On Monday the 27th, in the morning, the "Opposition" came to tell me that I could not see the young Prince: M. de Damas had tired his pupil by dragging him from church to church to the Stations of the Jubilee. This weariness served as a pretext for a holiday and was made to justify a trip to the country: they wanted to hide the child from me. I spent the morning in visiting the town. At five o'clock, I went to dine at Count Chotek's.
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The house belonging to Count Chotek was built by his father[595], who was also Grand Burgrave of Bohemia, and presents externally the form of a Gothic chapel: nothing is original nowadays, everything is copied. The drawing-room gives a view over the gardens; they slope down into a valley: the light is always dull, the soil greyish, as in those many-cornered recesses of the mountains of the North, where gaunt nature wears the hair-shirt.
The table was laid under the trees in the "pleasure-ground[596]." We dined without our hats: my head, which so many storms have insulted by carrying off my hair, was sensitive to the breath of the wind. While I strove to keep my mind on my dinner, I could not help watching the birds and clouds that flew over the banquet: passengers embarked on the breezes and having secret relations with my destinies; travellers, the objects of my envy, whose aerial course my eyes cannot follow without a sort of emotion. I was more at home with those parasites wandering in the sky than with the guests seated near me on the earth: happy those anchorites who had a raven for dapifer!
I cannot speak to you of Prague society, because I met it only at that dinner. There was a woman present who was very much in the fashion in Vienna and very witty, I was told; she seemed to me an acrimonious and foolish person, although she still had a certain youthfulness, like those trees which keep in summer the dried clusters of the flower which they have borne in spring.
Society in Prague.
I know, therefore, of the manners of this country only those of the sixteenth century, as told by Bassompierre[597]: he loved Anna Esther, eighteen years of age and six months a widow. He spent five days and six nights in disguise and hidden in a room with his mistress. He played tennis in Hradschin with Wallenstein. Being neither Wallenstein nor Bassompierre, I laid claim to neither empire nor love. The modern Esthers ask for Assueruses who are able, disguised though they be, to get rid of their dominoes at night: one does not lay aside the mask of the years.
Prague, 27 May 1833.
After the dinner was over, at seven o'clock, I waited on the King; I there met the same persons as before, excepting M. le Duc de Bordeaux, who was said to be ailing from his Stations on the Sunday. The King was half reclining on a sofa, and Mademoiselle sitting on a chair right up against the knees of Charles X., who was stroking his grand-daughter's arm and telling her stories. The young Princess listened attentively: when I appeared, she looked at me with the smile of a reasonable person who should say:
"I must do something to amuse my grand-papa."