A fête at Court.
There was a fête at Court, and with that commenced for me honours of which I was very unworthy. Jean Bart[79], to go to Versailles, put on a coat of cloth-of-gold lined with cloth-of-silver, which made him very uncomfortable. The Grand-duchess, now Empress of Russia, and the Duchess of Cumberland chose my arm in a polonaise: my worldly romances were beginning. The air of the march was a kind of medley, composed of various pieces, among which, to my great satisfaction, I recognised the song of King Dagobert[80]: that encouraged me and came to the rescue of my timidity. These fêtes were repeated; one of them in particular took place in the King's Great Palace. Not caring to undertake the description on my own account, I give it as chronicled in the Berlin Morgenblatt by the Baroness von Hohenhausen[81]:
Berlin, 22 March 1821 (Morgenblatt No. 70).
"One of the notable persons present at this entertainment was the Vicomte de Chateaubriand, the French Minister, and however great the splendour of the spectacle that unfolded before their eyes, the fair Berlinese still kept a glance for the author of Atala, that superb and melancholy novel, in which the most ardent love succumbs in the fight against religion. The death of Atala and Chactas' hour of happiness, during a storm in the ancient forests of America, depicted in Miltonian colours, will remain ever engraved in the memory of all the readers of the novel. M. de Chateaubriand wrote Atala in his youth, painfully tried by his exile from his country: hence the profound melancholy and the burning passion which breathe throughout the work. At present this consummate statesman has devoted his pen solely to politics. His last work, the Vie et la mort du duc de Berry, is written quite in the tone employed by the panegyrists of Louis XIV.
"M. de Chateaubriand is of a somewhat short, yet slender, stature. His oval countenance has an expression of reverence and melancholy. He has black hair and eyes: the latter glow with the fire of his mind, which is pronounced in his features."
But I have white hair: so forgive the Baroness von Hohenhausen for having sketched me in my good days, although already she grants me years. The portrait, besides, is very handsome; but I owe it to my sincerity to say that it is not like.
*
The house Unter den Linden was much too large for me, cold and dilapidated: I occupied only a small part of it. Among my colleagues, the ministers and ambassadors, the only one worthy of note was M. d'Alopeus[82]. I have since met his wife and daughter[83] in Rome with the Grand-duchess Helen[84]: if the latter had been in Berlin instead of the Grand-duchess Nicholas, her sister-in-law, I should have been better pleased.
M. d'Alopeus, my colleague, had a gentle mania for believing himself to be adored. He was persecuted by the passions which he inspired:
"Upon my word," he used to say, "I don't know what there is about me; wherever I go the women follow me. Madame d'Alopeus became obstinately attached to me."
He would have been an excellent Saint-Simonian. Private society has its own aspect, like public society: in the former, it is always attachments formed and broken off, family affairs, deaths, births, private sorrows and pleasures; the whole varied in appearance according to the centuries. In the other, it is always change of ministers, battles lost or won, negociations with Courts, kings who disappear, or kingdoms that fall.
Under Frederic II.[85] Elector of Brandenburg, surnamed "Iron-tooth"; under Joachim II.[86], poisoned by the Jew Lippold[87]; under John Sigismund[88], who added the Duchy of Prussia to his Electorate; under George William[89], "the Irresolute," who, losing his fortresses, allowed Gustavus Adolphus[90] to chat with the ladies of the Court and said, "What is to be done? They have guns;" under the Great Elector[91], who found nothing in his States but "heaps of ashes, which prevented the grass from growing[92]," who gave audience to the Ambassador of Tartary, "whose interpreter had a wooden nose and slit ears;" under his son, the first King of Prussia[93], who, startled out of his sleep by his wife, took the fever with fright and died of it: under all these reigns, the different Memoirs display only a repetition of the same adventures in private life.