“The prayer was ended at length, and every one arose, gently, without confusion and without noise, and sank again into their seats in silent meditation, which continued undisturbed by a single sound for several minutes. The prophetess had fallen back upon her ottoman, and her golden locks completely buried her face beneath their shadow. I would have given much to have been sure of the expression of her countenance, for once I became aware that her eye sought mine, and then I observed that she turned aside to avoid my scrutiny. Bergasse sprang to my side in delight and triumph. ‘Is she not splendid?’ inquired he, with a naïveté of tone and manner at which I was highly amused. ‘You have heard her in her glory to-night,’ he whispered in my ear, with an air of the greatest mystery, while his countenance changed from the expression of childish admiration, which it had worn when he had addressed me, to that of awe and wonder—‘She has had a pressentiment, and is under its influence still.’ He took my arm, and walked with me through the crowd into the adjoining room.
“As I left the sacred boudoir, I beheld the ‘white angel of the north’ in busy conversation with the prophetess, and the unhappy King of Prussia bending forward, eager to catch the slightest syllable which fell from the lips of the speakers; but the effort was vain; his neck was too short, and his eye wandered from the one to the other with the restless, unquiet look of a person afflicted with deafness.
“Bergasse turned to me as soon as we were alone. ‘There is something dreadful about to happen,’ said he, in a solemn whisper. ‘She has had her pressentiment to-night, and she has never deceived us yet. Something awful is about to occur here; in this very apartment, perhaps—in this very room, upon the very spot where we now are standing!’ He seized my arm and drew me nearer to his side, then added—‘My dearest friend, some one is about to DIE beneath this very roof!’ I drew back aghast; but Bergasse seemed too much exalté by his subject to care if even he himself were the victim, provided the prophecy of his divinity came true. ‘Yes,’ added he, with a grim smile, ‘she has felt that death is walking amongst us; he is now, at this moment, choosing his victim. She has insisted on my sending home my nephew. She wished me to depart also, but I must not leave her. Even while I am dallying with you, I am losing the precious words which fall with such sweet unction from her tongue.’
“He left me abruptly, and hurried back to the boudoir of Madame de Krudener, while I remained lost in astonishment, to think that the man, who had once dealt terror into the heart of the boldest satirist that ever existed—he who had for awhile, by his energy and sarcastic bitterness alone, arrested the headlong progress of Beaumarchais, and turned the popular tide of ridicule against him who had so long ridiculed all things with impunity, should have thus become, in his old age, the puling slave of a self-deluded impostor, who was prompted in the comedy she was playing by the wild vagaries of the ex-tailor, Jüng Stilling. I left the soirée with feelings of mingled pity and disgust, to which was added, a strange suspicion concerning the motive which actuated the ‘white angel of the north’ in thus making this public display of his admiration of the prophetess, and consenting to be made one of the coryphées in the theatrical representations she was thus in the habit of giving.
“I was scarcely awake the next morning, when Bergasse rushed into my room, exclaiming, in a tone of triumph, ‘She did not deceive—it was true—the pressentiment was justified! Why did you not stay till later?—you would have seen the truth with your own eyes, and have been an unbeliever no longer.’ With the artful tact of a professed marvel-monger, he allowed me time for reflection after he had pronounced these words, and then resumed, as soon as he perceived that I had collected my wandering senses.
“‘You were no sooner gone, my friend, than her inspired prophecy of last evening was fulfilled. I was seated where you had left me, at her feet, when a young man of the Neapolitan embassy, who had been hovering around the door, gathered sufficient courage to enter the boudoir and make his bow to Madame de Krudener. His name was Carascola; he had arrived but a few days since from Naples. Madame de Krudener had known his mother, and in courtesy and kindness felt in duty bound to ask him some few questions concerning the prospects and intentions which had led him to Paris. He had answered her questions with that embarrassed timidity with which young men are used to reply to their superiors, and Madame de Krudener had already dismissed him, and turned again to the “white angel of the north,” whose conversation had been interrupted by the young man’s entrance, when suddenly she started from the sofa as though a pistol-shot had been fired through her brain, and darting on me a look of terror, she exclaimed, faintly, “Bergasse, the hour is come—nought can save us from the approach of our Sovereign Lord and Master. He is here—his choice is made.” At that very instant, I give you my honour as a gentleman, I beheld Carascola, who was leaving us, full of youthful spirit, to gain the outer room, fall forward upon the floor, without stumbling, without resistance, without convulsion, but rather as it were sink down softly as though seeking repose, and there lie stretched his full length, without sense and without motion. A crowd soon gathered round him, and they raised him up; his countenance was pale and his features frightfully swollen, even in that minute; a doctor who was present opened a vein upon the forehead, but it was all of no avail. She had spoken truth. Death had chosen his victim, and that victim was Carascola.’
“Such was the tale which Bergasse had come so early to my bedside to tell me. I ascertained, that very day, that it was true in every particular, and was certainly an extraordinary proof of the possibility of an almost supernatural coincidence. I doubt not that Madame de Krudener had often experienced these pressentiments before, but I much doubt whether any one of them ever came true so rapidly, so àpropos, as in this case. The young man had evidently been in a bad state of health, perhaps subject to fits, from his childhood, and on this occasion the excitement of meeting with the august personage he had come to visit, the heat of the room, the emotion of the prayer and prophecies, must have caused a congestion of the brain. I can, however, vouch for the entire truth of the fact I have related; you must yourselves arrange the causes, according to your own scepticism or powers of belief.”
The prince arose as he concluded his story; his toilet was completed, and he was released from his tormentors. I was sorry to behold the morning conference thus breaking up, for I could have listened on until sunset. I dared, however, to hazard one single question. “Did you ever see Madame de Krudener after this?”
The prince bit his lip slily. “Never so close as on that night,” returned he; “but from a distance, as such great luminaries should only be gazed at by vulgar mortals like ourselves. It was at the review of Alexander’s troops in the plaine des Vertus, a ceremony of which she has left us such a flaming description. But alas! already was she no longer the object of exclusive adoration to the ‘white angel of the north,’ for I observed that his head was often close under the pink bonnet of Madame du C——, while the yellow ringlets and broad straw hat of Madame de Krudener were left to float unheeded in the wind. The purpose for which he had been playing the comedy of such assiduous attendance at her prayer-meetings was evidently answered, and he cared no longer to expose himself to ridicule for her sake. Soon after this, she left Paris for ever, and I beheld her no more. But my niece, who, like many of her sex, was infatuated with the eloquence and talents of Madame de Krudener, followed her to the Greuzacher Horn, whither she had retired. Here she sank lower in the scale, and no longer preached to kings and emperors, but to an immense army of ragged proselytes, whom her generosity in alms-giving, more than her pious exhortations, had drawn around her. This same army followed her, I believe, in all her wanderings, and I am told that at her death the little colony established itself at Karasoubazar, where it is flourishing still, and where almost divine honours are paid to her remains; pilgrimages are performed to her tomb to this very day, and miracles are wrought as freely as at many other shrines.
“It is certain that the game which Alexander deemed it worth his while to play was a deep one, for its object has not been discovered to this very day. I know, from the best authority, that for a long time he counterfeited entire obedience to her commands, fasted, prayed, and wept, beat his bosom and tore his hair when she so ordered it—took the whole responsibility of the absurd and childish project of the Holy Alliance upon his own shoulders—and, in short, gave himself up to the guidance of one whom he feigned to consider as Heaven-inspired. And when the allied sovereigns—who had all, at first, been blinded by the tinsel of the framework of that famous treaty—turned round and laughed it to scorn, shamed by the blunt good sense of England, who had pronounced the document unintelligible and refused to sign, Alexander—whether from misplaced amour propre, or from real conviction, still remains a mystery—would never consent to withdraw his signature. Whatever may be the merits of the conception of that mighty work, it certainly sprang from the brain of Madame de Krudener alone; but when complimented upon the stupendous, though ‘unintelligible,’ design, it was her wont to reply with great modesty, while she flung back her ringlets and looked towards Heaven, ‘The Holy Alliance is the immediate work of God. It is He who has chosen me for his weak, uncertain instrument, and it is He who has inspired me with the idea of uniting the sovereigns of Europe in the holy bonds of brotherly love, for the good of the great human family under their charge.’”