We even had our emissaries in foreign countries, who were to endeavour to get admittance to the houses of the great, of the foreign ministers, and the rich merchants, with a view of exciting dissention between the rulers of those respective countries and their subjects, between parents and children, and between the most intimate friends. They were to form cabals, invent calumnies, rouse hatred and suspicion against any thing that did not agree with our plan, and to persecute our antagonists with poison and dagger. Religion itself was not to be spared when our welfare required it so. They were to seize every opportunity to interfere with politics, to excite commotions, to preach rebellion, and through bribery to work up the people to revolt.
By means of this extended connexion, my power became so immense; by this I carried every thing. It was this that made the world wonder how, with her withered charms, the Countess of Lichtenau could manage to lead the K—g which way she chose. The end sanctifies the means, said my great tutor, Machiavel, and Mousons would analyze this doctrine with me in its most minute details. He likewise was the man who initiated me into the mysteries of the God and the Goddess of Love, and let me into such secrets as no man before him had yet opened to my eyes. Oh! this Mousons was a great genius! and his gallantry was the true gallantry of a Frenchman.
I succeeded in persuading the K—g that the use of the waters of Pyrmont would prove highly beneficial to his health.
Mousons wrote to Hamburgh for a set of French players; every kind of amusement imaginable was thought of to entertain the monarch. He suffered, indeed, inexpressibly from a pectoral dropsy. Pyrmont was converted into paradise upon earth; we had balls, operas, fire-works, cassinos, suppers, dinners, breakfasts, horse-races. All turned round the K—g in a perpetual circle of diversion, and the fair sex particularly strove to attract the eye of the illustrious guest.
I there, likewise, had a little adventure, which particularly concerned myself. The Prince of W——, the proprietor of Pyrmont, fell deeply in love with me, and made me a formal proposal of marriage. I had resolved to exchange the title of a Countess for that of a Princess, and things had gone so far that I had even obtained the K—g’s permission for the purpose. But some minister, who, at an ominous hour, dissuaded him from the purchase of Pyrmont, threw such obstacles in my way, as entirely blasted this glorious marriage. I would have been revenged of him, had not the sudden weakness of the K—g hastened our departure for Potsdam.
I left Pyrmont with a heavy heart, and with a still heavier heart I arrived, in the K—g’s company, at the Marble-palace, at Potsdam. Oh! could I have the least notion that this journey was to put an end to all my glory? Was it possible for me to have the remotest shadow of a dream, that the powerful, the adored, the immortalized, the dreaded, Countess of Lichtenau, like an abject criminal, should be kept in close confinement, in the very same palace where, sovereign like, she dictated laws to a mighty monarch, and a mighty people, that had so often groaned under the weight of her oppressive despotism? Could I have thought to see myself some time scoffed at, derided, and despised, by enemies, who rejoiced at my downfall, and to whom the clank of my chains is the harmony of music? To see myself the object of satire and abuse in all the newspapers, pamphlets, ballads, and other vile publications, in which my fame, my rank, and title, are traduced with unparallelled licentiousness? Could I have thought that my divine, my dearest-beloved Mousons, he, the prototype and mirror of the virtues of all the French emigrants, loaded with irons, should be dragged a prisoner to the fortress of Magdeburg? Alas! my journey to Pyrmont proved the tomb of my glory; the divine music which I heard in that enchanting scene of dissipation was converted into a mournful dirge to attend my bier. Those whom I have oppressed and wantonly tormented now rise against me, and loudly proclaim their own wrongs, and the infamy of the prostitute that squandered away the little product of their hard money, and carried millions into foreign countries. The sound of their cries strikes my ear with double horror, for, alas! it is the voice of truth!
Until the K—g’s death, I never dreamed things would go so far with me; hence I kept up my usual mode of living, and, together with my associates, had nothing else in view but to amuse the Monarch. He was frequently subject to a temporary absence of mind, and experienced, besides, the most unpleasant symptoms of body. To assuage the one and the other, I used to administer to him corroborating draughts and narcotic powders. Alas! I did not know that I was busily employed in laying the speedy foundation of my own ruin, for these very medicines tended to enfeeble his constitution, and, instead of restoring health, had the contrary effect, which was daily visible. The vivacity of Mousons, the gambols of my dancing nymphs and sportive Naïades were called into assistance to dissipate the clouds that settled on the Sovereign’s brow, to do which myself I had the power no more.
As the K—g had been ordered to take much exercise, I used to accompany him in a small triumphal car, in which he took frequent airings in the gardens of the Marble-palace. The access to his person had been strictly forbidden, and I had the sole and uninterrupted enjoyment of his presence. At that time I dispatched Mousons to Hamburgh with some secret papers, which I had found in the red pocket-book, with directions to communicate them to Lord ——, who was then at that place. These papers consisted of the secret articles of the peace which had been concluded with France; they answered my purpose exceedingly well, and I was paid for them with a good round sum of E——h g——. Cursed pocket-book! thou art the cause of my misfortune; I have to thank thee for my confinement. Hadst thou not been discovered in my possession, what could the new K—g have urged against the Countess of Lichtenau? Perhaps my being the K—g’s mistress. Who had a right to interfere with that? Who dared to find fault with that? Had not the Rev. Dr. H——, one of the ecclesiastical board, a few years ago, openly declared, that the country ought to vote thanks to the Countess of Lichtenau for promoting the purity of the Christian religion? But I am guilty of a crime against the state; I am guilty of high treason; there lies the rub; there the cause of my anxiety, and my fear of imprisonment for life. Hence the remorse that preys on my mind day and night, and which deprives me of sleep and rest in the gloomy walls of my prison.
By the joint advice of Mousons and Rietz, I gave the K—g a fête, the gaiety of which was to surpass every thing. The spot pitched upon for this purpose was one of those gardens at Potsdam which we called the English gardens, and in which the beauties and the deformities of nature are all collected and contrasted with each other on a few acres of land. This spot was kept under lock and key by one of the trusty guards of the association. My Naïades, Cupids, Sylphs, and Nymphs, scarcely veiled with transparent gauze, opened this divertisement, and the first beauties were selected to heighten the glowing scene. After the pantomime commenced a ball.
A ball, it is well known, is a great promoter of voluptuousness. One couple after the other disappeared; whole groups were seen scattered about in the most lascivious attitudes; here a Dido in the embraces of an Æneas; there a Cleopatra, lost in an ocean of delight with her tender Antony. Little Cupids, in half-lighted grottos, by the twinkling ray of an expiring torch, prepared the hymeneal feast, in which the God of Love, the hero of the piece, exerted his talents in the most enamoured manner.