In his sixty-fifth year, the worn-out, gouty, suffering old man was taken possession of by two passions strangely out of keeping with his age and the bent of his mind. It was a momentary return of youth. The one was for the famous ballet-dancer, Fanny Elsler, at that time a girl of nineteen. His infatuation for her knew no bounds. He writes: "I have won her simply and solely by the magic power of my love. Until she knew me she did not know that such love existed.... Think of the bliss of daily undisturbed intercourse with a being whose every attribute enraptures me ... in whose eyes, and hands, and every separate charm I can absorb myself for hours, whose voice bewitches me, and with whom I can carry on endless conversations; for I am educating her with fatherly solicitude, and she is the aptest of pupils, a pupil who is at once my beloved and my child."
The other surprising passion was for Heine's Buch der Lieder, then just published. It was all very well for the old reactionary to call the audacious poet a "crazy adventurer;" he could not resist his sorcery. "I am still," he writes, "refreshing myself with the Buch der Lieder. Like Prokesch, I bathe for hours in these melancholy waters. Even the poems which verge upon actual blasphemy I cannot read without the most profound emotion; I sometimes blame myself that I so often and gladly return to them." His receptive nature could not withstand them. He has rightly described himself as a woman. In a strain which reminds us of the hermaphroditic traits in Lucinde, he writes to Rahel: "Do you know the reason why the relation between us is such a perfect one? I will tell you. It is because you are an infinitely productive and I am an infinitely receptive being: you are a great man; I am the first of all the women who have ever lived."
He was now so nervous that a vigorous handclasp would alarm him; even the sight of a martial moustache was enough to disquiet him. In well-intentioned travellers who came to make his acquaintance he saw assassins in disguise. In the last year of his life his back was bent, his gait timorous and unsteady. The clear, sagacious eyes, for which he had been remarkable as a youth, were now, as it were, veiled by their furtive expression. In company he fortified himself by wearing large black spectacles.
One day at a fête, Fanny Elsler, presenting him with a foaming glass of champagne which she had tasted, said teasingly: "Der Krug geht so lange zu Wasser, his er bricht" (German proverb—The pitcher goes often to the well, but comes home broken at last). Gentz replied: "It will anyhow last out my time and Metternich's." His standpoint is indicated and judged in these words.
In religious matters Gentz was extraordinarily vacillating. At one time he would declare that religion was to him simply a matter of politics; at another, though he never actually went over to Catholicism, he would, in Romantic fashion, make great concessions to it. He prostrated himself at the feet of the Catholic mystic, Adam Müller, who literally took Napoleon to be the devil incarnate (writing, for instance, to Gentz in July 1806, that "as Christians we must subdue the Bonaparte within us"); and, when petitioning the Emperor for an appointment in Austria, he gave as one of his reasons for leaving Prussia, "my long-felt enmity to Protestantism, in the original character and increasingly evil tendencies of which I believe I have discovered, after much and careful proving of the matter, the root of all the corruption of our times, and one of the main causes of the decay of Europe."
In politics he is the representative of unequivocal, conscious reaction, and he does not, like some other hypocritical reactionaries, fight shy of the word. In a letter written at Verona in 1822, he relates that at a dinner-party at Metternich's he has just met Chateaubriand, who has been extremely amiable and complimentary to him. "In the course of conversation he mentioned it as a remarkable phenomenon, one which could not possibly escape the notice of the historian, that four or five years ago, when the condition of Europe seemed quite hopeless, a mere handful of men—not more than could be counted on one's fingers—had determined to combat the Revolution, and that these men had been so successful that to-day they were taking the field, with Governments and armies supporting them, against the common enemy. As marking the most important moments in this bold reaction, he mentioned the founding of Le Conservateur, and the Congress of Karlsbad. He looks forward to the future with sanguine courage, regarding the victory of the good cause as certain. All true power and real talent are upon our side, contained in some ten or twelve heads. Nothing could be more dangerous for us than to attach too much importance to the attacks of the Revolutionaries, or to be in any way afraid of these said Revolutionaries, who, for all their uproar, are mere babblers. I could scarcely conceive, he added, how such men as Benjamin Constant, Guizot, and Royer-Collard had sunk in the public estimation. This and more he said, not with any fire and eagerness, but calmly and coldly."
Gentz was far from guessing, when he penned these words, how great a surprise this same man held in store for him. Two years later the event occurred which forms the turning-point, the watershed, as it were, in the spiritual history of the first half of the century, namely, Chateaubriand's dismissal from the Ministry and entrance into the ranks of the Liberal opposition, whose leader he became. It was this event in combination with Byron's death, which happened about the same time, that called Liberalism throughout the whole world to arms.
Gentz could not control his wrath. After the appearance of Chateaubriand's article in the Journal des Débats on the abolition of the censorship, he wrote to a friend: "I subscribe to every word you say about Chateaubriand. It is long since anything has agitated and incensed me in the manner this really villainous article has done. It is the work of a man who, because he has not succeeded in disturbing the peace of his enemies with drums and pipes, grasps a torch and sets fire to the roof over their heads. Not that there is anything incomprehensible in such a performance, for Frenchmen are now at liberty to do whatever they please; and the man who, in his vindictive antagonism, could immediately violate every sense of duty, honour, and decorum, as this monster did on the third day after his dismissal, was bound in the end, irritated by the feeling of his own impotence, to go as far as he could without running the risk of imprisonment—a risk practically non-existent in his country." But all Gentz's wrath could not check the current of events, and before long the reaction which he represents was struggling in its death throes.
In a letter to Pilat, written in 1820, he writes: "What is Duller, what is La Mennais, what (with the exception of Bonald) are all the writers of our day in comparison with Maistre? His book On the Pope is, to my mind, the greatest and most important of the last half century. You have not read it, or you could not have failed to mention it. Take my advice—do not read it à batons rompus, amidst the noise and distractions with which you are constantly surrounded, but keep it for a time when you have unbroken quiet and can concentrate your thoughts. Your so-called friends must know the book, but not a word do they say of it. Such meat is too strong for these lukewarm, critical souls. It has cost me some sleepless nights, but what enjoyment have they not purchased me! Profundity of thought in combination with astonishing erudition and with political insight superior to Montesquieu's, the eloquence of a Burke, and an enthusiasm which at times rises to the height of genuine poetry—to this add the characteristics of the man of the world, adroitness, refinement, the knack of sparing the feelings of the individual whilst treading his doctrines and opinions under foot, a prodigious knowledge of men and things—and think of it all employed in such a cause, to produce such results! Yes; now I fully and firmly believe that the Church will never fall. If such a star made its appearance in her sky but once in a century, she would not only stand, but prevail. The book has some weak points! I say this in order that my admiration may not seem blind—but they are lost like spots in the sun. Others before Maistre may have felt what the Pope is, but no other writer has expressed it as he has done. This extraordinary book, which the contemptible generation of to-day barely condescends to notice, represents the labour of half a lifetime. The author, now a man of more than seventy, has evidently been engaged upon it for twenty years. A monument should be erected to him in one of the great churches of Rome. Kings should take counsel with him. As a matter of fact, after he has exhausted his private means, all that he has obtained from his Government, and that not without difficulty, is the title of Minister, and an income sufficient to live upon in Turin with the greatest economy. Never has a human being had a better right to say to his children:—
'Disce puer virtutem ex me, verumque laborem,
Fortunam ex aliis!'