‘What would he have said to Metastasio, who, after living for twenty years in Vienna, had not mastered as many words of German, which quantity he considered sufficient to save his life in case of need?’ laughed the prince. ‘Besides, you find your own tongue the only one adopted here, not only in society and at all the festive gatherings, but also at all the conferences of the Congress. That much, indeed, was due to its precision and its universal use. It was necessary to establish a general means of communication between so many strangers; without this the Congress would have become a Babel.’
‘And also, prince, because no language lends itself more easily to the biting epigrams and sparkling repartees which are, as it were, like a bottle of champagne that’s being “uncorked,”’ I replied. ‘The proof of it is in your recent answer to the Baron de ——, when he told you that the emperor had made him a general. “He has appointed you to be a general, he could not make you one,” is a fair sample of the pliability of French.’
Chatting like this about many trifles, which on his lips became interesting subjects, the prince rapidly reviewed the foremost figures of society, generals, statesmen, elegant women, etc.
‘This Congress, with its intrigues of all kinds hidden by fêtes, is decidedly like Beaumarchais’ La Folle Journée. It is an imbroglio with ever so many Almavivas and Figaros. As for the Basilios, one runs against them at every turning. I sincerely trust people may not be compelled to exclaim by and by with the joyous barber: “Whom, after all, are they leading by the nose?”’
We soon got to the courtyard of his modest residence. The house was small, but comfortable, and the prince might have easily realised the wish of Socrates by filling it with true friends. It had been built on the site of a monastery founded in 1628: Leopold rebuilt it after the siege of Vienna; Joseph I. enlarged it; Joseph II. suppressed it. Since then, the prince had bought it. On the front door was engraved his favourite sentence:—Quò res cumque cadunt, semper stat linea recta.
‘I so thoroughly feel the barrenness of everything,’ he often said, ‘that there is no merit in my being neither envious nor spiteful, nor vainglorious.’
He began by taking me into his garden. ‘I should fail in all the traditions of ownership if I did not start by making you acquainted with all the details of my principality. Inasmuch as my house with its enclosure is scarcely more spacious than the domain allotted by the people to the president of the loftily perched republic of San-Martino, we’ll go the round of it in less time than an act of mental contrition would take. Nevertheless, such as it is, the place enables me to escape from the bustle of fêtes, from the fatigue of pleasure, and from the crowd of majesties and highnesses. Here, and here alone, I am enabled to enjoy my own society. I come here to get the fresh air, and to recruit the strength I spend every evening on the incessant festivities of the Congress.’
At the end of the garden, he opened the door of a pavilion, positively suspended over the Danube, and from which the whole of Vienna could be taken in at a glance.
‘This,’ he said, ‘is the spot whence John Sobieski started at the head of his brave Poles, and with less than thirty thousand men saved the empire by routing all the Ottoman forces of the Grand-Vizir Kara-Mustapha. Sobieski’s faculty of instantly perceiving a situation was so sure and so thorough that at the sight of the enemy’s dispositions, he coolly said to the generals surrounding him that those dispositions were defective, and that infallibly he would beat his foes. It was impossible to say of him what is commonly said of kings, namely, that they have won a battle personally, when they have only looked at it from afar. They may have won the battle personally, but not by their presence. Sobieski won his battles in person, and by his presence.
‘I like the letter he wrote to the queen, his wife, on the day after the victory, which was dated from the tent of the grand-vizir himself. There is genuine greatness without the slightest admixture of false modesty in the following words: “Let Christendom rejoice and give thanks to the Lord; the infidels can no longer insult us by saying: ‘Where is now your God?’”