stood listening. Tears dimmed her sight. Why had 
 not nature rested there? The God who is nature, why had 
 He gone on to create in man, and in woman above all, these 
 intricate avenues to misery the brain, the heart, the 
 womb? 
 
 " Nature's innocence ..." 
 
 She was no longer the dupe of that shibboleth. There 
 was no innocence in nature. 
 
 "Adultery?" 
 
 This was not adultery. She knew adulterous women 
 in Vienna; Madame Z.; Countess X., changing her lovers 
 every five weeks or every five days. Her husband's liaison 
 with Adelheid Ortski had been adultery. 
 
 "But this?" 
 
 She could front the God of any of the religions, unabashed. 
 
 ' ' But my own God ? The God of my religion the world- 
 soul?" she flashed out suddenly. 
 
 She pondered. 
 
 "That art thou, the world-soul." She saw rather than
 
 382 Schonbrunn 
 
 heard her own bloodless lips, carved in bronze, whisper 
 those words; but still she pondered. 
 
 "The ethics of all the religions are ultimately the same," 
 Rentzdorf had asserted in one of his Dialogues ; and in The 
 Runes of Odin he had in his own person obviously spoken 
 the mandate: "Look thou upon thine enemy's face until 
 thou seest shine through it the face of God." Again, in 
 Caius Marius she had once marked and studied the words 
 of a Roman tribune to Sulla, "Accursed is he who builds 
 his own joy upon another's suffering." 
 
 Her mind swept to affirmation. 
 
 "Nature's innocence? The bird's pure notes? If this 
 in me is wrong, God in me is the wrong-doer; if this in me 
 is sin, it is God in me that sins." 
 
 And a resolve, born out of all yesterday's and this morn- 
 ing's soul-conflict, rose in her mind like a distant light. 
 In Naples long ago she had broken from the routine of her 
 soul-life. Why then should she hesitate to break from the 
 routine of her society-life? Once all her thinking had been 
 thought out for her in Galilee or inside a priest's skull ; yet 
 she had shattered that deadly charm. Now all her actions 
 were shaped for her in Vienna inside her acquaintances' 
 skulls. Why did she hesitate? 
 
 " Heinrich, my beloved, forgive me ! Why do I doubt ? 
 Tear out the world's heart ! Bleed to death of the wound 
 or live for ever restored ! This, that the world dreads, this 
 is God." 
 
 But the future? Her equivocal position? 
 
 She turned in a paroxysm against herself, indignant. 
 Could she imagine herself ever wearying of this this unend- 
 ing ecstasy of soul and sense; touch, taste, smell, hearing, 
 sight, transfigured all to soul-states, God-possessed unceas- 
 ingly could she imagine herself ever wearying of this in a 
 crowd or in a desert, in obloquy or on a throne, of his voice, 
 his passionate adoration of herself, his words, his visionary
 
 An Idyll at Modling 383 
 
 thought, his laughter, his gloom ? And in an exaltation she 
 sped on his vices, if they were vices, were diviner than the 
 tabled virtues of others ; his treachery better than another's 
 faith. 
 
 "Together in the black rain but together." 
 
 But in him if this love should die? Oh, she reflected, 
 let him have his uttermost will of her ! In that tempest it 
 were heaven's heaven to founder! She would tell him this 
 on the ride; she would take back her refusals of last night. 
 Why was she here except through him to know suffering? 
 
 "Give me the worst now, that I may better know the 
 best. This afternoon ..." 
 
 Her life rose before her; her life chequered with error on 
 error errors of judgment, errors of the heart, errors of will, 
 of speech, of resolve. 
 
 "Woven of blunders," she muttered, "but this is not a 
 blunder. This day I shall have done the one supremely 
 right thing. " 
 
 She called her maid. 
 
 "Vitet Vitel Quick, quick!" 
 
 VI 
 
 The environs of Vienna, notably to the south and south- 
 west, are the most beautiful possessed by any capital in 
 Europe. The soil is sandy and broken, streams are fre- 
 quent, valleys alternate with sudden bold headlands crested 
 by a modern mansion or the ruins of a feudal tower, and over 
 wide areas the ground is strewn with boulders of rock or 
 green with sudden patches of gorse and bracken. Pines 
 cluster into gloom on the lower slopes, or clamber one behind 
 the other up some narrow ledge rising sheer above the bed 
 of a vanished torrent, like Druid priests in their dark-robed 
 processions of pre-Roman times. 
 
 To the east the horizon line is level with the Danube;
 
 384 Schonbrunn 
 
 northward through the evening haze the city's roofs, spires, 
 domes, gables, glimmer unsubstantial as a resting cloud. 
 Vienna's oriental aspect is then very marked. Rentzdorf 
 often came here in summer, and as he lay and looked north- 
 ward to the city would see, under that smoke canopy, now a 
 rearguard left by the crusades, now a camp flung far forward 
 in the counter-attack by Islam against the retreating 
 Cross. 
 
 Near Modling, late that Saturday afternoon, he and the 
 Countess Amalie were sitting amongst the bracken on the 
 edge of a pine-coppice overlooking the valley. 
 
 "You have to meet Uvarow at nine?" 
 
 "Yes"; he answered, "at nine, to take him to Bee- 
 thoven. " 
 
 In the silence a pine-cone dropped and she watched the 
 silvery intense light between the stems on the further edge 
 of the wood. 
 
 "Have you seen much of him recently? " Rentzdorf asked. 
 
 "Beethoven? No. He has moved his lodging again, 
 Count Markowitz tells me." 
 
 And she thought of Wilhelmina Markowitz's sharp criti- 
 cism of the composer that afternoon for having taken no 
 active part whatever in the war. "How are we to listen 
 when next he conducts his Eroica, " Wilhelmina had con- 
 cluded, "when we reflect that with heroes in battle not 
 four miles away, he stayed quiet at home?" 
 
 Guessing her thoughts, Rentzdorf looked at Amalie. 
 She was wearing a felt hat with a feather which swept in 
 a long curve and fell below the brim, and as, leaning on 
 her elbow, she lay on the turf, fragrant with pine-needles, 
 her right foot was thrust forward a little under the hem 
 of her riding-skirt. 
 
 But Amalie did not continue the subject. The words 
 which she had that morning determined to speak were still 
 unspoken. She wished to speak them now. The after-
 
 An Idyll at Modling 385 
 
 noon was wearing to evening ; but even now she was unwill- 
 ing to mar the tranced hours of this celestial day. 
 
 She turned restlessly, changing her position. 
 
 "How hot the sun still is! What is it that makes a man 
 a Bonaparte, Heinrich? I have been watching that green 
 fly by the spider's web, there, between those two pines, 
 these last ten minutes. He must be a cunning, last sum- 
 mer's fly, doing it to torment the spider. This evening is 
 lost to us. Why does M. Uvarow wish to see Beethoven?" 
 
 "He has heard of his new symphony. He has been of 
 service to Belli and returns to Troppau and thence to 
 Petersburg to-morrow." 
 
 She began to play with the fingers of his hand resting 
 on the turf near her. The rings on her own sparkled in the 
 sun. "If those fingers of yours were the meshes of a 
 spider's web these iridescent flies on mine would soon be 
 caught!" she said. And she imprisoned his hand under 
 both her own against her knee. 
 
 A sudden hush and quietude had caught the world, a 
 stillness within a stillness. Far below she heard the faint 
 murmur of a brook unheard till now. Everywhere were the 
 golden browns of autumn; the very air, motionless as a 
 translucent lake above the valley, was pervaded by the 
 melancholy russet gleams. 
 
 And the peace of exterior nature and the autumn day the 
 woods, the resting clouds, the mist-suffused hills, the shadow 
 of the pine-stem, the pattern worked by the bracken fronds 
 on the red sand, the sunlight asleep at the foot of the hills, 
 the far-off dreaming spires and domes passing into her 
 heart, became the peace of the world-soul dreaming of 
 Azbar; and the beauty of nature, passing into her soul, 
 was projected upon the infinite future and became the 
 world-soul's ecstasy, in its end attained, a paean trium- 
 phant, a transport that strove to her lips in words and was 
 still repressed. 
 25
 
 386 Schonbrunn 
 
 In a silent but quivering mighty assertion of the faith that 
 was his faith she murmured half to herself, turning to the 
 immense steep curve of the eastern sky, blue from the zenith 
 to the horizon line : 
 
 "God can never exhaust the wonder of His own being, 
 nor of those worlds, not this nor mine. For if this that I 
 feel is not God, there is for me no God. I could weep with 
 the bliss of it; weep with the pain of it." 
 
 VII 
 
 Enervated yet exalted, she turned to her lover. 
 
 "Let us walk up the ravine, shall we?" 
 
 She stood up. He aided her to pick the pine-needles from 
 her dress, pressing his lips to the outline of her knees. 
 
 They began their walk. Sometimes it led along a wooded 
 path chequered with sunshine, sometimes in the open they 
 skirted a sunburnt slope strewn with acorns. Far down 
 on their right through tangled bushes the dark glimmer 
 of the stream followed them. 
 
 Suddenly an arch of boughs, so thick and dark that it 
 might have been the roof of a natural temple, rose above 
 them. With a strained laugh she took his hand and said 
 in a half -choked voice: 
 
 "I have something to say to you something I have tried 
 to say all day. " 
 
 But the roof disparted and they came out on a platform 
 overlooking a most wide landscape north-westward, on 
 their left, the dark outlines of the Wienerwald ; nearer them, 
 in the plains the ruins of a castle; and barring the horizon 
 northward, the shimmering towers and domes of Vienna 
 under their soft canopy of smoke. 
 
 She sat down on a boulder. Rentzdorf stretched himself 
 on the turf, watching her hand as it tugged at some stalks of 
 heather the exquisite modelling of each finger, the tint and 
 setting of the nail.
 
 An Idyll at Modling 387 
 
 Suddenly he saw that she was trembling convulsively. 
 
 "Dearest, dearest, what is it?" He sprang to his feet. 
 "Great God, you are weeping?" 
 
 She made a vague gesture. 
 
 "Ah, "he said, "I know." 
 
 "Yes, " she answered. " It is that again." 
 
 "When did you hear?" 
 
 "This morning as I was about to ride to your lodging." 
 
 There was a silence. 
 
 " Well ? And when does he come back ? ' ' 
 
 " It may be to-day. " 
 
 She was resolute to spare neither him nor herself, hating 
 all subterfuge. 
 
 A long, to her a terrible, pause ensued. 
 
 "It is soon," he muttered; but with a poignant sense 
 of her misery he interrupted the sarcasm. "It does not 
 matter, Amalie ; it is simply nothing. Indeed, I have known 
 this all day. It is nothing. " 
 
 An immense happiness swept over her like a sea. He 
 loved her. His love earth, heaven, God, the past, all 
 were in that. 
 
 "Heinrich ..." 
 
 Her emotion left a rigid pallor, ageing her features, touch- 
 ing their beauty with an unendurable pathos the premoni- 
 tions of decay. 
 
 "There is a way to end it. " 
 
 "To end it?" 
 
 " It is this which I really wished to say to you. " 
 
 To his amazement and to her own a burst of distractingly 
 sweet laughter followed the words, sweet as well-tuned 
 bells or the plash of the stream far below, hung with beds 
 of violets. 
 
 How is a woman unembarrassedly to offer herself to a 
 man who may not want her? That was the idea at which 
 she laughed.
 
 388 Schonbrunn 
 
 "You asked me last night, " she began; but breaking the 
 construction of her sentence, "I mean," she stammered, 
 "I do not care whether I ride back again with Toe and 
 Johann, or whether I ever enter Vienna again. " And like 
 snow that lies in glistening inertness, apparently frozen 
 into motionlessness for ever, but at the spring's first laugh- 
 ing touch rushes in confusion down the green slope, so her 
 awkwardness dissolved in quick words, golden as the wind's 
 breath above beds of roses. 
 
 "This?" Rentzdorf said. "Great God this? Oh, you 
 heaven of heavens, you God-given Amalie ! Now I under- 
 stand. But why? Why? And to-day?" 
 
 "Last night what you said last night " and with a 
 vivid blush she added, "I wished to give you my youth 
 what I have left of it!" 
 
 He did not like the sentence, and she divined this. Yet 
 like soaring music the wonder of this woman's love was 
 on him, an increasing glory this, and the might of her 
 beauty, strong as Circe's wine, sweet as the siren's singing. 
 
 For ever to possess this woman for ever; amid inviolate 
 leisure, day by day, night by night, living hour by hour 
 together the long love-death, the long love-life that their 
 hours would be, steeped in everlastingness ! "It is as 
 well," she had once said, lifting her heavy brow, "that 
 we have to separate sometimes ; for if we were together it is 
 certain we should not discredit Vienna by living too long!" 
 
 But like a glint of evil across this transport came the 
 question : His art ? Would a daily life with her aid or im- 
 pede his art? It would free him, absent or present, from 
 harassing damnable suspicions and jealousies. It would 
 render unnecessary the terrible balm he had been forced to 
 apply to the wound the reasoning that, whatever craving 
 or joy or delight was her delight, ought to be his, even 
 if it were the delight in another's kiss. This hell that 
 mocked heaven would be over. It would free him too
 
 An Idyll at Modling 389 
 
 from those encounters with her husband the amused ironic 
 stare ' What the devil can you see in my wife ? ' He had 
 the answer at hand, this same dog-trainer 'saw' nothing 
 in the Medici Venus, nothing in the frieze of the Par- 
 thenon. Yet it irked him; for that man had known her in 
 her maidenhood. 
 
 The temptation was extreme, violent, sudden and all 
 but irresistible. 
 
 But in an instant all was confounded by the question 
 "At what price?" 
 
 The answer was categoric, "This woman's humiliation." 
 
 "She trusts me. I cannot trust her." 
 
 He turned to her. 
 
 "Well?" she said, gazing into his face. "Well?" 
 
 From brow to foot a breathing miracle, there she stood, 
 compact of every excellence that on earth he had dreamed 
 of in woman ; in her character, even in her stormy exacting- 
 ness, her jealous temper, her weakness, her strength, her 
 habits of body and mind, an unwearying interest. For 
 him at least other women existed but to set off this woman's 
 perfections; or if desires for other women rose, as rise 
 they must, at a passing perfume, the line of an arm or 
 waist, they had been streams that, tributary, fed the greater 
 river of his passion for Amalie; this Rentzdorf could say, 
 not to her merely, but in solitude in the secret interviews 
 with his own heart. 
 
 "Amalie ..." 
 
 She turned swiftly, throwing back her veil. 
 
 "Ah, God, Heinrich, beloved, how I love you! How I 
 love you!" 
 
 Her arms seized him; her mouth, stammering her ecstasy, 
 was pressed against his mouth. In the transport of that 
 embrace all foundered. Beauty by its own excess was in 
 dissolution ; life and form by their own excess hurried to self- 
 destruction; but again, upon this swirling chaos and wreck-
 
 39 Schonbrunn 
 
 age of worlds, her pallid face rose like a lotus upon 
 midnight pools, and her mouth still thirsted for his with 
 a thirst which time might annihilate but never assuage. 
 Will, reason, the right course, the wrong course, argument 
 and resolution she had groped about amongst those for- 
 mulas all that day, all these years; but once more, in a single 
 blinding splendour, his desire and her desire flashing into 
 identity with God's desire, all was answered, for all was 
 vision. 
 
 Shuddering, their trembling hands still clung together, 
 interlinked. 
 
 "Other things are means," Rentzdorf said slowly; "this 
 is an end. No sublimity of doing or suffering excels this. 
 Discomfort we shall find, you and I, whichever path we 
 take nothing matters, for this shall be with us." 
 
 Something elemental yet eternal, absorbing the heart, 
 making the senses a transport utterly, yet in this en- 
 trancement binding the soul, the senses' ancient critic; 
 an instinct, yet so transfigured by the soul in its long voyag- 
 ings that it was now the forlorn hope of a God, and of the 
 same God the supreme emotion; adding their glory to 
 life's sanctitudes, unavailable livious ecstasy was abso- 
 lutely redeeming art from the desecration of praise, for in 
 this oblivious ecstasy was at once art's inspiration and its 
 hallowing force. Such was the passion of Rentzdorf and 
 Amalie. 
 
 "As for last night, it is the familiar cause, Amalie. When 
 we are apart the world saturates us ; when we come together 
 too suddenly its poison is still in us. That is how I explain 
 last night." 
 
 They stood up. He saw the slow tears sparkling on her 
 lower eyelids; but on the face was happiness, celestial 
 sweetness. A strange gaiety raised them above fear and 
 above hope, a tragic lightheartedness, the serenity of Greek 
 heroes and Greek gods, secure of the leisure of eternity.
 
 An Idyll at Modling 391 
 
 "What is the place of laughter? " she had once asked. She 
 knew it now the superfluous overflowing "joy," the 
 superfluous overflowing consciousness of the world-doom 
 in God's doom. 
 
 This day, this hour was the most consummate in their 
 love. Both made this attestation, both made this interpre- 
 tation of the day. 
 
 But night was on them unawares. Northward, the 
 Wienerwald heights stood out in blue-black masses. All 
 between was flooded with a dying golden light. The 
 shadows on the grass had lost their outlines : under the trees 
 the twilight was thickening fast. 
 
 An ineffable sadness came down on both. The end of 
 things in nature, in this day's drama, in this long war 
 life's end, the end of their passion, world's end, time's end, 
 God's end. 
 
 "I had forgotten," she said, rousing herself. "Rothgar 
 has cast a shoe: we must take the short cut to the stables. " 
 
 She gathered up her skirt, and, her whip under her arm, 
 she began to descend the path. But she turned, and her 
 eyes were preternaturally lustrous through her veil. 
 
 "Dearest, dearest . . . We can ride together the last 
 part of the way? Now you must talk to Toe. She will 
 want to tell you of her engagement."
 
 CHAPTER XIV 
 
 A VIENNESE POET AND A VIENNESE COMPOSER 
 
 SAVARY'S prognostication was justified. Less than 
 thirty-six hours had elapsed since the attempt upon 
 Napoleon's life and already in Vienna that attempt was 
 forgotten. A silent shrug of the shoulders was the answer 
 to any remark or conjecture about Staps's purpose or his 
 fate. 
 
 "The Treaty has the Emperor ratified the Treaty?" 
 
 That alone was worth thinking about; that alone worth 
 speaking about. 
 
 At about eleven o'clock that night Rentzdorf and the big 
 young Russian attache", Dmitri Miklailovitch Uvarow, 
 entered the celebrated Cafe" Florian in the Alleegasse. It 
 was crowded with visitors of both sexes. 
 
 "Ah, what is that?" Uvarow suddenly asked in Russian. 
 
 The Beresanyi "Chor, " a celebrated tzigane orchestra 
 raised by Prince Adolf Beresanyi, had slipped into the 
 capitol, that afternoon, and were now, amid the clapping 
 of hands and the jingling of glasses, climbing noisily into 
 their places in the small amphitheatre that had long stood 
 empty. 
 
 "Machiavelli is right," said the Russian. "Men are in 
 all times and in all places the same. Alaric is at the gates 
 but Rome crowds to the circus as usual." 
 
 392
 
 Viennese Poet and Viennese Composer 393 
 
 He looked at Rentzdorf. The latter, his left hand 
 thrust into the folds of his cloak, stood surveying the 
 shifting, richly coloured scene. His quiet astonished his 
 companion. 
 
 "He is a Viennese," thought the Russian, "and knows 
 Vienna's ways. In Russia during the cholera the danger 
 to those we hate makes our own danger endurable. Bah, 
 Austria has signed a shameful peace; but each man's dis- 
 grace to-day is also the disgrace of his rival." 
 
 At a table near Uvarow, a clenched fist made me glasses 
 and decanters ring; and in a low, guttural, emphatic voice 
 the table-thumper began to expatiate importantly on the 
 secret clauses of the Treaty. He was an honest Moravian 
 grain-merchant and, in his own trade, sensible enough 
 and shrewd ; now he was posing as a Kaunitz. 
 
 " Defeated ? " said he. " Not we ; not a bit of it ! You'll 
 see. Bonaparte knows what he is about. So does our 
 Kaiser. It's a drawn game. What?" 
 
 At a more distant table a voice gave the toast "Franz 
 der Zweite, unser Kaiser! Hoch! Hoch!" Every man 
 and woman in the room sprang to their feet "Our Em- 
 peror! Austria for ever!" The tzigane orchestra burst 
 into the national hymn. 
 
 "That is not how Paris would acclaim Bonaparte if he had 
 returned defeated, " the Russian said to Rentzdorf, his brown 
 eyes filming; for, like many young men of the era, Uvarow 
 was "sentimentalisch," and easily moved. 
 
 Rentzdorf shrugged his shoulders. He was less disposed 
 than the Russian to admire this undistinguishing devotion 
 to a monarch, heroic or commonplace, bungler or man of 
 genius. 
 
 II 
 
 Turning at last, Rentzdorf crossed a passage and pushed 
 the door of one of the private rooms that ranged round
 
 394 Schonbrunn 
 
 the immense public room. Uvarow was about to follow 
 him in, but with an imperative glance Rentzdorf laid his 
 hand on his shoulder. 
 
 "Is it here?" the Russian asked. 
 
 For answer Rentzdorf pointed to the figure of a man 
 seated behind a table, the sole occupant of the room. 
 
 Beethoven, his head with its mane of jet-black hair 
 propped on both his hands, was engrossed in thought, 
 apparently oblivious of the riot and surging joy around him. 
 His lips worked; occasionally a violent thrust forward of 
 the lower jaw showed that he was chanting or muttering to 
 himself. A note-book lay on the marble table-top between 
 his elbows. Abstracted and withdrawn, he sat there in the 
 lonely sublimity of stern and profound thought. Years 
 and deafness had created about him a solitude in which he 
 had ceased to expect intruders. 
 
 Rentzdorf pushed open the glass door, and stood aside to 
 allow Uvarow as his guest to enter. Beethoven, lifting 
 his head, stared at the Russian. His astonishment became 
 anger, and the cry, " Heraus ! " Out with you, was on his lips. 
 Suddenly behind Uvarow's shoulder he saw Rentzdorf. His 
 face was instantly transfigured, and with a joyous shout he 
 sprang to his feet. 
 
 "Heinrich, du lieber Heinrich!" 
 
 He threw his arms about his friend, repeating his name, 
 showering questions Why had he left Buda-Pesth? Where 
 was the Archduke? And this treaty? What infamy? 
 And then the question, not at once intelligible to Rentz- 
 dorf, "Der Knabe? What about the lad? What news 
 of the young hero?" 
 
 Rentzdorf introduced Uvarow. 
 
 "Ach, was?" Beethoven protested. "No apologizing! 
 Well, you must forgive a German. On so black a day some 
 wish company, " he indicated the next room "some wish 
 solitude. But you, I am glad to see you. "
 
 Viennese Poet and Viennese Composer 395 
 
 Uvarow, in whom something of the Petersburg student 
 still lingered, had forgotten his grim reception. He was for 
 the first time in front of the idol of his musical enthusiasm ; 
 and though he did not find in him the god-like physiognomy 
 he had anticipated, nevertheless he saw a face and bearing 
 and gestures and energy vraiment extraordinaires, as he 
 wrote to his sister next day, "and like those of a man 
 possessed with a demon that leaves him no rest but tears 
 and rends him incessantly." 
 
 He began an address fitting the occasion. This was a 
 Russian craze or trick of the epoch. Potiamkin, the Orloffs, 
 Panin, Speranski himself, all indulged in it. It was a par- 
 venu nation's way of attesting its good manners. "I am a 
 lover of nature, " said he; and he placed his hand on his left 
 breast and looked earnestly at Beethoven. "I can endure 
 privations; I love simplicity and am sensitive sensible 
 to the innocence of rustic life. I have heard the great music 
 of your German masters and I have heard the ocean in a 
 storm; but never till I heard your divine Fifth Symphony" 
 (the Sixth was in 1809 numbered Five) "never have I 
 heard all these the brook, the thunder, the ocean, the 
 tempest, in one piece, vivid as in a picture of the immortal 
 Claude Lorraine." 
 
 Was this harangue impromptu or studied ? The pleasant 
 thing was that it was sincere; the fatiguing thing was that 
 Beethoven, deaf and understanding French badly, had not 
 taken in a single syllable. 
 
 "Was sagt der Herr?" he asked Rentzdorf curtly. 
 
 Rentzdorf translated the Russian's high-flown speech into 
 temperate German. M. Uvarow, he explained, was an at- 
 tache in the Russian service, and in music an enthusiast for 
 the German school; he had found in Beethoven's own works, 
 especially in his symphonies, an inspiration greater than that 
 of Haydn or Mozart. Finally, M. Uvarow had only this one 
 night in Vienna; to-morrow he was returning to Troppau.
 
 396 Schonbrunn 
 
 "Ah, to Troppau?" said Beethoven. "Excellent! Is 
 that rock of German liberty still there minister vom 
 Stein?" 
 
 Uvarow assured him that Stein was still at Troppau ; he 
 himself had indeed obtained the honour of a long conver- 
 sation, walking to and fro in the village meadows with him 
 and with M. Pozzo di Borgo only four days ago. M. Stein 
 had spoken with admiration of Austria's valour; of Stadion's 
 and Wellington's victories. 
 
 "He is not afraid then? He, at least, does not despair 
 of Germany?" Beethoven asked. "Ach, das ist doch 
 wohl." 
 
 But he sank immediately into sombre silence. 
 
 Stein's name had in 1809 a peculiar magnetism. It 
 stood for ardour yet seriousness ; it was free from the intem- 
 perate zeal of the Tugendbund. It was dissociated from 
 the half-rebellious anarchy of Schill's and Brunswick's 
 risings. Finally, it stood for the unconquerable moral 
 grandeur of Germany ranged against the violence and law- 
 less might of Napoleon. 
 
 All at once Beethoven reverted to the Staps incident. 
 The thick-rimmed spectacles were flung off ; the black eyes 
 blazed, and the brick-red countenance seemed to stream 
 with a kind of glory: 
 
 " Der Knabe ? Der Knabe this heroic lad where is he ? 
 What has been done with him? What have you heard? 
 That blood-gorged tyrant, ach, if I could fight battles as I 
 can write music ! But it is useless, useless. Blind chance 
 rules this earth blind chance. " 
 
 Rentzdorf was puzzled. He had heard the rumour of 
 the attack on Napoleon, but in 1809 rumours of that kind 
 were rife and no man of sense any longer listened in them. 
 In his own circle Staps's action was discredited or dis- 
 believed. Bolli himself had witnessed the incident and 
 declared positively that it was merely the arrest of a young
 
 Viennese Poet and Viennese Composer 397 
 
 Viennese of the middle class too eager to present a petition, 
 or simply too eager to see the French Emperor. 
 
 Uvarow, however, after a furtive glance towards Rentz- 
 dorf, began in loud French to explain the affair. Bee- 
 thoven, only half understanding, shook his head impatiently 
 and sat muttering to himself; "Murder and yet murder. 
 Still he goes on triumphing. What will be the end? And 
 God does nothing. God does not say a word!" 
 
 All that summer he had been oppressed by the spectacle 
 of continuous triumphant wrong. Was Napoleon never 
 to be overthrown? He had begun to question the justice 
 of God, that exterior personal God whom, in the fashion- 
 able deism of many cultured minds in France and Germany, 
 Beethoven conceived as a beneficent and over-ruling des- 
 pot, rewarding and punishing in some indistinct Heaven 
 or Hell, all men and women for the good or evil performed 
 on this earth. Was God a God of righteousness? Why 
 then was He silent now? Why did He sit still whilst 
 Napoleon rode in blood from victory to victory? 
 
 And, strangely enough, these contradictions had fitted 
 in with his personal mood as an artist. For during the 
 preceding winter and all the summer the subject of Egmont 
 had obsessed him on the one hand, the irresistible power 
 of an Alva, bigoted, crafty, and pitiless, and, on the other, 
 ranged against it, the royally confiding strength, faith, and 
 heroic idealism of Egmont. Why was the latter destroyed? 
 True to his temper, and to his resolve to find something 
 "good" in apparent evil, Beethoven had struggled to con- 
 sole himself for Egmont's death on the scaffold by the 
 contemplation of his after fame. Was not the glory of 
 an independent Netherlands his work? Was it not like a 
 spacious tree rooted in his bloody grave? There, he 
 reasoned, was Egmont's divine reward; there was Egmont's 
 "heaven." And during these last two days, the rumours 
 of the young Thuringian's attempt on Napoleon's life, con-
 
 398 Schonbrunn 
 
 fused, unreliable, vague and changing as they were, had 
 nevertheless wrought him to the height. It was Egmont's 
 heroism over again, but in Germany, not the Netherlands; 
 and in an agony of illumination he had jotted down one of 
 the sublimely terrible phrases which he afterwards wove 
 into the "Victory Hymn " of the Egmont overture the most 
 deathless monument whether to Friedrich Staps or to 
 "Young Germany, " the Germany of 1809 and the Germany 
 of 1813, that genius or devotion will ever raise. 
 
 The motifs of that hymn and other motifs, nebulous or 
 precise, breathing the same lofty clear defiant spirit, had 
 been thundering in his ears all day; and all day in his dingy 
 lodging near the Karnthner he had sat brooding over the 
 young Thuringian's action and the possibilities of his fate. 
 Rentzdorf 's return alone had dragged him from his lair. 
 Yet to-night there could be nothing of the banter and 
 exuberant wit, the huge laughter, and the fond interchange 
 of ideas upon poetry and music without end, which, a 
 year before, had made their meetings so memorable. 
 
 in 
 
 In the pause of silence the silence which succeeds the 
 first glad outburst in a meeting of friends Uvarow, with 
 ceremonious grace, held out his snuff-box. Rentzdorf, 
 though he detested the practice, accepted, out of courtesy 
 to a stranger. Beethoven brusquely declined. 
 
 "He neither smokes nor snuffs," Rentzdorf said apologeti- 
 cally to the Russian. And in a rapid aside, he added, 
 "Speak straight to him, looking at him whilst you speak." 
 
 " He is deaf then ? The report is true ? " 
 
 "Yes." 
 
 "Has it lasted long? Is there no hope of a cure?" 
 Uvarow began again, speaking in an awestruck, over- 
 excited whisper.
 
 Viennese Poet and Viennese Composer 399 
 
 " Do not whisper to me, I beg of you, " Rentzdorf remon- 
 strated. "Speak openly, but low. It began nine years 
 ago. He has tried every remedy. " 
 
 "How frightful ! How piteous ! " 
 
 "Piteous? Yes; as a blinded eagle." 
 
 Beethoven, thinking from Rentzdorf's unconcerned face 
 that his talk with Uvarow was on some everyday topic* 
 placed his hand on the poet's shoulder and looked at him 
 with smiling affection. 
 
 "You at least look fa mo j, splendid," he said; "and you 
 are a hero. We others, we speak about heroes; you are 
 the thing itself. And I saw your Liechtenstein yesterday 
 and took off my hat to him as I would not take it off to the 
 Emperor. He has the Roman air high, unimpeded, serene. 
 So sieht ein Held aus! Yes; and so you too were at the 
 ball last night? I go no longer to balls. At five and thirty 
 one's dancing days are done." He frowned. 
 
 Rentzdorf knew very well that Beethoven was forty or 
 near it; but it was a weakness of the composer to under- 
 state his years. It was part of the fashion and swagger of 
 his epoch. Every man wished to do, or to seem to have 
 done, great things in his youth, in the shortest possible 
 time, or in the most disadvantageous circumstances to 
 have written poems whilst dressing before or undressing 
 after a ball; to have composed overtures in the small hours 
 after a midnight debauch. 
 
 "Five and thirty!" Uvarow protested in imperfect 
 German. " That is nothing. Marshal Davout " 
 
 "This infamy!" Beethoven resumed. "O this infamy! 
 Germany is buried in this peace as in a grave." 
 
 His gesture was horribly expressive. His habitual look 
 of "possession" was intensified. 
 
 "Blind chance! That is the heart of things. You are a 
 warrior and a thinker, Heinrich; I am only a poor artist. 
 What gives this man his power? The whole earth writhes
 
 400 Schonbrunn 
 
 under his iron heel. Why? Ah, would to God I were 
 blind as well as deaf deaf and blind as this stone. " 
 
 He struck the marble top of the table with his clenched 
 fist. Uvarow saw the knuckles whiten and the coarse hairs 
 on the back of the fingers stand out in odd distinctness. 
 The nail of the thumb was flattish and ill kept. 
 
 Rentzdorf, familiar with Beethoven's temperament, felt 
 the approach of one of those moods of colossal gloom which 
 echo in his later sonatas and symphonies. He never 
 dreamed of criticizing these attacks. Ill health, poverty, 
 the envious insults of rivals or enemies, the veiled strictures 
 or caricatures of professed friends, his best works misunder- 
 stood or misrepresented how could Beethoven be expected 
 to imitate the equable subservience of a Haydn, or assume 
 Goethe's staid olympianism? And Rentzdorf knew of the 
 venomous attacks that very spring upon his two latest 
 symphonies; the imaginary conversation of the tortured 
 instruments written in gall and envy by Weber; Raupach's 
 printed sneers at "this crazy, half -blind, half-deaf old 
 pianist. " 
 
 "If it were not for my art, my divine art ... You 
 understand me, Heinrich; you at least understand me." 
 
 He flung forward his arms. His huge heavy head rested 
 on his wrists for several seconds. 
 
 When he lifted his face its look had changed. 
 
 "Resignation and submission," he said, speaking rather 
 to himself than to his listeners. "Yes, submission: but to 
 the will of God. We may be slaves, we Germans; but suffer- 
 ing, unwilling slaves! We are not Italians. We struggle, 
 we resist, and therefore we are unconquered. " 
 
 Rentzdorf, who spoke openly to Beethoven of poetry 
 and art, could rarely, if ever, express to him, unless ironi- 
 cally, his convictions upon religion and human fate. The 
 "verger's intellect," which in a bitter letter to Amalie he 
 had attributed to Bach, raised a barrier between himself
 
 Viennese Poet and Viennese Composer 401 
 
 and Beethoven also. The oftener he met him the more 
 fixed became his conviction that the tenor is closely allied 
 to the composer, and that music amongst the greater 
 arts is the nearest to that of the mountebank or the six- 
 fingered monstrosity. Uvarow, on the other hand, who 
 was a reader of Fenelon, and a frequenter of the Masonic 
 and Quietist coteries of Petersburg, was excited by Bee- 
 thoven's method of self -consolation. It resembled Quiet- 
 ism; and he now quoted eagerly the maxims " Do nothing; 
 for all is done . . . Resist not evil . . . Imitate the 
 water, the lowliest yet mightiest of things." 
 
 "What is our deliverance?" he said with a fine boyish 
 earnestness. "What puts us beyond Napoleon's power? 
 To desire only the things which the tyrant cannot assail ; to 
 renounce pleasures and gold ; above all, to renounce praise, 
 Bonaparte's god. He who covets men's praise shall wither 
 under men's curses. That will be Bonaparte's doom. " 
 
 Earnestness always impressed Beethoven. He made the 
 young Russian repeat the words in German, he himself 
 alternately nodding his huge head, or tapping the table to 
 indicate his disapprobation or misunderstanding. 
 
 IV 
 
 Rentzdorf sat watching the two men's faces. 
 
 Uvarow, his voice out of hand, was urging the stale 
 thesis that Napoleon ought to have made permanent peace 
 long ago; Washington would have done this, even Moreau; 
 but in Bonaparte "lust of dominion" had driven him to 
 violate the Peace of Amiens. 
 
 Impatient, Rentzdorf asked abruptly: 
 
 "Where would you have had him stop? In 1797? He 
 
 dared not. Campo Formio was a truce and he knew it. 
 
 The monarchies were arming, Russia, Austria, Prussia, 
 
 England. He struck at England in Egypt. His absence 
 
 26
 
 402 Schonbrunn 
 
 in Egypt led to the loss of his conquests in Italy: Egypt, 
 therefore, led to Marengo. And after Marengo, how is he, 
 First Consul, absolute despot of unexampled armies, the 
 inheritor of the glory at once of the Revolution and of the 
 Bourbon monarchs, to acquiesce in England's retention 
 of half this planet? Rome's legions conquered the world 
 at the point of their swords. England has filched it like 
 a common thief whilst Europe slept. What soldier or 
 statesman who has taken upon himself the imagination of a 
 great people can tolerate this without a secret rage? It is 
 for cuistres to discuss whether Pitt were willing or unwilling 
 to surrender Malta. Bonaparte, as Louis XV. 's successor, 
 has Rossbach to efface; he has Plassey to avenge. But 
 Jena did this, you will say. Why did he not stop there? 
 Jena, like Austerlitz, is a phase in a gigantic plan, which, 
 when complete, shall un-write the history of the centuries. 
 Go back five years. His armies in 1804 are cantoned round 
 Boulogne, ready for the invasion of England; but presto! 
 he discovers that behind him Austria is in arms; that 
 Russia is in arms; that Prussia is about to join them. In a 
 second he abandons his grip which was tightening on Eng- 
 land, and, in order to secure his communications for the 
 future, he determines to handcuff Europe. Thus Boulogne 
 leads to Ulna and Ulna to Austerlitz, and Austerlitz to Jena, 
 to Eylau, Friedland, and Tilsit. After Tilsit, he resumes the 
 campaign against England. England seizes'the Danish fleet. 
 'Politics is robbery then? ' he says to his legions. 'Robbery 
 be it, and he the greatest who robs the most violently or 
 the most adroitly. Let your iron "greatness" be the 
 destructor of their hoary worm-eaten pretence-goodness.' 
 And that, great God, that is the hour that we Austrians 
 think our opportunity! Fate's mandate, we imagine, 
 had gone forth against Fate's minion ! We, we pose as the 
 saviours of Europe! Wagram, a bloodier Austerlitz, is our 
 instructress viola tout. But the victor? He will trample
 
 Viennese Poet and Viennese Composer 403 
 
 out the revolt in Spain, and next summer, with Russia as 
 his extreme right wing, Prussia and Hanover as his right 
 centre, Portugal and Spain as his left wing, France and 
 Belgium and Holland as his colossal centre, and now with 
 Austria as his rear, he will realize the Boulogne design. 
 For who will stay that avalanche? And England under the 
 Caudine Forks, nothing stands between him and world- 
 empire. It is a fair stake to play for the despotism of a 
 planet n'est-ce pas? No; I for one am not prepared to 
 say where Bonaparte should have stopped. Besides, to say 
 'ought' to what is past, to whine for the 'might-have- 
 been' what idleness! Only when we know the past as 
 inevitable as well as irrevocable do we begin to understand 
 either past or present. Time, existence, the past, the pre- 
 sent, man, God these are not problems but the answer to 
 a problem." 
 
 "And yet, " exclaimed Uvarow, "you have fought against 
 this 'grand entraineur des hommes?" 
 
 "I have fought and still fight against him. To that end 
 are we Austrians. " 
 
 It was Beethoven who broke the silence. 
 
 "Yes, Heinrich; you have spoken a word. Du lieber 
 Gott, what drama, und was fur ein Held! what a Hero! 
 Napoleon Bonaparte! What music that name made me 
 hear! What battle music and what a glory! Italy, the 
 Bridge of Lodi, Arcola, Rivoli, the Pyramids, Marengo 
 he taught the tyrants a dance ! Ach, das war schon, herrlich. 
 Yet now the change! But he is led by the hand, and to 
 the abyss. Yes ; what rose out of the gulf must back to the 
 gulf again. God's path is on the sea. He is led by the hand, 
 I tell you, and to the abyss. I see it. I see it. " 
 
 Uvarow gave a little forced mirthless laugh. It was 
 the kind of laugh that lets light in upon a human char- 
 acter. 
 
 "To a gulf indeed! But where will it open, and when,
 
 404 Schonbrunn 
 
 to receive this new Mettus Curtius and his infernal hosts? 
 That's what I ask. Eh ? " 
 
 He turned to Beethoven and then to Rentzdorf; but 
 something in the poet's face prevented the Russian from 
 continuing. He had intended in all good faith to place 
 at this point the fatuous inanity already noised abroad 
 by Madame de Krudener the white angel named Alex- 
 ander I. striking its ethereal talons into the black angel 
 named Napoleon. 
 
 "Tell me, Ludwig, " Rentzdorf said in the pause, "where 
 is the point at which you begin to see in Bonaparte the 
 asserter of eternal wrong?" 
 
 Beethoven, to the Russian's astonishment, starting up 
 like a man waking from a frightful dream, burst into a 
 furious tirade, not against Napoleon, but against Austria. 
 His features were convulsed; his eyes, like burning lamps, 
 flashed from side to side. 
 
 "Gott in Himmel, you have spoken a word! You have 
 put in my soul old bad thoughts, old glorious thoughts. 
 Austria! What is Austria to me? Austria what seas of 
 blood! The tyrant-oppressor, the everlasting sure friend 
 of darkness! Hatred of Austria has made men heroes. 
 Alliance with Austria is the embrace of a corpse, breathing 
 from her corrupting lips a breath that turns her lover into 
 stone. I am a Rheinlander, praise be to God ! Yes, from 
 the free Rhein stream am I." 
 
 His jungle of black hair was, to Rentzdorf 's half -amazed, 
 half -amused survey, full of twisting adders; yet he felt no 
 indignation at Beethoven's outburst. Austrian as he was, 
 he regarded men like Ferdinand II., the murderer of Wallen- 
 stein, and Leopold I., the murderer of the Hungarians, as 
 a cultured liberal Englishman might regard Henry VIII., 
 the murderer of Sir Thomas More, or James II., the insti- 
 gator of the Bloody Assize. 
 
 Gesticulating, Beethoven started afresh.
 
 Viennese Poet and Viennese Composer 405 
 
 "Those who envy me, traduce me. To-night, in the 
 night of Germany's honour, rising in insolent might, they 
 would tread me down. Triumphant slaves shout round 
 the triumphant robber. my soul answer them not! 
 To their fury, oppose calm! Blind hate, blind chance 
 that is the world. 'It is more blessed to give than to 
 receive?' Daily I live that maxim. Long was I in 
 doubt; but no longer am I in doubt. I have fought in 
 trust, in affection for all the human kindreds for all 
 of them, all! Evil-entreated, I have sung goodness; in 
 misery I have proclaimed joy. How has Austria requited 
 me? Poverty, hideous daily penury, and poverty. I wait 
 for the darkness, I creep out by night, because my coat is 
 threadbare and my boots patched so that I cannot face 
 my fellowmen in the sunlight. What slaves were Haydn, 
 Mozart, to sell their art! To sell that it is to sell 
 God! Oh, the vileness! Comfort? Riches by playing the 
 lackey? I trample on it, shuddering with disgust at what 
 I must trample on ! No ; I will never give in, never, never, 
 never, never!" 
 
 His emotion seemed to shake the room. The thick 
 finger-tips of his left hand tapped the marble table con- 
 vulsively; but his countenance was iron, and dun as iron 
 the features. 
 
 With an indomitable look and gesture defiance, male- 
 diction, grief, regret, scorn he continued: 
 
 "Bonaparte's treason there is the cause. He had the 
 chance : breathless the human race waited. The star that 
 burned above Corsica, a balefire to tyrants, but to us, the 
 star of our hope, and what radiance over France ! What 
 music I heard, what paeans, what mournful exultant dirges 
 over dead heroes, fallen, fallen, yet victorious! Bonaparte! 
 If I forget him, may my right hand forget! In the mid- 
 night of my heart his strength strengthened me. Fight on, 
 fight, fight, fight! Heroic battle, heroic joy, heroic glory,
 
 406 Schonbrunn 
 
 heroic pain. I remember; I remember. He came to 
 strike down my strong enemies fear, doubt, madness, and 
 despair within me; oppression and wrong outside me. He 
 came to break all our fetters, to bring comfort to those that 
 were in prison. He came, the light-bringer, the asserter of 
 glory, proclaimer of equality, brotherhood, the everlasting 
 freedom and greatness of man. Glory to man in the 
 highest ! What a lightness ! those dawns ! ' France and 
 Bonaparte!'; that was our watchword 'France and 
 Bonaparte!' At Arcola, Rivoli, Lodi, Marengo, the priests 
 and the despots of the world trembled as at the earth- 
 quake's tread. God, how he is fallen, fallen!" 
 
 In Beethoven's own history that erebus pit of disease, 
 mortifications, ceaseless combat, unsurrendering independ- 
 ence, anger at the prosperity of wrong in the desperate 
 crises of the years when, his deafness irremediable, he stood 
 on the brink of madness or suicide, he had in Bona- 
 parte's victories found an inspiration to his own struggle, 
 and the conflict and the gratitude had become the Eroica. 
 
 Uvarow, very pale, his thin Slav volubility silenced, his 
 little moustaches twirling upwards, his mouth a little open, 
 yet most intent, sat with his eyes fixed on Beethoven. 
 
 "But I will tell you, Heinrich," the latter went on. 
 "To you I will speak. I have been thinking of it much. 
 What have I to do but think? Well? What? Macbeth 
 I have been composing it. These three weeks, these three 
 months, it is the thought of my thought. Macbeth what 
 is it? It is Bonaparte; but to me Bonaparte is more 
 appalling. What is Shakespeare's theme, eh? A loyal 
 soldier, brave amongst the brave, is in an hour made a 
 treacherous, damnable, midnight assassin. How? Shakes- 
 peare answers, 'The witches, the blasted heath. They 
 start the evil thing in Macbeth.' But in Napoleon 
 what set going the evil in him? Who was the tempter? 
 mystery; murder on murder, D'Enghien, the
 
 Viennese Poet and Viennese Composer 407 
 
 noble Pichegru, conqueror of Holland; the Englishman 
 Wright; Villeneuve with his gashed throat; Palm; Palafox, 
 so this new Macbeth rushes on his career of blood; and so 
 on, on to the abyss, to the abyss! But I have the sketches 
 here " 
 
 He rummaged in the huge pockets of his rough coat made 
 of tanned sheepskin. He found many things, thrusting 
 some back again, depositing others on the table an old 
 empty snuff-box, a piece of cheese, a broken shoebuckle, 
 some coins wrapped in paper, three or four pencils with 
 used-up, flattened points. 
 
 ' ' I lose everything nowadays ; mislay everything. Every- 
 where I am robbed. I have changed my lodgings seven 
 times. Everywhere slothful or thieving servants; dis- 
 honesty, cheating " 
 
 "Do not bother, Ludwig; I know what you can make of 
 such a subject. " 
 
 Beethoven, startled by something in Rentzdorf s voice, 
 for, deaf as he was, he had an amazing power of detecting 
 an accent, the naunce of a tone he seemed indeed to hear 
 tones only stopped in his search and looked up quickly. 
 
 "You do not like my comparison? My plan for a 
 Macbeth-Napoleon opera does not please you? Hein?" 
 
 Rentzdorf was nonplussed for a second. Aloof from most 
 men, he rarely contradicted their theories or criticized their 
 works. But with Beethoven he was sincere. 
 
 ' ' Doch, Heinrich ? ' ' the composer insisted. " Ja ? Speak 
 then." 
 
 "Well," Rentzdorf said with a laugh, "are they so cer- 
 tain, those murders? And is it Napoleon who has changed, 
 or we ourselves, Ludwig; you and I? For instance, was 
 he so bound to be our leader? And he, our fate-appointed 
 leader, so-called what right had we to demand that he 
 should lead us whither we desired to go? And that limited, 
 noble, patriotic Napoleon that you desiderate is the loss
 
 408 Schonbrunn 
 
 to be so regretted? The man of Corsica he gave us in 
 his debate with Paoli. We have dozens such in Hungary, 
 in Poland, in Ireland, in Bosnia. The man of France he 
 gave us. We have dozens such again Moreau, Washing- 
 ton, Kteber, Hoche. But the Man of Destiny?" 
 
 Rentzdorf then hinted that in Napoleon there might be a 
 fate incomparably more tragic and mysterious than that of 
 the stage-prophecyings, witches, blasted heaths, and air- 
 drawn daggers of Macbeth; a tragedy in which glimpses of 
 the world-tragedy, avant-couriers of the world-doom, might 
 appear. 
 
 "Here on this earth, and out there amongst the star- 
 galaxies, a God is in conflict ; out there as here a God works, 
 moving in and through this suffering universe to an end be- 
 yond itself and beyond Himself to an end in which all 
 this strife, this rage and ecstasy and anguish that is Being's 
 essence and Being's God shall cease or be transformed. 
 The Nirvana not of man but of God. That is Destiny. 
 That is Reality." 
 
 "Total Annihilation?" Uvarow said. "This universe 
 and its originator self -destroyed together? That is very 
 complete. " 
 
 Rentzdorf did not answer, but still addressing Beethoven: 
 
 "The nearer a religion, a philosophy, or a poem or a 
 symphony approaches to the tragic will which underlies the 
 worlds, the more supreme is that symphony or that book. 
 That is the great ' ought ' of art your art and mine the 
 only 'ought.' If you and I have been alone hitherto " 
 
 He stopped, half irritated with Beethoven, half irritated 
 with himself at speaking thus openly. 
 
 Beethoven, who had not heard Uvarow's exclamation, 
 said sharply: 
 
 "But why do you stop ? You said , ' If you and I have been 
 alone hitherto ' What were you about to add?" 
 
 "This perhaps," Rentzdorf said. "Bonaparte may be
 
 Viennese Poet and Viennese Composer 409 
 
 of our company that is all; his disillusion your disillusion; 
 his despair your despair and mine. Who knows? At 
 Arcola he too doubtless thrilled to our ardours, wished 
 to be the eastern star to a new earth. Who knows? Now, 
 he goes his wild road, certain only of the black nothingness 
 over which this planet is swung, certain of the world-doom, 
 certain above all of his own doom." 
 
 "Napoleon a tragic disillusioned " Uvarow exclaimed. 
 "That is novel." 
 
 Beethoven for a considerable time said nothing. His 
 brow was heavily lined and he was evidently pondering 
 Rentzdorf's words and their undermeaning. Then, speak- 
 ing so loud that even amid the hurly-burly the"guests at the 
 nearer tables turned and stared through the glass door 
 curiously and, exchanging a word, went on with their card- 
 playing or their drinking: 
 
 "I only half understand you, Heinrich. The will of 
 God we must submit to that will. He knows what is best 
 for us. I cling to that faith, Heinrich a just and personal 
 God, divine retribution." And with a blow on the table 
 and a fierce glance " Ja I believe in the goodness of man, 
 the goodness of God, and in the immortality of the soul." 
 
 "Who asks you to believe in anything else, Ludwig?" 
 
 "You do. Your writings, your poems, your dramas I 
 have been reading them. " 
 
 Rentzdorf smiled in ironic expostulation. 
 
 "That was great waste of time, Ludwig; but you will get 
 over the bad effects, I daresay. Certainly I am the last 
 man on earth to wish to interfere with any man's religion." 
 
 Instantly Rentzdorf regretted his impatience. 
 
 His annoyance was the annoyance with an imperfect, 
 "tied" thing, with this man, a work of nature, as with a 
 work of art in which the Beauty is not free but still im- 
 prisoned. For why should this man, whose music seemed 
 the express image in sound of the most daring soul-motives,
 
 Schonbrunn 
 
 emotion-ideas of his own Prometheus, sit here and talk like a 
 Vienna shop-keeper in his Sunday coat? 
 
 But Beethoven was again fumbling in his huge pockets. 
 This time he discovered what he wanted and banging an 
 iron-clasped note-book on the table, he hurriedly turned 
 the leaves; and keeping it away from Uvarow's inspection, 
 for he was always suspicious of strangers, he said: 
 
 ' ' Look at this. What do you think ? Ha ? " 
 
 There was the most eager expectancy in the dark luminous 
 eyes. 
 
 It was not his Macbeth sketches ; it was his Egmont over- 
 ture, rough and in germ still, but to Rentzdorf's scrutiny 
 already visibly announcing the colossal might and splendour 
 that were to come. 
 
 "This is tragedy; this is heroism. You understand me 
 here, Ludwig not half but whole. This is tragedy, a 
 trumpet-call to the things which matter, challenging the 
 soul. This is heroism. " 
 
 "Ach was sagt der Schalk? See how he flatters me!" 
 
 Uvarow looked around him. It was near midnight. In 
 the cafe the excitement had become more uproarious . News 
 had kept arriving hour by hour, news from Linz, news from 
 Brunn, of the movements of Davout's troops; news from 
 Znaim. Napoleon, it was reported, had already left 
 Schonbrunn. The Emperor Francis was on his way from 
 Altenburg. From every street there seemed to come a 
 rumour in the darkness of great bodies of men on the march. 
 
 Part of the floor had been cleared and dancing had begun. 
 From the faces of the men Uvarow turned to the women, 
 comparing them with those whom, on a similar night, he 
 would have seen in a Petersburg cafe. These foreign shapes 
 seemed more elegant; their strange eyes, strange language, 
 piqued the curiosity of youth.
 
 Viennese Poet and Viennese Composer 411 
 
 Suddenly his glance, which had wandered from figure to 
 figure, comely matrons, Slav brunettes or slim blonde- 
 haired German maidens, came to a pause, arrested by a 
 bizarre apparition. This was a girl of seventeen or eighteen 
 robed in scarlet, with a large white hat, with clustering 
 feathers, and holding a long white wand. Her features ex- 
 pressed great softness, every motion of her figure, seduction. 
 Men's eyes as they watched her were filmed as with 
 smoke. 
 
 The tziganes played on; the dancers came out of the circle 
 wiping their foreheads. 
 
 ' ' To the victors the spoils ! ' ' thought the Russian. ' ' And 
 the vanquished are the dead; the victors those who live, 
 and their chief prize a woman's waist those who have 
 the will or the strength to clasp it." 
 
 A burst of ribald laughter at a table near him ended in 
 the Buda students' refrain, chanted by a dozen voices and 
 accompanied speedily by the tziganes and by knots of young 
 men everywhere about the huge room : 
 
 "Nolo me mortuum, nolo me mortmain; 
 Nolo me mortuum basiaret!" 
 
 "Hierbin ich Mensch!" Uvarow thought, and, chame- 
 leon-like, taking on Faust's colour, he turned to Beethoven. 
 "Hier bin ich Mensch," he repeated aloud, "hier darf ich 
 sein!" 
 
 Beethoven smiled agreeably. 
 
 He too, whilst Rentzdorf looked at the score, was watch- 
 ing the scene, nodding his head to the tzigane tune; and, as 
 his eyes travelled from group to group the drinkers, the 
 twining figures of the dancers through the smoke-dimmed 
 air, the youthful flushed faces, the go and come of the 
 tziganes' elbows, the women's figures the scene had 
 provoked something of the temper of the Dionysos Sym- 
 phony for which he left merely notes.
 
 412 Schonbrunn 
 
 Thus midnight crept past. A new day was born. 
 
 "You are leaving us?" the Russian exclaimed. 
 
 Rentzdorf had risen. 
 
 "Yes," he said, and in a lower voice added, "but you 
 need not come with me. Stay and get better acquainted 
 with Beethoven." 
 
 The latter looked as if he wished to accompany his friend, 
 but Rentzdorf by a few words in the Viennese patois iterated 
 Uvarow's anxiety to talk with him. 
 
 Rentzdorf himself wished to be alone. 
 
 An unconquerable desire even at this hour had seized 
 him, if not to see Amalie at least to see the windows behind 
 which she lay.
 
 CHAPTER XV 
 
 SO STIRBT EIN HELD!" 
 
 IVTAPOLEON'S decision in the Staps case had been 
 + ^ communicated to General Lanier, the temporary 
 commandant of the arsenal, at seven o'clock on Saturday 
 evening. 
 
 The instructions were explicit. The prisoner was to be 
 shot within the arsenal before daybreak on the I5th, at 
 a place selected by the due de Rovigo. The Emperor's 
 words were "avant le point du jour. " This phrase Savary 
 translated into 5.30 A.M. adding the following details, at 
 five o'clock two of the slabs which paved the "Watch- 
 tower" court were to be raised, a grave six feet long, seven 
 deep, and three wide was to be dug; a stout pole was to be 
 thrust into the ground not more than two feet from the edge 
 of the grave; the prisoner was to be bound to this pole, 
 shot, and at once buried. All blood-stains were to be 
 carefully removed, and every trace of the moving of the 
 slabs obliterated. 
 
 The depth of the grave, Savary calculated, would be an 
 added security against the discovery of the remains by the 
 Austrians when the arsenal and Vienna itself were finally 
 evacuated by the French. 
 
 The prisoner was to be allowed neither priest nor con- 
 fessor, no minister of religion of any kind. Writing mate- 
 rials, however, were to be offered him, and if he made use of 
 
 413
 
 414 Schonbrunn 
 
 them or left any testamentary or written statements upon 
 any subject whatever, such papers were to be delivered 
 without delay to the due de Rovigo; if, moreover, the 
 prisoner made any verbal statement this also was to be 
 communicated to the due de Rovigo. 
 
 Savary, like Bonaparte himself, still adhered to the 
 theory that the Tugendbund was implicated in the young 
 Thuringian's desperate attempt. The pens, ink, and paper 
 were placed at his disposal as an opportunity or an incite- 
 ment to betray his confederates. 
 
 A strong guard had been set on Friday round that part 
 of the arsenal in which the prisoner was confined. During 
 that night and all Saturday he had been under surveillance 
 in his cell; he had been observed seated on the edge of his 
 plank bed, or walking up and down, gesticulating silently 
 or staring up at the single small square window. Some- 
 times he would sigh heavily or mutter to himself in 
 a melancholy or dejected manner. He had, of course, 
 eaten nothing. The offer of writing materials he had 
 gladly accepted. Once he had been seen to kneel and pray; 
 then, rising, he had seized the pen and paper and for 
 a considerable period written rapidly. The papers were 
 seized, but their contents revealed nothing. They con- 
 sisted of incoherent words, fragments of lofty eloquence, 
 or patriotic poetry, a prayer for Germany, part of a letter 
 to Goethe, full of vehement reproaches, an apostrophe to 
 his great dead friend, Friedrich Schiller. 
 
 By Savary's orders this personal surveillance was on the 
 night of the I4th relaxed, and at ten o'clock altogether 
 suspended. Friedrich Staps thus passed his last night on 
 earth unscanned and unwatched by his enemies' eyes. 
 
 II 
 
 Punctually at five o'clock on Sunday morning a bugle 
 call, a short note followed by a longer holding note, startled
 
 "So Stirbt Ein Held!" 415 
 
 every hearer who at that dreary hour was awake in the 
 streets or houses adjoining the arsenal. And everyone who 
 heard that mournful summons started up or lay listening. 
 What could that mournful sound portend? Was it an 
 actual bugle-call or merely the prolongation of a dream? 
 
 The bugle announced to the grenadiers composing the 
 arsenal guard that the fusiliers of the I2th regiment had 
 arrived at the place selected by Savary and had begun their 
 part in the drama. 
 
 Four minutes later, Sergeant Picquart, accompanied by 
 ten grenadiers of the arsenal guard, approached the senti- 
 nels posted by the door of Staps's cell. After a parley the 
 sergeant was admitted ; and the gaoler, placing a lantern on 
 the floor, withdrew. 
 
 Picquart at first could scarcely detect the prisoner, but 
 the sound of his breathing came to him, now fitful, now 
 regular. 
 
 Then he saw Staps. 
 
 He was fast asleep, stretched out on his plank bed, half 
 undressed, his cheek on his right hand, his left hand hanging 
 by his side. A rusty chain attached his right foot to an 
 iron staple morticed into the wall which was here of great 
 thickness. 
 
 The sergeant stood for several seconds looking at the 
 prisoner. A flush that might have been fever but might 
 also have been youth and healthy sleep was on the boy's 
 face; the neck and throat were white and had in their soft 
 outlines something womanish. The chin was bold and 
 finely moulded. 
 
 "It is German, that face," thought the sergeant, "we do 
 not grow such features west of the Rhine." 
 
 He approached the bed and was about to lay his hand 
 on Staps's shoulder when the latter, turning on his back, 
 murmured drowsily: 
 
 "It cannot be time to get up yet, Marie? It is too dark
 
 416 Schonbrunn 
 
 and cold. Go away! This is Sunday . . . Ah, who are 
 you?" 
 
 His eyes, wide open, sparkling and very blue, stared at 
 the grenadier. He had not slept until two; he had then 
 fallen into a broken slumber harassed by fearful dreams; 
 but about four, this slumber had become a deep and restful 
 sleep. In his dreams he was a child again in his Thuringian 
 home, and Marie, his mother's old servant, had come to 
 wake him and had come too soon. But at the clank of his 
 chains and the rustle of the straw a panic fear blanched 
 his features. 
 
 "You must get up and put on your coat," the sergeant 
 said to him curtly, "and at once." 
 
 "For what?" the boy asked in his imperfect French. 
 
 "For what? A breakfast of lead. Come! Despatch! 
 Your day's work is soon over." 
 
 The next instant Staps was on his feet. 
 
 "I am ready." 
 
 But he staggered and would have fallen; but steadying 
 himself he sat down on the edge of his bed. His head was 
 giddy; his fingers chilled to the bone; his brow hot; and 
 horrible quiverings shook his body. 
 
 "I am very cold. Has there been a frost?" he asked in 
 an indifferent voice, though his teeth clashed against each 
 other. 
 
 "A few yards' walk will put that all right," was the gruff 
 answer. "Come! Get into your coat and boots. It is 
 time to start unless ..." 
 
 The notion had struck the sergeant that in a few minutes 
 the prisoner would be dead, and that a dead man's boots 
 were always difficult to remove. 
 
 Staps as he stopped to fasten his shoes noticed that they 
 were muddy. His mind became confused. Why had Marie 
 forgotten to clean them? His fingers fumbled at the strings 
 helplessly, blindly; and all the time, he seemed to hear a
 
 "So Stirbt Ein Held!" 417 
 
 continuous deep sighing somewhere around him or within 
 him. 
 
 ' ' I am doing this for the last time. This morning I have 
 to die." 
 
 The time for heroic action was past; the time for heroic 
 suffering had come. And, at the word, he knew what that 
 trembling was. It was the revulsion of his youth's forces, 
 baulked of their joy, against this hideous annihilation, here 
 in life's morning, by death. And a panic terror descended 
 on him. He was conscious of the impulse to scream out, to 
 implore his judges to spare him for one day, for half a day, 
 even for an hour, till he saw the sun rise again. 
 
 "Ah, it is useless," he muttered, "useless ... I have 
 to go through with it. I have to be brave. Aid me, oh 
 God, aid me! What do I do next? Ah, my coat yes; I 
 am ready, ready. Have we far to go?" 
 
 "Not very." 
 
 But after these two sinister words the sergeant's manner 
 changed. The spectacle of this child's courage and of his 
 fears for Staps seemed to him younger than the youngest 
 conscript of even that horrible year had affected him with 
 an unaccustomed emotion. He went to the prison door and 
 looked out. 
 
 "Sit down, " he then said with gruff kindness. "There's 
 not a hint of daylight in the sky. I'll leave you to yourself 
 a bit." 
 
 He himself was indifferent to religion; but this German 
 boy, he reasoned, might he not wish to pray before death? 
 
 in 
 
 Left alone, Staps remained seated on the bed. 
 
 "To die . . . ?" 
 
 He began to wring his hands, yet taunting himself with 
 his own weakness. " It is for Germany, " he repeated, and 
 he strove to invest that name with its glory. But like a 
 27
 
 Schonbrunn 
 
 deceitful halo the glory had gone. The hero forms of 
 poetry or history, Siegfried and Arminius, that he had 
 imagined seated above their sepulchres in colossal gloom 
 brooding Germany's wrongs, no longer rose at his summons. 
 The maxims and verses which had sustained his enthusiasm 
 sounded no longer in his ears. 
 
 "My book?" he suddenly thought. Where was his 
 Schiller? 
 
 A shudder of despair ran over him. He had left it at the 
 inn in Nussdorf. On Friday morning as he started for 
 Schonbrunn he had thrust it into his pocket as usual; 
 but it had encumbered his walk, for the dagger was in its 
 place. 
 
 He looked around, bewildered by this new calamity. 
 
 Schiller's Joan d'Arc? It had been his final inspiration. 
 Without it he had not the strength to die. 
 
 And in that midnight of the soul a strange vision came to 
 him. He saw his dead mother's face, and she was looking 
 out into the wet, windy darkness. "What is she looking for?" 
 he asked himself with a tremor. She disappeared. The 
 faces of young girls drawn up in a semi-circle now rose with 
 the same hallucinatory clearness. They were singing in 
 chorus. His own beloved was amongst them. But some- 
 thing hard and hateful at once insulated him from her and 
 from them. In the uncertainty and inner war of spirit at 
 Erfurt, she had not only been of no aid; she had acted 
 the part of traitress and spy. She was gentle; had great 
 modesty; yet at the first hint of his heroic purpose she had 
 taken fright obeyed her mother. 
 
 But his own mother? 
 
 He felt the ice of a supernatural awe on his face. In the 
 unseen spirit- world it was for him she was waiting; it was 
 for his coming she was looking out as in his Naumberg 
 home she had on Saturday evenings looked out for his re- 
 turn through the dusk from Erfurt.
 
 "So Stirbt Ein Held!" 419 
 
 "Ah, God. . . . This it is; this it is." 
 
 He flung himself on his knees and began to pray. 
 
 There came the tramp of footsteps, the clang of arms, 
 and, turning, Staps saw in the grey light the sergeant, and 
 behind him the shakos and bayonet-points of the escort. 
 
 "You are ready? It's time we set out now. Why, 
 what's this? Courage, my lad, courage! It's little you 
 lose by dying young. " 
 
 With a roughness that was intended to paralyse his 
 own feelings and to hearten the prisoner he began to give 
 orders, accompanying them with a series of oaths and ex- 
 hortations. "Remember, you'll feel no pain; not a twinge. 
 I've had a bullet through me often enough; you don't even 
 know it at the time, though it's Hell afterwards. But 
 you'll have no afterwards. D'ye see? And mind you 
 don't wriggle your head about like this," he explained, 
 moving his head quickly from side to side. "That makes 
 the fellows nervous, and a bullet might smash your shoulder 
 that ought to have gone through your brain or your heart. 
 Then it's all to begin over again. But six bullets at six 
 
 paces 
 
 Suddenly the sergeant averted his eyes. The surprise 
 and the fearful candour in the boy's glance were more than 
 he could stand. 
 
 ' ' Quick ! March ! " he shouted. 
 
 Staps was under the open sky. The shakos and bayonets 
 instantly closed him in; and beyond them he saw only the 
 dull iron-hued heavily buttressed walls. 
 
 "Right wheel ! " the sergeant said angrily; for his men had 
 started for the exit. ' ' Thousand devils ! Right wheel ! ' ' 
 
 Staps kicked his heel against the ground, attempting to 
 thrust his foot better into the shoe ; and feeling the fog in 
 his throat he asked to have his coat buttoned. His chest 
 had always been weak. But the grenadiers did not under- 
 stand him, and, with a sudden reflection he muttered to
 
 420 Schonbrunn 
 
 himself, "Ah, my God! What does it matter? The dead 
 do not catch cold." 
 
 They were now passing the court-house in which he had 
 been tried yesterday. In one of the escort he recognized, 
 by a scar above the right eyebrow, a grenadier who had been 
 on guard there. 
 
 "Es soil ein Wort sein, " he thought with sudden illumin- 
 ation, and in an instant the scene of his trial stood out 
 before him. 
 
 And repeating again like an incantation the phrase long 
 afterwards famous in the German war of liberation and, in 
 1813, at the battle of the Nations, "Es soil ein Wort sein" 
 there shall arise a word he imagined again the incident of 
 which it formed a part. Savary, proud of the opportunity 
 of displaying in the presence of soldiers his own knowledge 
 of legal customs, had, throughout the trial, assumed the 
 part of a juge cT 'instruction, and hurled reproaches and in- 
 sults at his prisoner, "You are a nobody; egged on by 
 others to this cowardly and heinous act. Your very name 
 is an absurdity. Who are those others? The Emperor 
 knows how to reward repentance even at the eleventh hour." 
 
 " If I were a coward or a common man, " Staps had cried, 
 "how could I have conceived and executed this thing? My 
 name may be ridiculous, but my deed is glorious for ever. 
 It will burst exultant from my grave, and burn in front of 
 the Army of Liberation. You may fire a thousand cannon ; 
 the youth of Germany has not made peace with you." 
 
 Yes; he knew it now. There were prophecyings in the 
 air; his would be the word that would arise, his name death- 
 less as Napoleon's. 
 
 "Halt!" 
 
 All stood still. Dazedly Staps looked around. He saw 
 that he was in a narrow roofed-in passage. Was it here? 
 Were they about to murder him in this hole?" 
 
 Instinctively he started forward, struggling to speak; but
 
 "So Stirbt Ein Held!" 421 
 
 at the same instant two bayonets were at his breast; his 
 arm was seized in a vice by one of the grenadiers. 
 
 "Do not stir or speak or you are a dead man." 
 
 The cause of the delay was simple. Moved by a humane 
 feeling, sergeant Picquart had sent forward a grenadier to 
 ascertain whether the preparations in the courtyard were 
 completed. He did not wish "the boy" to stand by whilst 
 his grave was being dug. 
 
 The grenadier returned. 
 
 "Quick! March!" 
 
 In less than two minutes Staps saw in front of him a wide 
 open court, and low down in the west a few stars struggling 
 against the rapid onrush of the dawn. A vast pallor full 
 of mysteriousness flooded the east; but in the west and 
 south the stars were still visible. He recognized Orion, his 
 baldric a glittering gem. Close behind the low wall he saw 
 two or three wretched trees. Their leaves had been blown 
 into the court and lay in withering heaps. In the same 
 direction but on this side of the wall and well within it, 
 several torches blazed. One torch half burnt out was 
 smoking; another lay extinct on the ground. Men had 
 been at work there; implements lay on the earth, spades, 
 pick-axes, some pieces of rope. Three soldiers, their 
 sleeves rolled up revealing their tanned, hairy arms, were 
 conversing in low voices. Beside them he saw by the 
 flare of the torches a freshly-dug trench. It was close to the 
 wall, and was partly screened from sight by their figures. 
 
 Staps looked at this trench, at a pole which rose beside 
 it, and at the two heaps of earth. He did not at once 
 understand; but suddenly the truth flashed on him. It 
 was for him, this trench. It was his grave. 
 
 IV 
 
 At a considerable distance from the trench," six men 
 drawn up in a line stood watching the prisoner with interest.
 
 422 Schonbrunn 
 
 Their uniform was not that of the arsenal guard, nor was it 
 that of the grenadiers who had guarded Staps yesterday. 
 
 "Is that our man?" one of the six asked his comrade. 
 
 "Seems like it," was the curt answer. 
 
 "That baby? Why, I was told it was Levi, the damned 
 spy, who nearly dished us in Lobau. " 
 
 "He's a spy right enough," a grizzled, beery-looking 
 veteran said to the conscript. "That's why his grave's 
 dug so deep. When we're gone he might 'walk ' and betray 
 to the Austrian sappers our Emperor's plans." 
 
 "Silence in the ranks!" exclaimed a well-bred voice. 
 "Silence, or by God, I'll have every man of you in irons. 
 Christ's blood, is this a canteen?" 
 
 The speaker was Lieutenant Riouffe, a Marseillais, son of 
 General Rioufle, one of the five hundred who in July '92 had 
 made the famous march. 
 
 Rioufle had drunk too much the night before; he had 
 staked rashly at faro and lost ; he was leaving a mistress of 
 whom he was not yet tired, a Slovak girl only sixteen years 
 old with beautiful round eyebrows; he had not had more 
 than two hours' sleep; the smoke from the torches stung his 
 eyes which were blood-shot. Above all, he hated this morn- 
 ing's bloody task. Therefore he blustered and shammed 
 anger. 
 
 Riouffe's irritable mood was also the cause of the delay. 
 The soldiers had measured the grave by the height of one of 
 their own number. Riouffe, who dreaded Savary, wished 
 to have it tested, and there was neither a tape nor a foot 
 rule to be found. 
 
 Staps understood nothing of this delay. His mind was 
 struggling with a myriad painful and dazing thoughts. Yet, 
 he noticed wistfully, the branches of the sickly trees were 
 recovering their hues ; the uniforms, the epaulettes, the faces 
 were recovering their hues, not from the lanterns now and 
 not from the torchlight. Would he see the sun again?
 
 "So Stirbt Ein Held!" 423 
 
 There was a shout. A grenadier was seen hurrying 
 across the courtyard bearing something in his hand. It was 
 a tape. 
 
 All approached the grave. A corporal jumped into it. 
 
 An unseen voice beside Staps whispered "It is now!" 
 And resolute his spirit answered "It is now!" 
 
 And now to his memory, which in his prison cell had 
 betrayed him so cruelly, now to his memory there came 
 crowding pell-mell the verses, the hero-maxims, Wolfram's, 
 Schiller's, Uhland's, Fichte's. And with them came also 
 fragments and echoes of a remoter, mightier music thrilling 
 along his brain, fragments from the sagas and ancient war- 
 hymns of his nation and his race; above all, these words 
 from the death-song of a German warrior: 
 
 "The Gods will welcome me. See! They are come to 
 call me home the maidens whom Wotan hath sent to call 
 me. The hours of my life are gone past. Laughing I die." 
 And lo ! in a forest-hung, shining region, out-splendouring 
 the noon, Valhalla arose, and the hosts of Valhalla, and 
 Sigurd turned Sigurd was gazing at him. 
 
 "They are waiting to see how I shall die!" 
 
 The thought had leaped into words before the flash which 
 lit up his darkening soul had quivered out of sight. 
 
 " Sigurd the Volsung !" 
 
 The name was like a sword dividing the firmament. 
 Unmistakably as at Erfurt in his hour of dread spiritual 
 doubt God's mandate had thundered its sacred message to 
 him, so now in his extremity of weakness and fear that 
 name thundered its hero-courage to him. 
 
 And visibly to his guards and to the bystanders Staps's 
 figure seemed to gain in stature. He stood more erect; 
 a light was on his brow ; in his bearing there was the uncon- 
 cern which is born of the last valour, passing into defiance 
 as his glances now met their glances, alone, death-doomed 
 but undefeated.
 
 424 Schonbrunn 
 
 The corporal of fusiliers had climbed out of the grave. 
 He spoke some words to Lieutenant Riouffe, and together 
 the two came forward. 
 
 Staps looked at the officer; but the latter, averting his 
 eyes, gave an order to the grenadiers. They fell back 
 five paces, leaving the prisoner alone with his two guards. 
 
 "Germany for ever! Down with the oppressors! Ger- 
 many! Liberty!" 
 
 Riouffe started, stood a second, staring at the prisoner. 
 
 "Que dit-il?" he asked at length. 
 
 Staps had spoken in German, his native accent very 
 marked in his excitement. 
 
 No one answered. The officer shrugged his shoulders, 
 and after a rapid glance aroun gave a short, sharp com- 
 mand. 
 
 Four grenadiers seized Staps, and in an instant jerked 
 him forward, and began awkwardly but rapidly to bind him 
 hand and foot to the pole fixed in the earth close to the 
 grave. 
 
 Taken by surprise, the prisoner at first offered no resist- 
 ance; but divining the object of this violence, he began 
 to wrestle furiously with his executioners, protesting in 
 German, "I can stand by myself. I am not afraid to die. 
 I will not be bound like a thief. I will not. " And again he 
 struggled convulsively ; and at the stare of stupor or menace 
 in his captors' eyes, he cried out in French, "Je ne veux 
 pas " But he could not at once recollect the word for 
 "bound." It came to him, and in his vehemence he used 
 a German idiom, "li e"tre," but immediately correcting 
 himself he repeated it, gazing angrily, imploringly into 
 the face of the grenadier with the scar who had been present 
 at his trial. 
 
 "It will be better for yourself," was the stern answer 
 after a steady look into the boy's face, and with a quick 
 twist of the rope the work was completed.
 
 "So Stirbt Ein Held!" 425 
 
 The four grenadiers fell back to their places. Staps was 
 left alone, bound to a stake beside an open grave. 
 
 In that moment of awful solitude the essential agony 
 began. His grave, black and deep as a pit, was at his feet. 
 There in a second or two he would lie unresisting and still, 
 and those two heaps of earth be piled above him. And 
 the forces of his youth, the horrible life-thirst, sobbed 
 and clamoured and raged in him. Why was he to be shot 
 down? What right had these Frenchmen to murder him? 
 He cast an appealing, frightful glance at their six faces. 
 One was a boy like himself ; another under a fierce look was 
 hiding the compassion he dared not or would not manifest. 
 What made these men assassins and those grenadiers 
 that stood looking on, silent as those walls? He felt his 
 mind confused; and he lost his way. The cords drawn 
 violently across his breast oppressed his breathing. His 
 throat was parched. His head began to turn from side to 
 side, restlessly, feverously. But no one came to his aid. 
 No one even noticed his misery. And the last loneliness 
 swept around him, a most harrowing, stern loneliness, that 
 of a world in which he saw nothing but enemies, strong and 
 implacable, looking hate and death at him here where he 
 stood, pinioned by an open grave, his grave. He moaned, 
 and an inward, supreme, fearful struggle began; and in 
 that struggle the boy found his road, never to lose it again. 
 
 In the pause the balance still hung between victory 
 and despair; but the immense hush and the white glories 
 of the dawn, one mystic splendour from horizon to zenith, 
 suddenly upbore him. He heard words and voices and 
 singing, the riding of horses. He saw again the hero- 
 shapes, colossal, like resting clouds or shadowy towers, 
 waiting, waiting, regardful how he, a German, should die. 
 His loneliness was gone; these were his companions; and 
 vanquishing the sick weight on his heart, louder and clearer 
 than he knew he shouted in French:
 
 426 Schonbrunn 
 
 ' ' Germany ! God and my Fatherland ! Germany ! ' ' 
 
 There was a brief word of command, a swift tramp of feet, 
 a rattle of muskets, then an imperative: 
 
 "Left wheel! Halt!" 
 
 The fusiliers had swung forward. Their musket barrels 
 gleamed dully in the whitening dawn. Lieutenant Riouffe 
 now stood in line with them. The corporal took up a 
 position beyond the former and a little behind him. 
 
 "It is Now!" thought Staps, with a shuddering vivid- 
 ness. " It is indeed Now !" 
 
 "Attention!" 
 
 Staps closed his eyes, but instantly opening them wide : 
 "God for Germany!" he shouted, all his soul in exultation. 
 "Down with the tyrant of the earth! Germany for ever! 
 Germany!" 
 
 "Fire!" 
 
 When the muskets were grounded and the smoke slowly 
 cleared the standers-by saw a dead face, the chin falling on 
 the breast, in the eyes a ghastly stare of astonishment 
 and agony; the shoulders lurched forward straining the 
 ropes grotesque, ludicrous even, but fast becoming, accord- 
 ing to the temperament of the onlookers, unendurably 
 painful, gruesome, or terrifying in the extreme. 
 
 His boyhood in the Thuringian woods, his ardour for 
 great poetry and heroic actions, his loves, his resentments, 
 his ambitions, his wrongs, his passion for freedom and for 
 the greatness of his race to this they had brought him; 
 here they all were ended. 
 
 Riouffe, the officer who had given the order to fire, stood 
 biting his nails, scowling and muttering to himself. The 
 fusiliers looked at each other in stupid silence ; one of them, 
 the conscript, wandering from the ranks, stood with bent 
 head.
 
 "So Stirbt Ein Held!" 427 
 
 Two soldiers going up to the dead boy undid the cords. 
 The body slipped in a huddled mass to the ground. Blood 
 was oozing from several places in or about the breast. 
 Corporal Boucherat, stepping briskly forward, bent over 
 Staps and lifted the left hand the hand that but three days 
 ago had lain in Corvisart's so trustfully. It fell back pulse- 
 less and unanswering now. 
 
 "Dead as a stone, mon lieutenant," he said to Riouffe. 
 
 The fusiliers took up the shovels and spades; but at that 
 moment a low iron-clamped door in the wall on their left 
 opened and two superior officers in forage caps and undress 
 uniform, accompanied by the commandant, General Lanier, 
 began slowly to cross the courtyard. 
 
 There was an instantaneous excitement. Every man 
 stood to arms. The conscript fell again into the ranks. 
 "The due de Rovigo in person ! " he whispered irrepressibly. 
 "Nom de Dieu, and General Rapp who commanded the 
 Young Guard at Aspern." 
 
 "Shut up! Do you want to have us all on bread and 
 water?" 
 
 Savary, without a word to anyone, went up to the trench 
 and stood looking down on the dead. Two of the grenadiers 
 approached with torches; but he motioned them away. 
 The sky was now full of light. 
 
 Staps lay with his face partly turned to the earth, as 
 though he had fallen forward on his wounds. 
 
 Savary with the toe of his boot slightly thrust aside the 
 left arm which half hid the features ; but by a kind of reflex 
 action the arm returned to its place again. 
 
 "Uncover the face!" Savary commanded without turning 
 round. 
 
 Lieutenant Riouffe gave an order and three soldiers 
 sprang forward; one of the latter, kneeling, held the arm 
 away from the face which looked up at Savary with the 
 tranquil irony that death confers. The dead boy already
 
 428 Schonbrunn 
 
 knew all or he knew nothing. His assassin still moved in a 
 world of appearances. 
 
 "Enough!" said Savary, turning away, and in the same 
 breath he added to Rapp, "C'est bien lui. That's our 
 man." 
 
 At this moment, not murderous contentment but the gaze 
 of Murder itself seemed to look from Savary 's sinister 
 countenance; the reports which made him play for Bona- 
 parte the functions which the Borgias assigned to their 
 private assassins were, if not justified, certainly made 
 intelligible. 
 
 Rapp, a singular short stuttering in his throat, looked 
 down in turn on the death-pale features in the death-pale 
 dawn; he looked at the hands; he saw the threadbare 
 clothes; one of the shoes was badly fastened, as though its 
 wearer had been interrupted by the summons to his doom ; 
 the sole of the other was worn to the welt. He must often 
 have been footsore, Rapp thought, not only on his long 
 tramp from Erfurt to Vienna, but on his journeys to and 
 from the inn to Schonbrunn. 
 
 "Well, he will be footsore no longer. What a waste! 
 He had in him the stuff that would have made a brave man. 
 What a waste!" 
 
 Staps's bearing at the court-martial had impressed him 
 greatly. 
 
 "Shall we go now?" he said to Savary. "You are 
 satisfied?" 
 
 The words were spoken with a soldier's deference to a 
 superior and overtly referred only to the victim's identity; 
 but through them pierced the accusation, "This is your 
 handiwork; you are pleased with it?" 
 
 Savary gave a swift side-glance at the speaker; then with 
 a gesture of haughty and overbearing disdain he strode on in 
 front, motioning to Rapp and Lanier to attend him; and, 
 scarcely noticing the subaltern's salute, the three officers
 
 "So Stirbt Ein Held!" 429 
 
 re-crossed the courtyard and disappeared through the door 
 by which they had entered. 
 
 Corporal Boucherat's hard cherry voice broke the spell 
 and the stupor. 
 
 "To work, lads, briskly, briskly!" 
 
 A gush of blood followed the raising of the body. It was 
 held for a second or two over the trench, then dropped. 
 A dull thud, a rattle of pebbles and earth marked its descent. 
 One of the soldiers looked down into the pit. 
 
 "It's more like a pit than a grave. Are we to throw the 
 earth on his face like that?" 
 
 "Sacrebleu, do you suppose he cares?" Corporal Bouche- 
 rat sneered. " Perhaps you think he would like your shako 
 over his mug? Throw it down if you've a mind," he 
 said, with a wink to the subaltern, seeking his approval. 
 "Briskly, lads. Briskly!" 
 
 The men grasped their shovels and spades and began 
 hurriedly to fill in the earth, every now and then trampling 
 it solidly down. 
 
 They were about to replace the slabs when they dis- 
 covered that a considerable heap of earth was left over. 
 Dropping their shovels, they clustered in various attitudes 
 around the edge, staring now at the heap of earth, now at 
 the earth in the grave. It could not be more tightly 
 packed, yet it was only two inches from the surface. 
 
 Corporal Boucherat tested it with his foot, stamping 
 on it at several points. 
 
 "God's curse!" he jerked out. "What's been dug out 
 of the earth ought to be dug in again n'est-de pas ? Try 
 again. " 
 
 " I see it, " one of the men muttered in an awed voice and 
 his face went a sickly white. 
 
 "Sacrebleu!" the corporal exclaimed at the same mo- 
 ment, "I had not thought of that. The right amount 
 precisely," measuring the heap with his eye.
 
 43 Schonbrunn 
 
 But the other five faces retained their look of stolid 
 unintelligence. 
 
 "Le cadavre; espe*ce d 'idiots! The dead body, fools!" 
 the corporal ground out between his teeth. "Do you 
 comprehend now? Clear off that earth. Anywhere you 
 like. To the Danube if necessary, but get it out of here, 
 every atom of it. Do you understand?" 
 
 The miscalculation was like the oversight of the assassin 
 who removes every trace of his bloody act except a rusty 
 button or a scrap of paper. 
 
 The slabs were carefully replaced. 
 
 "Everything right now, sir?" Boucherat said self- 
 contentedly to the subaltern. "It only wants a drop of 
 rain or a touch of frost and nothing'll be noticeable, 
 nothing." 
 
 At a sign from Riouffe the sergeant turned to the grena- 
 diers. 
 
 ' ' Left wheel ! Quick march ! ' ' 
 
 Once more the tramp of military footsteps broke the 
 morning silences. They receded and the corporal and 
 firing party alone were left in the court. 
 
 The grey-headed fusilier, whom a weakness for cognac 
 had reduced to the ranks as often as his courage gave him 
 promotion, turned to Boucherat. 
 
 "A short Sunday's work, corporal, and a bad, I call it; 
 yes, ugly and bad." 
 
 "Snipe-shootin', " was the laconic retort. 
 
 "Ye-es," the other rejoined in his beery, familiar tones, 
 "I've seen a snipe's head drop on its breast just like that 
 boy's. It's infanticide, I call it. D'Enghien was at least 
 a grown man." 
 
 "Bah, it's that you're thinking of, is it? Better think of 
 your breakfast. He's had his chunk right enough all 
 he'll ever want. Fall in!" 
 
 "Murder will out, they say; murder will out."
 
 "So Stirbt Ein Held!" 431 
 
 " Not this time. We've made too clean a job of it. Fall 
 in!" 
 
 The old fusilier slowly obeyed. 
 
 "Now for breakfast, lads!" Boucherat said jauntily. 
 ' ' Shoulder arms . Quick mar-r-ch ! ' ' 
 
 The rattle of muskets ; then the swing of retreating steps ; 
 and in a second or two total silence reigned over the arsenal 
 court and a grave. The dead leaves from the plane trees 
 beyond the wall were already beginning to fall on the two 
 skbs.
 
 CHAPTER XVI 
 
 EPILOGUE 
 
 HPHE joy of the Viennese at the Peace of Schonbrunn 
 J. ended with the night of the day on which it was 
 signed. Not a single eye penetrated the arsenal walls 
 to the crime enacted there at dawn ; but three hours later 
 every citizen felt himself in the tyrant's grip. 
 
 Shortly after eight o'clock warning notices were posted 
 on church doors and on the doors of public buildings or on 
 the shutters of closed shops, and on hoardings in the chief 
 quarters of the city, commanding the inhabitants who 
 lived near the ramparts to keep indoors. All citizens alike 
 were forbidden to resort to the fortifications for the usual 
 Sunday promenade. At ten o'clock handbills to the same 
 effect were distributed from house to house in the Graben, 
 St. Stephen's Place, in the Mehlmarkt, and the Alleegasse. 
 
 "For what possible reason?" the astonished burghers 
 asked each other as they gathered in groups about the 
 notice; and whilst they still rubbed their eyes they dis- 
 covered the reason. 
 
 By the orders of the French Emperor the bastions were 
 simultaneously or one after another to be blown up. The 
 demilunes and galleries, the earthworks and subterranean 
 forts all, in a word, that composed the city's ancient 
 walls, were to be destroyed or razed to the ground. 
 
 432
 
 Epilogue 433 
 
 The consternation was mixed with incredulity, anger, and 
 resentment. 
 
 " It is bluff, " said one burgher. " There has been a hitch 
 in the final negotiations," said a second. "But why did he 
 proclaim the peace by cannon-shot yesterday? Is this 
 the great Napoleon's magnanimity?" said a third. "Is 
 it justice? Is it even law?" 
 
 "Might" it evidently was; might, if not right. 
 
 Attracted by the novelty many vagabonds and loafers 
 and Viennese men and women of the working classes, the 
 majority of mixed Slav, Magyar, Jewish, or Greek blood, 
 thronged to watch the French engineers at work. They 
 waited for the explosion as for a new kind of firework. 
 
 But the well-to-do citizens of German extraction, men 
 of the bourgeois or middle-class, at once began to hold 
 meetings in their private houses. It was speedily evident 
 that in this matter Vienna must aid herself; for long before 
 the hardest rider could reach Totis and Francis II. the 
 work of demolition would be well begun if not completed. 
 
 At a semi-official meeting near the Mehlmarkt the idea 
 of an immediate deputation to Schonbrunn was mooted. 
 Was not Napoleon noted for his considerateness to such 
 embassies? 
 
 The burgomaster that Sunday was at Presburg. Karl 
 Morsch, his brother-in-law, however, a rich tradesman, 
 was in Vienna, and to his roomy business premises in the 
 Kohlmarkt the meeting at once removed. There amid 
 the smell of grains, herbs, and seeds, the hurried meeting 
 rapidly increased in numbers and at last fully seventy per- 
 sons were present, all substantial citizens, many of them 
 men who held or had held civic office. 
 
 To an observer who had visited Haarlem the scene would 
 
 have recalled one of those paintings by Franz Hals, such as 
 
 "The Archers of St. George." The faces of those seventy 
 
 or seventy-five men were not handsome or impressive, 
 
 28
 
 434 Schonbrunn 
 
 but all seemed to exude a vigorous, healthy energy; many 
 were alert, clean-looking, capable men, representing a 
 nation's wealth and something of a nation's power. 
 
 "In the regrettable absence of the burgomaster" 
 Morsch was voted to the chair. 
 
 At first he spoke very quietly. A deputation, he said, 
 had been proposed, in his own opinion it was the only 
 course; and he suggested that it should consist of six 
 citizens, two from each of the quarters most affected by this 
 "extraordinary action of the French Emperor, an action 
 contrary to the law of nations and of humanity." For 
 his own part, he could not persuade himself that Napoleon 
 wished to impose upon this great and ancient city so unpro- 
 voked and so unforgettable an insult. 
 
 Though a native of Vienna, Morsch was, on his mother's 
 side, of Suabian origin and a relation of that Hauptmann 
 Hermann who had displayed so conspicuous a valour at 
 Aspern. Every man in the room knew very well the 
 Suabian fury which was burning under those restrained 
 words, and every man by his expression and by his deep 
 guttural shouts of " Hoch ! Hoch ! Well said ! " exhibited his 
 sympathy or assured him of his support. 
 
 A dusky complexioned individual with puffy cheeks and 
 a short thick beard that crept up to his eyes, rose and said, 
 " Meine Herren! We all of us value the fervent patriotism 
 of Herr Morsch, our burgomaster's brother-in-law. He has 
 shared the dangers of the siege and of the war; but," he 
 paused weightily, "is it certain that the destruction of the 
 bastions is not an article of the Treaty? We may have 
 purchased peace at that price " 
 
 There was a chorus of confused astonishment; men 
 turned their shoulders to look at the speaker, Hans Mauern- 
 brecher. ' ' What 's that he says ? ' ' 
 
 But a new speaker had got on his feet. This was a man 
 in a skull-cap, with a broad, smooth, clean-shaven face,
 
 Epilogue 435 
 
 breathing intellect. He was a Levantine Greek, his father's 
 name was Ypsilanti, but at an early age the son had adopted 
 the German name of Schonthal. For long he had been not 
 unfriendly to Napoleon, for he was interested in the move- 
 ment for Greek independence; but now he was disillusioned, 
 as the Poles were disillusioned, by Napoleon's reckless 
 sacrifice of their aspirations to his own policy. 
 
 The purport of his speech was that the prestige of the 
 unconquered Austrian army, whether under the Archduke 
 or Liechtenstein, did not admit of the interpretation put 
 upon Napoleon's proclamation by the preceding speaker. 
 There must be some error. To suppose that Napoleon 
 would demand, or Francis II. consent to, this humiliation of 
 Vienna, was, in his judgment, an affront to both sovereigns. 
 He therefore proposed that an authoritative deputation, 
 twelve men representing every quarter of Vienna, should 
 proceed to Schonbrunn and lay before the French Emperor 
 a protest from the entire city. 
 
 Joseph Collin, a brother of the writer of the patriotic songs, 
 sat watching the Levantine's face, and when the latter sat 
 down he turned to his neighbour and whispered, " That man 
 does not believe a word he is saying. But what is his 
 game? This poisonous cosmopolitanism once more ever 
 the bane of Austria!" 
 
 Schonthal's proposal, however, won instantaneous assent. 
 
 One querulous, foggy voice, the voice of an old man of 
 seventy with a long beard, enquired whether it would not 
 be wiser to get Andre"ossy to approach the Emperor. But 
 again the tranquil, smooth-faced, wide-eyed Greek rose, 
 and by a word or two demonstrated the error in this proposi- 
 tion. The deputation, he added, might take this oppor- 
 tunity of expressing Vienna's satisfaction in the peace and 
 her gratitude for its prompt announcement yesterday. 
 
 "To whom is the peace a satisfaction?" Joseph Collin 
 interpellated without getting on his feet.
 
 436 Schonbrunn 
 
 "I will tell you," the Greek answered quietly. "It is a 
 satisfaction to nearly nine-tenths of the inhabitants of 
 Austria; for nearly every man is wearied of war. Aspern, 
 you say, is a victory, and Wagram a drawn battle. Does 
 not this treaty confirm that faith? Farther, the peace is a 
 satisfaction to the Archduke and to his staff and to his 
 generals, for the glory of it is their work. It is also a 
 satisfaction to the enemies of the Archduke; for to them it 
 seems his disgrace. It is a satisfaction to the young soldiers 
 who see in it the reward of their valour; and to experienced 
 soldiers because they know that we cannot prolong this war 
 single-handed and therefore wish to wait till Russia or 
 Prussia shall be with us." 
 
 Collin was about to answer, but there was a unanimous 
 cry of "Vote! Vote!" 
 
 The election of the twelve deputies was at once proceeded 
 with. 
 
 Three relations of the Burgomaster, of whom Bieder- 
 kampf was the most noted, were the first nominated, then 
 Mauernbrecher, then Schonthal and Joseph Collin for their 
 fluency of speech; then Kohler, the manufacturer of boar- 
 spears and fowling-pieces, owner of a large shop in the 
 Graben. Four others were added in a breath Wachsmuth 
 an architect; Steiner, the attorney; Fuchs, a shipbuilder, 
 and Zoll, a brewer. 
 
 It was agreed to set out for Schonbrunn within thirty 
 minutes. 
 
 "But the carriages? And how many horses, two or four 
 or six?" was now the cry. 
 
 The Levantine rose again. 
 
 "Six quadrupeds, I entreat you, gentlemen unless we 
 bipeds are to aid them in dragging our heavy vehicles to 
 Schonbrunn." 
 
 There was some laughter. For who was to provide eigh- 
 teen horses at a minute's notice?
 
 Epilogue 437 
 
 ii 
 
 Napoleon that morning woke in one of his happiest 
 tempers. He whistled as he dressed or hummed in his strid- 
 ent falsetto "La Marche des Tart ares, " bringing a benevo- 
 lent smile to the fat face of Rustum, that most faithful of 
 slaves. 
 
 "You will be glad to see Paris again, you rogue?" 
 
 "Yes, me ver' glad, Sire: my leetle wife and two bebes are 
 der." 
 
 But Napoleon had begun again "The March of the Tar- 
 tars" and his thoughts were nearly as multitudinous and 
 a myriad times swifter than the horsemen of Ginghis or 
 Timour. His impatient mind was already devouring the 
 future, the Russian alliance and its new phase; the Czar's 
 probable resentment at the increase to the Duchy of War- 
 saw; his own designs against Constantinople and Egypt; 
 the survey of the banks of the Drave; the demolition of the 
 walls of Gratz and Klagenfurth; the erection of fortifications 
 at Salzburg and at Passau. 
 
 "This Peace is a bridle-path," he said to himself, "but it 
 ends in a highway to the Orient." 
 
 An immense pride possessed him, and the consciousness of 
 an almost superhuman power. The incidents of the preced- 
 ing day had encouraged his cynicism and scorn of men ; but 
 they had also heightened his sense of his intellectual super- 
 iority to others. He looked down on men as from a tower; 
 his contempt for his entourage, for his generals as for his 
 ministers, Berthier, Oudinot, Marmont, Bernadotte, Andre- 
 ossy, Daru, Champagny, Maret, whose weaknesses one by 
 one he had probed, extended to the whole human race, and 
 now at this moment it concentrated itself in a sincere 
 loathing and impatient contempt for the corrupt, frivo- 
 lous, vain, weak, vacillating and pretentious Austro- 
 Viennese.
 
 438 Schonbrunn 
 
 The resolution to demolish the fortifications was the 
 expression of this contempt. 
 
 His order to Bertrand was peremptory. He and his 
 engineers were to occupy the next three days in destroying 
 every trace of Vienna's walls. Galleries and subterranean 
 works alike were to be "annihilated." Similar demoli- 
 tions were to be carried out at Gratz, Briinn, Raab, and 
 Klagenfurth. "Policy" was in this work of destruction, 
 indisputably, for this exhibition of force would have a moral 
 effect, it would sharpen Austria's sense of her own weak- 
 ness; but in the main he was influenced by pride and con- 
 scious, irresistible power. 
 
 At breakfast, as his thoughts swept to Paris and Madrid, 
 he rubbed his hands in amusement. 
 
 "Guiseppe le pauvre Guiseppe!" 
 
 But in France he had a more piquant source of amuse- 
 ment. Amid the ramifications of his world-wide policy he 
 had come nearer the solution of a private and domestic pro- 
 blem. This was the determination to be at Fontainebleu 
 before Josephine and then? 
 
 A malicious smile completed the thought. 
 
 For he had made up his mind to wall up the private pass- 
 age between her room and his; so that when she arrived 
 frightened, panting, and all in a fluster from Strasburg, she 
 would have ready for her the double surprise of finding him 
 at Fontainebleu and the passage between her room and his 
 room blocked up. 
 
 He had his speech ready. 
 
 "Not I, but you yourself, by your conduct have built 
 that wall." 
 
 He would thus in a moment avenge himself on her for all 
 her monstrous infidelities; intrigue on guilty intrigue sully- 
 ing his most glorious hours of triumph, from her abandoned 
 profligacy at Milan in his first dazzling intoxication of genius 
 thirteen years ago, to her inconsiderate reckless behaviour
 
 Epilogue 439 
 
 at Strasburg only two months ago all would by that 
 sentence be erased, and all made plain. 
 
 Ill 
 
 About nine, on an urgent request, he gave an audience to 
 Savary. 
 
 But at the sight of that minister, boding as a raven, 
 Napoleon's gaiety and high-soaring speculation fell all to 
 earth. He saw yesterday's court-martial; he saw the 
 execution; the dismal scene in the spectacular darkness; 
 the firing-party; the torches; the spades and shovels; the 
 ready-made grave. 
 
 He frowned heavily and was about to dismiss Meneval 
 but changing his purpose, banging that drawer in the cabi- 
 net of his mind, he turned from the due de Rovigo and 
 remarked to Meneval 
 
 " To the King of Naples, add ' 'tis a fine sabre you have 
 sent me.' But say that I cannot have him at Paris. The 
 climate is bad for the Queen of Naples, my sister. " 
 
 "Sire . . . your Majesty," Savary began. 
 
 Napoleon wheeled round "Ah, monsieur le due de 
 Rovigo, what o'clock is it?" 
 
 "Nine o'clock, Sire." 
 
 " Come to me after chapel. I will hear you then. " 
 
 The assassin, like the traitor, is never welcome even to 
 those for whose benefit he has perpetrated his murders or 
 his treason. 
 
 And Napoleon turned to Marbreuf and proceeded with 
 the sketch of a plan, extending to three thousand words, 
 for the fortification of Passau, four days up the Danube 
 from Vienna, but strategically, in Napoleon's judgment, 
 an integral portion of that city. 
 
 Amid these affairs the death or life of a German boy 
 seemed an unimportant and far-ofiE event, so far-off and
 
 44 Schonbrunn 
 
 unimportant that at such a moment and from such a distance 
 Napoleon could not even see it ! 
 
 IV 
 
 Shortly before noon the twelve deputies from Vienna 
 reached Schonbrunn. They came in three coaches; one, 
 much gilt-tasselled and befringed, carried Morsch, the burgo- 
 master's brother-in-law, and three other deputies of high 
 civic dignity or rank. This was drawn by six horses. In 
 the second carriage, drawn by four horses, sat the Greek, 
 Zacharias Schonthal, Joseph Collin, and two others. The 
 third, also drawn by four horses, carried the two cousins 
 of the burgomaster's wife, who ought not to have been 
 deputies at all. 
 
 An outburst of patriotic enthusiasm had marked their 
 departure from the Townhall; men and women crowded to 
 press the hand of each deputy in turn; others thronged the 
 windows; handkerchiefs and flags were waved. There 
 were cheers for the burgomaster and for Morsch; cheers for 
 the Emperor Francis and the Archduke Charles. 
 
 "We might have been starting for the front," Schonthal 
 said, when the second carriage had jolted some half a mile 
 beyond the Kornthnerthor. 
 
 Joseph Collin, to whom the remark was addressed, made 
 no answer. In twenty minutes they would be at Schon- 
 brunn; in twenty minutes they would confront the "Great 
 Napoleon" and by their eloquence or their adroitness extort 
 from him a concession which armies could not extort. Was 
 this the season for a jest? And twirling his moustaches 
 arranged in the Magyar fashion, he thought of the great- 
 ness of Austria and of his own and his brother's songs and 
 upon the manner by which he could most effectively make 
 Napoleon feel that he too was "no mean citizen and of no 
 mean city." 
 
 Collin's was the state of mind prevailing amongst all the
 
 Epilogue 441 
 
 deputies. That so august a commission would impress 
 Napoleon could not be questioned. The problem now 
 agitating each burgher-head was rather How shall I 
 individually impress the "great man?" In what posture 
 shall I stand; by what speech shall I centre on me his 
 attention? Their patriotism, their resolution to redress 
 a wrong, had not abated; but Vienna's walls, the city's 
 honour, had become the concern of the general body. It 
 was something latent, vague, and undefined, that would no 
 doubt make itself felt, and felt with masterfulness, at the 
 right moment; meanwhile the individual, Karl or Franz, 
 Johann or Ferdinand, was all in all. 
 
 "We live in strange times," observed the merchant with 
 the flowing beard. "I remember our present emperor's 
 uncle, Joseph II., that was, starting for the siege of Ismail. " 
 
 "I can take you farther back than that," snarled a vine- 
 gar-faced little old fellow, badly shaven and with a mouth 
 warped and twisted whether silent or speaking. "I re- 
 member Marshal Daun and I remember Fermor's march. 
 That settled Frederick of Prussia. We should have had a 
 Fermor and Russia now. Massacre! Massacre! That's 
 how to treat these French dogs!" 
 
 The other deputies looked out of the windows. How had 
 this fellow got elected? He might mar all by such a speech. 
 
 A row of gnarled and stunted oaks, an offshoot of the 
 Wienerwald, blocked out the sky westward. 
 
 "There must have been a touch of frost," the Greek said 
 in his suave yet unaffected voice. "Each day the leaves 
 come down faster. " 
 
 "Like the generations of men," the little old fellow inter- 
 jected; and to Joseph Collin's astonishment he began to 
 quote in Greek the great passage from the Iliad. Literary 
 man as he was, this was more than Collin himself could 
 have accomplished. Was this rough dog a man of culture 
 then?
 
 44 2 Schonbrunn 
 
 "Was Daun as good a soldier as the Archduke?" the 
 Greek enquired, turning with great politeness to the little 
 man. 
 
 "He was not a patch upon the Archduke," was the 
 instant retort; "but he got good fighting out of his men; he 
 made them feel they were Austrians, fighting for a great 
 and sacred cause and for a great and good woman." 
 
 He took off his hat, as though the phantom of the dead 
 empress had ridden past in all her strength and noble woman- 
 hood. "Ach, she was a fine woman, worth fighting for, 
 worth dying for. You do not meet such women nowadays. " 
 
 "I have seen Daun's prayer-book," Collin began, his 
 voice sounding literary and very ordinary beside the Greek's 
 distinction and the little old man's fiery emphasis. "He 
 selected the verses himself, and made every soldier in his 
 armies carry one, did he not?" 
 
 But Schonbrunn was in sight; the rose-granite of the 
 obelisks, the noonday sun on the windows. 
 
 The front carriage was in parley with the French sentinels. 
 
 In the spacious "hall of audience" on the ground floor of 
 the right wing the deputies waited, embarrassed, silent, 
 standing solitary and apart or in knots of three or four. 
 
 The politeness or veiled insolence of the French officers 
 had made them acutely aware of their position. The 
 vanity or ebullient patriotism, the "victory of Aspern- 
 Essling" attitude, as the Viennese wits had already begun 
 satirically to name Austrian Chauvinism, had disappeared 
 or dwindled considerably. No longer did each man ask 
 How shall I impress Napoleon? No longer did he ponder 
 the posture he would assume ; or, if he pondered that ques- 
 tion at all, it was to answer it by arranging himself into some 
 resemblance to the several attitudes consecrated to the
 
 Epilogue 443 
 
 world-conqueror the arms folded across the chest, or the 
 hands locked behind the back and the head thrown forward 
 as though in weighty meditation. 
 
 The scene was replete with comedy; it was replete with 
 pathos. 
 
 And now as they stood in this splendid room amid those 
 memorials of luxury and grandeur, those paintings, orna- 
 ments, hangings, in this vast silence broken only by the 
 measured footsteps of the French sentries, each man's 
 birth, his habits, his social environment, temper of mind, 
 his character in a word, his state of health, the manner 
 in which he had passed the preceding night, all became 
 manifest. 
 
 "Are we," the Moravian began with his fatuous import- 
 ance, "are we, the citizens of Vienna, to address the French 
 Emperor as 'Our gracious Majesty' when he is not 'our' 
 Majesty neither our king nor our emperor? And ought 
 not we to sit down? They haven't brought us chairs." 
 
 Indeed, there was only one chair visible and that at the 
 opposite end of the room from that in which the deputies 
 stood huddled. That solitary chair was placed on a crimson 
 carpet and its tall back in crimson velvet was studded 
 and fretted with gold. 
 
 "It is always open to you to ask for a chair," the Greek 
 said pleasantly, "or to sit on the floor." 
 
 Morsch, the burgomaster's brother-in-law, intervened 
 categorically. 
 
 "You are not to open your mouth, Hans; no, not the 
 width of a finger-nail, unless to express your astonishment ; 
 and you are to stand as firm as your weak hams will let 
 you; and see that you don't turn your back to the Emperor 
 when once he enters. French or German, an emperor is an 
 emperor all the world over. As for the address, what is 
 to be spoken, the manner of the speech and by whom 
 has all been settled. I am to speak of the walls and forti-
 
 444 Schonbrunn 
 
 fications; Collin here of the restoration of guns and trophies; 
 Biederkampf of the danger of the simultaneous blowing-up 
 of the bastions; Schonthal, if he will be so kind, of the 
 general position the glory of temperance and mildness in 
 conquerors, the past of Vienna, and of what is due from a 
 conqueror to so ancient a city. Not another man is to say a 
 word, unless of course Bonaparte" (speaking the name 
 very low after the style usual amongst the Viennese nobility) 
 "address him personally. Even in that case it will be wise 
 to answer as thus That I myself, Herr Morsch, or Dr. 
 Schonthal, or Herr Collin, 'can answer Your Majesty's ques- 
 tion better than I can.'" 
 
 "Well, it is as God wills," the Moravian answered, "but 
 if he asks my name, as my wife's father told me he did on a 
 former occasion when the keys of our city were the dispute, 
 or my age, or how many children I have, shall I not answer 
 for myself? Shall I say that Herr Collin or yourself know 
 such things better than I do?" 
 
 "Well, even in that case it would be wiser and safer to 
 refer the matter to me," Morsch answered. "Is it under- 
 stood?" 
 
 "It is as God " he began, but trembling he inter- 
 rupted himself "Mother of Christ, yonder he comes!" 
 
 Instinctively the twelve men drew closer together, exactly 
 as men do when confronted by some unexpected danger. 
 There they stood, their twelve heads rising one above the 
 other, as if thus jostled they could better see or better 
 understand the portent. 
 
 Napoleon, without vouchsafing them so much as a glance, 
 walked straight to the chair of state, sat down, rose again, 
 and with a step which to Collin at least and to Schonthal 
 suggested a tiger's stealthy powerful glide, began to walk to 
 and fro in front of it. Something had evidently disturbed 
 him extremely ; his step was irregular and violent ; his brow 
 was like a thunder-cloud, yet it did not seem anger. " Some
 
 Epilogue 445 
 
 painful interview which their arrival had interrupted?" 
 thought the Greek, studying that singular being whom he 
 could never observe enough, in whom he never saw twice 
 the same man. "Or some intelligence from Paris or 
 Madrid?" 
 
 Visibly before his eyes, Napoleon's brow became clearer. 
 Its commanding and desolate power returned. Now he 
 seemed to be aware of their presence, and stopping in his 
 rapid walk, exactly, Collin thought, like some forest king 
 might stop, he looked at them, and almost instantly he 
 began to speak, his voice sounding curiously shrill, raucous 
 and ineffective in this huge empty room; speaking in a 
 French which was not that of Vienna, and could hardly 
 be that of Paris. 
 
 It seemed, indeed, extraordinary to Schonthal that this 
 man should speak at all, unless with war-drums, in the 
 silver blare of trumpets, or in the thunder of artillery and 
 charging horsemen. 
 
 "You are come to demand the preservation of your 
 walls and of your bastions?" the Emperor began. "You 
 wish me to restore your cannon and your trophies of vic- 
 tory ? Honour can be purchased only on the battlefield. Is 
 it perhaps for sale in the markets of Vienna? Of what value 
 are the memorials of victory to a thrice-vanquished nation ? 
 And those obsolete fortifications why do you desire to 
 retain them? Defend your city they cannot. Of this 
 you twice have had proof." 
 
 There was a kind of scoffing reasonableness in his voice 
 and bearing; and when he had spoken the last words he 
 glanced from Morsch, prominently in the middle of the 
 group, to Collin on his right, to Biederkampf and to the 
 Brunn wheat-merchant, as though in search of a human 
 face upon which his eyes might rest and feel the presence 
 of an intellect or a will. 
 
 Napoleon's next words summed up with astonishing
 
 446 Schonbrunn 
 
 definiteness the result of his survey; for his glance had 
 seemed to rest upon nothing. 
 
 "One cannot make concessions to the abject without 
 derogating from the reverence we owe to the brave. " 
 
 Valour, these Viennese merchants reflected, was then 
 to this man the Godhead. Valour in battle the last and 
 highest test of merit and man's life? And theirs was gold. 
 Was it surprising that though they had appeared men of 
 importance in the Townhall that morning, merchant-princes 
 even, here they appeared common as dirt, mere sutlers or 
 camp-followers? His ways of life were not theirs; nor his 
 thoughts their thoughts. 
 
 Napoleon, as though fatigued by their mere presence, 
 seemed about to quit the room and end the audience. 
 This gave Morsch resolution. The speech which he had 
 prepared he could not deliver; but he jerked out, not with- 
 out effect, the words: 
 
 "Of our walls we all are proud. They are the city's 
 most ancient monument. Venerable are they to every 
 Viennese as our cathedral itself is venerable. Your Maj- 
 esty cannot " 
 
 But here he stopped. 
 
 The peppery little old man, who had no right to speak, 
 reassumed his terrier-like aggressiveness; and seeking by 
 ornate diction to match Napoleon's style, he robbed his 
 words of their effectiveness. 
 
 "The trophies are trophies we captured ourselves on the 
 stricken field. And we forged the cannon from the metal 
 of guns abandoned by the Ottoman yonder at Zenta and 
 here before our very walls. Every Viennese values them 
 as though he had shed his own blood in winning them." 
 
 But a new order of ideas had arisen in Napoleon's mind 
 and exactly as though no one had spoken he began, 
 "The Sicilians chained the Athenians in their mines. I 
 have in France a hundred-thousand English and German,
 
 Epilogue 447 
 
 two hundred-thousand Spanish and Portuguese prisoners 
 toiling in my galleys, draining my marshes, digging my 
 canals. Why to that multitude have I not added two hun- 
 dred-thousand Viennese? Your lives are forfeit; you hold 
 them by my sufferance. Every inch of ground on which 
 your city stands, every stone in its churches, palaces, public 
 buildings, and private houses is mine." Then looking at 
 each man in the room yet seeming to see none, he said 
 brusquely "You speak of your ancient walls and of your 
 guns captured from the Turks. Who defended those walls 
 and captured the guns? Not your Emperor, not your 
 Habsburgs. It was a Polish king and the valour of a 
 Polish army. And I, I like a second Sobieski restore to you 
 your city; but not the guns. These I will give to my allies, 
 the Poles, to whom they rightfully belong; and as for your 
 walls, I raze them to the ground the better to guard you 
 against the temptations of your own vanity or your own 
 folly. When you look upon their ruins, you may learn 
 to reflect. Their scarred and naked foundations may be a 
 reminder to you of God's vengeance and your own madness 
 in twice waging unprovoked and treacherous war upon 
 Napoleon!" 
 
 He pronounced these words in tones that even in their 
 menace were threaded by melancholy cadences. But it 
 was a melancholy obviously aloof from the present audi- 
 ence, arising from some inward obsession, lasting or ephe- 
 meral. 
 
 "Sire, is this civilized warfare?" the Greek interposed; 
 for Morsch seemed palsied; Collin embarrassed; whilst 
 Biederkampf stood shifting from one foot to the other. 
 
 "Ha?" Napoleon exclaimed. "You are a connoisseur 
 in civilized warfare, monsieur, you? What is civilization? 
 I will tell you. That State is the most civilized in which a 
 heroic life is most within the reach of every citizen ; and that 
 State again is the most civilized in which human life has
 
 44 8 Schonbrunn 
 
 most value set on it. It is by these attributes that France 
 is distinguished from Athens; Rome from Byzantium. But 
 Austria? You have in Austria neither law nor justice; 
 your fortresses are full of dungeons and in your dungeons 
 your noblest citizens rot ; you have torture ; you still retain 
 the rack. But what is your name?" he said suddenly. 
 
 The Levantine's face had separated itself from the crowd. 
 Its pallor, its impassivity, its evidence of breed, recalled 
 to him Talleyrand's; inferior indisputably, but more honest. 
 
 "Schonthal, your Majesty." 
 
 " Schonthal? You have not the look of a German. " 
 
 "My father was a Greek; I adopted my mother's name. " 
 
 But Napoleon did not hear the words. 
 
 "It is you yourselves who have brought this on your- 
 selves. The citizens who submit to a government are the 
 accomplices of that government. Why did your Emperor 
 make war as soon as he saw me set out for Spain? I could 
 have dethroned him. Instead I restore him to you. Is any 
 price too high for this gift? Value it. He is an amiable, 
 kind-hearted if weak and erring old man. And as for your 
 guns well, there is a way to recover them, there is a way 
 to repossess these trophies of your armed valour." 
 
 A singular evil mocking light scintillated in his eyes. 
 
 "What way, Sire?" 
 
 It was Morsch who spoke the words, in his quietest, 
 most earnest manner. 
 
 "Come to Paris, and wrench them away by force." 
 
 Nothing could exaggerate the rapidity of the utterance, 
 the variety of expressions which succeeded each other on 
 Napoleon's countenance impatience, contempt, menace, 
 infinite pride, mockery, yet withal a kind of superhuman 
 heroic might. 
 
 All the Suabian in Morsch flamed up. 
 
 "Your Majesty may yet compel us to take that way, " he 
 said with energy, and stood trembling; for he felt that by
 
 Epilogue 449 
 
 those words he had ruined a cause which he had deeply at 
 heart. 
 
 Napoleon, who from the first had seen in him a German 
 of the Germans one of those "ideologues" who made on 
 him the same uncomfortable impression always turned 
 swiftly and seemed about to annihilate him for his boldness. 
 
 But annoyed that by his own petulance he had made 
 such a retort possible "A la bonne heure, monsieur!" he 
 exclaimed. "It will give me a pleasure that fate till now 
 had much denied me the pleasure of a perfect admiration ! " 
 
 He made a signal of dismissal. 
 
 And stiffly or awkwardly, keeping their faces towards 
 him, the twelve deputies quitted the audience hall. 
 
 Exactly four and a. half years later the Austrian Schwart- 
 zenberg and his white-coats were within the walls of Paris, 
 and Morsch's sullen threat, torn from him in a moment 
 of exasperated humiliation, was fulfilled to the letter. 
 
 VI 
 
 That same afternoon Napoleon set out for Paris, leaving 
 Schonbrunn at five o'clock, and leaving it for ever. 
 
 He rode in the State carriage drawn by eight horses; in 
 front and behind along the route glittered a strong detach- 
 ment of the cuirassiers of the Guard. Crossing the Wien, 
 the cortege struck into the high road which leads past St. 
 Polten and Molk to Linz; thence, with the Styrian Alps 
 glittering on the northern horizon, to Scharding where 
 the road debouches down the valley of the Inn to Passau. 
 
 Napoleon and his escort were not four miles beyond 
 Vienna when a distant and sullen detonation made him turn 
 and glance back towards the city. 
 
 Distinctly through the shimmering haze he saw a vertical 
 column of smoke spring f o a considerable height and 
 flattening, slowly extend like a roof above the north-western 
 
 29
 
 450 Schonbrunn 
 
 quarter of the suburbs. Whilst he still gazed, a second 
 column sprang up and a second detonation was borne to 
 him; and in rapid succession a third, a fourth, and a fifth 
 followed; and the evening wind, blowing together and min- 
 gling the tufted capitals of these pillars, covered gradually 
 the whole city, its spires, domes, roofs, gables with a 
 stupendous canopy of yellowish-grey and black and sul- 
 phurous smoke. 
 
 "He has begun ten minutes later than I ordered," Napo- 
 leon said to himself. " N'importe ; he has begun. " 
 
 And after another scanning look, estimating the segment 
 of the walls represented by the two extreme smoke-columns 
 he sank back on the cushioned silk of the carriage, resuming 
 his somnolent brooding. 
 
 What he had seen was the work of General Bertrand and 
 his engineers destroying the fortifications of Vienna. 
 
 The carriage tore on. The route now approached the 
 Danube and passed several villages. The children came 
 out to stare and for a short distance to scamper behind the 
 escort. 
 
 Still the miles swept past. 
 
 Napoleon, from a rack in front neatly packed with 
 some thirty small volumes, took out a book, read a para- 
 graph yawned, thrust it back. 
 
 "Idiot!" 
 
 It was Marmontel. 
 
 How few readable books there are in the world, he re- 
 flected. But the capacity to admire anything in art, poetry, 
 music, or sculpture, had almost dried up in him. Life, 
 the beating hour, actuality, was his; but books, poems, 
 histories, romances, dramas how stilted, uneventful, 
 unobserved and desiccated ! And all the writers and poets 
 of earth, Homer, Voltaire, Corneille, even Ossian, what dull 
 observers of an indistinct corner of a planet, equally unable 
 to live themselves and to invent some fitting and final
 
 Epilogue 451 
 
 word upon the life they only ponder upon human glory, 
 action, suffering, strife, grief, victory, unconquered disaster 
 upon anything of this infinite, bewildering, embarrass- 
 ingly varied and exhilarating phantasmagoria of triumph 
 and my steriousness ! But he, he had life ; he had power, like 
 that of a God. 
 
 He glanced now and then at the landscape, but, his mind 
 fixed on an inward landscape, he saw nothing. The shadow 
 of a tree crept along the sward; then, an unnatural time 
 afterwards, the tree itself loomed up, darkening the carriage 
 a moment, and, with its thinning leaves, was swept behind 
 into the past. 
 
 The vastnesses were again beckoning to him. A gi- 
 gantic enterprise had been wrought to its event ; yonder in 
 front of him, another waited, unachieved. 
 
 And leagues behind him the sun touched with its glory 
 the smoke-pall above Vienna, and caught as in a golden 
 net with the long grass of the Marchfeld, the charred ruins 
 of villages, the ashes of extinct camp-fires, a solitary home- 
 stead, and the graves of men. 
 
 THE END
 
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