A few hours later, when coming back, he waved the roll containing the signatures of the arbiters of peace who had become the arbiters of war. For a moment, though, the accord obtained with so much labour was on the point of being broken. It was when the Congress heard of the flight of Louis XVIII. from the Tuileries without an attempt at striking a blow, and of Napoleon’s taking possession of the palace. Emperor Alexander, in particular, failed to understand the tame submission of the Bourbon family and the absence of a single defender.
One morning I ran up against General Ouwaroff. ‘The czar,’ he said, ‘has not recovered from his surprise. He is tired of war, and just now he repeated to me at least a dozen times, “Never shall I draw the sword for them.”’
M. de Talleyrand, in addition to this, performed wonders of skill and patience in the retying of the loosened ‘Congress bundle’ and in directing the various wills of which it was composed towards one common aim. If, on the one hand, the masses beheld with terror the horizon becoming once more dark with threatening clouds, the men devoured with ambition rejoiced at the probable revival of a time of glory. For, disguise it as one will, the intrigues which were already set on foot to overthrow or to support Napoleon offered a prospect of a prompt result in the way of grandeur and riches. Among the many ambitious ones of various ranks who rushed in crowds to Vienna, the ubiquitous Fauche-Borel, the secret agent of the Bourbon princes during the emigration, was foremost. He came once more to offer his fortune, his devotion, and even the blood of his family for a cause in which he had sacrificed everything. No one had a greater right than he to call kings ‘the illustriously ungrateful.’ His adventurous life, his expensive tastes, had promptly swallowed all the sums he received from the house of Bourbon and from the British Government. His was indeed a strange destiny. The crowning of his efforts turned out to be a disaster to his personal fortune. For twenty years his numberless creditors had awaited patiently the day of his success. Scarcely were the Bourbons seated on the throne, the access to which had been facilitated by him, than everybody imagined the ill-fated bookseller of Neufchâtel to be loaded with gold and honours. Pressed on all sides and but meanly remunerated, his position was a thousand times harder than it had been before. Hence, he was going to resume his life of intriguing and hopes. If a warning were needed for the ambitious against their all-engrossing craving to be somebody or to appear to be somebody, no more striking example could be advanced than that of Fauche-Borel putting an end to his disappointed ambition by committing suicide, and by that death setting the seal on everything that has been said about the ingratitude of princes.
‘The Congress is dissolved,’ Napoleon had said, on setting his foot on French soil at Cannes. Meanwhile, on the 11th March, in the midst of the general consternation, a company of amateurs still played in the Redotto hall Le Calife de Bagdad and Les Rivaux d’eux-mêmes, and, strange though it may appear, there was a larger audience than might have been expected. It was, however, the final flicker of the expiring lamp; the last feeble sound of the broken instrument. Pleasure took flight. ‘The Congress is dissolved.’
THE END
FOOTNOTES
[1] Throughout this translation I have left many of the nobiliary titles and names of the Continental aristocracy in their French garb; those of the English personages mentioned I have reduced to their original expression.
[2] Bourgeois was then, as now, the appellation commonly bestowed upon the members of the middle classes.—Transl.
[3] The marquisate was created in 1663, and was registered in the Parliament of Languedoc. It was bestowed upon Louis-François de La Garde, chevalier seigneur de Chambonas, son of Antoine de La Garde, married to Charlotte de la Beaume de Suze. The title passed to his nephew, Scipion-Louis-Joseph, who was brigadier in the king’s armies in 1744, and who died 27th February 1765. He married: First, Claire-Marie, Princesse de Ligne; second, Louise-Victoire-Marie de Grimoard de Beauvoir du Roure, daughter of the Comte du Roure, lieutenant-general in the king’s armies, and of Marie-Antoinette-Victoire de Gontaut Biron. The issue of the second marriage was two boys, one of whom was Scipion-Charles-Victor-Auguste, Marquis de Chambonas, Baron de Saint-Félix and d’Auberque, Comte de Saint-Julien, who married on the 2nd April 1774, Mlle. de Lespinasse de Langeac. (Administrative Archives of the Dépôt (Ministry of War and La Chesnaye des Bois), 3rd edition, Article ‘La Garde.’)