[MAGA. July 1832.]
“
What is the day’s news? Tell me something, my dear Colonel, for I am dying of ennui,” said the showy Prince Charles of Buntzlau, one of the handsomest men about the court, and incomparably the greatest coxcomb.
“Not much more than yesterday,” was the answer of Colonel the Baron von Herbert. “The world goes on pretty much the same as ever. We have an Emperor, five Electors, and fifty sovereign princes, in Presburg; men eat, drink, and sleep notwithstanding; and, until there is some change in these points, one day will not differ much from another to the end of the world.”
“My dear Colonel,” said the Prince, smoothing down the blackest and longest pair of mustaches in the imperial cuirassiers, “you seem to think little of us, the blood, the couronnés, the salt of the earth, who preserve Germany from being as vulgar as Holland. But I forget; you have a partiality for the gens du peuple.”
“Pardon me, Prince,” said Herbert, with a smile, “I pity them infinitely, and wish that they might exchange with the Landgraves and Margraves, with all my heart. I have no doubt that the change would often be advantageous to both, for I have seen many a prince of the empire who would make a capital ploughman, while he made but a very clumsy prince; and I have, at this moment, three prodigiously high personages commanding three troops in my regiment, whom nature palpably intended to clean their own horses’ heels, and who, I charitably believe, might, by dint of drilling and half-a-dozen years’ practice, make three decent dragoons.”
“Just as you please, Colonel,” said the Prince, “but beware of letting your private opinion go forth. Leopold is one of the new light, I allow, and loves a philosopher; but he is an Emperor still, and expects all his philosophers to be of his own opinion.—But here comes Collini.”
Collini was his Italian valet, who came to inform his Highness, that it was time for him to pay his respects to the Princess of Marosin. This Italian’s principal office was, to serve his master in place of a memory—to recognise his acquaintance for him as he drove through the streets—and to tell him when to see and when to be blind. The Prince looked at his diamond watch, started from the sofa, gave himself a congratulatory glance in a mirror, and, turning to Collini, asked, “When am I to be married to the Princess?”
“Poh, Prince,” interrupted the Colonel, with something of disdain, “this is too absurd. Send this grimacing fellow about his business, and make love on your own account, if you will; or if not, choose some woman whose beauty and virtue, or whose want of them both, will not be dishonoured by such trifling.”
“You then actually think her worth the attentions of a Prince of the Empire?” said the handsome coxcomb, as, with one finger curling his mustaches, he again, and more deliberately, surveyed himself in the mirror.