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The peace once signed, General the Count of Narbonne went to Vienna, where he met two of his best friends, the Prince of Ligne, who had been one of the favorites of Marie Antoinette, and the Count of Lamarck, who had been a confidant of Mirabeau. One day when he was dining with them, and Prince Metternich and a few other intimate friends, the conversation turned to politics.
In view of the execrable tyranny, both political and religious, which Metternich succeeded in establishing for thirty years, it is natural for an ordinary person to look upon him as a monster, hard, cruel, unscrupulous, haughty, gloomy; a sort of Wallenstein or Strafford, to be held in abhorrence; a man to be assassinated as the enemy of mankind. But Metternich was nothing of the sort.
M. Metternich replied in a note, dated Frankfort, the 25th of November, stating that the Allies felt no difficulty in acceding to Napoleon's choice of Mannheim for the meeting of the Congress; but as M. de Bassano's letter contained no mention of the general and summary bases I have just mentioned, and which had been communicated to M. de St.
Is it surprising that on that same day the Ministers of the Powers decided to have no more negotiations with Napoleon, and that Metternich listened not unfavourably to the emissary of the Bourbons, the Count de Vitrolles, whom he had previously kept at arm's length?
To abandon this or that province is not the question; our political superiority and our existence depend on it. And he sends you! In what attitude does he wish to place me before the French people? He is strangely deluded if he thinks that a mutilated throne can offer an asylum to his daughter and grandson.... Ah, Metternich, how much has England given you to make you play this part against me?"
His picture of the Congress of Vienna is unsurpassed in historical literature. Like Saint-Simon, he can sum up a character in a few lines. German historians are seldom skilful portrait-painters. Treitschke forms an exception. His portraits of Talleyrand, of Metternich, of Tsar Alexander I., of Leopold I., King of the Belgians, are masterpieces of the literary craft.
For a different reason, Henry Ward Beecher put a time limit upon the volume, or volumes, which will tell us, among other things, all about one of the greatest scandals of modern times; and yet how few people now recall it or care anything about the dramatis personae and the actual facts! Metternich, next after Napoleon and Talleyrand, was an important figure in a stirring epoch.
He was now forty-four years of age, in the prime of his strength and the fulness of his fame, a prince of the empire, chancellor and prime minister to the Emperor Francis. On his shoulders were imposed the burdens of the State. He ruled with delegated powers indeed, but absolutely. The master whom he served was weak, but was completely in accord with Metternich on all political questions.
"That is the château of Johannisberg, belonging to Prince Metternich, formerly a celebrated prime minister of Austria. Those vineyards are the most noted in the world. The famous Johannisberger wine is made from these grapes. It sells here for five or six dollars a bottle, where ordinary kinds can be bought for twenty cents, and even less.
The King called to him, as he opened the door, "Don't forget the ecrevisses a la Bordelaise; I have been looking forward to them for a long time." We asked at what time the carriages should come back. He said: "Not before two o'clock. His Majesty never retires before." We were then shown into a salon, where the Princess Metternich and I were asked by the King to take off our hats.
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