Isabey’s Study—His Picture of the Plenipotentiaries at the Congress of Vienna—The Imperial Sepulchre at the Capuchins—Recollections of the Tombs of Cracow—Preacher Werner—St. Stephen’s Cathedral—Children’s Ball at Princesse Marie Esterhazy’s—The Empress Elizabeth of Russia—The Picture-Gallery of the Duc de Saxe-Teschen—Emperor Alexander and Prince EugÈne—The Pictures of the Belvedere—The King of Bavaria—Anecdotes.

One of the memorabilia of the Congress of Vienna which had the advantage of uniting all suffrages, a privilege not generally granted to all the transactions of that august Areopagus, is the historical and beautiful drawing of Isabey representing a sitting of the plenipotentiaries. The artist was then putting the last touches to it. One morning, Griffiths and I went to his house. His gallery of portraits, which contained all the celebrated personages of Europe, was already very considerable, but our attention was attracted at once by the drawing which, under the title of ‘The Congress of Vienna,’ will connect his name with the illustrious men he has portrayed there. Everybody knows that composition, representing the room of the Congress at the moment Prince de Metternich introduced Wellington.

Theoretically, Lord Wellington had no right to figure in that production, inasmuch as he only arrived in Vienna in February 1815, and then it was to replace Lord Castlereagh. His arrival necessitated an important change in the picture—the introduction of a new personage. That was the motive which made Isabey choose that particular moment, inasmuch as it enabled him to leave all the other figures in their original places. Isabey explained to us very charmingly the discontent of the new arrival at finding himself relegated to a corner of the composition, where he can only be seen sideways. The clever artist had ingeniously explained the situation to the English general, apparently with great satisfaction to both. Another particular incident had marked the preliminaries. Among the number of European celebrities Baron Humboldt was necessarily a figure. They had told Isabey that he would meet with great resistance on the part of this statesman, who had a thorough aversion to having his portrait taken. He had even refused that favour to Princesse Louisa Radziwill, the sister of Prince Ferdinand of Prussia. Warned of this singularity, and even somewhat intimidated by it, Isabey presented himself at the diplomatist’s. His real or simulated embarrassment increased the partial good humour of the baron, who, fixing his large, blue-goggled eyes on him, replied, ‘Have a good look at me, and then you’ll be bound to admit that nature has given me too ugly a face ever to spend a penny on it for its reproduction. Nature would in reality have the laugh of me if she could convict me of such foolish vanity. She ought to be aware that I fully recognise the trick she has played me.’ Struck by the reply, the painter looked with stupefaction at the extraordinary face of the minister, but immediately resuming his gaiety and quickness of wit, he retorted, ‘But I am not going to ask your excellency the slightest recompense for the pleasant trouble I am going to take. I am only going to ask the favour of a few sittings.’

‘Oh, is that all? You can have as many sittings as you like. You need not stint yourself in that respect, but I cannot abandon my principle of not spending a penny on my ugly face.’

In fact, the witty diplomatist sat as many times to the painter as he wished. When the engraving appeared, his was found the most striking likeness of all, and he often said, ‘I have not paid a penny for my portrait by Isabey. No doubt he wanted to avenge himself, and he has made an excellent likeness of me.’

Leaving the painter’s study, we went citywards, and on the bridge over the Danube we fell in with Princesse HÉlÈne Souvaroff, General Tettenborn, and Alexander Ypsilanti. They were going in the same direction, and told us that they were making for the church of the Capuchins to see the tombs of the imperial family. They proposed that we should accompany them, and we accepted.

When we got to the chapel, a monk, after having lighted a large torch, preceded us to the crypts. There were nine tombs of emperors, thirteen of empresses, and in all about eighty of the members of the imperial race. ‘It was in this subterranean chapel,’ said our guide, ‘that every day during thirty years Maria-Theresa heard Mass before the sepulchre she had erected for herself by the side of that of her husband.’

‘This trait of Maria-Theresa,’ said Tettenborn, ‘reminds me of one of the clever answers of Joseph II. When he had granted the public admission to the Augarten, a lady complained that she could no longer stroll about there among her equals. “If everybody were restricted to the society of his equals,” replied the emperor, “I should be reduced for a bit of air to the crypt of the Capuchins, inasmuch as it is only there that I should find mine.”’

After contemplating for a few moments those magnificent monuments of marble and brass, we slowly ascended the steps of the crypt, when the light of several torches told us of the arrival of a numerous company; and it would appear that these excursions had all been postponed to the end of February on account of the weather, for soon Messrs. Nesselrode and Pozzo di Borgo, the Duc de Richelieu, and M. Amstedt passed us on their way. Then we went to the ramparts. The conversation had taken a serious turn, in accordance with the objects we had just left. The Princesse HÉlÈne compared these crypts with those of the monastery of Petchersky at Kion, where most of the saints of the convent are placed in open coffins. Those precious relics draw to the ancient capital of Moscow a number of pilgrims, who proceed on foot from Casan and other towns close to Italy.

‘There is no greater proof of the strength of religious feeling than that,’ said Princesse HÉlÈne. ‘It is at the bottom of all those distant pilgrimages, which, without it, would seem impossible. But,’ she added, ‘the hope of future recompense assuages present evils.’

‘When I was at Cracow,’ I said, ‘I also paid a visit to the subterranean vaults of the cathedral, where the Kings of Poland rest. The coffins are similarly open, and the bodies are embalmed. Time seems to have respected their forms, and they are still vested with all the attributes of royalty. The ermine cloak, the sceptre, the diadem sparkling with precious stones, all those baubles of a vanished power present a striking contrast to the relentless aspect of death. Nevertheless, such images of the past are less terrible when brass or marble disguises, as it does here, the visible effects of death, or when the monuments are inscribed with a line recalling a glorious reminiscence, like that of the Narischkine family in the Church of the Annunciation at St. Petersburg.’

It was a holiday, and the streets were filled with a great crowd, mainly of artisans, apparently very happy and prosperous.

‘Truly,’ said Griffiths, as I pointed this out, ‘one rarely meets with a beggar in Vienna. The charitable institutions are administered with much order and much liberality. Public benevolence in particular seems to be directed with a great sense of justice. The people, having in general more industrial aptitude and commercial intelligence than the other populations of Germany, seem to conduct their own affairs very well, and it may safely be said there is no capital in Europe which can be compared with Vienna for its sights, and the happy-go-lucky existence of its inhabitants.’

The spire of the cathedral was standing against the cloudless sky.

‘Don’t you feel tempted,’ said I to Princesse Souvaroff, ‘to be present at one of the spectacles which just now seem to cause, rightly or wrongly, a great excitement—I mean a sermon by the Rev. M. Werner?’

The princess had heard the name, and she fell in with my view, anxious, like ourselves, to know this simple priest, who, amid so many great interests and varied amusements, had still found a means of arousing the enthusiasm of the crowd.

Before he had followed in the footsteps of Massillon and Bossuet, M. Werner had been a Lutheran and a dramatic poet. He was the author of several successful tragedies, which he had treated in the most romantic way. Importing into his theatrical compositions all the energy of his religious convictions, he had made it a point to paint the commencement of Lutheranism in the most seductive colours. A circumstance both poetical and romantic marked the history of his conversion to Catholicism. One evening he was strolling in the Cathedral Square in Vienna, a prey to one of those sombre reveries so peculiar to German poets. In his emotion, he stood contemplating that imposing mass and the Gothic towers, the summits of which are lost in the clouds. All at once the door opened, and a venerable priest, dressed in white, and escorted by two young children, appeared on its threshold, and started for the couch of a moribund to administer the supreme rites of his faith. A torch left a trembling but luminous trace behind. Struck by the spectacle, the Lutheran poet stops and wistfully looks after the vanishing procession. His imagination has been fired, the inmost recesses of his heart are moved; the grandeur and sublimity of the Catholic religion are revealed to him by the very simple fact of an old priest carrying the last sacrament to a man on his deathbed. From that moment, M. Werner practically became a Catholic. He left Vienna, went to Rome, and abjured his errors in the Basilica of St. Peter. Then after having lived for some two years in a monastery at the foot of Vesuvius, he came back to Germany, and, discarding the theatre for the pulpit, began to preach. The peculiar nature of his conversion, his talent as a preacher, apart from his diction, which still showed the lofty thoughts and the alternately brilliant and sombre colours of his former poesy—everything, in fact, combined to bring him into relief. Whenever he was announced to preach, the church could scarcely hold the crowd of both pious and merely curious. The theatrical directors, seeing the success of the preacher, conceived the idea of reviving the tragedies of the poet, and made an excellent thing out of them. In the morning the public hurried to listen to the words of the new St. Paul, and in the evening, with minds still full of quotations from Holy Writ and the Fathers, the same audiences went to applaud Attila, Luther, and other works of the converted heretic. Sorely grieved at this applause, M. Werner felt compelled to denounce from the pulpit his former errors, which he would fain have destroyed altogether. But the more he fulminated, the more piquant seemed the contrast, and his dual success as an author and as a preacher hourly increased.

The crowd in the cathedral was so dense as to make it difficult for us to find room. There were princes, generals, ‘grandes dames,’ and, what was not less strange, people belonging to every Christian community. After a while the apostle appeared, and delivered a long sermon in German, of which I did not understand a word, though I was probably not singular in that respect among that particular audience that morning. In spite of this, the effect seemed no less satisfactory. The hollow voice of the speaker, his tall, lean, and wan figure, his deep-set eyes, all seemed to accord with the fane, whose interior he caused to resound with his voice. The cathedral of St. Stephen, in fact, artistically sculptured outside, is dark within, and that obscurity, itself so favourable to meditation, seemed to add something sepulchral to the utterances of the preacher.

‘Well,’ said the Princesse HÉlÈne to me when we were coming out, ‘what do you think of the preacher?’

‘I have only been able to judge partly of his eloquence, and I should think there would be little fault to find with the moral drift of his discourse, inasmuch as his dogma is no doubt irreproachable. Nevertheless, his violent tone and gestures do not inspire me with a desire to see his theatrical works. If you’ll follow my advice, we’ll go to the theatre of the Court to see Cinna or Le Misanthrope.’

At parting, we said a few words about soon meeting again at the Princesse Marie Esterhazy’s, who was about to give a children’s ball, which after the many splendid receptions of grown-up people could not fail to excite great curiosity. Expectation was thoroughly realised, for the princess’s rooms presented the most animated and graceful picture. All the young offshoots of the aristocracy had been invited to take part in the entertainments projected for their edification. The crowned guests at Vienna (reduced this time to the rÔle of spectators), all the illustrious political and military personages, followed suit and gathered round the young ones, endeavouring, perhaps, to snatch an imaginary glimpse of their own youth in the contemplation of the unaffected gaiety and games. The apartments of the palace had been so cunningly arranged as to lead the young guests from surprise to surprise. Jugglers’ fantoccini, magic-lanterns succeeded each other. And when all those joyous pastimes were exhausted, they finally came upon the big ball-room, where the dancing immediately commenced, not with strict adherence, perhaps, to the programme, but with all the more gracefulness and absence from constraint. The costumes, which, as may easily be imagined, were all magnificent—Turks, knights, Albanians, mediÆval, Louis XIV., Russian, Polish—were worn with comic importance by those Liliputian highnesses. Amidst all these little angels it was easy to perceive that the demon of Pride had exercised his dangerous seductions. One of those female highnesses got into a great rage with a companion of inferior rank. The quarrel became so embittered, neither of them being willing to give in, that it occasioned some trouble at the ball. It reminded me of the anecdote told me by Lord Stair, which a few years before had vastly amused all England. It was during the infancy of the Princess of Wales(?). They had given her as a companion the daughter of a musician who had acquired a great reputation by playing the organ at St. Paul’s. The children quarrelled about a toy, of which each wanted to get possession. The small wranglers claimed privilege in identical terms. ‘How dare you resist me?’ said the princess. ‘Don’t you know that I am the daughter of the Prince of Wales?’ ‘What’s that to me? Don’t you know, yourself, that I am the daughter of the organist of St. Paul’s?’

Dancing was interrupted by the arrival of the Tyrolese singers, who were then causing a great sensation in Vienna. They were seven fine men and ten women, and wore the picturesque costume of their mountains. A few years before, they had come from the Tyrol as simple journeymen watchmakers, and in the evening they met together to sing their national songs. The effect was such as to cause immense crowds to follow them through the streets. The police were obliged to give them an escort to prevent disorder. The directors of the Wieden Theatre engaged them to sing on their stage. The enthusiasm was such as to make them repeat the same airs half-a-dozen times: the highest society engaged them for their evening parties, and everywhere they were equally applauded. During the Congress they had returned to the scene of their first glory.

After that the children went into a room which till then had been closed to them. A big tree with golden branches was bending beneath all kinds of toys; amongst others those pretty boxes made out of Vienna paving-stones. A lottery was drawn. Before the little ones retired, they danced a waltz. The sovereigns and the whole of the Court seemed to share those childish joys, and to forget for the moment their own agitated existence at the sight of so much innocent happiness. Only the Empress Elizabeth of Russia preserved an appearance of melancholy. One could perceive that she envied the joys of maternity. Her affection for the emperor was such that, when she met with the daughter he had had by Madame Narischkine, she smothered the child with caresses, trying to cheat her own aspirations as wife and mother.

To whatever political opinion one may belong, one is always glad to be able to speak of those who have occupied the world’s stage. Thanks to the Congress of Vienna, it has been vouchsafed to me to approach some of the men who have left their names on the pages of contemporary history; hence the anecdotes which follow.

One bright February day, Zibin, Luchesini, and I were wandering through the residence of the Duc de Saxe-Teschen. Among the mass of precious objects there is a collection of about twelve thousand original drawings, and a hundred and thirty thousand engravings after artists of various countries. We were courteously received by M. LefÈvre, the custodian of these treasures, of which, he told us, he was going to publish a description in chronological order, according to the schools. At the end of a gallery arranged to hold these rarities, we caught sight of the Archduke Albert, who was doing the honours to Emperor Alexander, accompanied by General Ouwaroff and Prince EugÈne. We drew near as they were examining a collection of military maps, the most complete in Europe.

‘Cities have been destroyed,’ said Archduke Albert. ‘Empires have toppled over. Tactics have changed, but military positions remain the same.’ He added: ‘Several comparisons prove that the same chances have often produced the same results.’ Nevertheless, it was on the scene of the last war that the attention of his guests seemed particularly riveted. Nothing equals in interest the remarks of Emperor Alexander on inspecting those plans of battles.

‘There,’ he said, placing his finger on a certain spot, ‘this or that corps made this or that mistake. This or that battery took up a wrong position—this or that charge decided the action. Here, at Austerlitz, we might have retrieved the game, but Kutusoff stopped too far away from Mortier, and those frozen lakes of Augezd and of Monitz, in giving way under twenty thousand men and fifty pieces of artillery, completed our disaster.’

‘Nevertheless,’ said Prince EugÈne, ‘we should perhaps have lost the battle if the emperor had attacked a few hours earlier. The chances of war are determined by very small incidents.’

‘There, at Friedland,’ Alexander went on, everything was lost by a false cavalry manoeuvre, of which they took advantage, and by the retreat of Korsakoff on Friedland. Consequently, the whole of his corps d’armÉe was surrounded, and in endeavouring to find an issue across the waters of the Alle, it found its death. Take it all in all, we fought well, but we had to deal with cleverer players than we were.’ He passed from the campaigns of Italy to those of Germany, tactfully avoiding speaking of the disastrous Russian war.

The emperor and Prince EugÈne vied with each other in courtesy; the archduke put an end to the subject by showing them a descriptive catalogue compiled by himself, which, despite his great age, he continually revised. To enumerate the treasures contained in this gallery, one ought to have copied that catalogue from beginning to end. Some of the drawings dated from the year 1420: there were more than a hundred and fifty, many of them by Albert DÜrer, and the majority drawn with the pen, the figures richly coloured, especially some birds of an admirable finish. A still more particular interest attached to the engravings of this illustrious master, inasmuch as they once constituted his own collection. The duke pointed out to us several drawings by Raphael, and fifty sketches by Claude Lorrain.

The emperor came up to us, and spoke very kindly to Zibin, and presented him to Prince EugÈne as the youngest Knight of the Order of St. George. Having overheard the name of Luchesini, he asked him if it was his father who had been plenipotentiary at the celebrated Congress of Sistow under Frederick II.

‘Yes, sire.’

‘And where is he now?’

‘On his estates at Lucca.’

‘If he writes his recollections,’ remarked Alexander, ‘they will be very interesting, for he has seen and observed much.’

We afterwards paid a visit to the sumptuously decorated apartments. In one of these a pan-harmonium, composed of a hundred and fifty wind-instruments, played symphonies and marches, accompanied with admirable precision by an automatic trumpet. We left the archduke with his illustrious visitors and went to the Belvedere in order to see a collection of pictures which had been largely increased by Joseph II. at the suppression of some convents. The palace of Belvedere requires no description. Its curator, M. Fugger, was kind enough to serve as guide, and specially pointed out to us the Titians, Rubenses, and Vandykes. In the evening we went as usual to the Comtesse Fuchs’s. There I met Prince EugÈne, and the conversation turned on the treasures collected at Malmaison, which were thoroughly appreciated by Prince Gargarine and Colonel Brozin, who had become acquainted with them during Alexander’s several visits to Josephine.