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Updated: June 13, 2025
Count Saxe was besieged with persons wishing to go to Courland with him, chiefly gentlemen out at elbows who had nothing to lose; men of a doubtful past, men who had failed at everything else and thought themselves fitted to conquer a kingdom.
We were in Mitau from June, 1726, when those rascally Courlanders pretended they meant to make Count Saxe Duke of Courland, until August, 1727, when we made our way out of the place only twenty of us; and not without trouble, either, of which I shall speak presently. To this rag of a remnant of twenty was Count Saxe's following reduced.
The secretary stole away in a fishing-boat with a few crowns in his pocket, and reached the court of Courland with a letter of introduction from Goertz, explaining his secretary's adventures and his craze for paper. The Duke of Courland was a spendthrift; he had a steward and a pretty wife three several causes of ruin. He placed the charming young stranger with his steward.
Petersburg, a newspaper of the highest standard, stated that at the end of July, 1871, a Jewish woman residing in Courland gave birth to 4 girls, and again, in May, 1872, bore 2 boys and a girl; the mother and the 7 children, born within a period of ten months, were doing well at the time of the report.
I was at Ulm when a courier of the Duke of Wurtemburg's passed through the town with the news that his highness would arrive from Venice in the course of five or six days. This courier had a letter for me. It had been entrusted to him by Prince Charles of Courland, who had told the courier that he would find me at the "Hotel du Raisin," in Augsburg.
Francezka was not awaiting the bishop at the top of the terrace, which seemed to annoy him. He forgot that he had arrived some hours in advance of the time. Count Saxe, however, was strolling about enjoying the fragrance of the morning. The bishop had not seen him since our return from Courland, and, by some accident, had never been enlightened as to his real name and rank.
Four crowned heads looked on at the game, and an Imperial princess, when I turned up the ace of hearts and made Paroli, burst into tears. No man on the European Continent held a higher position than Redmond Barry then; and when the Duke of Courland lost, he was pleased to say that we had won nobly; and so we had, and spent nobly what we won.
So, I am in control of my niece, very much as you, Count Saxe, are Duke of Courland: we both have the papers that is, if Babache still has your rescript under his shirt, but neither one of us could precisely enforce our authority." This was the only gibe Madame Riano threw at us during the whole journey. Often, when Mademoiselle Capello rode, she called me to her side.
"I am considering," said Monsieur Voltaire, with a wicked grin, "of making a new comedy something on the order of a roaring farce. Count Saxe's expedition to Courland will make excellent material. First act: Count Saxe going forth with Captain Babache and three hundred Uhlans, to conquer the universe.
Moreover, the circumstance that the two old aunts, with still more extraordinary gowns and be-ribboned head-dresses than I had yet seen them wear, were sweeping along one on each side of her and cackling their welcomes in French, whilst the Baroness was looking about her in a way so gentle as to baffle all description, nodding graciously first to one and then to another, and then adding in her flute-like voice a few German words in the pure sonorous dialect of Courland all this formed a truly remarkable and unusual picture, and my imagination involuntarily connected it with the ghostly midnight visitant, the Baroness being the angel of light who was to break the ban of the spectral powers of evil.
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