For a year or two after the sale, he led a wandering life, with Berlin or Weimar for his headquarters. In 1846, shortly before his sixtieth birthday, he met, so he confided to the long-suffering Lucie, the only woman he had ever loved, or at least the only woman he had ever desired to marry. Unfortunately, the lady, who was young, beautiful, clever, of high rank, large fortune, and angelic disposition, had been married for some years to a husband who is described as ugly, ill-tempered, jealous, and incredibly selfish. The prince's letters at this period are filled with raptures over the virtues of his new inamorata, and lamentations that he had met her too late. For though his passion was returned the lady was a strict Catholic, for whom a divorce was out of the question, and for once this hardened Lothario shrank from an elopement, with the resultant stain upon the reputation of the woman he loved. In 1846 he parted from his affinity, who survived the separation little more than a year, and retired with a heavy heart to his paternal castle of Branitz, near Kottbus, where he occupied himself in planting a park and laying out gardens. Branitz was only about a tenth part the size of Muskau, and stood in the midst of a sandy waste, but at more than sixty years of age the prince set himself, with all the ardour of youth, to conjure a paradise out of the wilderness. Forest trees were transplanted, lakes and canals dug, hills appeared out of the level fields, and, in short, this 'earth-tamer,' as Rahel called him, created not only a park, but a complete landscape.
The remainder of our hero's eventful career must be briefly summarised. In 1851 he made a flight to England to see the Great Exhibition. Here he renewed his acquaintance with many old friends, among them the Duchess of Somerset, who told him that she had known his father well twenty-five years before. The prince, who has been described as a male Ninon de L'Enclos, was naturally delighted at being mistaken for his own son. In 1852 the work at Branitz was so far advanced that its lord invited Lucie to come and take up her abode at the Schloss. But the poor lady's troubled life was nearing its close. She had a paralytic stroke in the autumn of this year, and remained an invalid until her death, which took place at Branitz in May, 1854.
In the loneliness that followed, the prince amused himself by keeping up a lively correspondence with his feminine acquaintance, for whom, even at seventy, he had not lost his fascinations. His celebrity as an author and a traveller brought him many anonymous correspondents, and he never wearied of reading and answering the sentimental effusions of his unknown admirers. In 1863 he paid a visit incognito to Muskau, the first since he had left it eighteen years before, though Branitz was but a few leagues away. He was recognised at once, and great was the joy in the little town over the return of its old ruler, who was honoured with illuminations, the discharge of cannon, and torchlight processions. The estate had passed into the hands of Prince Frederick of the Netherlands, who had carried out all its former master's plans, and added many improvements of his own. Pückler generously admired the splendour that he had had so large a share in creating, and then went contentedly back to his kleine Branitz, his only regret being that he could not live to see it, like Muskau, in the fulness of its matured beauty. In 1866, when war broke out between Prussia and Austria, this grand old man of eighty-one volunteered for active service, and begged to be attached to the headquarters' staff. His request was granted, and he went gallantly through the brief campaign, but was bitterly disappointed because he was not able to be present at the battle of Koniggrätz, owing to the indisposition of the king, upon whom he was in attendance.
In 1870, when France declared war against Prussia, he again volunteered, and was deeply mortified when the king declined his services on account of his advanced age. For the first time he seems to have realised that he was old, and it is probable that the disappointment preyed upon his spirits, for his strength rapidly declined, his memory failed, and on February 4,1871, after a brief illness, he sank peacefully to rest. He was buried in a tomb that he had built for himself many years before, a pyramid sixty feet high, which stood upon an acre of ground in the centre of an artificial lake. The two inscriptions that the prince chose for his sepulchre illustrate, appropriately enough, the sharply contrasting qualities of his strange individuality--his romantic sentimentality, and his callous cynicism. The first inscription was a line from the Koran:
'Graves are the mountain summits of a far-off, fairer world.'
The second, chosen presumably for the sake of the paradox, was the French apothegm:
'Allons
Chez
Pluto plutôt plus tard.'
