On the further side of the park was an old abandoned pheasantry: the Prussian princes do not go shooting. I crossed a little wooden bridge over a canal leading out of the Spree and found myself among the pine-wood columns which form the portico of the pheasantry. A fox, which reminded one of those in the mall at Combourg, came out of a hole contrived in the wall of the preserve, passed the time of day, and retreated into his coppice.
What is known as the Park, in Berlin, is a wood of oaks, birches, beeches, limes and alders. It lies outside the Charlottenburg Gate, and is crossed by the high-road leading to that royal residence. To the right of the Park is an exercise-ground; to the left are booths.
Inside the Park, which was not at that time intersected with regular walks, one saw meadows, uncultivated spots, and beech-wood benches, on which Young Germany not long ago had carved hearts pierced by daggers: under these stabbed hearts one read the name of "Sand[128]." Flights of crows, taking up their dwelling in the trees at the approach of spring, were beginning to chatter. Living nature was reviving before vegetable nature, and quite black frogs were being gobbled up by ducks in the ponds which here and there had thawed: those were the nightingales which "opened the spring-time in the woods" of Berlin. However, the Park was not without pretty animals: squirrels scrambled along the branches or darted along the ground, sporting their tails as a flag. When I came near the merry-making, the actors climbed the trunks of the oaks, stopped in a fork, and snarled at me as I passed below. Few strollers frequented the forest, the uneven soil of which was lined and cut by canals. Sometimes I would meet a gouty old officer who, quite warm and lively, would say to me, speaking of the pale ray of the sun under which I was shivering with cold:
"That's scorching!"
From time to time, I came across the Duke of Cumberland, on horseback and almost blind, pulling up in front of an alder-tree, against which he had ridden and knocked his nose. Some six-horsed carriages would pass: in them were the Austrian Ambassadress or the Princess von Radziwill and her daughter, fifteen years of age, charming as one of those clouds with maidens' faces that surround Ossian's moon. The Duchess of Cumberland nearly always took the same walk as myself: at one time, she was returning from a cottage where she had been relieving a poor woman of Spandau; at another, she stopped and graciously told me that she had wanted to meet me: an amiable daughter of the thrones alighting from her car, like the Goddess of Night, to roam in the forest! I also saw her in her own house: she would repeat that she wished to entrust me with her son, that little "George[129]," since grown into the Prince whom his cousin Victoria[130] would, they say, have liked to place by her side on the throne of England.
The Duchess of Cumberland.
The Princess Frederica has since dragged out her days on the banks of the Thames, in those gardens at Kew which formerly saw me wander between my two acolytes, illusion and poverty. After my departure from Berlin, she honoured me with a correspondence; in it she describes, from hour to hour, the life of an inhabitant of those heaths where Voltaire passed, where Frederic died, where that Mirabeau hid himself who was to commence the Revolution of which I was the victim. One's attention is captivated on seeing the links by which so many men are connected who have never seen each other.
Here are some extracts from the correspondence opened with me by H.R.H. the Duchess of Cumberland:
"19 April[131], Thursday.
"This morning, on waking, I was handed the last evidence of your remembrance; later, I passed before your house. I saw the windows open as usual, everything was in the same place, except yourself! I cannot tell you what this made me feel! I now no longer know where to find you; each moment carries you farther away; the only fixed point is the 26th, the day on which you count on arriving, and the memory which I retain of you.
"God grant that you may find everything changed for the better, both for yourself and for the general good! Accustomed as I am to sacrifices, I shall know also how to bear that of not seeing you again, if it is for your happiness and that of France."
"22.
"Since Thursday, I have passed in front of your house every day on my way to church; I prayed hard for you there. Your windows are constantly open, that touches me: who pays you that attention to follow your tastes and instructions, in spite of your absence? It occurs to me sometimes that you have not gone away; that business detains you, or that you want to keep off intruders, so as to finish it at your ease. Do not believe that that would mean a reproach: it is the only way; but, if that be so, pray tell me, in confidence."
"23.
"It is so prodigiously warm to-day, even in church, that I cannot take my walk at the usual time: that is all the same to me now. The dear little wood has no charm left for me, everybody bores me there! This sudden change from cold to heat is common in the North; the inhabitants, with their moderation of character and sentiments, do not resemble the climate."
"24.
"Nature has grown much more beautiful; all the leaves have come out since your departure: I should have liked them to come two days earlier, so that you might have carried away in your memory a more smiling picture of your stay here."
"Berlin, 12 May 1821.
"Thank God, here is a letter from you at last! I knew quite well that you could not write to me earlier; but in spite of the calculations which my reason made for me, three weeks, or rather twenty-three days, are very long for friendship in privation, and to remain without news is like the saddest exile: still, memory and hope remained to me."
"15 May.
"It is not from my stirrup, like the Grand Turk, but still from my bed that I write to you; but this retreat has given me all the time to reflect on the new dietary which you propose to make Henry V. observe. I like it much; the roast lion can only do him great good; only I advise you to make him begin with the heart. You will have to make your other pupil[132] eat lamb, lest he should play the deuce too much. It is absolutely necessary that this plan of education should be realized and that George and Henry V. should become good friends and good allies."