The atrocious scenes at Naples[ [156] have produced a bad effect at Berlin and street excitement is said to have become menacing once more. The citizens have seized the arsenal.
Sagan, June 7, 1848.—Mental equanimity depends upon a thousand petty circumstances in every case. Only those who are very young and know nothing of mental trouble, are able to avoid the thousand and one influences of times, places, things, and even of details apparently most trivial. I think that Saint Evremond says that the less people are amenable to pleasure the more they are afflicted by trouble.
Paris seems to be peaceful but at what a price has this result been obtained? Terrible refinements of cruelty have been committed.
Sagan, June 12, 1848.—The state of Berlin and Breslau grows steadily worse. The provinces are correspondingly affected and I expect to see civil war break out any day. The country populations are ready to join the revolutionary movement against their overlords and their priests, but they detest the towns. The peasants do not like the citizens and are royalists and supporters of the military, though they are against the nobles and the priests. The result is a strange confusion which heaven alone can disentangle. The assembly which has met at Berlin has been hitherto marked by no character except ignorance and disturbance.
Sagan, June 18, 1848.—The newspapers and my letters tell me that Germany is resuming its republican tendencies. Hecker has been elected for Frankfort. Confusion is thus inconceivable, especially in view of the increasing dislike which France shows for the deplorable government under which she placed herself four months ago. She must be reduced to extremities indeed to turn to the Bonapartist flag, so miserably represented by Louis Napoleon who is known to be a very poor figurehead. And what can be said of the frightful scenes at Prague, and the assassination of poor Princess Windisch-Graetz.[ [157] I have also been very anxious on account of Berlin, where the pillage of the arsenal and the opposition to the Ministry in the Chamber have diminished the prospect of a peaceful solution; three Ministers, Arnim, Schwerin and Kanitz, have resigned.
Potsdam, June 23, 1848.—I reached here yesterday after staying for half a day at Berlin. Medem writes from Vienna to his colleague Herr von Meyendorff and speaks very mournfully of the vacillation and uncertainty that have prevailed at Innsbrück since the Baron von Wessenberg has been in power. I am not surprised; Wessenberg is a kind, clever and good-hearted man, but even from London days I thought him muddle-headed and this is a terrible hindrance to the conduct of affairs.
I have news of Prince Metternich: he is sending his sons to a Catholic college in England as he finds no one who will join his fate and act as tutor; he is also troubled by pecuniary embarrassments.
The reigning Grand Duke of Mecklenberg-Schwerin has increased the settlements upon his stepmother, in order that the Duchesse d'Orléans and her children may gain indirectly a means of greater comfort in life; a noble and tactful action.
The ministerial crisis here is still in progress and the street uproar has been thus succeeded by a political disturbance which is no less dangerous, when a Chamber is composed of ill-assorted elements as that of Berlin. There was a rumour yesterday evening that a telegram from Frankfort stated that the assembly in that town had elected a dictator for Germany in the person of the Archduke John.[ [158] Here there was a wish for a triumvirate. Rumour consequently arose that Prussia had replied to this news by a protest.
Sagan, June 28, 1848.—I have returned to my domestic hearth. Though I have hitherto had no great reason to complain of my own corner of the world, I none the less feel that the earth is mined and is trembling beneath my feet. The district that I have just left seems to me to be terribly unsafe. At Paris blood is flowing.[ [159] For some days our knowledge of events there has been confined to telegraphic news from Brussels and is very uncertain. I merely know that my children are not in the town.