The Prince never got over his son’s death, and he entirely lost all enjoyment in life. This sad recollection had made in his heart a deep and incurable wound. “That so light-hearted a man,” says Count Ouvaroff, “who had lived through so much and was so careless of misfortune, should ten years after this calamity break down at the bare mention of the beloved name! No one dared utter it in his presence; if he happened to speak of his son his voice would betray the intensity of his grief, and his eyes fill with tears.” There is something strangely touching in this picture of the old man, formerly so worldly and sceptical, as we should say nowadays, who would not be comforted because he still thought of the child of his heart who was no longer. “There is,” said the Prince with admirable philosophy, when shortly after he lost all his fortune, “there is a terrible method of rising above circumstances. It is bought at the cost of a great grief. If the soul has been wounded by the loss of all that is dearest, I defy minor misfortunes to touch it; loss of wealth, total ruin, persecutions, injustice, everything sinks into insignificance.”
FOOTNOTES:
[104] The expenses of this banquet amounted to nine thousand eight hundred and ninety-five livres. (Archives of Mons.)
[105] Oh Richard! oh my King! the whole world forsakes thee.
[106] Villeneuve Laroche, Memoirs on Quiberon.
[107] On the 11th June 1792 the inauguration of the Emperor François II. took place at Mons. By letters patent granted at Vienna on the 19th March, the new Emperor had authorised the Duc Albert de Saxe-Teschen to represent him in this ceremony, and to take the customary oaths in his name. The Duke Albert having in his turn appointed the Prince de Ligne, Grand Bailiff of Hainault, to perform these duties, the latter conferred the honour on Prince Charles, his eldest son. (Note communicated by M. Deviller, keeper of the records at Mons.)
[108] The hôtel de Ligne was on the Rue de la Grosse Pomme, it is now a hospital for incurables.
[109] The Archduke Charles-Louis, born in 1771, and youngest brother of the Emperor François, was one of the best Austrian generals during Napoleon’s wars; it is rather curious to study the outset of his military career.
[110] Moniteur, “Sitting of the Convention,” Thursday evening, 27th September 1792.
[111] Forty years ago, at Mons, there were old men who remembered Prince Charles’s death as an event which afflicted the whole city.