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This trait seemed wholly worthy of an age whose love of utility is such that the Prince Puckler Muskau suggests the probability of men coming to put the bodies of their dead parents in the fields to fertilize them, and of a country such as Dickens has described; but these will not, I hope, be seen on the historic page to be truly the age or truly the America.
The project of a journey to America having been abandoned, the prince now determined to spend the winter in Algiers, leaving Lucie in charge at Muskau. This modest programme enlarged itself into a tour in the East, which lasted for more than five years.
But the severity of a European winter proved fatal to poor Machbuba, consumption laid its grip upon her, and it was as a dying girl that at last she was taken to the Baths of Muskau. Lucie received this once-dreaded rival kindly, but at once carried off the prince for a visit to Berlin, and in the absence of the master whom she worshipped with a spaniel-like devotion, Machbuba breathed her last.
In 1863 he paid a visit incognito to Muskau, the first since he had left it eighteen years before, though Branitz was but a few leagues away. He was recognised at once, and great was the joy in the little town over the return of its old ruler, who was honoured with illuminations, the discharge of cannon, and torchlight processions.
Muskau having become much too hot to hold him, he spent the next years in travelling about the Continent, always in pecuniary difficulties, and seldom free from some sentimental entanglement. In 1810 Graf Pueckler died, and his son stepped into a splendid inheritance.
As soon as the trifling formality of a divorce from Count Pappenheim had been gone through, the marriage took place at Muskau, to the accompaniment of the most splendid festivities. As may be supposed, the early married life of the ill-assorted couple was a period of anything but unbroken calm.
He was now eager for a love-match with the fair Henriette, whose attractions had rendered him temporarily forgetful of those of Muskau. But Mademoiselle Sontag, though carried away by the passionate wooing of the prince, actually remembered that she had other ties, probably her engagement to Rossi, to which it was her duty to remain true.
But Lucie obstinately refused to receive Machbuba at Muskau, and declared that the prince's reputation would be destroyed for ever, if he brought a favourite slave under the same roof as his 'wife, and thus sinned against the laws of outward seemliness.
Pueckler generously admired the splendour that he had had so large a share in creating, and then went contentedly back to his kleine Branitz, his only regret being that he could not live to see it, like Muskau, in the fulness of its matured beauty.
At this time he went a good deal into literary society, and became intimate with several women-writers, among them the Graefin Hahn-Hahn, Rahel, and that amazing lady, Bettine von Arnim. With the last-named he struck up an intellectual friendship which roused the jealousy of Lucie, and was finally wrecked by Bettine's attempts to obtain a spiritual empire over the lord of Muskau.
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