Joseph II. and His Court Part 158

"Yes, the king is old, and would gladly end his days in a myrtle-grove; while I long to continue my flight, higher and higher, till I reach the sun. But who will go with me to these dizzy heights of power--"

"His majesty, the Emperor of Austria," said the loud voice of a gentleman in waiting, who knocked at the door of the cabinet.

"The emperor!" exclaimed Catharine. "You know I granted his request to come to me unannounced; but I have given orders to the sentries to send the word forward, nevertheless, so that I always know when he is about to appear."

"Farewell, Catharine," said Potemkin. "The crow must give place to the imperial falcon. Why am I not an emperor, to offer you my hand, and be your only protector?"

"Could I love you more if you were an emperor, Gregory? But, hush! He comes, and as soon as his visit is ended, return to me, for I must see you."

Potemkin kissed her hand again and again, and vanished through the tapestry by a secret door, which led to a small corridor connected with the czarina's private apartments. But instead of crossing this corridor, he turned into a little boudoir, through which the emperor would have to pa.s.s and there awaited his appearance. He came, and seeing Potemkin, looked surprised, but bowed with a gracious smile.

Potemkin laid his finger upon his lip, and pointed to the cabinet.

"Sire," said he in a whisper, "I have antic.i.p.ated you. Prussia has received an important check, and the treaty will not be renewed. It rests with your majesty now, to improve the opportunity and supplant the King of Prussia. Be sympathetic and genial with the czarina--ABOVE ALL THINGS flatter her ambition, and the game is yours. Depend upon my hearty co-operation."

"A thousand thanks," whispered Joseph in return. Potemkin made a deep and respectful salutation, and left the room. As he closed the door noiselessly behind him, the emperor crossed the threshold of the imperial cabinet.

CHAPTER Cx.x.xIX.

THE CZARINA AND THE KAISER.

When Joseph entered, he found the empress reclining with careless grace upon the divan, perfectly unconscious that he was anywhere within her palace walls. But when she saw him, she sprang up from the cushion on which she lay, and, with protestations of delighted surprise, gave him both her hands. He bent over those soft white hands, and kissed them fervently.

"I come to your majesty because I am anxious and unhappy, and my heart yearned for your presence. I have bad news from Vienna. My mother is ill, and implores me to return home."

"Bad news, indeed!" exclaimed Catharine, sadly. "The n.o.blest and greatest woman that ever adorned a throne is suffering, and you threaten to leave me? But you must not go, now that the barriers which have so long divided Austria from Russia have fallen."

"Your majesty may well speak of barriers," laughed Joseph, "for we were parted by a high Spanish wall, and the King of Prussia walked the ramparts, that we might never get a glimpse at each other. Well! I have leaped the walls, and I consider it the brightest act of my life that I should have journeyed thither to see the greatest sovereign of the age, the woman before whom a world is destined to succ.u.mb."

"Do not give me such praise, sire." replied Catharine, with a sigh; "the soil of Maria Theresa should not bestow such eulogium upon me. It is the Empress of Austria who unites the wisdom of a lawgiver and the bravery of a warrior with the virtues of a pure and sinless woman! Oh, my friend, I am not of that privileged band who have preserved themselves spotless from the sins of the world! I have, bought my imperial destiny with the priceless gem of womanly innocence!--Do not interrupt me--we are alone, and I feel that before no human being can I bow my guilty head with such a sense of just humiliation as before the son of the peerless Empress of Austria!"

"The Empress of Austria is still a woman, reigning through the promptings of her heart, while Catharine wears her crown with the vigor of a man. And who ever thought of requiring from an emperor the primeval innocence of an Arcadian shepherdess? He who would be great must make acquaintance with sin; for obscurity is the condition of innocence. Had you remained innocent, you had never become Catharine the Great. There are, unhappily, so many men who resemble women, that we must render thanks to G.o.d for vouchsafing to our age a woman who equals all and surpa.s.ses many men."

"You have initiated a new mode of flattery, sire," said Catharine, blushing with gratification; "but if this is your fashion of praising women, you must be a woman-hater. Is it so?"

"I would worship them if they resembled Catharine; but I have suffered through their failings, and I despise them. You know not how many of my bold schemes and bright hopes have been brought to naught by women! I am no longer the Joseph of earlier days--I have been shorn of my strength by petticoats and ca.s.socks."

"How can you so belie yourself?" said Catharine. "It is but a few months since we had good proof that the ambition of the Emperor Joseph was far from being quenched forever."

"Ah! your majesty would remind me of that ridiculous affair with Bavaria. It was my last Quixotism, the dying struggle of a patriotism which would have made of Germany one powerful and prosperous nation! And it was YOU who opposed me--YOU who, of all the potentates in Europe, are the one who should have understood and sustained me! Believe me, when I say, that had Catharine befriended me there, she would have won the truest knight that ever broke a lance in defence of fair ladye. But, for the sake of a dotard, who is forever trembling lest I rob him of some of his withered bays, the bold Athene of the age forgot her G.o.dlike origin and mission, and turned away from him whom she should have countenanced and conciliated. Well! It was the error of a n.o.ble heart, unsuspicious of fair words. And fair words enough had Frederick for the occasion. To think of such a man as HE, flaunting the banner of Germany in my face--he who, not many years ago, was under the ban of the empire as an ambitious upstart! He thought to scare me with the rustling of his dead laurel-leaves, and when he found that I laughed at such Chinese warfare, lo! he ran and hid himself under my mother's petticoats; and the two old crowns fell foul of one another, and their palsied old wearers plotted together, until the great war upon which I had staked my fame was juggled into a shower of carnival confetti! Oh, you laugh at me, and well may you laugh! I am a fool to waste so much enthusiasm upon such a fool's holiday!"

"No, I do not laugh at you," replied Catharine, laying her arm upon his.

"I laugh for joy, to see how l.u.s.tily you hate. A man who hates fiercely, loves ardently, and my whole heart glows with sympathy for such a being.

So, then, you hate him soundly, this King of Prussia?"

"Hate him," cried Joseph, clinching his hand, "ay, indeed, I hate him!

He has instigated Germany to oppose me; he wrested Bavaria from me, which was mine by right of twofold inheritance; and I detest him the more that he is so old, so gouty, and so contemptible, that to defeat him now would not add one hair's breadth to my reputation as a general."

"It is true," said Catharine, thoughtfully, "Frederick is growing very old. Nothing remains of the former hero but a dotard, who is incapable of comprehending the march of events--"

"And, yet, is ambitious to legislate. Oh, Catharine, beware of this old king, who clings to you to support his own tottering royalty, and to obstruct your schemes of conquest. But he will not succeed with you as he has done by me. You have no mother to thrust you aside, while she barters away your rights for a mess of pottage! I see your eagle glance--it turns toward the south, where roll the stormy waves of the Black Sea! I see this fair white hand as it points to mosques of Constantinople, where the crescent is being lowered and the cross is being planted--"

Catharine uttered a cry of ecstasy, and putting her arms around Joseph's neck, she imprinted a kiss upon his brow.

"Oh, I thank you, Joseph!" exclaimed she, enthusiastically. "You have comprehended the ambitious projects which, identified as they are with my existence as a sovereign, I never yet have dared to speak above my breath!"

"I have guessed and I approve," said Joseph, earnestly. "Fate has a.s.signed you a mission, and you must fulfil it."

"Oh, my G.o.d!" e.j.a.c.u.l.a.t.ed Catharine, "I have found a friend who has read my heart."

"And who will aid you, when you call him to your side."

"I accept the offer, and here is my hand. And so, hand in hand, we shall conquer the world. G.o.d be praised, there is room enough for us both, and we will divide it between us. Away with all little thrones and their little potentates! Oh, friend, what joy it must be to dwell among the heights of Olympus, and feel that all below is ours! I am intoxicated with the dream! Two thrones--the throne of the Greek and the throne of the Roman emperors; two people so mighty, that they dare not war with one another; while, side by side, their giant swords forever sheathed, they shed peace and happiness upon the farthermost ends of the earth!

Will you realize with me this G.o.dlike dream?"

"That will I, my august friend, and may G.o.d grant us life and opportunity to march on to victory together!"

"To victory," echoed Catharine, "and to the fulfilment of the will of Peter the Great! He enjoined it upon his successors to purge Europe of the infidel, and to open the Black Sea to Christendom. In Stamboul I shall erect the throne of my grandson, Constantine, while in Petersburg, Alexander extends the domains of Russia in Europe and in Asia. You do not know all that I have already done for cla.s.sic Greece. From his birth, I have destined Constantine to the Greek throne. His nurses, his playfellows, and his very dress are Greek, so that his native tongue is that of his future subjects. Even now, two hundred boys are on their way from Greece, who are to be the future guards of the Emperor Constantine!

As the medal which was struck on the day of his birth prefigured his destiny, so shall his surroundings of every kind animate him to its glorious fulfilment. Look--I have already a chart on which Constantine is to study the geography that my hand is to verify for him and for his brother."

The empress had risen and approached her escritoire. From a secret drawer within another drawer she took a roll of parchment which, after beckoning to the emperor, she placed upon the table. They unrolled it, and both bent over it with beating hearts.

"Observe first the marginal ill.u.s.trations," said Catharine. "Here stands the genius of Russia, leaning upon the Russian shield. To the left you see arrows, horses' tails, Turkish banners, and other trophies--here at the top, you see the Black Sea, where a Russian ship is in the act of sinking a Turk.

"Here in the centre, are the empire of Greece and the Archipelago. Take notice of the colors on the map, for they show the boundaries. The yellow is the boundary-line of the Greek empire. It begins in the northwest by Ragusa, takes in Skopia, Sophia Phillippolis and Adrianople as far as the Black Sea. It then descends and includes the Ionian islands, the Archipelago, Mitylene, and Samos. That is the empire of Constantine, whose capital is to be Constantinople. The red lines show the future boundaries of Russia. They pa.s.s through Natolia, beginning in the north by Pendavaschi, and end with the Gulf of Syria."

The emperor, who had been following Catharine's jewelled hand with anxious scrutiny, now looked up with a significant smile.

"Your majesty's map reminds me of an incident among my travels. In the beginning of my unhappy regency, I was inspecting the boundaries of my own empire. In Moravia I ascended a steep mountain whence I had a view of the surrounding country. 'To whom belongs the pretty village?' said I. 'To the Jesuits,' was the reply. 'And this tract with the chapels?'

'To the Benedictines.' 'And that abbey?' 'To the Clarissarines.' 'But where then are my possessions?' said I."

"And your majesty would put the same question to me," interrupted the czarina. "Look at the colors of the map. We have appropriated the yellow and the red, but there is another color to be accounted for."

"I see a boundary of green, which includes Naples and Sicily," said Joseph, looking down upon the map with new interest.

"Those are the boundary-lines of new Austria," said the empress, with a triumphant smile. "As I hope for the reestablisbment of empire in Greece, so must your majesty accomplish that of Rome. Since you have no objection to give me the Black Sea, I shall make no opposition to the extension of your empire to the sh.o.r.es of the Mediterranean. Italy, like Germany, is a prey to petty princes. Rescue the Italians from their national insignificance, sire, and throw the aegis of your protection over the site of the old Roman empire. Do you not bear the t.i.tle of King of Rome? Give to that t.i.tle, meaning and substance. Yours is the south and west, mine is the east, and together we shall govern the world."

Joseph had listened with breathless attention. At first he grew pale, then a flush of triumph suffused his face, and he took the hand of the czarina and drew it to his heart.

"Catharine!" cried he, deeply moved, "from my soul I thank you for this inspiration! Oh, my heart's interpreter, you have read my secret yearnings to be in deed, as well as in word, 'King of Rome!' Yes--I would free Italy from the oppression of the church, and lead her on to greatness that shall rival her glorious past! G.o.d is my witness, I would have done as much for Germany; but Germany has rejected me, and I leave her to her fate. For the future I remain Emperor of Austria; and my empire shall be so vast, so prosperous, and so powerful, that Catharine of Russia shall esteem me an ally worthy of the greatest woman of modern times."

"Two faithful allies," exclaimed Catharine--"allies bound by one common policy, whose watchword shall be 'Constantinople and Rome!'"

"Ay," returned Joseph, with a laugh, "though while YOU raise the standard of the cross in Constantinople, _I_ shall overturn it in Rome.

As soon as my shackles fall, I shall set to work!"

"I see that you have faith in my plans," cried Catharine, joyfully.