The Prince soon grew tired of Wertheim. Apart from other reasons, of which perhaps we may learn something hereafter, he felt lost without the accustomed entourage which he had attracted to Joyeuse. The death of Mark had made a profound impression upon his delicately strung temperament. It disturbed the lofty serenity of his life, it shocked his taste, it was bad art. That such a thing could have happened to him in the very citadel and arcanum of his carefully designed existence—and should have happened, too, as the result of his own individual purpose and action—arrested him as with an archangel's sword; showed him forcibly that his delicately woven mail was deficient in some important, but as yet unperceived, point; that his fancifully conceived prince-life was liable to sudden catastrophe. He had lived delicately, but the bitterness of death was not passed. He left Wertheim, and, travelling with his children and servants in several carriages and chaises de poste, he journeyed to Vienna, whither the Princess had preceded him.
The Prince travelled alone in a carrosse-coupé, or travelling chaise, at the head of his party. The Barotin and the children followed him in the second carriage, which was full of toys for their entertainment; now and again one or the other would be promoted for a stage or two to their father's carriage, to remain there as long as they entertained him. After a time they entered upon the flat plains of the Danube and approached Vienna.
As they crossed the flat waste of water meadows, over the long bridges of boats, and through the rows of poplars, a drive usually so dreary to travellers to Vienna, the sun broke out gloriously and the afternoon became very fine. For many miles before him, over the monotonous waste, the great tower of St. Stephen's Church had confronted the Prince, crowned with its gigantic eagle and surrounded by wheeling flocks of birds—cranes and ravens and daws. Herons and storks rose now and again from the ditches and pools by the wayside and flitted across the road. The brilliant light shone upon the mists of the river and upon the distant crags and woods.
The Prince was alone; the children were tired and restless from the long journey, and were sent back to the long-suffering Barotin. He lay back upon the rich furs which filled the carriage, and kept his eyes listlessly fixed upon the distant tower. The descending sun lighted up the weather-stains and the vari-coloured mosses that covered its sides; a rainbow, thrown across the black clouds of the north and east, spanned the heavens with a lofty arch.
The Prince gazed wearily over the striking scene. Existence appeared to him, at the moment, extremely complicated.
"It was a terrible mistake," he said, his thoughts still running on the old disaster; "a terrible mistake! Yet they cannot be right—Isoline and the people with her—who talk of nothing but sacrifice and self-denial, and denounce everything by which life is not only made endurable, but by which, indeed, it is actually maintained in being. What would life be if every one were as they? 'Ah!' she says, 'there is little chance of that! So few think of aught save self! So few deny themselves for the sake of others, you need not grudge us few our self-chosen path.' That is where they make the fatal mistake. Each man should carve out his life, as a whole, as though the lives of all were perfect, not as if it were a broken fragment of a fine statue; each should be a perfect Apollo of the Belvedere Gardens, not a mere torso; not a strong arm only that can strike, not a finger only that can beckon—even though it be to God. Because all cannot enjoy them, does that make assorted colour, and sweet sound, and delicate pottery less perfect, less worthy to be sought? He should aim at the complete life—should love, and feel, and enjoy."
The great tower rose higher and higher above the Prince as he thought these last words aloud; the screaming kites and daws wheeled above his head; the great eagle loomed larger and larger in the evening light. They passed over the wide glacis, threaded the drawbridges and barriers, and entered the tortuous narrow streets. A golden haze lighted the crowded thoroughfares and beautified the carving and gables of the lofty houses. A motley crowd of people, from east and west alike, in strange variety of costume, thronged the causeways, and hardly escaped the carriage-wheels in their reckless course. The sight roused the Prince from his melancholy, and he gazed with an amused and even delighted air from his carriage-windows. His nature, pleasure-loving and imaginative, found this moving life a source of never-tiring interest and suggestiveness. The fate, the interests, the aims, and sorrows of every human figure that passed across his vision, even for a second, formed itself in some infinitely slight, yet perfectly real and tangible, degree in his mind; and he conceived the stir and tremor of a great city's life with a perfect grasp of all the little details that make up the dramatic, the graphic whole.
The carriage swept through the Place St. Michael, past the Imperial Palace, and, pursuing its course through the winding streets to the imminent peril of the populace of Croats, Servians, Germans, and a mixed people of no nation under heaven, reached the Hôtel which had been selected for the Prince in the Tein quarter.
Though this quiet quarter is in close neighbourhood to the most busy and noisy parts of the city, the contrast was striking. The Prince saw nothing here but quaint palaces crowded together within a space of a few hundred yards. Here were the palaces of the Lichtensteins, the Festetics, the Esterhazys, the Schönbornes. Antique escutcheons were hanging before the houses, and strange devices of the golden fleece, and other crests and bearings were erected on the gables and roofs. Vienna was emphatically the city of heraldry, and a tendency towards Oriental taste in noble and burgher produced a fantastic architecture of gables and minarets, breaking the massive lines of fortress-like mediæval palace and hôtel. Here and there a carriage was standing in the quiet street, and servants in gaudy liveries stood in the sunshine about the steps and gates.
The next morning the Prince was seated at his toilette, in the hands of his dresser, who was frizzling and powdering his hair. By his side was standing his valet or body-servant, as he would be called in England—Chasseur or Jager, as he was called in North or South Germany. This man was one of the most competent of his order, and devoted to his master.