Vienna.—It must be a fine city that impresses one with its splendour before breakfast, after driving all night in a mail-coach. It was six o’clock in the morning when I left the post-office, in Vienna, to walk to a hotel. The shops were still shut, the milkwomen were beating at the gates, and the short, quick ring upon the church bells summoned all early risers to mass. A sudden turn brought me upon a square. In its centre stood the most beautiful fabric that has ever yet filled my eye. It looked like the structure of a giant, encrusted with fairies—a majestically proportioned mass, and a spire tapering to the clouds, but a surface so curiously beautiful, so traced and fretted, so full of exquisite ornament, that it seemed rather some curious cabinet gem, seen through a magnifier, than a building in the open air. In these foreign countries, the labourer goes in with his load to pray, and I did not hesitate to enter the splendid Church of St. Etienne, though a man followed me with a portmanteau on his back. What a wilderness of arches! Pulpits, chapels, altars, ciboriums, confessionals, choirs, all in the exquisite slenderness of Gothic tracery, and all of one venerable and time-worn dye, as if the incense of a myriad censers had steeped them in their spicy odours. The mass was chanting, and hundreds were on their knees about me, and not one without some trace that he had come in on his way to his daily toil. It was the hour of the poor man’s prayer. The rich were asleep in their beds. The glorious roof over their heads, the costly and elaborated pillars against which they pressed their foreheads, the music and the priestly service, were, for that hour, theirs alone.
I seldom have felt the spirit of a place of worship so strong upon me.
The foundations of St. Etienne were laid seven hundred years ago. It has twice been partly burnt, and has been embellished in succession by nearly all the emperors of Germany. Among its many costly tombs, the most interesting is that of the hero Eugene of Savoy, erected by his niece, the Princess Therese, of Liechtenstein. There is also a vault in which it is said, in compliance with an old custom, the entrails of all the emperors are deposited.
Having marked thus much upon my tablets, I remembered the patient porter of my baggage, who had taken the opportunity to drop on his knees while I was gazing about, and having achieved his matins, was now waiting submissively till I was ready to proceed. A turn or two brought us to the hotel, where a bath and a breakfast soon restored me, and in an hour I was again on the way with a valet de place, to visit the tomb of the son of Napoleon.
He lies in the deep vaults of the capuchin convent, with eighty-four of the imperial family of Austria beside him. A monk answered our pull at the cloister-bell, and the valet translated my request into German. He opened the gate with a guttural “Yaw!” and lighting a wax candle at a lamp burning before the image of the Virgin, unlocked a massive brazen door at the end of the corridor, and led the way into the vault. The capuchin was as pale as marble, quite bald, though young, and with features which expressed, I thought, the subdued fierceness of a devil. He impatiently waved away the officious interpreter after a moment or two, and asked me if I understood Latin. Nothing could have been more striking than the whole scene. The immense bronze sarcophagi lay in long aisles behind railings and gates of iron, and as the long-robed monk strode on with his lamp through the darkness, pronouncing the name and title of each as he unlocked the door and struck it with his heavy key, he seemed to me, with his solemn pronunciation, like some mysterious being calling forth the imperial tenants to judgment. He appeared to have something of scorn in his manner as he looked on the splendid workmanship of the vast coffin, and pronounced the sounding titles of the ashes within. At that of the celebrated Empress Maria Theresa alone, he stopped to make a comment. It was a simple tribute to her virtues, and he uttered it slowly, as if he were merely musing to himself. He passed on to her husband, Francis the First, and then proceeded uninterruptedly till he came to a new copper coffin. It lay in a niche, beneath a tall, dim window, and the monk, merely pointing to the inscription, set down his lamp, and began to pace up and down the damp floor, with his head on his breast, as if it was a matter of course that here I was to be left awhile to my thoughts.
It was certainly the spot, if there is one in the world, to feel emotion. In the narrow enclosure on which my finger rested, lay the last hopes of Napoleon. The heart of the master-spirit of the world was bound up in these ashes. He was beautiful, accomplished, generous, brave. He was loved with a sort of idolatry by the nation with which he had passed his childhood. He had won all hearts. His death seemed impossible. There was a universal prayer that he might live, his inheritance of glory was so incalculable.
I read his epitaph. It was that of a private individual. It gave his name, and his father’s and mother’s; and then enumerated his virtues, with a commonplace regret for his early death. The monk took up his lamp and reascended to the cloister in silence. He shut the convent-door behind me, and the busy street seemed to me profane. How short a time does the most moving event interrupt the common current of life.