The Duc de Reichstadt often spoke of the captains of antiquity, preferring Cæsar to Alexander, and Hannibal to Cæsar. The following is the eulogium which, according to the Chevalier de Prokesch, he gave on the conqueror of the Trebia, Trasimena and of Cannes.
"He is the finest military genius of antiquity; the cleverest man in strategy of his age. He has been reproached—by whom? by academic pedants and library strategists,—for not knowing how to take advantage of the success he had obtained; but conceive the difference there existed between Hannibal, chief of an empire, freely disposing of his resources, and the simple general of a jealous republic? of a senate made up of those who envied him, and of narrow minds which, by shameful schemings, refused the means of assuring the triumph of his arms? Hannibal has the merit of having trained Scipio for his victories; and one of the greatest phenomena of ancient times is to see this general, by his genius, make a nation of shopkeepers successful for so long as a military people."
We will not criticise these ideas beyond saying that they are a little stilted, after the classical style. Did the son of the man whose incoherent style strode with giant steps or with lion-like leaps, bursting ever into images, talk thus? M. de Montbel and M. le Chevalier de Prokesch will reply. And then the style of the lines we have just read will explain what follows.
"You have a noble aim before you, monseigneur," said M. de Prokesch to the young duke. "Austria has become your adopted country.... (Poor child, he remembered the Cossacks because they had brought him out of France!). Austria has become your adopted country, and with your talents you can prepare yourself to do it immense services in the future!"
"I feel it as you do, monsieur," replied the Duc de Reichstadt. "My ideas must not demean themselves by disturbing France; I do not wish to be an adventurer, I do not particularly wish to serve as the instrument and laughing-stock of Liberal views. It will be a sufficiently noble ambition for me to try some day to walk in the footprints of Prince Eugène de Savoie. But how am I to prepare myself for so great a rôle? How am I to attain to such a height? I want to find round me men whose talents and experience will facilitate the means, if possible, of providing this honourable career."
Is this in the very least the style you would have supposed the son of the man of the proclamations of Marengo, of the Pyramids and of Austerlitz to have used! True, when we borrow from Reichstadt through M. de Montbel it is translated from Carlism, and when he borrows from M. de Prokesch it is translated from the Austrian.
The revolution of July came and made itself heard throughout the whole world. This time the eyes of a whole party turned towards Napoleon II., and, strange to say, it was M. de Talleyrand who took upon himself to be the organ of that party at Vienna! Needless to say, all proposals were rejected. Then a woman of sturdy courage, of the Napoleon family, both in spirit and in face, tried to arouse in the young prince's mind something of what Ulysses meant to demand from Achilles, lost amongst the daughters of Deidamia. This woman was the Comtesse Camerata, daughter of Elisa Bacciochi. She arrived in Vienna one day, and lodged at the Hôtel du Cygne in the rue de Carinthia.—It was about the beginning of November 1830. One night, when returning to the house of M. d'Obenaus, his tutor, the Duc de Reichstadt found a young woman, wrapped in a Scotch plaid, waiting for him on the staircase landing. When she caught sight of the duc, she moved quickly towards him, took his hand, pressed it and then carried it to her lips with an expression of the liveliest tenderness. The prince stopped, amazed.
"Madame," M. d'Obenaus asked, who accompanied the Duc de Reichstadt, "what are you doing, and what do you want?"
"Who shall prevent me from kissing the hand of the son of my sovereign?"