After that the children went into a room which till then had been closed to them. A big tree with golden branches was bending beneath all kinds of toys; amongst others those pretty boxes made out of Vienna paving-stones. A lottery was drawn. Before the little ones retired, they danced a waltz. The sovereigns and the whole of the Court seemed to share those childish joys, and to forget for the moment their own agitated existence at the sight of so much innocent happiness. Only the Empress Elizabeth of Russia preserved an appearance of melancholy. One could perceive that she envied the joys of maternity. Her affection for the emperor was such that, when she met with the daughter he had had by Madame Narischkine, she smothered the child with caresses, trying to cheat her own aspirations as wife and mother.
To whatever political opinion one may belong, one is always glad to be able to speak of those who have occupied the world’s stage. Thanks to the Congress of Vienna, it has been vouchsafed to me to approach some of the men who have left their names on the pages of contemporary history; hence the anecdotes which follow.
One bright February day, Zibin, Luchesini, and I were wandering through the residence of the Duc de Saxe-Teschen. Among the mass of precious objects there is a collection of about twelve thousand original drawings, and a hundred and thirty thousand engravings after artists of various countries. We were courteously received by M. Lefèvre, the custodian of these treasures, of which, he told us, he was going to publish a description in chronological order, according to the schools. At the end of a gallery arranged to hold these rarities, we caught sight of the Archduke Albert, who was doing the honours to Emperor Alexander, accompanied by General Ouwaroff and Prince Eugène. We drew near as they were examining a collection of military maps, the most complete in Europe.
‘Cities have been destroyed,’ said Archduke Albert. ‘Empires have toppled over. Tactics have changed, but military positions remain the same.’ He added: ‘Several comparisons prove that the same chances have often produced the same results.’ Nevertheless, it was on the scene of the last war that the attention of his guests seemed particularly riveted. Nothing equals in interest the remarks of Emperor Alexander on inspecting those plans of battles.
‘There,’ he said, placing his finger on a certain spot, ‘this or that corps made this or that mistake. This or that battery took up a wrong position—this or that charge decided the action. Here, at Austerlitz, we might have retrieved the game, but Kutusoff stopped too far away from Mortier, and those frozen lakes of Augezd and of Monitz, in giving way under twenty thousand men and fifty pieces of artillery, completed our disaster.’
‘Nevertheless,’ said Prince Eugène, ‘we should perhaps have lost the battle if the emperor had attacked a few hours earlier. The chances of war are determined by very small incidents.’
‘There, at Friedland,’ Alexander went on, everything was lost by a false cavalry manœuvre, of which they took advantage, and by the retreat of Korsakoff on Friedland. Consequently, the whole of his corps d’armée was surrounded, and in endeavouring to find an issue across the waters of the Alle, it found its death. Take it all in all, we fought well, but we had to deal with cleverer players than we were.’
He passed from the campaigns of Italy to those of Germany, tactfully avoiding speaking of the disastrous Russian war.
The emperor and Prince Eugène vied with each other in courtesy; the archduke put an end to the subject by showing them a descriptive catalogue compiled by himself, which, despite his great age, he continually revised. To enumerate the treasures contained in this gallery, one ought to have copied that catalogue from beginning to end. Some of the drawings dated from the year 1420: there were more than a hundred and fifty, many of them by Albert Dürer, and the majority drawn with the pen, the figures richly coloured, especially some birds of an admirable finish. A still more particular interest attached to the engravings of this illustrious master, inasmuch as they once constituted his own collection. The duke pointed out to us several drawings by Raphael, and fifty sketches by Claude Lorrain.
The emperor came up to us, and spoke very kindly to Zibin, and presented him to Prince Eugène as the youngest Knight of the Order of St. George. Having overheard the name of Luchesini, he asked him if it was his father who had been plenipotentiary at the celebrated Congress of Sistow under Frederick II.