‘Yes, I have heard that the two champions were both wounded, but were so little hurt that their friends are not in the least uneasy.’
‘The Vienna public,’ remarked Ompteda, ‘would indeed be surprised if it knew the cause of the quarrel. The wife of one of these gentlemen has an unfortunate mania for scents, or rather for one scent of which she claims to be the inventor. It’s a mixture of rose-water and musk, sufficiently strong to set all the Italian women troubled with vapours running. Inasmuch as the lady, who is still very good-looking, though by no means in the first flush of youth, goes out a great deal, that undesirable perfume is so well known that she couldn’t enter a room without her presence being betrayed by it. It so happened that one fine morning her husband, the Prince —— walks into the rooms of his friend the Comte ——. In less than a second his nostrils are assailed by a scent which he knows but too well, and he exclaims, “My wife has been here.” “Your wife,” replies the comte. “Not at all.” “You deny it! Well, then, she is still here, and if I begin to look for her, the scent will do the rest for me very shortly.” In consequence of this violent explanation, in which the one denies and the other affirms, the two friends draw their swords in the room itself, and while each wounds the other, the lady escapes by a back staircase. The mishap ought to have cured her. She continues, nevertheless, to drench herself with that damnable perfume, which might well be called the Tell-tale Scent.’
‘People are very sorry about the accident which cost the young Duc Louis d’Aremberg his life. You know that he was thrown from his horse on the flagstones of the Josef Platz, and when they lifted him up he was dead. It appears that birth is no guarantee against the thunders of the gods. The father of the young duke lost his life out hunting. His mother was guillotined in France. His brother was exiled in consequence of a duel in which he killed his adversary; his sister perished in the historic ball given by Prince Schwartzenberg in Paris. Was it worth while to call oneself d’Aremberg to be a prey to all these misfortunes?’
‘You were not at the last ball of Gey-Müller, the banker?’
‘No, but I was at the similar fête at Arnstein’s, and it was really a curious sight to me to see the financial world rivalling the Austrian Court in display, and perhaps surpassing it.’
‘The most particular feature of the Gey-Müller ball was not so much its profusion, its elegance, its exquisite supper, as a fall—not the fall of an empire, to which people are pretty well used by now—but the fall of the handsome Madame Pereyra, the daughter of Baron Arnstein. She was waltzing with Prince Dietrichstein. Carried away by the rapidity of that Russian waltz, which is like a whirlwind, and getting caught in the folds of her dress, she fell with her partner, and both rolled amidst the crowd. You may imagine their confusion. Truly, princes with the name of Maurice seem to be pursued by a kind of fatality. At the imperial carrousel you saw Maurice Lichtenstein flung into the middle of the arena with his horse, and now there is this other Maurice who gyrates on his back instead of turning round on his legs. However, there is no accounting for taste.’
‘Don’t joke about it, dear baron, for you are unwittingly stoning me. A similar adventure happened to me in the Salon des Étrangers at Paris. Fortunately, my pretty partner was masked, which saved her the trouble of blushing. I, moreover, owed to this fall the overhearing of a conversation which, at that period, had all the interest of a scene from a drama.
‘It was during the first years of the Consulate. The best society of Europe flocked to Paris. France, probably anxious to get as much joy out of life as she could after the bloody scenes of the Revolution, seemed to do everything to forget. The rooms at Frascati were the resort, or rather the temple, of pleasure. In one part of the building people of every rank and of both sexes came to risk, under the disguise of a domino, the fruits of twenty years’ work, or the product of more ingenious speculations. In another spot, screened by a slight surface of cardboard and a silk wrap, the most piquant, political, or amorous intrigues went on. Further on, quadrilles, in which figured Vestris, Bigottini, and Millière, displayed all their grace and suppleness. I was waltzing with Madame R——. The crowd surrounding us was immense. Getting caught in the folds of her domino, my partner stumbles, falls, and bears me down with her. We were immediately on our legs again, but, somewhat excited by the accident, Madame R—— asked me to take her outside the room. Fortunately for us, we ran against the Marquis de l’Ivry, who had us taken to his own apartments higher up. The purer air and some stimulant soon got the better of the discomfort of Madame R——. We were just getting ready to go down to the ball-room again when we heard a lively conversation in the adjacent apartment. Beaumarchais has said that in order to hear, you must make up your mind to listen. Persuaded that it was nothing but a ball intrigue, we got nearer to the partition, and through its very thin substance we distinguished two female voices. We were about to draw back disappointed, when the name of Bonaparte struck our ear. That name, the talisman of the period, having attracted our attention once more, we heard one of the ladies say—“I give you my word, my dear Teresina, that I have done everything friendship could expect of me, but that it’s all in vain. This morning I made a new attempt, but he will not listen to anything. In fact, I have been asking myself what could have prejudiced him so strongly against you. You are the only woman whose name he has struck off the list of those admitted to my familiar intercourse. Being afraid of his affronting you personally—a thing for which I would never console myself—I ventured to come here alone with my son. At the Château they think I am in bed, but I wanted to see you to quiet your own mind, and to justify myself.”
‘“I have never doubted either your heart or your affection, Josephine,” replied the other lady. “Their loss would be a thousand times more painful to me than Bonaparte’s prejudices. My conduct has been sufficiently dignified to make my visits appreciated, and certainly I shall pay you none without his knowledge. But does he not remember that the first step of Tallien after the 10th Thermidor was to open for us the cell where we were both awaiting our death sentence? Can he forget that the man whose name I bear provided for your children throughout your captivity? Those children—his own now—were, without doubt, not consulted before he forbade you my company. He was not Consul when I shared with you—but pardon me, Josephine, O, forgive me!”
‘Here there was a burst of sobs, preventing me hearing every word.