‘Not know me!’ my lips painfully murmured, stupefied. I felt like one suddenly blinded. Everything in this world seemed to fail me at once—the present, the future, friendship, and my courage withal. Tears, but badly hidden by the brim of my hat, coursed down my cheeks. At sixteen one does still shed tears. One has not acquired the courage which is only learned in the school of adversity.
Though distressed beyond measure at my own weakness, I could not make up my mind to leave the place. In fact, by that same wonderful process of the imagination which in a few moments of sleep shows you a long series of diverse objects, my imagination pictured to me spontaneously the steep and winding staircase leading to the attics of the Hôtel de Calais, and my relentless landlord waiting there, my bill in his hand, in order to bar further progress, as he had barred it to my expelled predecessor. There was more than this, however. Some horrid words had in reality fallen upon my ear. Juliet, the friend and companion of my infancy, no longer remembered even my name. During this mental colloquy, Joseph, rigid, motionless, constantly watching a curtain in the hall, showed but too plainly his impatience to close the door upon me for ever. In spite of his looks, I did not budge. I felt it impossible to abandon my last hope. All at once, by one of the spontaneous inspirations often due to desperate positions, it flashed upon me that during my infancy I bore only a pet name, and that Mme. Récamier never called me by any other. That was enough. Tightly grasping Joseph’s arm, I exclaimed:
‘Please, monsieur, go back to Mme. Récamier, and tell her that it’s Lolo who has come back from Sweden, who begs of her to see him for one moment.’
To judge by Joseph’s face at this new request, I felt certain that he considered me bereft of my senses. The man was, no doubt, asking himself what possible connection there could possibly be between Lolo, Sweden, and his mistress. Consequently, he did not seem disposed to attempt this new message, but I begged so hard that finally he decided in my favour, just as one grants to a patient whose physician has given him up the last whim from which he expects his cure.
Behold me alone once more, striding up and down the huge hall, not even trying to restrain my fears now that there is no stranger to witness them, and recommending myself to that Providence which hovered over our vessel in the storm-tossed Baltic, which had protected me at Copenhagen, and from Whom at that moment I seemed to request a miracle not less decisive than any of the former to which I owed my life.
‘It often takes no more than a minute to settle a man’s destiny,’ says an Arab poet, just as it suffices for one ray of light from heaven to disperse a cloud. At the most exciting part of my mental soliloquy I heard in the distance a concert of feminine voices shouting in all keys. One, however, dominated the rest; and such a voice! That of the heavenly spirits painted by Milton never made a more charming impression. I recognised it at once. Then, immediately afterwards, the door was flung open, and Mme. Récamier, surrounded by three young girls as beautiful as herself, rushed towards me, crying, ‘My friend, my poor Lolo, so it’s you!’ and her eyes, fixed on mine, grew moist, while the most grateful and refreshing tears I ever shed in my life coursed freely down my cheeks. ‘Yes, it is I,’ I said.
This, ladies, is one of the chapters in my chequered life. You wished to hear it, and fashion alone must be the excuse for telling it.
This little story wound up the evening.
* * * * *
Next day the majority of us met once more at a fête the dazzling pomp of which did not come up to the more intimate happiness of the small circle at the Comtesse de Fuchs’s. Lord Stewart, the English ambassador, gave a grand ball at the magnificent Stahremberg mansion, his residence, to celebrate the birthday of his sovereign. Nothing had been neglected to make the entertainment worthy of the memorable circumstances, and of the power represented by his lordship. Lord Stewart displayed a magnificence—or, to speak correctly, a profusion—of which few fêtes offered an example. His excellency, however, who loved to be eccentric in everything, and whose eccentricities were not always successful, had hit upon the idea to add to his invitation a courteous injunction to come to his ball in the costume of the time of Elizabeth. His countrymen understood him easily enough, and they were numerous in Vienna. The remainder of the guests had not complied with the request, but those who had adopted the costume were sufficiently numerous to produce a very remarkable effect. As to his excellency himself, he wore his uniform of colonel of hussars, the scarlet of which was covered with embroideries, and a great number of orders, civil and military, to such a degree as to have led one easily to mistake him for a living book of heraldry. Save for that singularity the ball was like any other: a great many sovereigns, princes, ‘grandes dames,’ political celebrities; a marvellous supper; a charming lottery of English trifles, which a lady dressed exactly like Queen Elizabeth distributed to the guests. After which we danced until daylight, a proceeding becoming rarer and rarer every day in Vienna, where the Court balls were seldom prolonged beyond midnight.