Such, in his early days, was the gay gentleman who, at the last Congress of Vienna, bore still gaily the weight of eighty summers. His lean horses used to gallop through that city with his ancient carriage behind them, on which was inscribed the punning device—“Quo res cumque cadunt, stat linea recta.” This vehicle was almost as large as his house. The latter was of the smallest dimensions; and in that small dwelling, he gave small dinners to small parties. The dishes served were in strict keeping with the size of the table, and he generally ate four-fifths of what they contained. This superbly-dressed Amphitryon actually expected that his guests would let their hunger be appeased on the supply he liberally poured forth of brilliant but unsubstantial wit.
According to Johnson, who says that quotation is the watchword of literary men, he was a literary man, for he had ever ready a magazine of citations adapted to all purposes. The variety was some warrant of wide reading; and the Prince was, at all events, not like Pozzo di Borgo, who made the same triad of quotations endure a three-months’ duty. At the side of the Prince’s little bed, in the very least of libraries, his little commonplace book, on an almost invisible desk, received the brief record of ideas that visited his gossamer brain. All around this room were strewn, in most admired disorder, a mountain of manuscripts, and a wilderness of works on love, philosophy, poetry, and war. Amidst this mass, the old Prince would leap about with the agility of a monkey. Fatigue he never acknowledged, and sleep he little cared for. He would sit up whole nights, half a week through, to read dry works on strategy; and then fall asleep over erotic songs, of which he commenced many, and finished few. Those that he did terminate have as little of the echo of nature as Watteau’s shepherdesses have of its aspect. One of the most innocent of his pursuits was to attend at the Opera, and applaud Frederic Venua’s pretty music to the pretty ballet of ‘Flore et Zéphyre.’
The once young leader of fashion would not lay down his sceptre when he grew old; and as an octogenarian he played, in the eyes of Vienna, an airier “ci-devant jeune homme” than was ever conceived or executed by the inimitable Potier. He could be a boy with the boys; and the old gentleman played heartily at soldiers with the little King of Rome, before that shadow of a monarch grew up to welcome those other favourites, one of whom especially was as fatal to him as the Fornarina to the gifted Raphael.
But the Prince loved to be with young men, and to be thought of by them; and did not love to be reminded either of old-age or of death. His little summer residence at the Kalemberg was the locality whence Sobieski departed to save Austria from the infidel, and to earn for it, what Austria has ever paid to her benefactors, eternal ingratitude. The spirit of the heroic no longer resided there at the period of which I am treating. The walls of the house were covered with the portraits of ladies whose hearts, or what they called such, had yielded to the assaults of De Ligne; and above the portal was inscribed this motto of mingled impiety, mendacity, and impudence:—
“Sans remords, sans regret, sans crainte, sans envie.”
The slippered soldier who, in his decrepitude, flung out his banner with this device upon it, belied at least a portion thereof. He caught cold, by keeping an assignation near the bastion, on one of the coldest nights of the Congress-winter, and while waiting vainly for the innamorata who had fooled him. The consequent symptoms soon assumed a fatal aspect; and straightway “this god did shake,” and made his motto pointless, save against himself. His remorse might have been small, and doubtless no one envied a dying dandy; but the latter was himself no longer without fear or regret. He feared the slow approach of death; and his regret was not that life had been misspent, but that it had come to its limit. He aggravated his malady by defying it, and appearing at a ball. It was the last occasion on which he was seen in public, and it killed him. He took to his couch, and, in ignoble prostration, he bewailed that he could not die like Petronius Arbiter, that accomplished roué, base as man and great as consul, who played with death; now pricked a vein, and now bandaged it; now whipped a slave, and now freed one; now listened to gay music, now trilled a gay song; anon, cursed the whole world, and forthwith fell dead, like a dog in his uncleanness.
“After all,” said the Prince, “I shall be better off than Petronius; and friends and dear ones will receive my last sigh. Not,” said poor fearful nature, speaking through the Prince,—“not that I am going to die just yet. There is no cause for fear. Let us banish sadness. I am living, and I will live!” And then the moribund beau made puns, as if death could be delayed by playing upon words. Or he called up old souvenirs, and gossiped about the famous “fine eyes” of the Countess de Witt. “You should have seen her,” said the dying Prince; “her eyes were so bepraised that she at length never spoke of them but as her ‘fine eyes.’” Once the admirable Marie Antoinette expressed regret at her looking unwell, and asked from what she suffered. “May it please your Majesty,” answered the simple Countess, “I am suffering from cold in my fine eyes!”—and then the dying prater laughed, and they who stood around him smiled in melancholy accord.
At length, the arrow of the Inevitable Angel was poised, but the sinking Prince still formed projects for the future. He would see the Czar Alexander upon affairs of state; and many a gay day, he averred, should yet make glad the gardens of Belveil. His medical attendant, Malfati, came in for a share of observation; and the whole profession of which Malfati was a member was made subject for satire. “When he was with the great Catherine,” he remarked, “he could do more for himself than the doctors were then doing for him.” Malfati inquired, “In what way?” “Whenever I was well,” said the son of fashion, “I used to invite Ségur and Cobentzel to my quarters. I gave medicine to one, and bled the other; and thereupon I got well!” And as the sinking octogenarian laughed, Death steadied his javelin for the throw.
Malfati delicately hinted that age opposed greater difficulties now than before; and in gentle spirit, he essayed to prepare the Prince for the coming and irresistible change. But no! the Prince had work yet to do, and must live to do it. “I have no intention yet,” he said, “nor shall have for a long time to come, to make use of the epitaph written for me by my old friend, the Marquis de Bonney:—