Louisa of Prussia and Her Times Part 61

It was only a few waiters, who carried a well-spread table, in the midst of which a splendid pheasant stretched its brownish, shining limbs, and filled the whole room with the odor of the truffles with which it was stuffed. By its side shone, in crystal bottles, the most precious Rhine wine, looking like liquid gold, and a silent, still undisclosed pie gave a presentiment of a piquant enjoyment.

The traveller sipped the several odors with smiling comfort, and took his place at the table with the full confidence that he would be able to fill the next half hour of his life with enjoyment and to advantage.

In this confidence he was not disappointed, and when he finally rose from the table, on which nothing but bones had remained of the pheasant, and nothing but the bare crust of the pie, his countenance beamed with satisfaction and delight.

The waiters made haste to remove the table, and the head waiter made his appearance with the large hotel register, in which he asked the traveller to enter his name.

He was ready for it, and already took the pen to write his name, when suddenly he uttered a cry of surprise, and excitedly pointed with his finger to the last written line of the book.

"Is this gentleman still in your hotel, or has he already left?" he asked, hastily.

"No, your honor, this gentleman arrived only an hour ago, and he will stay here to-night." said the head waiter.

"Oh, what a surprise," said the traveller, starting up. "Come, please to conduct me at once to this gentleman."

And, with impatient haste, he ran to the door, which the head waiter opened to him. But upon the threshold he suddenly stopped and seemed to pause.

"Pray wait for me here in this hall; I shall follow you immediately," he said, as he returned to his room, closed its door, and hastened to the table in order to put his gold and his papers into the casket and to lock it.

In the mean while, the traveller in the small room of the second floor had finished his frugal meal, and was now occupied with making up his account and entering the little travelling expenses of the last few days into his diary.

"It is after all an expensive journey," he muttered to himself; "I shall hardly have a few hundred florins left on my arrival at Berlin. It is true the first quarter of my salary will at once be paid to me, but one-half of it I have already a.s.signed to my creditors, and the other half will scarcely suffice to furnish decently a few rooms. Oh, how much are those to be envied, the freedom and cheerfulness of whose minds are never disturbed by financial troubles!"

A loud knock at the door interrupted him; he hastened to put back his money into his pocket-book, when the door was hastily opened and the stranger of the first story appeared in it with a smiling countenance.

"Frederick Gentz!" exclaimed the owner of the room, in joyful surprise.

"Johannes Muller!" smilingly exclaimed the other, running up to him with outstretched arms, and tenderly embracing the little man, the great historian. "What good fortune for me, my friend, that I put up at this hotel, where I was to have the pleasure of meeting you! Accidentally I found in the hotel register your name, and at once I rushed to welcome you."

"And by coming you afford to my heart a true joy," tenderly said Johannes Muller, "for nothing can afford a greater joy than the unexpected meeting with a beloved and esteemed friend, and you know you are both to me."

"I only know that you are both to me!" exclaimed Gentz. "I only know that during my present journey I am indebted to you for the most precious hours, for the most sublime enjoyments. I had taken along for my reading your work on the 'Furstenbund' ('Alliance of Princes').

I wished to see whether this book which, on its first appearance, so powerfully affected me, would still have the same effect upon me after an interval of twenty years. The world since then has been transformed and changed, I myself not less; and I was well aware how far my views on many most important topics would differ from yours. This, indeed, I found to be the case, and yet the whole reading was for me an uninterrupted current of delight and admiration. For four weeks I read in my leisure hours nothing but this book, and I felt my mind consecrated, strengthened, and nerved again for every thing great and good."

"If you say this," exclaimed Muller, "I have not labored in vain, although a German author feels sometimes tempted to believe that all his labors, all his writing and thinking were useless efforts, and nothing but seed scattered upon barren and sterile soil, and unable to bear fruit. Oh, my friend, what unfortunate days of humiliation and disgrace are still in store for Germany! But let us not talk of this now, but of you. Come, let us seat ourselves side by side upon this divan. And now tell me of your successes and your glory. The report of it has reached me, and I have learned with unenvying delight with what enthusiasm the whole literary and political world of England has received you, and how the court, the ministers, and the aristocracy of Loudon have celebrated the great German writer and politician."

"It is true I have met in Loudon with much kindness and a flattering reception," said Gentz, smilingly. "You know a German writer must go abroad if he lays claim to recognition and reward, for, as the proverb says, 'The prophet is not without honor, save in his own country.' I had, therefore, to go to England in order to secure for my voice, which until then was little heeded, some authority even in Germany."

"And now, when you have so eminently succeeded in this, you return I hope forever to Germany?"

"It almost seems so. I follow a call of the Austrian minister, Cobenzl, and have been appointed in Vienna as Aulic councillor, with a salary of four thousand florins."

"And in which ministry will you work?"

"Not in any particular one. I have been engaged for extraordinary services exclusively, with no other obligation than, as Minister von Cobenzl expressly writes, to work by my writings for the maintenance of the government, of morals, and order."

A smile stole over the delicate features of Muller.

"Exactly the same words which the Minister von Thugut said to me two years ago. And you have had the courage to accept the position?"

"Yes, I have accepted it, because I hope thus to render a service to the fatherland, and to be of advantage to it. I have forever east off my Prussianism, and shall henceforth become an Austrian with body and soul."

"How wonderful are the dispensations of fate! for I must reply to you that I have cast off forever my Austrianism, and shall henceforth become a Prussian with body and soul."

"Ah, you go to Prussia! You leave the Austrian service?"

"Yes, forever. I follow a call to Berlin."

"Oh," exclaimed Gentz, "I have not the courage to complain that I have to do without you in Vienna, for fate in its wisdom has disposed of both of us, and it will make us available for the great, sublime cause of Germany. Being both stationed at one place, our efforts could not be so far reaching, so powerful, and therefore fate sets you up in the north of Germany, and me in the south, in order that our voices may resound hither and thither throughout Germany, and awaken all minds and kindle all energies for the one grand aim, the delivery and the honor of Germany."

"You still believe, then, in the honor of Germany and the possibility of its delivery," Muller inquired, with a sigh.

"Yes. I still believe in it," Gentz exclaimed, with enthusiasm; "but to that end many things must yet be done, many things must be aimed at and changed. Above all, two things are necessary. In the first place, the old enmity between Austria and Prussia must disappear, and both must firmly unite with each other and with England against France. It is this which I in Vienna and you in Berlin must never lose sight of--which we must aim at with all the power of our spirit and of our eloquence; for it is one of the last measures which are left for maintaining the independence of Europe and for averting the deluge of evils which break forth more terribly every day. From the moment when Austria and Prussia shall stand upon one line and move in one direction, there will be nowhere in Germany particular interests. All the greater and lesser princes would at once and without hesitation place themselves under the wings of this powerful alliance--the well-disposed cheerfully and out of conviction, and the unpatriotic ones through fear. So much of the const.i.tution as has been rescued from this last shipwreck, would be safe for the duration of this alliance; and so much of it as must be altered, would be altered according to the principles of justice and of the common weal, and not according to the disgraceful demands of French and Russian land agents."

"You are right," exclaimed Johannes Muller; "a close alliance of Austria and Prussia is necessary, and only through it, and through it alone, the maintenance of the European equilibrium is possible, but for the present we must lean on the power of Russia and the resources of England."

"No, no," Gentz exclaimed, vehemently; "no communion with Russia! Russia is a friend who can never be trusted, for whenever it shall be her advantage she will at any moment be ready to become the most bitter enemy of her friends. But really we have had a striking and terrible example, of this when the Emperor Paul suddenly separated from Germany and England in order to ally himself with France. But the union of France and Russia is the most threatening and terrible combination for the whole remainder of Europe. Of all the wounds which during the last ten years have been inflicted upon the old political system, and in particular upon the independence of Germany, those which were caused by the temporary agreement between France and Russia were the deepest and most incurable. If this comet should rise a second time over our heads, the world will go up in flames. What is to resist the combined power of these two colossuses unless the united weight and the united bulk of Germany hinders their embrace? The western colossus has long since broken through its old barriers; all the outposts are in its power, all the fortresses which do not belong to it are dismantled, all the points of military defence are outflanked. From Switzerland and Italy, from the peaks of the conquered Alps, it may irresistibly pounce upon the centime of the Austrian monarchy and invade the exposed provinces of the undefended Prussian kingdom. And now let it please Providence to elevate upon the Russian throne a prince full of ambition and thirst of conquest, and the subjugation of Germany, the dissolution of all the empires still existing, a double universal monarchy would, under the present circ.u.mstances, be the next consequence; and if the present system, or rather the present hopeless languor should continue for several more years, this must sooner or later be the inevitable destiny of Germany."

"There is now for Germany only one enemy," Johannes Muller said, vehemently, "and this enemy is France--is Bonaparte! A new crisis approaches; of this I am convinced. Bonaparte will not be satisfied with the t.i.tle and the office of a First Consul for life; he will place a crown upon his head, and threateningly oppose himself with his sceptre to all monarchies, and they will either have to humble themselves before him or to unite against him. Therefore, no other, no possible future enemy, should be thought of at this time, but only the universal foe and his government, so incompatible with general tranquillity. Let all the hatred of the nation be poured down on him, and on him alone, by everywhere spreading the conviction that nothing interferes with the preservation of peace throughout the world but his existence."

[Footnote: Muller's own words.--Vide "Memoires d'un Homme d'Etat," vol.

vii., p. 58.] "There is something else I would wish for Germany," said Gentz, musingly. "I will now reveal to you my innermost thoughts, my friend, for I am satisfied that our meeting here was a dispensation of fate. Providence has decreed that we, the intellectual champions of Germany, should agree here on the plans of our campaign and concert measures for our joint action. Therefore, you shall descend with me into the depths of my heart and see the result to which I have been led by many years' reflection concerning the causes and progress of the great convulsions of our day, and by my own grief at the political decay of Germany. The result is the firm belief that it would be by far better for Germany to be united into one state. Oh, do not look at me in so surprised and angry a manner! I know very well, and I have reflected a great deal about it, how salutary an influence has been exerted by the dismemberment of Germany on the free development of the individual faculties; I acknowledge that, considered individually, we might very probably not have reached, in a great and centralized monarchy, the proud and glorious eminence we are occupying at the present time, and so far, as a nation, after all, only consists of individuals, I am unable to perceive exactly how ours, without anarchy, could have acquired the distinction which it might boast of if it were a nation! But whenever I think that it is no nation--whenever I think that France and England, with greatly inferior faculties and means, have grown up to that true totality of human life--to that true nationality which nothing is able to destroy--whenever I think and feel that foreigners, on whom we may look down from our exalted stand-point, in matters of politics, trample on our necks, and are allowed to treat us as though we were their servants, all consolations derived from our grand and magnificent individuality vanish and leave me alone with my grief. [Footnote: Gentz's own words.--Vide "Memoires d'un Homme d'Etat," vol. vii., p.

20.] I am free to confess to you that I have already gone so far on the road of those mournful reflections as to consider it very doubtful whether the whole history of Germany was ever treated from a correct point of view. I know but too well that the princes of the house of Austria seldom, if ever, deserved to be the rulers of Germany; but I do not believe that there are any reasons why we should exalt at the discomfiture of their plans. It is a matter of great indifference to me whether a Hapsburg, Bavarian, Hohenzollern, or Hohenstaufen succeed in bringing the empire under one hat; I only place myself on an Austrian stand-point because that house has the best prospects and is under the highest obligations to accomplish the unity of Germany. Now you know my innermost thoughts; criticise and correct them, my friend!"

"I will neither criticise nor correct them," said Muller, offering his hand to Gentz with a tender glance; "I will only exchange views with you. I imagine, therefore, at this moment, we were pacing, as we did a year ago, previous to your journey to England, the splendid hall of the imperial library, where the sixteen statues of the Hapsburg emperors reminded us of their era. Before which of them will we place ourselves and say: 'What a pity that you, wise and n.o.ble prince, are not the sole ruler of Germany; you were worthy, indeed, that the moral and political welfare of the whole nation should be left to the decision of your will, and that every thing should be submitted to your power!'"

"It is true," muttered Gentz, mournfully; "in the history of Germany there is no emperor, king, or prince to whom we might or should talk in this manner."

"Nor is that the cause of our misfortunes," said Muller; "the want of one ruler has not produced them, and it is not so bad that we have not got but one neck, and cannot consequently be struck down at one blow.

The fault, on the contrary, is our own. If we had a single great man, even though he were neither an emperor nor a king, if he were only a Maurice of Saxony, a Stadtholder of Holland, he would attract the nation in times of danger and distress; it would rally around him and he would stand above it. That we have not such a man is owing to our deplorable system of education, and to the wrong direction which our mode of thinking has taken. Every thing with us has fallen asleep, and we are in a condition of almost hopeless stagnation. The old poetry of fatherland, honor, and heroism, seems to be almost extinct among us; we are asleep, and do not even dream. In order to recover our senses, a conceited tyrant, who will mock us while plundering our pockets, is an indispensable necessity. Providence, perhaps, has destined Bonaparte to become the tyrant who is to awaken Germany from its slumber by means of cruelties; he is, perhaps, to revive among the Germans love of honor, liberty, and country; he is, perhaps, to be the scourge that is to torture us, so that we may overcome our indolence, and that our true national spirit may be aroused. I hope the tyrant will accomplish this, and deliver Germany. G.o.d knows I would not like to serve him, but to the liberators of the world I should willingly devote my ideas and my feelings, nay, my blood. [Footnote: "Memoires d'un Homme d'Etat," vol.

vii., pp. 39, 40.] Then let us hope, wait, and prepare. Let us not occupy ourselves with Germany as it might be, perhaps, in its unity, but with Germany as it CAN be with its confederate system. The Germans are not qualified, like the English or French, to live in a single great state. The climate, their organization, that miserable beer, the insignificant partic.i.p.ation in the commerce of the world, prevent it; the somewhat phlegmatic body of the state must have an independent life in each of its parts; the circulation issuing from a single head would be too imperceptible. We must be satisfied with the glory which a Joseph, a Frederick the Great, and the enthusiasm of the whole people gave to us, and if the next struggle should terminate successfully, will give to us to the greatest extent. [Footnote: Ibid., vol. vii., p.

46.] We must struggle on for the welfare of the entire people, and the individuals should unite into one great harmonious whole. Like myself, you consider concord between Austria and Prussia at present the only remedy for the ills of Germany; let us, therefore, strive for it, let us direct our whole strength to this point, to this goal."

"Yes, let us do so!" exclaimed Gentz, enthusiastically. "We are both destined and able to be the champions of Germany; let us fulfil our task. No matter how much greater, how much more exalted and brilliant your name may be than mine, for my part I am proud enough to believe that I have certain talents which ought to unite our political efforts.

Hence, you cannot and must not reject and neglect me; you must accept the hand which I offer you for this great and holy compact, for the welfare of Germany. We must keep up an active and uninterrupted correspondence with each other, and freely and unreservedly communicate to each other our views about the great questions of the day. It seems to me wise, necessary, and truly patriotic that such men as we should hold timely consultations with each other as to what should be done, and how, where, and by whom it should be done. The wholesome influence we may exert, stationed by fate as one of us is in Berlin, and the other in Vienna, by faithfully uniting our efforts, will be truly incalculable.

Now say, my friend, will you conclude such a covenant with me? Shall we unite in our active love for Germany in our active hatred against France?"

"Yes, we will!" exclaimed Johannes Muller, solemnly. "I truly love and venerate you; I will struggle with you incessantly until we have reached our common n.o.ble goal. Here is my hand, my friend; its grasp shall be the consecration of our covenant. Perhaps you do not know me very intimately, but we must believe in each other. All our studies, all our intellectual strength, our connections, our friendships, every thing shall be devoted to that one great object, for the sake of which alone, so long as it may yet be accomplished, life is not to be disdained."

[Footnote: "Memoires d'un Homme d'Etat," vol. vii., p. 40.]

"Yes, be it so," said Gentz, joyfully. "The covenant is concluded, and may G.o.d bless it for the welfare of Germany!"

CHAPTER XLII.

THE EMPEROR NAPOLEON.