His daughter, the Princesse de Clary, bent over him and closed his eyes.[95] His face no longer wore the expression of terror and anger that had contracted it a moment before his death. His features had recovered their ordinary and placid expression, and the look of youth which had been theirs so long in virtue of his peace of mind and soul. A smile hovered on his lips, and the man, so extraordinary in everything, even after his death was perhaps handsomer than he had ever been at any period of his life. His noble face might have served as a model to the brush of Lesueur for his sublime heads of Heaven’s elect. In default of the halo which is the pictorial symbol of everlasting happiness, there were the beams of genius and goodness. His immortality had commenced.
At the foot of the bed an old soldier was convulsed with sobs. It was the Major Docteur whom I had often met at the house. His affection for the illustrious old man partook of the nature of fanatical worship. It was said that there were ties of close blood relationship, but whether the tears coursing down that noble, scarred face were due to gratitude or admiration, or kinship, they plainly showed the extent of his loss and the bitterness of his grief.
The princess cut a few locks of her father’s white hair and distributed them among us. We received them silently, bedewing them with our tears. I doubt whether they were ever parted with by any of the recipients.
The Prince de Ligne was in his eightieth year. With him disappeared one of the most brilliant lights of his century.[96]
He was the veteran of European elegance, and at eighty had preserved the vigour of a man in his prime added to the grace of youth. He also had the tastes of the young without ever becoming ridiculous in the slightest degree in consequence. Animated as he was by the most cordial good-will towards them, young men, whom he treated as ‘chums,’ worshipped him and were never so happy as in his company.
His was a genuine and unostentatious philosophy. The revolution in Belgium deprived him of a great part of his wealth. He bore his losses with the utmost fortitude. Lavish like most men endowed with great imagination, he had left portions of his remaining fortune in every capital of Europe, and, in spite of his extravagance, had scattered even more wit than money.
The idea of death had perhaps never presented itself to him: the extent of his knowledge, the fantasy displayed in his taste, his fondness for the worldly life led by a society of which he might rightly claim to be an ornament—all this had provided him with a freshness of imagination, a vivacity of affection, and a kind of unfailing youth, the source of which resided in his mind and in his heart. He in every respect justified the saying of Maupertuis: ‘The body is a green fruit; it only becomes ripe at the moment of death.’
The Prince de Ligne was a field-marshal, the proprietor of a regiment of infantry (raised and subsequently maintained at his own expense), captain of the trabans and the guards of the Imperial Palace, a member of most of the European Orders, and a Knight of the Golden Fleece. He took a legitimate pride in reminding people that one of his ancestors, Jean de Ligne, Marshal of Hainault, had received that knighthood at the same time as Philip, the father of Charles V.
No official mourning was ordered for the illustrious deceased, nevertheless mourning was general, inasmuch as it was in everybody’s heart. For a great number of years, the Viennese had come to look upon the Prince de Ligne as an object of respect and admiration, a feeling which was, perhaps, still further increased by the reverence shown him by foreigners. The Viennese no doubt also remembered the friendship that had bound him to their Emperor Joseph, and the ‘fraternity of glory’ that had subsisted between the prince and their most famous warriors; they could not forget the familiar footing on which he had lived with them and with all the celebrities of the previous century. To part with the man who spoke so admirably of all these, and reminded them so vividly of their heroes, was like losing them a second time.
The funeral of the Prince de Ligne took place with all the honours due to his rank, and with a pomp hitherto unknown at the burial of a private individual. The procession left his house at midday. It was composed of eight thousand infantry, several squadrons of cavalry, and four batteries of artillery. His company of trabans surrounded the funeral car; its officers carried the insignia of mourning. A herald-of-arms, on horseback, in black armour, wearing a black crape scarf, baldrick-fashion, and holding a drawn sword lowered, followed immediately afterwards; and then came the prince’s own battle-charger, caparisoned in black spangled with silver stars. Behind the charger, and by the side of the family, came a great number of marshals, admirals, generals, belonging to nearly all the armies and navies of Europe. Among them, the Prince Eugène, Generals Tettenborn, Philippe de Hesse-Hombourg, Walmoden, Ouwaroff, de Witt, Ypsilanti, the Prince de Lorraine, the Duc de Richelieu, and all the notable personages who at that moment had forgathered in Vienna. Some of those captains, who had come expressly to pay their last tribute to the man who had been their model, were on horseback and carried their swords bare.