We went back to our seats in the drawing-room. The Dauphiness read the letter which was addressed to her. Madame la Duchesse de Berry thanked her sister for the concern she had shown in her misfortune, recommended her children to her, and specially placed her son under the guardianship of his aunt's virtues. The letter to the children consisted of a few loving words. The Duchesse de Berry invited Henry to make himself worthy of France.
Madame la Dauphine said to me:
"My sister does me justice, I have been very much concerned at her troubles. She must have suffered much, suffered much. You must tell her that I will look after M. le Duc de Bordeaux. I am very fond of him. How did you find him? His health is good, is it not? He is strong, although a little nervous."
I spent two hours in private conversation with Madame, an honour rarely granted: she seemed satisfied. Having never known anything about me except from hostile reports, she no doubt believed me to be a violent man, puffed up with my own merits; she was pleased with me for having a human aspect and being a good fellow. She said to me, cordially:
"I am going out walking: I am keeping to the regimen of the waters; we shall dine at three: you must come, if you do not want to go to bed. I want to see you, so long as it does not tire you."
I do not know to what I owed my success; but certainly the ice was broken, the prejudice wiped out; that glance which had been fixed, in the Temple, on the eyes of Louis XVI. and Marie-Antoinette, had rested kindly upon a poor servant. At the same time, though I had succeeded in putting the Dauphiness at her ease, I felt myself exceedingly constrained: the fear of passing a certain level took from me that faculty for every-day intercourse which I had with Charles X. Whether it was that I did not possess the secret of drawing what was sublime from the soul of Madame; whether it was that my feeling of respect closed the road to the intercommunication of thought, I felt a distressing sterility which came from within myself.
At three o'clock, I was back at Madame la Dauphine's. I there met Madame la Comtesse Esterhazy and her daughter, Madame d'Agoult, Messieurs O'Heguerty the Younger and de Trogoff, who had the honour of dining with the Princess. Countess Esterhazy, once a beautiful woman, is still good-looking: she had been intimate with M. le Duc de Blacas in Rome. They say that she meddles in politics and tells M. le Prince de Metternich all that she hears. When, on leaving the Temple, Madame was sent to Vienna, she met Countess Esterhazy, who became her companion. I noticed that she listened attentively to what I said; she had the simplicity, the next morning, to tell me that she had spent the night in writing. She was preparing to leave for Prague; a secret interview was arranged at a spot agreed upon with M. de Blacas; from there she was going to Vienna. Old attachments made young again by espionage! What a business and what pleasures! Mademoiselle Esterhazy is not pretty: she looks witty and mischievous.
The Vicomtesse d'Agoult, a devotee to-day, is an important person of the class which one finds in all princesses' closets. She has pushed on her family as much as she could, by applying to everybody, especially to myself: I have had the satisfaction of placing her nephews; she had as many as the late Arch-chancellor Cambacérès.
I dine with the Dauphiness.
The dinner was so bad and so scanty that I rose dying of hunger; it was served in Madame la Dauphine's own drawing-room, for she had no dining-room. After the meal, the table was cleared; Madame went back to sit on the sofa, took up her work again and we formed a circle round. Trogoff told stories; Madame likes them. She interests herself particularly in women. The Duchesse de Guiche was mentioned: