The particular mania of M. Aïdé was to obtain presentations to any and every one. The moment a new drawing-room was opened, M. Aïdé’s fixed idea was to find an introducer to facilitate his admission to it. He often addressed himself to that effect to people with whom he could scarcely claim acquaintance; and it was exceedingly difficult to shake him off. The Prince de Ligne, whose kindness he had often laid under contribution in this way, finally got tired of the thing, and one day, when badgered as usual, he introduced the obstinate Greek in the following words: ‘I present to you a man very much presented and very little presentable.’
The excellent prince often said that he was sorry for what he had done, for the sentence was repeated, and drew still greater attraction to M. Aïdé without curing him of his mania. Some years afterwards, while he was travelling in England, the elegant manners he had acquired in his constant intercourse with good society captivated, during his stay at Cheltenham, a young and exceedingly rich girl, whom he married. The uncertainty of his existence seemed, as it were, at an end, when he got involved in a quarrel with the young Marquis of B—— at a ball at Mr. Hope’s. The cause, it was said, was most trifling—an introduction. A duel was the result, and M. Aïdé was killed on the spot.
A not less curious individuality, notably for the memories she recalled, was the old Comtesse Pratazoff, the favourite of Catherine II., near whom she had occupied a most intimate if not most important position. In Vienna she was accounted a celebrity. I was indebted for a glimpse of that relic of the past to the Prince de Ligne. ‘Our acquaintance dates from very long ago,’ he said, while taking me to her temporary residence one day. ‘She also belonged to the company during that famous Crimean journey, not because she had any particular functions, but because the empress had got so used to talk to her, especially in the morning and in the evening, as to be unable to dispense with her. Royal favour often springs from nothing more than a mere habit on the part of the sovereign of seeing a certain person near him. In the Comtesse Pratazoff’s case it was, however, something more than that.’
Catherine the Great’s intimate friend had taken up her quarters at the inn. On entering the room I saw, seated on a couch, a voluminous mass filling the whole of its space. To judge from the quantity of jewels she wore, she might have passed muster as an Indian idol. From the top of her head to her waist, she was literally covered with necklets, diadems, bracelets, pendants, brooches, earrings, etc. This jeweller’s shop seemed to me about seventy.
On our entering the apartment, she made an attempt to rise, but fell back into her original position, trying, not, however, without great difficulty, to find room for the prince on the sofa beside her. Having become aware of my presence, she welcomed me with some of those ultra-polished, not to say finical, phrases the whole vocabulary of which was a very open book to the educated Russians of her time. Then the conversation drifted on to the halcyon days of the fêtes of the Hermitage. The past was dignified and the present vilified. The most curious feature of this hour’s visit was the prince’s seeming oblivion of the thirty years that had passed since that journey to the Crimea, and his persistent effort to treat this enormous dowager as a young and skittish thing, calling her ‘my dear’ and ‘my little girl’; and her absolutely serious acceptance of this kind of flirting by mincing and mouthing in a most ridiculous, though to her evidently natural, manner.
When we left her, I promptly repaired home to inscribe on my notes the portrait of that puppet who had come to show Europe in Vienna the sight of her decrepit old person, her ancient jewels, and her superannuated pretensions.
Another ‘character’ was an Englishman named Foneron. He had been for a long time a banker at Leghorn, and had amassed a great fortune there, after which he migrated to Austria. As humpbacked as Æsop, as careful as the Phrygian, and nevertheless endowed with a sensitive heart, he had strenuously calculated the discomforts of a union with a fair one of any thing like Circassian stature. With admirable foresight, he had looked for and found a young girl with a most charming face, but more deformed than he. He offered his hand, which was accepted, for the girl was poor. The marriage took place secretly, but there were still too many witnesses, for never assuredly was there a more strangely assorted marriage. A host with an excellent wine-cellar and an almost matchless cook is sure to meet with indulgence from every one. Mr. Foneron had both, and in spite of the far from good-natured remarks about himself and his wife, made a point during the Congress of giving the most exquisite dinners. Few strangers admitted to his sumptuous board have forgotten the Friday’s fare, and the classic beefsteaks forming part of it. They might have called Mr. Foneron the cook of the Congress. Amidst that crowd of pretenders and petitioners, he asked for nothing, claimed neither indemnity nor titles, nor orders. His titles and orders were his dinners. His sole ambition might have been to preside at the Beefsteak Club of London.
At one of those receptions I met M. Ank——, a Jew by birth, who did not belie the instinct of his race for gold. He had a great quantity of it, he was literally bursting with it; but his reputation for avarice at least equalled his reputation for wealth. He took it into his head to invite me to breakfast. Curious to verify the proverb to the effect that there is nothing more lavish than a miser, I accepted the invitation. Both the size and the tidiness of the whole of his apartment produced as it were a cold shiver. There was scarcely any fire, few carpets, and some hard-worn furniture. As a kind of penance, no doubt, for the many glorious banquets I had partaken of during the preceding months, he offered me a little dubious black liquid which he called chocolate. When I had courageously swallowed the Lacedemonian broth, he took to showing me his artistic treasures. M. Ank—— was a numismatist; he had one of the richest and most complete collections of medals in Vienna, rivalling that most celebrated one of the Comte Vitzay. After this he showed me some rather good pictures and then a heap of bric-à-brac, collected less for the love of art than from the wish for gain, for he put a madly exaggerated price on all that old rubbish. I had accepted the chocolate, I had drunk it, and I swallowed the rest of the bitter cup. When he had shown me everything, he drew from an iron chest a portfolio full of drafts to order, bills of exchange, and bills at sight. They represented an immense amount of money. ‘These are no family parchments,’ he said, ‘or emblazoned scutcheons, but patents of nobility calculated to blanch the cheeks of the world’s aristocracies, and patents of nobility which shall never derogate. There are neither misalliances nor hereditary stains of gold in that book. Gold, from the day it was first purified by fire, is the only pure genealogy, the only one retaining its pride, the only one whose brightness cannot be dimmed. Find me an aristocracy capable of vying in multiplicity of quarterings and services rendered with that one, and I’ll kneel down and worship.’
And he stroked the bills of exchange, and waved the flimsy bits of paper in the air, to prove to me the enormous total of those patents of nobility of his imagination. ‘With all this,’ he went on, ‘the world is an immense Garden of Eden, where no fruit is forbidden. Whatever the moralists of the school of Seneca may pretend, here you behold the motive of all virtue, and also the motive of all pleasure. I hold the whole of it in this hand without trouble, without confusion, without remorse—the whole of it, from the most sumptuous palace, the most exquisitely appointed carriages, the most exquisitely prepared banquets, to the most divinely beautiful woman.’ Saying which, he strained his ‘bill case’ to his heart with more fervour than the old man hugs his purse in the ‘Scène du Déluge’ of Girodet.
‘I think I have heard enough, M. Ank——,’ I said; ‘you not only make an end of all virtue, but you would justify crime. Why should not a brigand adopt your plea after killing you, by saying that he also wishes to judge whether the reality your gold would procure could not weigh up against all your illusions?’