The same winter I had another experience which lives in my memory. One day I received a note bearing the signature “Princesse Annette Tschawtschawadze,” inviting me to call upon this lady at the Grand Hôtel, where she and her two daughters, Lisa and Tamara, were sojourning. At Homburg I had known Princess Annette, who was a sister-in-law of the Dedopali, and I was delighted to see her again.

An interesting incident in her life had often been told me. The notorious Circassian leader Shamyl had once abducted her. It was at the beginning of the fifties. The young woman was sitting with two of her younger children and a French governess on the veranda of their villa in Kachetia, when suddenly a band of horsemen fell upon them. The men leaped off, tied the women securely, and lifted them up on their horses. The two children were put into Princess Annette’s arms, and away went the troop. In addition to her terror, the young woman experienced the fearful agony of having one of her children slip from her arms as they kept growing weaker, and seeing it crushed under the horses’ hoofs. The whole abduction was for nothing but ransom. The ladies were treated with the most scrupulous respect in Shamyl’s abode; only he set a very high price on their release—not a price in money, but some political concession or other. The ransom was granted, and Princess Annette was given her liberty; but never in her life could she recover from the horror that she felt at the moment when her child fell from her arms.

I found the lady in her hôtel salon, and among the visitors (oh, surprise!) I perceived Heraclius Bagration, Prince of Georgia. And still greater was my surprise when Princess Annette presented to me her seventeen-year-old daughter Tamara and the elderly gentleman as—affianced!...

It did give me a shock; but my feelings for him had long ago cooled down, and so I was able to offer tolerably unembarrassed and sincere congratulations.

XIII
THE YEAR 1870–1871
Resumption of music study in Milan · Outbreak of the Franco-German War · My double existence in the world of books · Return of the victorious troops to Berlin

Prince Achille Murat was an officer in the French army; in this capacity he received orders to take up garrison duty at Algiers. Of course his wife went with him, and consequently Paris once more became empty for me. My heart also was empty, and the plans for the future had gone to wrack and ruin. Our small property had dwindled sadly with all these costly lessons and the other expenses of a luxurious existence ... and so it came about that I turned my attention to singing again. We journeyed to Milan for the purpose of studying opera parts under Maestro Lamperti and, if possible, to make my début at the Scala. Lamperti gave me an examination—found my voice marvelously beautiful—but I should have to study with him for at least a year before I could venture to think of appearing in concert or opera. Very good—on then with the do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si....

I studied and practiced diligently, but the “one important thing,” the world-filling thing so to speak, which at the beginning of my apprenticeship I found in hoped-for mastery of my art, had vanished from me.

And now the Franco-German War broke out. I received word from Salomé Murat that she had given birth to a son in Algiers, and that he was born on the first of July, the very day when war was declared. I had not seen the tempest coming, and when it broke it aroused as little interest in me as did the storm of 1866. I was occupied with far more serious troubles: I could not make a success of my artistic career. Whenever I sang at a test, nervousness closed my throat and I made a failure. The “Singsang” was becoming a torment. But I struggled on, for the others kept assuring me that this nervousness could be conquered, and that then my talent would come out victorious. Under the stress of this I paid little heed to the mighty tragedy which was at that time convulsing the world. Other woes than mine were there suffered; my contemporaries there were trembling with other anxieties! Once more did I let this elemental event pass over the horizon without any inward revolt. The repeated victories won by Germany filled me with great respect, while at the same time the fall of the Napoleonic dynasty, with which I had come into such close contact, aroused my sincere sympathy; on the other hand, I was glad for my delightful royal vis-à-vis that he was to wear the proud imperial crown.

About all the distress and the horrors which followed in the wake of the Franco-German War I heard little—or would not hear anything; I put it aside with my habitual fatalistic C’est la guerre. Politics did not interest me in the least; I did not read the newspapers. This gave me all the more time for books. Books carried me into another world in which, along with my own individual life, I led a second life. In my early childhood I had been seized by the passion for reading and learning; through my intercourse with Elvira, poetess and daughter of a savant, it was still more fanned into flame, and never, under any circumstances, has it left me. Whether at home in Baden or off traveling; whether studying at the opera school or moving in high life amid joys and festivities; whether in love and engaged and disengaged again; whether my existence was offering me splendor and pleasures or care and worriments,—I always spent many hours every day in the company of books.

At the time of which I am now speaking, what I had read would have filled a stately library. All of Shakespeare, all of Goethe, all of Schiller and Lessing, all of Victor Hugo. The last-named,—a world in himself,—who had already made such a mighty impression upon me as a child with his Ruy Blas, I felt called upon to know in all his works; and I was intoxicated with his command of language, with the sunward flight of his genius. Anastasius Grün, Hamerling, Grillparzer, Byron, Shelley, Alfred de Musset, Tennyson, among poets; and of the novelists I knew all of Dickens, all of Bulwer,—better say at once, all of the Tauchnitz collection. In French the novels of George Sand, Balzac, Dumas; the dramatic works of Corneille, Racine, Molière, Dumas fils, Augier, Sardou.