‘Truly,’ said Griffiths, as I pointed this out, ‘one rarely meets with a beggar in Vienna. The charitable institutions are administered with much order and much liberality. Public benevolence in particular seems to be directed with a great sense of justice. The people, having in general more industrial aptitude and commercial intelligence than the other populations of Germany, seem to conduct their own affairs very well, and it may safely be said there is no capital in Europe which can be compared with Vienna for its sights, and the happy-go-lucky existence of its inhabitants.’
The spire of the cathedral was standing against the cloudless sky.
‘Don’t you feel tempted,’ said I to Princesse Souvaroff, ‘to be present at one of the spectacles which just now seem to cause, rightly or wrongly, a great excitement—I mean a sermon by the Rev. M. Werner?’
The princess had heard the name, and she fell in with my view, anxious, like ourselves, to know this simple priest, who, amid so many great interests and varied amusements, had still found a means of arousing the enthusiasm of the crowd.
Before he had followed in the footsteps of Massillon and Bossuet, M. Werner had been a Lutheran and a dramatic poet. He was the author of several successful tragedies, which he had treated in the most romantic way. Importing into his theatrical compositions all the energy of his religious convictions, he had made it a point to paint the commencement of Lutheranism in the most seductive colours. A circumstance both poetical and romantic marked the history of his conversion to Catholicism. One evening he was strolling in the Cathedral Square in Vienna, a prey to one of those sombre reveries so peculiar to German poets. In his emotion, he stood contemplating that imposing mass and the Gothic towers, the summits of which are lost in the clouds. All at once the door opened, and a venerable priest, dressed in white, and escorted by two young children, appeared on its threshold, and started for the couch of a moribund to administer the supreme rites of his faith. A torch left a trembling but luminous trace behind. Struck by the spectacle, the Lutheran poet stops and wistfully looks after the vanishing procession. His imagination has been fired, the inmost recesses of his heart are moved; the grandeur and sublimity of the Catholic religion are revealed to him by the very simple fact of an old priest carrying the last sacrament to a man on his deathbed. From that moment, M. Werner practically became a Catholic. He left Vienna, went to Rome, and abjured his errors in the Basilica of St. Peter. Then after having lived for some two years in a monastery at the foot of Vesuvius, he came back to Germany, and, discarding the theatre for the pulpit, began to preach. The peculiar nature of his conversion, his talent as a preacher, apart from his diction, which still showed the lofty thoughts and the alternately brilliant and sombre colours of his former poesy—everything, in fact, combined to bring him into relief. Whenever he was announced to preach, the church could scarcely hold the crowd of both pious and merely curious. The theatrical directors, seeing the success of the preacher, conceived the idea of reviving the tragedies of the poet, and made an excellent thing out of them. In the morning the public hurried to listen to the words of the new St. Paul, and in the evening, with minds still full of quotations from Holy Writ and the Fathers, the same audiences went to applaud Attila, Luther, and other works of the converted heretic. Sorely grieved at this applause, M. Werner felt compelled to denounce from the pulpit his former errors, which he would fain have destroyed altogether. But the more he fulminated, the more piquant seemed the contrast, and his dual success as an author and as a preacher hourly increased.
The crowd in the cathedral was so dense as to make it difficult for us to find room. There were princes, generals, ‘grandes dames,’ and, what was not less strange, people belonging to every Christian community. After a while the apostle appeared, and delivered a long sermon in German, of which I did not understand a word, though I was probably not singular in that respect among that particular audience that morning. In spite of this, the effect seemed no less satisfactory. The hollow voice of the speaker, his tall, lean, and wan figure, his deep-set eyes, all seemed to accord with the fane, whose interior he caused to resound with his voice. The cathedral of St. Stephen, in fact, artistically sculptured outside, is dark within, and that obscurity, itself so favourable to meditation, seemed to add something sepulchral to the utterances of the preacher.
‘Well,’ said the Princesse Hélène to me when we were coming out, ‘what do you think of the preacher?’
‘I have only been able to judge partly of his eloquence, and I should think there would be little fault to find with the moral drift of his discourse, inasmuch as his dogma is no doubt irreproachable. Nevertheless, his violent tone and gestures do not inspire me with a desire to see his theatrical works. If you’ll follow my advice, we’ll go to the theatre of the Court to see Cinna or Le Misanthrope.’
At parting, we said a few words about soon meeting again at the Princesse Marie Esterhazy’s, who was about to give a children’s ball, which after the many splendid receptions of grown-up people could not fail to excite great curiosity. Expectation was thoroughly realised, for the princess’s rooms presented the most animated and graceful picture. All the young offshoots of the aristocracy had been invited to take part in the entertainments projected for their edification. The crowned guests at Vienna (reduced this time to the rôle of spectators), all the illustrious political and military personages, followed suit and gathered round the young ones, endeavouring, perhaps, to snatch an imaginary glimpse of their own youth in the contemplation of the unaffected gaiety and games. The apartments of the palace had been so cunningly arranged as to lead the young guests from surprise to surprise. Jugglers’ fantoccini, magic-lanterns succeeded each other. And when all those joyous pastimes were exhausted, they finally came upon the big ball-room, where the dancing immediately commenced, not with strict adherence, perhaps, to the programme, but with all the more gracefulness and absence from constraint. The costumes, which, as may easily be imagined, were all magnificent—Turks, knights, Albanians, mediæval, Louis XIV., Russian, Polish—were worn with comic importance by those Liliputian highnesses. Amidst all these little angels it was easy to perceive that the demon of Pride had exercised his dangerous seductions. One of those female highnesses got into a great rage with a companion of inferior rank. The quarrel became so embittered, neither of them being willing to give in, that it occasioned some trouble at the ball. It reminded me of the anecdote told me by Lord Stair, which a few years before had vastly amused all England. It was during the infancy of the Princess of Wales(?). They had given her as a companion the daughter of a musician who had acquired a great reputation by playing the organ at St. Paul’s. The children quarrelled about a toy, of which each wanted to get possession. The small wranglers claimed privilege in identical terms. ‘How dare you resist me?’ said the princess. ‘Don’t you know that I am the daughter of the Prince of Wales?’ ‘What’s that to me? Don’t you know, yourself, that I am the daughter of the organist of St. Paul’s?’
Dancing was interrupted by the arrival of the Tyrolese singers, who were then causing a great sensation in Vienna. They were seven fine men and ten women, and wore the picturesque costume of their mountains. A few years before, they had come from the Tyrol as simple journeymen watchmakers, and in the evening they met together to sing their national songs. The effect was such as to cause immense crowds to follow them through the streets. The police were obliged to give them an escort to prevent disorder. The directors of the Wieden Theatre engaged them to sing on their stage. The enthusiasm was such as to make them repeat the same airs half-a-dozen times: the highest society engaged them for their evening parties, and everywhere they were equally applauded. During the Congress they had returned to the scene of their first glory.