A few hours later the daughter rushed to me and wept at my feet: I must not treat her father so badly—I must revoke the cruel decision....
But there was no changing my mind now. Stubbornly I clung to my “I cannot, I cannot!”
Soon the whole episode lay behind me like a bad dream which I felt it a refreshment to have waked from. My engagement and disengagement had taken place at carnival time; in the summer I was no longer thinking of them. We spent this summer in Baden near Vienna, where my mother had bought a small villa. It was a jolly summer, full of picnics, watering-place music, and dancing parties.
A little circle of society was formed, including a few elegant and pretty young girls and numerous young gentlemen, mostly officers, and also the indispensable mothers; we met daily—often three times a day, at noon in the park during the music, in the afternoon walking to the Helenental, and again in the evening (if there was not a réunion) at the home of one family or another, or at the evening music in the park. I had formed an especially intimate friendship with a girl of my own age, by name Marietta, Marchesa Saibante. She was a striking sight: a tall and rotund figure (at that time angular thinness was not yet stylish), raven-black hair and eyes, dazzling teeth, very red lips and very red cheeks—but withal a snub nose and coarse features in general.
Marietta’s mother, a Baroness Scheibler by birth, had been married to an Italian, Marchese Saibante, and was a widow of many years’ standing. She had only this single daughter, and worshiped her. With the two lived also an unmarried sister of the Marchesa, and this Aunt Helene, as she was called, worshiped Marietta still more. The two middle-aged ladies (what a pity there is no German word for the expressively descriptive English “middle-aged”) did not let their favorite get a step away from their immediate presence. They were living in very modest circumstances, but were rather prideful, since they were related to all the illustrious families of the aristocracy. A deceased third sister had been married to a Prince Auersperg. They had also a rich uncle, Field Marshal Count Wratislav, who cherished a particular affection for Helene. This uncle was constantly being spoken of. Very often, too, mention was made of a cousin with the proud name Rohan (Roi ne puis, prince ne daigne, Rohan je suis). Cousin Rohan was spoken of only incidentally—not pretentiously,—“I have a cousin who is a Princess Rohan,”—but there were told anecdotes and facts that were in themselves worth speaking of, and that only happened by chance to be connected with Cousin Rohan. Query: do not most people have among their kinsfolk and friends, or even mere acquaintances, a person who is in a higher position then theirs, whom they regard as their “Cousin Rohan” and utilize for the apparently unintentional embellishment of their conversation?
That summer Elvira celebrated her marriage with Doris in See. Marietta and I figured as bridesmaids. While the breakfast was still going on the young couple left Baden for Pola, where the newly married ensign’s ship was lying at anchor.
Now I was thrown altogether on Marietta. It was a strong contrast. After my cousin,—the poetess, the scholar,—the Rohan’s cousin, who was a worldling through and through, with nothing else in her head but the enjoyments and glitter of social life. She had tasted of them, despite her limited circumstances; for she had spent a whole carnival in Prague, and had there, under the ægis of the Auerspergs, the Wratislavs, and the Rohans, danced at twenty balls and flirted (without results) with many an épouseur. Now in Baden it was dancing and coquetting again; Marietta and I were the belles of the season. These entertainments were now “the important thing.”—As if the world had been created for no other purpose than to be our place of amusement.
The following winter we (that is, my mother and brother and I) spent in Rome. It had come about thus. The just-dethroned Queen of Naples, with her suite, had spent this summer at the Weilburg in Baden as guests of Archduke Albrecht. The historic tragedy that had preceded, the defense and loss of Gaeta, had made but little impression on me; I only listened with interest to the stories that were told of it by the queen’s chief steward, an old principe, who often visited us. It was he who depicted to us the life of foreigners in Italy, especially in Rome, so temptingly, and urged us so strenuously to come there next winter that we let ourselves be prevailed upon. The prospect took my fancy greatly. Yet, to my shame, I must avow that what attracted me was not eternal Rome with the magic of its historic memories, but the portrayals of Roman society life. And it remained so during our stay. What made most impression on me there—what was to me “the important thing”—was not the Vatican and Castel Sant’Angelo and the Forum, but the Monte Pincio with its elegant Corso, the Teatro Costanza with its opera season consisting of two alternating operas (one of them Il Trovatore), and the balls and soirées that we attended in the palaces of the Roman magnates or in the drawing-rooms of the colonies of foreigners. I did not bring away deep impressions in any respect from that stay in Rome; it was reserved to a time many years later for me to take in, with some comprehension, the enchantment which this classic soil must exert upon any half-way receptive mind.
Our friend of Baden days, the Neapolitan principe, once invited us to an excursion to his home city, and took us from there to Pompeii, the Blue Grotto, and the marvelous Capo di Monte, where he owned a villa—but it was rather dilapidated, as was he himself for that matter. When he came out next with a proposal of marriage, at the close of the season when we were already packed up for our journey, I said “no” without hesitation. I would not conjure down upon myself a second time the fate which I had newly escaped—that of becoming the wife of an unloved old man. Oh yes, if my suitor’s twenty-five-year-old son, the black-eyed Duca di ..., who quite pleased me, had appeared as suitor, I do not know—but he did not take it into his head; I think he was more inclined to feel an antipathy to me, for he must have seen into his father’s plans, and a second marriage on the father’s part would presumably have been extremely unwelcome to the son. Not till afterward did we learn that in our circle it had been generally assumed that the elderly principe, who loaded us with attentions, had even in Baden been my unacknowledged fiancé.
From Rome we returned to Baden, where the life of last year’s season was repeated; and in the following winter, 1864, we went to Venice to go “into the world” again there.