"Fair Paradise would not have its complete charms, if thou wert not there," said a troubadour to his mistress absent through death.
Padua, 20 September 1833.
History has again come to strangle romance. I had hardly finished reading Zanze's defense at the Stella d'Oro, when M. de Saint-Priest entered my room, saying:
"Here's something new."
A letter from Her Royal Highness informed us that the Governor of the Lombardo-Venetian Kingdom had presented himself at the Catajo and announced to the Princess his inability to allow her to continue her journey. Madame desired my immediate departure.
At that moment, an aide-de-camp of the Governor's knocked at my door and asked me if it was convenient for me to receive his general. I replied by at once repairing to the apartments of His Excellency, who had alighted, like myself, at the Stella d'Oro.
The Austrian Governor.
The Governor was an excellent man:
"Imagine, monsieur le vicomte," he said, "that my orders against Madame la Duchesse de Berry were dated 28 August. Her Royal Highness had sent word to me that she had passports of a later date and a letter from my Emperor[234]. And see, on the 17th of this month of September, I receive an express in the middle of the night: a dispatch, dated the 15th, from Vienna, charges me to carry out my first orders of the 28th of August and not to allow Madame la Duchesse de Berry to advance beyond Udine or Trieste. See, my dear and illustrious viscount, what a misfortune for me! To arrest a Princess whom I admire and respect, if she refuses to comply with my Sovereign's wishes! For the Princess did not give me a good reception: she told me that she would do what she pleased. My dear viscount, if you could only prevail on Her Royal Highness to remain in Venice, or at Trieste, pending new instructions from my Court! I will endorse your passport for Prague; you can go there at once, without meeting with the slightest obstacle, and arrange all this; for certainly my Court has done nothing but yield to demands. I beg of you to do me this service."
I was touched by the noble officer's candour. On comparing the date of the 15th of September with that of my departure from Paris, on the 3rd of the same month, I was struck with an idea: my interview with Madame and the coincidence of Henry V.'s majority might have alarmed Philip's Government. A dispatch from M. le Duc de Broglie, handed in a note from M. le Comte de Sainte-Aulaire[235], had perhaps decided the Vienna chancery to renew the prohibition of the 28th of August. I may be making a false conjecture and the fact which I suspect may not have taken place; but two "men of quality," both peers of France of Louis XVIII.'s creation, both violators of their oaths, were, after all, quite worthy of being the instruments of so generous a policy against a woman, the mother of their lawful King. Need we be astonished if France to-day is more and more confirmed in the high opinion that she has of the people of the Court of former times?