II
VISIT TO PARIS
In the summer of 1855 Count Hatzfeldt, our ambassador in Paris, invited me to visit the Industrial Exhibition;[32] he still shared the belief then existent in diplomatic circles that I was very soon to be Manteuffel's successor at the Foreign Office. Although the King had entertained such an idea on and off, it was already then known in the innermost Court circles that a change had taken place. Count William Redern, whom I met in Paris, told me that the ambassadors continued to believe I was destined to be made a minister and that he himself had also believed this; but that the King had changed his mind—of further details he was ignorant. Doubtless since Rügen.
August 15, Napoleon's day, was celebrated among other ways by a procession of Russian prisoners through the streets. On the 19th the Queen of England made her entry, and on August 25 a State ball was given in her honor at Versailles at which I was presented to her and to Prince Albert.
The Prince, handsome and cool in his black uniform, conversed with me courteously, but in his manner there was a kind of malevolent curiosity from which I concluded that my anti-occidental influence upon the King was not unknown to him. In accordance with the mode of thought peculiar to him, he sought for the motives of my conduct not where they really lay, that is, in the anxiety to keep my country independent of foreign influences—influences which found a fertile soil in our narrow-minded reverence for England and fear of France—and in the desire to hold ourselves aloof from a war which we should not have carried on in our own interests but in dependence upon Austrian and English policy.
In the eyes of the Prince—though I of course did not gather this from the momentary impression made during my presentation, but from ulterior acquaintance with facts and documents—I was a reactionary party man who took up sides for Russia in order to further an Absolutist and "Junker" policy. It was not to be wondered at that this view of the Prince's and of the then partisans of the Duke of Coburg had descended to the Prince's daughter, who shortly after became our Crown Princess.
Even soon after her arrival in Germany, in February, 1858, I became convinced, through members of the royal house and from my own observations, that the Princess was prejudiced against me personally. The fact itself did not surprise me so much as the form in which her prejudice against me had been expressed in the narrow family circle—"she did not trust me." I was prepared for antipathy on account of my alleged anti-English feelings and by reason of my refusal to obey English influences; but from a conversation which I had with the Princess after the war of 1866 while sitting next to her at table I was obliged to conclude that she had subsequently allowed herself to be influenced in her judgment of my character by further-reaching calumnies. I was ambitious, she said, in a half-jesting tone, to be a king or at least president of a republic. I replied in the same semi-jocular tone that I was personally spoilt for a republican; that I had grown up in the royalist traditions of the family and had need of a monarchical institution for my earthly well-being: I thanked God, however, I was not destined to live like a king, constantly on show, but to be until death the king's faithful subject. I added that no guarantee could, however, be given that this conviction of mine would be universally inherited, and this not because royalists would give out, but because perhaps kings might. Pour faire un civet, il faut un lièvre, et pour faire une monarchie il faut un roi. I could not answer for it that for want of such the next generation might not be republican. I further remarked that in thus expressing myself I was not free from anxiety at the idea of a change in the occupancy of the throne without a transference of the monarchical traditions to the successor. But the Princess avoided every serious turn and kept up the jocular tone as amiable and entertaining as ever; she rather gave me the impression that she wished to tease a political opponent.
During the first years of my ministry I frequently remarked in the course of similar conversation that the Princess took pleasure in provoking my patriotic susceptibility by playful criticism of persons and matters.
At that ball at Versailles Queen Victoria spoke to me in German. She gave me the impression of beholding in me a noteworthy but unsympathetic personality, but still her tone of voice was without that touch of ironical superiority that I thought I detected in Prince Albert's. She continued to be amiable and courteous like one unwilling to treat an eccentric fellow in an unfriendly way.
In comparison with Berlin it seemed a curious arrangement to me that at supper the company ate in three classes, with gradations in the menu, and that such guests as were to sup at all were assured of this by having a ticket bearing a number handed to them as they entered. The tickets of the first class also bore the name of the lady presiding at the table to which they referred. These tables were arranged to accommodate fifteen or twenty. On entering I received one of these tickets for Countess Walewska's table and later on in the ball-room two more from two other lady patronesses of diplomacy and of the Court. No exact plan for placing the guests had therefore been made out. I chose the table of Countess Walewska, to whose department I belonged as a foreign diplomatist. On the way to the room in question I came across a Prussian officer in the uniform of an infantry regiment of the guard, accompanied by a French lady; he was engaged in an animated dispute with one of the imperial household stewards who would not allow either of them to pass, not being provided with tickets. After the officer, in answer to my inquiries, had explained the matter and indicated the lady as a duchess bearing an Italian title of the First Empire, I told the court official that I had the gentleman's ticket, and gave him one of mine. Now, however, the official would not allow the lady to pass and I therefore gave the officer my second ticket for his duchess. The official then said significantly to me: "Mais vous ne passerez pas sans carte." On my showing him the third, he made a face of astonishment and allowed all three of us to pass. I recommended my two protégés not to sit down at the tables indicated on the tickets, but to try and find seats elsewhere; nor did any complaints concerning my distribution of tickets ever come to my ears. The want of organization was so great that our table was not fully occupied, a fact due to the absence of any understanding among the dames patronesses. Old Prince Pückler had either received no ticket or had been unable to find his table; after he had turned to me, whom he knew by sight, he was invited by Countess Walewska to take one of the seats that had remained empty. The supper, in spite of the triple division, was neither materially nor as regards its preparation upon a level with what is done in Berlin at similar crowded festivities; the waiting only was efficient and prompt.