CHAPTER XII
Illness of the Prince de Ligne—The Comte de Witt—Ambassador Golowkin—Doctor Malfati—The Prince gets worse—Last Sallies of the Moribund—General Grief—Portrait of the Prince de Ligne—His Funeral.
One of the most painful events of my life, namely, the death of the Prince de Ligne, also damped the gaieties of the Congress. The event affected me so deeply, and it was so unexpected by me, that, after many years, I still vividly remember the particulars. I was on my way to pay my quasi-daily visit when, not far from the prince’s residence, I met the Comte de Witt, who wished to accompany me. The prince was in bed and ailing. He had caught a chill at that ill-fated appointment on the rampart; and on the previous evening at the ball, where he appeared so thoroughly consoled, he had been rash enough to go out without a cloak in the bitter cold in order to take some ladies to their carriage. As yet there were no grave symptoms; he was only feverish, and had passed a very restless night.
Nevertheless, he welcomed us with the cordial grace that never failed him, and we chatted about the crowd of strangers in Vienna and the latest rumours of the Congress; and finally we got to military matters, the favourite subject of the octogenarian marshal and of the young Russian general. To judge by his spirited remarks, there seemed no cause for anxiety, and the Comte de Witt as a parting sentence said how sorry Vienna would feel at the news of its brightest ornament being ill. He answered with a particularly atrocious pun, attributed to the Marquis de Bièvre, which seemed to afford him great amusement, and expressed the intention of getting well again in a short time if only to spite the gossip-mongers of the capital.
When the Comte de Witt was gone, the prince referred to the comte’s mother, to ‘his exquisitely beautiful mother,’ as he expressed it, ‘whose image rises before me the moment I catch a glimpse of her son and reminds me of the best years of my life. That type of beauty is lost,’ he went on. ‘It was a combination of Eastern loveliness and Western grace. You ought to have seen her, that Comtesse de Witt, when for the first time she appeared at the Court of France. No words of mine can convey an idea of the effect she produced, of the universal enthusiasm she aroused. I remember that, hearing her beautiful eyes—which were, in fact, the most beautiful conceivable—constantly mentioned, she imagined that the adjective and the substantive were inseparable. One day Marie-Antoinette said to her; “What’s the matter, comtesse, you do not appear to be well?” “Madame,” was the answer, “I have got a pain in my beautiful eyes.” As you may imagine, this ingenuous, delightfully naïve reply went the round, and justly applied to the lovely creature.’
I noticed that talking seemed to tire him, and I left, not without a vague feeling of sadness and anxiety. I felt depressed all day, and in order to verify my apprehensions of the morning I went back at night. Doctor Malfati[91] and the Comte Golowkin, known in connection with his unsuccessful mission to China, were with him, and the former was warning him against his want of care, which might be attended with serious consequences. Since the morning violent erysipelas had set in; the patient seemed much weaker. Golowkin, who had no more faith than Molière in doctors and the art of healing, was trying to dispel his uneasiness. ‘With all due deference to the faculty,’ replied the charming old man, ‘I have always belonged to the sect of unbelievers where medicine was concerned. You know the remedies I employed during the famous journey with the great Catherine in Taurida. She was very anxious that I should submit to some of the dictates of Hippocrates. “I have got a peculiar way of treating myself,” I replied. “When I am ill, I send for my two friends, Ségur and Cobentzel: I purge the one and bleed the other; and that as a rule cures me.”’
‘Times are changed, prince,’ said the doctor, somewhat nettled; ‘and if my memory does not mislead me, six lustres have gone by since then. Just let us count the years a bit. They make, as far as I can reckon——’
‘Stay, stay, doctor,’ exclaimed the patient in a lively tone, ‘don’t let’s count anything; I have never counted my enemies. And you, a clever man, you are telling me “times are changed.” Who in the world could persuade himself that age changes one’s face. Is it not the same in the morning when we get up as it was the previous evening when we went to bed? People here imagine, perhaps, that having exhausted all kinds of pleasure, I am going to relieve their monotony by giving them the spectacle of a field-marshal’s funeral. No, I am not a sufficiently good courtier to be the complacent actor in such an entertainment. I have no wish to divert the royal pit of the Congress Theatre in that way.’
These well-known words of the Prince de Ligne have always been strangely misquoted. Historians have lent to them a kind of philosophy, desirable, no doubt, but altogether unintended by the speaker. All have made him say: ‘I keep for these kings the spectacle of a field-marshal’s funeral.’