Prague, 27 May 1833.
I had intended to hear Mass at the Cathedral, within the castle precincts, but, being detained by visitors, I had time only to go to what was formerly the Jesuit Church. They were singing to an organ accompaniment A woman near me had a voice which made me look round at her. At the communion, she covered her face with her two hands and did not approach the Holy Table.
Alas, I have already explored many churches in the four quarters of the globe, without being able to lay aside, even at the Tomb of the Saviour, the rough hair-cloth of my thoughts! I have depicted Aben-Hamet wandering in the Christian mosque at Cordova:
"He caught a glimpse, at the foot of a pillar, of a motionless figure which he took, at first sight, for a statue on a tomb-stone."
The original of that knight of whom Aben-Hamet caught sight was a religious whom I had met in the church of the Escorial and whom I had envied his faith. Who knows, however, the storms deep down in that contemplative soul or what entreaty ascended towards the "holy and innocent pontiff?" I had been admiring, in the unfrequented sacristy of the Escorial, one of Murillo's most beautiful Virgins; I was with a woman: it was she who first showed me the monk deaf to the sound of the passions that passed through the formidable silence of the sanctuary around him.
After Mass in Prague, I sent for a calash; I took the road laid out along the old fortifications by which carriages drive up to the Castle. They were busy marking out gardens on the ramparts: the euphony of a forest will take the place here of the noise of the Battle of Prague[592]; the whole will be very handsome in forty years or so: God grant that Henry V. may not stay here long enough to enjoy the shade of a leaf as yet unborn[593]!
Having to dine at the Governor's to-morrow, I thought that it would be polite to go to call on Madame la Comtesse de Chotek: I should have thought her amiable and pretty, even if she had not quoted passages from writings to me from memory.
General Skrzynecki.
I went to Madame de Guiche's evening, where I met General Skrzynecki[594] and his wife. He told me the story of the Polish Insurrection and the Battle of Ostrolenka. When I rose to go, the general asked me to permit him to press my "venerable hand" and to embrace the "patriarch of the liberty of the press;" his wife wished to embrace in me the author of the Génie du Christianisme: the Monarchy accepted with all its heart the fraternal kiss of the Republic. I felt an honest man's satisfaction: I was glad to rouse noble sympathies, on different scores, in two foreign hearts; to be pressed, in turn, to the breast of husband and wife, through liberty and religion.