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THE 
 
 PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 HIS MEMOIRS, LETTERS, AND 
 MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS. 
 
 SelecttH anU SiansIateS 
 
 BY 
 
 KATHARINE PRESCOTT WORMELEY. 
 
 WITH INTRODUCTION AND PREFACE BY C.-A. SAINTE-BEUVE 
 AND MADAME DE STAEL-HOLSTEIN. 
 
 ILLUSTRATED WITH PORTRAITS FROM THE ORIGINAL 
 IN TWO VOLUMES. 
 
 Vol. I. 
 
 BOSTON: 
 
 HARDY, PRATT & COMPANY. 
 1902. 
 
Copyright, 1899, 
 By Hardy, Pratt & Company. 
 
 All rights reserved. 
 
 ■lOCVl^ 
 
 ?llntbtr»ita Press: 
 
 John Wilson and Son, Cambridge, U. S. A. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Page 
 Intboduction, by C.-A. Sainte-Bbuvb 1 
 
 Translator's Note . 35 
 
 Preface to Edition of 1809, by Madame de Stael- 
 
 holstein 45 
 
 MEMOIR, LETTERS, AND MISCELLANEOUS PAPERS. 
 Chapter Page 
 
 I. 1735-1757. Birth: Education: Marriage ... 51 
 
 n. 1757-1758. First Military Service: The Seven 
 
 Years' War 68 
 
 m. 1758-1763. The Seven Years' War: First Visit 
 
 TO Paris 93 
 
 IV. 1763-1767. Life in Vienna Ill 
 
 V. 1767-1769. Life in Paris: Jean-Jacques Rousseau 132 
 
 VL 1769-1770. Life in Paris: Voltaire 151 
 
 VIL 1770-1774. Frederick the Great 169 
 
 Vm. 1774-1778. Life in Paris: Marie Antoinette . . 196 
 
 IX. 1778-1780. The Bavarian War: A Trip to Spa 217 
 
 X. 1780-1786. Life at Belceil 233 
 
 XI. Bel<eil 256 
 
 Xn. 1780-1786. Paris, Belceil, and Travels .... 282 
 
 Xm. 1780-1786. Eussia: The Empress Catherine . . 301 
 
 Appendix. — Works op the Prince de Ligne 321 
 
 Index 325 
 
LIST OF 
 PHOTOGRAVUEE ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 Fibld-Makshal the Prince de Lisne Frontispiece 
 
 By C. Leclercq; in possession of the family. This portrait, to- 
 gether with the four pictures of Beloeil, have been most kindly given 
 to the translator by Mgr. the present Prince de Ligue, for this edi- 
 tion of his ancestor's works. The portrait is thought by the family 
 to be the best they have ol him. 
 
 Pass 
 
 Bel(eil, the ChAteau of 13 
 
 From a photograph given by the Prince de Ligne. 
 Chapteb 
 
 I. Francis I., Emperor op Germany 63 
 
 In the Imperial gallery, Vienna. 
 
 II. The Prince de Lione 90 
 
 By Au. La Berge ; from the edition of the Prince's works pub- 
 lished in 1860. 
 
 rv. Maria Theresa, Empress op Austria 112 
 
 In the Eoyal gallery, Munich. 
 
 IV. Mme. Geopfrin 128 
 
 By Chardin (Jean-Baptiste-Sim^on) ; in the Trocad^ro. 
 
 V. Jean-Jacques Rousseau 139 
 
 By Latoor ; in the Palais-Bourbon. 
 
 VI. Voltaire, Fkancois-Marib Arouet, called 152 
 
 By Toumites (Robert Le Vrac) ; in the Museum of Rouen. 
 
 VU. Frederick the Great, King op Prussia 172 
 
 By Camphausen; in the Berlin gallery. 
 
VI LIST OP PHOTOGEATURE ILLUSTRATIONS. 
 
 Chaftzb Page 
 
 Vni. Maeie- Antoinette, Queen op Fkance 196 
 
 By Mme. Vig^e-Lebrun (Elisabeth-Louise); at Versailles. 
 
 VIII. Philippe "ifeGALiTi;/' Dnc d'Okl^ans 214 
 
 By Eegnault (Jean-Baptiste, Baron) ; in the Trocad^ro. 
 
 X. IiA Fontaine 242 
 
 By Rigaud (Hyacinthe) ; in possession of M. le Vicomte H&icart 
 de Thury, Chateau de Thury. 
 
 XI. Belceil, the Gardens 268 
 
 From a photograph given by the Prince de Ligne. 
 
 xn. Louis XVI., King op France 286 
 
 By Duplessis (Joseph Silfr^de) ; in the Trocaddro. 
 
INTRODUCTION 
 
 Bt C.-A. SAINTE-BEUVE.i 
 
 More than once writers have drawn upon the Prince de 
 Ligne's collection of his Works in thirty-four volumes, rather 
 fantastically entitled by him " Melanges militaires, litt&aires, 
 et sentimentaires " (1795-1808) in order to make extracts, 
 either in two volumes or in five, under the title of " Selected 
 Works" or "Memoirs and Miscellanies." Mme. de Stael, 
 in the lifetime of the prince, made a volume of his " Let- 
 ters and Thoughts." After reading one or other of these 
 abridged collections we have ia our minds a very vivid and 
 HfeHke Prince de Ligne. The more he is allowed to speak 
 for himself the better that likeness is defined ; moreover, it 
 seems as if, in relation to him, all forms of brilliant eulogy 
 have been exhausted. If his "Memoirs" should some day 
 appear in full the whole will be said, or rather, said over 
 again, for we shall then have a full-length portrait of him 
 in all its freshness. Time can only add to the value of 
 certaia details which belong to the manners and morals of 
 a vanished society. " I should not write thus if I were to 
 be read at once," says the Prince de Ligne at the end of 
 one of his narratives ; " but a hundred years hence these 
 httle things, which now seem nothings, will give pleasure. 
 I judge so by that which I derive from the ' Souvenirs of 
 Mme. de Caylus,' the ' Memoirs ' of the mother of the 
 Eegent, those of Saint-Simon [at the time when this was 
 
 1 From the " Causeries du Lundi," June, 1853. 
 VOL. I. — 1 
 
2 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 written the latter were known only by fragments], and 
 fifty other writers of anecdotes of the Court of France of 
 those times." 
 
 Without pretending to forestall the final idea of him which 
 he will leave after his Memoirs have been wholly published, 
 I wish to say a few words here of the Prince de Ligne as 
 of one who has written much, and, without precisely treat- 
 ing him as an author, to make use of what he has himself 
 put in print, in order to offer a few remarks on the man and 
 on his period. 
 
 Bom in Belgium, May 12, 1735, of the illustrious family 
 whom we all know, he does not like to tell his exact age ; 
 he says that his baptismal record has been lost. He would 
 fain be, as he was in fact, the man " who is never more than 
 twenty." He diverts us with an account of his tutors, who 
 are more or less incapable or vicious, and he speaks in a 
 singular tone of his father. " My father never Hked me ; 
 I do not know why, for we never knew each other. But 
 it was not the fashion at that time to be a good father, or 
 a good husband. My mother was very much afraid of him ; 
 she was brought to bed of me attired in a great farthingale." 
 In the days of this haughty and stern parent it was cus- 
 tomary for fathers to be feared. But if manners had then 
 an antiquated stiffness, by the time the priace wrote these 
 flippant lines fashions had changed, the old manners had 
 suddenly relaxed ; from respect they had dropped to imper- 
 tiuence; all things were treated with a jest. Still, one 
 could wish that the amiable prince were less ready to trifle 
 with those sentiments of nature and family which he was 
 so well fitted to feel. He gayly quotes a correspondence 
 that he had with his father on the day he was appointed 
 colonel of the regiment that bore the family name and of 
 which his father was proprietary colonel: " Monseigneur, I 
 
INTRODUCTION. 3 
 
 have the honour to inform your Highness that I have just 
 been appointed colonel of your regiment. I am, with pro- 
 found respect, etc." The answer was not long in coming: 
 "Monsieur, after the misfortune of having you for a son, 
 nothing could more keenly affect me than the misfortune of 
 having you for colonel. Eeceive, etc." 
 
 But the lively scoffer who does the honours of his father 
 thus, tells us elsewhere, in doing justice to his high quali- 
 ties: "He had great elevation of soul; he was as proud 
 within as he was without." On the last occasion when he 
 saw his father, the latter, v/ho was then ill, said, when 
 charging him with certain matters : " After all, they con- 
 cern you more than they do me, because — " That "be- 
 cause," he confesses, which expressed the certainty of an 
 approaching end, made him burst into tears. 
 
 The Prince de Ligne had a son whom he loved tenderly, 
 whose comrade and friend he was, leading him under fire 
 the moment the occasion offered ; the death of this son, in 
 the first war of the Kevolution, broke his heart. He had 
 more natural feeling than he likes to admit. If, in the 
 feudal and seigniorial rigidity of the preceding generation 
 there stiU remained an excess of the ancient customs, it will 
 be seen, by the way the prince speaks of them, that in 
 him there was an opposite excess, an airy tone of the world 
 and an affectation of unrestraint, which presupposes a cer- 
 tain manner and style. 
 
 This was, in fact, the defect of his early years. It was 
 the first bend that he thought proper to give himself in 
 order to please. As a young man he had no other religion 
 than that of pleasing, and that (which ruled him above all) 
 of glory and military honour. When he was only fifteen he 
 wrote a Httle "Treatise on the Profession of Arms." This 
 liking for arms was something more in the young Prince de 
 
4 INTBODUCTION. 
 
 Ligne than the shining instinct of valour. Subsequently 
 he wrote much on < war, he studied and meditated all parts 
 of the subject, he analyzed the actions and the merits of the 
 great captains of former wars and the generals of his own 
 time. I do not know what the men of his profession think 
 of him, but the Duke of Wellington is said to have esteemed 
 his military works. Independently of the special knowl- 
 edge of which he gives proof, and of the actual ameliora- 
 tions which he proposed in his day, I see in what he writes 
 that which makes the soul of the noble profession of a 
 soldier, — the alliance of abnegation with a glorious emula- 
 tion. " We perform services," he said, " we endure hardships, 
 we receive praise." He makes an apostrophe to " Beginners 
 in war" which breathes the sacred fire. But whUe he 
 gives those electrifying counsels, he speaks in a tone that 
 is not less generous or less comforting to men who have 
 faUed to make their way although they deserved to do so ; 
 to those who are dissatisfied, who complain of the service 
 and whom a shght affront might drive into renouncing it. 
 It is the reverse of the medal, but on that side also he 
 points to Honour. 
 
 " A wrong, an injustice, or too little justice and favour," 
 he says, " may sometimes iiiake you regret that you have 
 sacrificed your days to your coimtry. Ah! never blame 
 yourself for that. The respect of the Army consoles and 
 avenges us for the foolish distribution of favours. Eemem- 
 ber the caressing, yet respectful air of those you have led 
 to victory ; remind yourself of what you have heard them 
 say of you in their tents, or in their bivouacs on the battle- 
 field. In what other profession, despite its drawbacks and 
 the caprices of fortune, can a man be more respected? An 
 old sub-heutenant commands more respect than a minister 
 of State ; his company trembles when he appears. No one 
 
INTRODUCTION. 5 
 
 stands aside for a great lord, but the soldier who meets an 
 officer in the street stops and salutes. Never, never quit 
 the noblest of careers." 
 
 We have seen in Vauvenargues a most distinguished 
 soldier and philosopher, who felt the glory of arms and 
 renounced them with regret. The Prince de Ligne said of 
 him : " Vauvenargues is too sad for a man of war ; he sees 
 things too gloomily." In this he supposes wilfulness on the 
 part of Vauvenargues, whereas it was reaUy melancholy, 
 acting on a serious nature and constant Hi-health. The 
 priuce himself carried to war a jaunty, animated air, that 
 heightened his valour and gave it a species of grace. 
 
 We have his " Journal of the Seven Years' War," of which 
 he made all the campaigns in the service of Austria ; a journal, 
 he says, " that was written more on horseback than other- 
 wise." In this war he was, successively, captain, lieutenant- 
 colonel, and then colonel in the WaUon regiment which 
 bore his name and belonged to his father.^ On the 17th of 
 May, 1757, he saw an advanced post for the first time and 
 heard the first balls whistle. " I was happy as a king," he 
 writes. His impatience cannot away at any time with the 
 methodical slowness of Mar^chal Daun. After each suc- 
 cess they chant Te Deums, which lose much time. They 
 let the enemy retire in good order after gaining advantages. 
 " It might have been difficult to damage them," he remarks, 
 " but the truth is we were not damaging." In a first affair, 
 where the object was to occupy the crest of a height, he 
 arrives with his company at the same time as the enemy. 
 " We had a moment of flux and reflux, like the pit at the 
 opera." This image comes naturally to him, as though war 
 
 1 Wallons (in English, 'Walloons) : Belgians of Gallic origin, speakinR 
 French, and occupying the provinces of Hainanlt, Namur, Liege, Luxem- 
 boiirg, and southern Brabant. — Tb. 
 
6 mTEODUCTION. 
 
 were a fdte. He makes his first prisoners, a captain and 
 fifteen or sixteen men, who, finding their retreat cut off, 
 surrender. "I sent them to the rear with boyish delight." 
 The affair over, he has lost half his battalion, and the victori- 
 ous fragments remain exposed to the fire of a battery. " It 
 came into no one's head to order us under shelter, though 
 all was over, and our artillery was scarcely answering that of 
 the Prussians. But one does not like to give advice in 
 such matters," — meaning thereby that he preferred to re- 
 main exposed to danger, even uselessly. I only cite these 
 passages to give an idea of the tone of the Prince de Ligne 
 in speaking of things of war with rapidity and zest. 
 
 If we go deeper, without, however, pretending to techni- 
 cal knowledge, we find the characters of the various generals 
 vividly sketched by means of their own actions: Mardchal 
 Daun, prudent, circumspect, methodical, who on one occa- 
 sion was seen to gallop for the first and only time in his 
 life, and after the victory of Hochkirch began on the field 
 to write to Maria Theresa, — that she might receive his 
 account of it on Saint-Theresa's day, — instead of giving the 
 proper orders for pursuit. He rested his sheet of paper on 
 a stone. "It was our stone of stumbling," remarks the 
 prince, who liked such play on words, especially if there 
 was any imagination in it. In his opinion, the victory 
 should have been completed before it was reported. Of 
 Lacy and Loudon, who are the generals of his choice and his 
 admiration, he is proud and self-glorifying to call himself 
 from afar the pupil As for the great Frederick, the 
 Prince de Ligne makes us fully feel the spirit of his tactics 
 during this weary war, in which he was satisfied, as a general 
 thing, not to be crushed, — to be "neither victor nor van- 
 quished, content with that state of uncertainty." Apropos 
 of a situation advantageous to the Prussians, "the king," 
 
INTEODUCTION. 7 
 
 observes the Prince de Ligne, "occupied it perfectly; he 
 enjoyed his usual pleasure, that of keeping us in suspense." 
 
 At the close of the campaign of 1759, the Prince de 
 Ligne, being then twenty-four years old, was chosen to 
 carry to the King of France at Versailles the news of the 
 affair at Maxen [where the Prussian general Pinck surren- 
 dered to the Austrians]. He relates his first appearance in 
 that Athens, to which by nature he belonged, with piquancy 
 and some little flourish. His fine Parisian moment, his 
 dashing French hour, had not yet come. 
 
 Some years after peace was made he returned to Paris, 
 and lived there for a time before he was sufficiently appre- 
 ciated. Madame du DefTand, a severe but also a most clear- 
 sighted judge, speaks of having just made his acquaintance 
 in the summer of 1767; he was then thirty-two years old. 
 " The Prince de Ligne," she says in a letter to Horace Wal- 
 pole (August 3d), "is not the stepson of the Princesse de 
 Ligne-Luxembourg, but her nephew. He is an acquaintance 
 of mine and I see him sometimes; he is gentle, polished, 
 a good fellow, and a trifle wild. He wishes, I fancy, to 
 resemble the Chevaher de BoufBers, but he has not, by any 
 means, so much wit; he is, in fact, his mimic." I am 
 struck by the fact that Grimm about the same time says 
 nearly the same thing in speaking of a letter addressed by 
 the prince in 1770 to Jean-Jacques Eousseau, offering 
 him an asylum against persecution at BelceU [his country- 
 seat in Belgium], hke M. de Girardin, who made Jean- 
 Jacques accept one later at ErmenonvUle. "This letter," 
 Grimm adds, "has had no success in Paris, because it is 
 not thought sufi&ciently genuine ; the pretension to intellect 
 is a malady that people do not recover from in this coun- 
 try." Two points may be remarked on here: in the first 
 place, persons who are already in possession of reputation 
 
8 INTEODUCTION. 
 
 and credit, and who watch your start, make difficulties in 
 admitting you; they compare you with others who have 
 won a rank abeady ; the places are aU taken in their mind, 
 the heights are occupied. To gain them, you must dislodge 
 your predecessors, which cannot be done in a day, nor 
 without some effort. Secondly, it is to be inferred that the 
 Prince de Ligne at starting forced his manner. Saint-Lam- 
 bert said of the dawning Boufiflers, "He is Voisenon the 
 Great." The Prince de Ligne was aiming to be Boufflers 
 the Great. This was pretension. He has written some- 
 where : " I prefer a stanza of Anacreon to the Iliad, and 
 the Chevaher de Boufiflers to an Encyclopedia." 
 
 I have noted already (for I like to grasp the lofty or the 
 serious sides of agreeable people) his worship of the military 
 religion, which enraptured him as a child with the glory of 
 such heroes as Prince Eugene and Maurice de Saxe. Possibly 
 all that he lacked to take high rank in this direction was a 
 command-in-chief, bestowed in time ; for, without speaking 
 of his iatrepidity on the battle-field, he possessed the coup- 
 d'osil, the glance that sees, of a true soldier. But together 
 with this noble and strengthening ideal he had another, of a 
 totally different kind, which came of an imagination that 
 was somewhat affected and spoiled by the air of the century. 
 " Who cares," he said, " that Bussy fought at the head of the 
 light-horse of France at the battle of the Dunes ? But they 
 remember well enough the ' Amorous History of the Gauls ' 
 and the Song of the Hallelujah. When a man paints him- 
 self in his works, especially on the side of voluptuous pleas- 
 ure, he interests every one, above all, young men ; they long 
 to have lived with the agreeable rakes of Anet and the Tem- 
 ple, and those gentlemen at Eoissy." AU of which carries 
 us back to th6 little suppers with rouSs, the Du Barrys and 
 others, and to a certain early affectation of Mcense and fash- 
 
INTEODUCTION. 9 
 
 ionable debauchery, of which the Prince de Ligne may have 
 had, perhaps insensibly, to correct himself. He did correct 
 himself of it, as he did of the desire to display his wit, of 
 which he had plenty without assuming it. " But even in 
 their errors there are persons whom everything becomes, 
 because they have grace and tact." He himself was one of 
 those persons from his youth up ; and until his end he must 
 always have had the desire to please. " None but boors are 
 without it." But his great precept in such matters is, above 
 all else, to imitate no otie. " The method would surely be 
 detected and all would be spoiled. The greatest art in pleas- 
 ing is to have no art." This he must have practised him- 
 self, if not in his first period, certainly in his second. 
 
 He whom Madame du Defland and Grimm found diffi- 
 culty in admitting to be of the pure race of French wits, 
 became one so naturally that, writing in 1807 from Ttiplitz 
 to his compatriot Prince d'Aremberg, Mirabeau's former 
 friend, and speaking to him of M. de Talleyrand, who had 
 just arrived, he says : " Fancy his pleasure in being received 
 by me ; for there are no Frenchmen left in the world but him 
 and you and me — who are not Frenchmen." And in saying 
 that he spoke the truth. 
 
 He made his first essay in Paris under Louis XV., but he 
 succeeded completely under Louis XVI., in that young and 
 frolicsome Court, among his true contemporaries. He has 
 painted in a few airy pages, with inimitable touch, those 
 matutinal and familiar cavalcades, those promenades, where 
 Queen Marie Antoinette enraptured and thrilled all hearts, 
 yet never ceased to deserve respect. He has shown us that 
 lovable and calumniated queen ia her true colours ; as he 
 does, later on, all the other illustrious sovereigns he has 
 known, — the Empress Catherine, Frederick the Great, Joseph 
 II., Gustavus III. On each of these historical personages 
 
10 INTRODtrCTION. 
 
 the Prince de Ligne is at once an accurate and rapid witness 
 and the most animated, easy, and natural of painters. His 
 judgments are of great value, and the sound sense that un- 
 derlies his amiability is readily discerned. 
 
 In the interviews that he had with Frederick at the camp 
 of Neustadt in 1770, the conversation having turned on 
 religion, the king talked freely and with little decency, as he 
 did with such men as La Mettrie and d'Argens. " I thought," 
 says the Prince de Ligne, "that he set rather too high a 
 value on his damnation and boasted too much of it. . . . 
 At any rate, it was bad taste to exhibit himself in that way. 
 I made no reply when he spoke to me thus." With Voltaire, 
 another sovereign, to whom he made a visit at Femey, and 
 whose conversation, gestures, incongruities even, in all their 
 dishabille and petulance, he gives us to the life, he had 
 more than one serious discussion. " He was just then in 
 love," he says, " with the English Constitution. I remember 
 that I said to him : ' Monsieur de Voltaire, add to that its 
 supporter, the ocean, without which it would not last a 
 year.'" The man who seemed the more trivial of the two 
 was not in this instance the least wise. 
 
 This serious and sensible side of his nature, which he 
 never had any opportunity of developing to results m pubhc 
 affairs, turned in the Prince de Ligne to the profit of his 
 character as I'homme aimable. But even in being only that, 
 to the exclusion of other things, there is progress to be made 
 if such a man would continue to deserve his reputation. He 
 must nourish that charm, as he advances, with all sorts of 
 accurate and solid ideas, without appearing to do so ; the 
 agreeable man of sixty, if only to seem always twenty, must 
 not be agreeable as men are at twenty, when half their 
 charm, ia many cases, is a winning face and pretty manners. 
 He must, though all the while preserving his desire to please, 
 
INTRODUCTION. 11 
 
 add to that charm qualities which he did not have at twenty. 
 While feeling himself ever in concert with youth, he must 
 have experience that shall always accompany him, yet never 
 he marked. But for that matter, the Prince de Ligne, who 
 knows all about it far better than any one, shall develop the 
 idea as it suits him, and recite to us the several degrees, or, 
 so to speak, the successive seasons of the homme aimaUe. 
 
 " I know men," he says, " who have only as much wit as 
 they need to be fools. Listen to them, they talk well ; read 
 them, they write finely ; at any rate it is said so. All men 
 have intelligence now-a-days ; but if there is not much in their 
 ideas, distrust their phrases. Unless there is wit, novelty, 
 piquancy, and originality, such men of intellect are in my opin- 
 ion fools. Those who have this wit, novelty, and piquancy 
 may still be only half agreeable ; but if to that half they 
 add imagination, charmtag details, perhaps even happy in- 
 congruities, things unexpected that flash like lightning, re- 
 finement, elegance, precision, a pretty turn of instruction, 
 of reasoning that does not weary and is never iu the least 
 commonplace, a simple or distinguished bearing, a happy 
 choice of expressions, gayety, aptness, grace, carelessness, a 
 manner of their own in speaking or writing, you may then 
 say that such men have really and truly minds and are 
 agreeable." 
 
 But now comes a second degree, the second season that 
 makes a lasting maturity, without which the agreeable man, 
 even though he be defined in the above manner, runs a 
 risk of dying within himself, or of turning into fossilized 
 youth. 
 
 " If," says the prince, " adding to all this, he has a knowl- 
 edge of the literature and the language of other nations, if 
 he has philosophy, if he has seen much, compared well, 
 judged soundly, met with adventures, played a part in the 
 
12 INTEODUCTION. 
 
 world, and if he has loved, or been loved, he is still more 
 agreeable." 
 
 You think that this attains to the highest degree ; but the 
 Prince de Ligne, who wlU not content himself at so small 
 a cost, and who imports into this grace and social felicity 
 something of the fire and vivifying poesy which he puts 
 into his actions of war, completes his model and gives us, in 
 so doing, his own portrait. 
 
 "If, adding stiU further to the above, he inspires the 
 desire to meet him again, if he leads others to find in -hun 
 a continual charm, if he is greatly concerned for others, and 
 greatly detached from himself, with a strong desire to please, 
 to oblige, to take part in the success of others, to make 
 others shine, if he knows how to listen, if he possesses 
 sensibility, elevation of mind, sincerity, probity, and excel- 
 lence of heart, oh, then he brings happiness to the society 
 in which he lives, and he is certain of universal success." 
 
 You will observe that in order to complete and crown 
 his picture he thinks it essential to add to his idea of the 
 charming man a sentiment of humanity, of affection, of 
 sincere self-detachment in the midst of success. The reason 
 is, he well knows that the peril of what is commonly called 
 amiabiUty in social life and the use, exclusively, of mental 
 gifts is hardness and selfishness; the remedy must there- 
 fore be found in the quahties themselves, the contrary of 
 their defects, in order that the fuU charm may be acquired, 
 and that the charm may last. 
 
 Among the desultory writings which escaped the Prince 
 de Ligne during the first half of his life and which best 
 depict him at that date, I note particularly those that he 
 has written about gardens in connection with his own at 
 Beloeil. This was the period when the Abb^ Delille pub- 
 lished his poem entitled "Gardens," in which he said of 
 
INTRODUCTION. 13 
 
 Beloeil, that beautiful place near Ath in Belgium, the prop- 
 erty and partly the creation of the Prince de Ligne, " Belceil, 
 magnificent, yet rural!" France was then in a vein of 
 creation and remodelling of gardens ; the English style was 
 being introduced and breaking in upon the harmonies of 
 Le N5tre. It was who should study to diversify Nature, 
 and profit by the study to embellish her. M. de Girardin 
 created Ermenonville ; M. de Laborde, M^rdville ; M. Boutin 
 had Tivoli ; M. Watelet, Moulin-Joli. Beloeil was, and I am 
 glad to think still is, a combination charmingly composed 
 of French and English gardens, — something natural, yet 
 regular ; elegant, but majestic. AH that was grand, formal, 
 and in the style of Le NStre came from the prince's father ; 
 he himself was ever seeking to add the varied, the unex- 
 pected ; time alone was lacking to him to complete his work, 
 his poem. He is not exclusive ; he would be very sorry to 
 banish the straight line; he does not wish to substitute 
 English monotony for French monotony, which was happen- 
 ing even then ; but in gardens, as in love, it is his opinion 
 that we should not show too much at first, because, the first 
 moments of pleasure over, we yawn and are bored. He 
 treats of buildings in their relation to the surrounding coun- 
 try. One building should be a palace, a royal residence, 
 another a chateau, another a country-house, a hunting-box, 
 a house in the fields or among the vineyards. But wher- 
 ever it be, " I exclude," he says, " everything with a bour- 
 geois faQade, without movement in the roof and elevation, 
 without centre, without projection on the wings; also all 
 that is plaster with its vulgar air; and I advise either the 
 noble or the simple, the magnificent or the pretty, but always 
 the appropriate, the piquant, and the distinguished." 
 
 Why do we say English gardens rather than Chinese 
 gardens, or natural gardens? According to the prince, 
 
14 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Horace has pictured to us an English garden; his Qua 
 jpinus ingens is the best, sweetest, and most smiling descrip- 
 tion of them. " That little brook that is fretting to escape," 
 said the prince, "gave me even more pleasure to arrange 
 than I take in reading." 
 
 In reading aU that he has written about gardens we are 
 repaid by charming passages, sketches of sites as if in 
 water-colour, washed-in lightly but very vividly touched. 
 Sometimes he exclaims against " templomania ; " though he 
 himself admits too many altars, statues, and allegories, accord- 
 ing to the taste of his day. Still, in the designs among 
 which he dallies there are plans and suggestions wholly 
 natural and suited to all fortunes. " If you are not rich," he 
 says, " you can still have all you need with a house of one 
 story, simple, neat, the roof hidden, a coating of colour, a 
 few casts of bas-rehefs or some rustic lattice-work ; a broad 
 and rapid brook escaping from real rocks, a trembling foot- 
 bridge, like that of Aline, a few benches, perhaps a stone- 
 table, a shepherd's hut, a movable salon rolhng on four 
 wheels ; a few pines, proud without arrogance ; a few Italian 
 poplars, darting upward, not showy, but agile and friendly, 
 one weeping willow, one Judas-tree, an acacia, a plane-tree ; 
 three flower-beds, cast hap-hazard on the grass, daisies in a 
 comer of your lawn and a little field of poppies and of bluets." 
 
 I make no mention of the chapter on allegories, inscrip- 
 tions, hieroglyphics, of which he desires that no abuse be 
 made, though at the same time he grants their use as a trib- 
 ute paid to the taste of the day. 
 
 " With all this," he adds, " and a ha-ha, unseen and sunken, 
 letting us enjoy the slopes, the vales, the woods, the fields, 
 the village, the ancient castle of the neighbourhood, I could 
 surpass both Kent and Le E"6tre ; and with twenty thousand 
 francs for the whole work, and two hundred francs a year to 
 
INTRODUCTION. 15 
 
 keep it up, I could bring travellers fifty miles off their route 
 to see it." 
 
 It is thus that he constructs you a Tibur, according to the 
 dream of a moderate competency ; but if you are rich, he will 
 propose to you columns, marbles, galleries with burnished 
 domes and tiers of terraces. " I mean that these shall be far 
 distant from each other, in a great space," he says, " blendiag 
 with water and turf and the finest oaks." 
 
 By these quotations I am only trying to give the senti- 
 ment that circulates through all that the Prince de Ligne 
 has written about gardens. He writes in a style most con- 
 trary to that of certain persons of our acquaintance, — in a 
 joyous style, through which the sun-rays pass. He brings 
 to his composition of gardens a strong recollection of society 
 and a taste for attracting and bringing it thither. He thinks, 
 with La Fontaine, that "gardens talk little." He loves 
 Nature, but rarely to be alone with it. He takes the country 
 on his return from camps, in the interval between two cam- 
 paigns, as he himself says happily : " You whom the Court 
 and Army relieve for a while of attendance, amuse yourselves 
 in your gardens, uplift your souls in your forests." He is so . 
 sociable, even ia his hours of retreat and solitude, that he 
 would not be sorry if he could see a great capital from his 
 rural home. " ' There,' I should say, sitting at the foot of an 
 ancient oak, 'there is the great assemblage of absurdities 
 and vices,' " and he enumerates them ; pushing to its con- 
 clusion the pretty theme, which parodies that of the sage of 
 Lucre tills enjoying the sight of a storm. But he wants all 
 sorts of people about him, even animals, provided they are 
 not stupid. This is truly that spirit of society which was 
 mingled by the eighteenth century with its love for gar- 
 dens. Since then we have made a stride in our worship 
 of Nature ; I do not say that we like to be alone more 
 
16 INTBODUCTION. 
 
 than they did in former times, but we are less afraid of 
 being so ; and we have fewer garden amateurs who would 
 say with the Prince de Ligne : " I have always so loved 
 social life of every kind that I lately parted with a Salvator 
 Eosa for almost nothing, because it was sheer desert, and 
 deserted places have to me an air of annihilation ; a picture 
 without figures is like the end of the world." 
 
 In after years the Prince de Ligne, in his " Eefuge " on 
 the Leopoldberg, near Vienna, seems to have been brought 
 to admire Nature more truly for herself. He has left some 
 papers as to this which breathe a soul at last initiated; 
 proving that he was well rewarded for his assiduous sylvan 
 labours. The habit of this kiad of beauty renewed his en- 
 joyment instead of lessening it, which is the great test of all 
 the things we love. " I perceive every day," he says, " and 
 more and more, that we never weary of the noble spectacle 
 of nature." His practical moral in this line is that we should 
 " seek out, not make ; " in other words, find and recognize 
 the existing points of view, the natural lay of the land, and 
 be content to give them all their value, not seeking to create 
 nor to construct. 
 
 How often duriag the last few days, while reading this 
 series of the prince's thoughts and excursions among gardens, 
 have I wished that some man of taste and observation (not 
 an indifferent and hasty editor) would make a diligent and 
 discriminating selection which should give their true value 
 to so many choice passages. A number of rapid glimpses, 
 full of freshness and invention, could be found. There is 
 one, for instance, upon the choice of seeds for the environs 
 of a park. The prince supposes that the park is not inclosed 
 by walls ; that the view extends beyond it through well- 
 managed vistas. He therefore chooses seeds that wiU give 
 diversity of tone to the plaias ; he assorts " the tender green 
 
tNTEODUCTiON. 17 
 
 of the flax, the honey-grass, the mottled buckwheat, the pale 
 yellow of the wheat, the vivid green of the barley, and many 
 other species, which," he says, " I do not yet know ; '' the 
 whole together forming a distance to the picture and a 
 pleasure to the eye. All this is said of a mere nothing, 
 with careless, piquant lightness, mingled with an avowal of 
 inexperience, as if by some Hamilton who had come to love 
 sincerely rural scenes. 
 
 In the history of the picturesque in our literature the 
 sketches and landscapes of the Prince de Ligne may serve 
 as a date and a landmark. Jean-Jacques Eousseau had 
 already discovered and revealed solitude and the sweetnesses 
 and sublimities it enshrines ; Bernardin de Saint-Pierre and 
 Chateaubriand were about, in their turn, to discover and de- 
 scribe the virgin forest, the savage and splendid beauties of 
 another world ; Obermann was soon to cast himself into the 
 solitary contemplation and inmost expression of far-off, 
 desolate scenes ; but amateurs, who were men of the world, 
 men of taste, and of noble taste, moved indeed by Nature, 
 and yet not wishing to enjoy it apart from society, said 
 (among other things) with the Prince de Ligne, and they 
 could not say it better than he: — 
 
 " I love the copses and vistas of a wood, the fine paths 
 better kept than those of a garden, the pretty fences, and 
 above all, those glades of birches that look like marble col- 
 umns standing forth against the tall, dark greenery of the 
 wood. I love the garden air of the forests, and the forest 
 air of the gardens ; and it is thus that I mean always to 
 work." 
 
 These sketches (with many others) of the Prince de Ligne 
 
 seem to me to represent to us to-day the spirit of the actual 
 
 transition which, profiting by the ideas and inspirations of 
 
 the great writers and innovators of the picturesque, endeav- 
 
 voi,. I. — 2 
 
18 INTEODUCTION. 
 
 oured to conciliate the latter with the traditions of our taste 
 and the inclinations of our nature. I speak of the Priuce de 
 Ligne as being altogether a Frenchman at the time that he 
 wrote on BeloeiL It is what he then was, and never ceased 
 to be. 
 
 " Away with the semi-amiable, the semi-learned men ! We 
 can get more from those who are not so at all. Let us have 
 the natural man ; above all, naturalness." This was a maxim 
 of the Prince de Ligne. Naturalness : he had it in his life- 
 time in his own person ; to-day he does not seem always to 
 have it in his style, which is written conversation, nor in his 
 letters and the sayings that are quoted of him ; and the 
 reason is that he lives no longer. The mark of the times 
 and the world in which he lived is stamped in the corner of 
 what he writes ; and though he says, " In aU we do let us 
 have what is called in painting the broad manner," he shows 
 the effects of Trianon. Eager, brilliant, sparkling with wit, 
 he sought the best, but did not always keep to it ; he had 
 more imagiuation than decorum or taste. This man of lofty 
 stature, of fine and noble countenance, with a martial and 
 intelUgent air, wore ear-rings. That being told, let us take 
 him on his good points : his witty sayiags, which often go 
 far into truth and earnestness, his perfect knowledge of life, 
 of the world, of men. 
 
 One of the episodes attached to his name, the memory of 
 which his letters have consecrated, was the journey he made 
 to the Crimea in 1787 with the Empress Catherine, her min- 
 ister Potemkin, and the whole of the diplomatic corps, ia- 
 cluding M. de S^gur, who represented France. Poniatowski, 
 King of Poland, appeared for a moment at one of the stop- 
 ping-places on their route. The Emperor of Germany, 
 Joseph II., was one of the party during the whole last half 
 of the trip. The Prince de Ligne has written nine letters 
 
INTBODUCTION. 19 
 
 on the subject to the Marquise de Coigny, — a bulletin of 
 fairy-land, of enchantment, for the benefit of that world of 
 Paris and of Versailles which the Assembly of Notables 
 was already undermining. "Cleopatra's fleet left Kiev as 
 soon as a general cannonading assured us of the breaking up 
 of the ice in the Borysthenes [Dnieper]. If any one had 
 asked, on seeing us embark on our big and little vessels to 
 the number of eighty sail, with three thousand men in their 
 crews, • what the devil we were going to do in those gal- 
 leys,' we should have answered, ' Amuse ourselves, and — 
 Vogue la galore ! ' " 
 
 Amuse themselves, and something more — initiate a war. 
 On arriving at the mouth of the Dnieper the flotilla of the 
 empress came to the town and fortress of Oczakow, then 
 belonging to the Turks, from which a dozen Turkish vessels 
 sailed out and stationed themselves across the river. This 
 angered Catherine: she took a map to study the country 
 and flicked the spot with her finger-nail, smiling, — a presage 
 of war ! It is well to notice in the prince's account with 
 what heedlessness the affair was begun. One object of the 
 trip was to drag in Joseph II., who was not inclined for war. 
 The Prince de Ligne assisted; he confesses the whole 
 manoeuvre, — not in his letters to the Marquise de Coigny, 
 which were written for the purpose of being shown, but in 
 a narrative, written later, and after the event, which wiU be 
 found ia the twenty-fourth volume of his Works. 
 
 Singular thing ! Catherine, who thought herself ready, was 
 not so at all ; she had a mind for war, and yet she hesitated. 
 "•Gazing at the portrait of Peter I., which she always carries 
 in her pocket when she travels, she said to me several times, 
 in a manner that dictated my answer : ' What would he say ? 
 what would he do if he were here ? ' It is easy to guess all 
 that my desire to please and to make war inspired me to 
 
20 INTEODUCTION. 
 
 reply." Here the Prince de Ligne makes his sincere med 
 culpS,. He contributed, without reflection he says, to the 
 harm that was done. Each time that the empress showed 
 him that portrait of Peter the Great on her snuff-box, and 
 repeated her "What would he say? what would he do?" 
 he made the desired answer. This is the only time we detect 
 him in saying a slighting word of the Empress Catherine and 
 of the disadvantage of having women upon thrones. " They 
 are overwhelmed with homage; they make no distinctions, 
 but accept it all as sovereigns. Thus S^gur's gallantry, the 
 piquant indifference of Fitz-Herbert [English ambassador], — 
 which only makes his bit of praise the more subtle, because 
 it has the air of escaping him unwillingly, — the flattery of 
 some, the servility of others, intoxicate this princess." He 
 sketches for us dehghtfuUy a few of these intoxicating 
 scenes ; especially one at the moment of their arrival in the 
 Crimea. The mise-en-scene was due to the clever Prince 
 Potemkin, but the feuilletons are those of the Prince de 
 Ligne. I send the reader to them. 
 
 However, when the war broke out, when Turkey (for she 
 could do so then) was the first to take offence, and the news 
 came that the Eussian ambassador was imprisoned in the 
 Sept-Tours, Catherine, who by that time had returned to her 
 capital, received these events with a less joyous air than that 
 with which she had provoked them. She became once more 
 what she really was, " a sovereign for history far more than 
 for romance," who now thought only of procuring certain 
 solid and feasible results with the least possible difficulty. 
 They had all gone fast and far in anticipating schemes of 
 partition among the sovereigns ; they had even asked them- 
 selves amid the enchantments of the Crimea, " What the 
 devil shall we do with Constantinople ? " But now they 
 were content to lay siege to Oczakow. 
 
INTRODUCTION. 21 
 
 The Prince de Ligne, during this journey to the Dnieper 
 and the Crimea, had been only the most agreeable of cour- 
 tiers and knights of romance. One day, as the imperial 
 galley passed close to the rock where tradition places the 
 sacriiice of Iphigenia, and while the party were discussing 
 that point of historical mythology, Catherine, who was walk- 
 ing the deck with majesty, grace, and slowness, stretched 
 forth her hand, and said : " I give you. Prince de Ligne, that 
 disputed territory." The story adds that the prince, seeing 
 they were near the bank, sprang into the water as he was, in 
 uniform, and immediately took possession of the rock ; carv- 
 iug on one side, the visible side, the divine name of Catherine, 
 and on the other (so he says) the wholly human name of 
 the lady of his thoughts, the lady of the moment — for he 
 changed often. He liked such lively frohcking. 
 
 But towards the end of the same year, 1787, he becomes, 
 as far as he is able, a personage of history ; he wanted war, 
 and he was now among the first to enter it. As he did not 
 think his own sovereign, Joseph II., was prepared to begin it 
 quickly enough, he asked to be taken, provisionally, into the 
 service of Eussia. " After committing various follies in the 
 course of my Hfe," he says, " I have ended by committing a 
 stupidity." We see him now without any definite part to 
 play, a soldier, half diplomat, a general-officer, half coun- 
 sellor, but a counsellor very little heeded, side by side with 
 Prince Potemkin, who caresses him and fools him. " I am 
 trustful," he says ; " I always believe in those who like 
 me." Oczakow is besieged; Potemkin is nothing of a sol- 
 dier, but he wishes to appear one. The Prince de Ligne, 
 out of delicacy, abstains from writing anything against him 
 to the Court, but he eats his heart out at the petty rivalries 
 and intrigues that take the place of battles. " What follies, 
 whims, childishnesses, anti-military things of all kinds went 
 
22 INTEODUCTION. 
 
 on during the space of five months that I remained before 
 that beggarly place ! I tried to ignore them ; but I suffered, 
 like a musician who listens to instruments that are out of 
 tune." 
 
 From there he went to the Russian army in Moldavia, 
 under command of Mar^chal Eomanzoff ; there, indeed, was 
 a soldier, but a man who was even more wily than Prince 
 Potemkin, and who listened to the Prince de Ligne as little. 
 The latter had his quarters at Jassy, and while fretting 
 against his enforced inaction, he made acquaintance with 
 the boyards and the wives of the boyards, the beautiful 
 Moldavians, the indolent Phanariots, the half- Asiatic Greek 
 women, whose grace and careless ease and dances he de- 
 scribes in his letters to the Comte de S^gur. 
 
 Shrewd political perceptions mingle with these pretty 
 sketches ; even the prince's hterary tastes find food there, 
 so that later, when he reads La Harpe's " Cours de Littdra- 
 ture " and makes annotations (often very keen and very 
 just), he reproves the celebrated professor for his chapter 
 on the Greeks. " If you had seen, Monsieur de La Harpe," 
 he says, "and studied the Greeks of to-day as I have in 
 treating with them on affairs of public policy, you would 
 know that they resemble the ancients. Circumstances alone 
 prevent them from showing it. Meantime, examine their 
 minds, look in their beautiful eyes, remark the vivacity 
 or the nobility of their present Greek language." He says 
 elsewhere, in criticisiag our manner of translating the an- 
 cients and our habit of ignorantly judging them: "We 
 must go to the fountain-head, to the original. I know 
 that time may have corrupted it, but I have shown trans- 
 lations to Greeks of the regions about Pera and the Archi- 
 pelago, and to the handsome, well-educated wives of the 
 boyards of Jassy, persons who knew French well, and 
 
INTRODUCTION. 23 
 
 spoke the modern Greek, but understood their ancient 
 literature thoroughly from father to son, and they one and 
 all assured me that the originals were totally different 
 from the translations, and that it was most amusing to 
 read of the discussions in Prance about the ancients, who, 
 especially the poets, were not in the least understood there." 
 This opinion (to me, who am as ignorant as the prince him- 
 self) seems at the present day to be strictly just. 
 
 At length, however, Joseph II. began his own war against 
 the Turks, less fortunately than he had reason to expect. The 
 Prince de Ligne has no longer any cause to be absent from 
 the Austrian ranks. He asks for his recall, and serves under 
 his former general, Loudon, at the siege of Belgrade (Septem- 
 ber and October, 1789) ; he helps him effectually by a series 
 of well-manoeuvred attacks, and towards the close by placing 
 a battery at the point of an island, which does marvels. 
 After Lacy, who was more completely a soldier, unitiag both 
 dash and coolness, he valued no one so highly as Loudon, a 
 great warrior the moment he was in action. " I was aU on 
 fire myself for that Being who was more god than man in 
 war." After the taking of Belgrade the Prince de Ligne, 
 who had been for some time in a sort of semi-disgrace [ow- 
 ing to an unfounded suspicion of his sympathy with the 
 Belgian revolution], obtained a distinction due to merit only ; 
 he was named Commander of the military Order of Maria 
 Theresa. His health, injured by a succession of fevers, 
 needed several months in which to recover itself. The revo- 
 lution in the Low Countries had begun, that of France was 
 beginning to flame. The Prince de Ligne is at the dawn of 
 great events ; he is fifty-five years of age ; his robust consti- 
 tution, recovered from the effects of Belgrade, is still well 
 able to endure fatigue. Pie aspires to a command-in-chief ; 
 he is on the point, perhaps, of showing his full proportions; 
 
24 INTEODUCTION. 
 
 for it is in war only, as he tells us himself, that he has 
 ever dreamed of playing a grand part; in other directions 
 he has been content to be a witness and a confidant. But 
 the Emperor Joseph dies (February 20, 1790 i), his adored 
 Joseph II., as he calls him, and with him the fortunes of 
 the Prince de Ligne come to an end ; his career is broken, or, 
 at any rate, closed. O sorrow ! in vain has he fed on noble 
 desires and generous ambitions ; he will never be anything 
 henceforth but the veteran of elegance, the last of the 
 knights of old. 
 
 We, who in these days are searching everywhere for mate- 
 rial on the history of manners and morals and the distinc- 
 tion of characters, should note well the point of separation of 
 periods which the prince, better than any one, helps us to 
 observe and define. In his letters to M. de Sdgur, dated 
 Oczakow, during that melancholy siege where, spite of slow- 
 ness and intrigues, a few brilliant cannonadings and combats 
 took place, the Prince de Ligne speaks of the Prince of Nas- 
 sau, that brilhant paladin, a sort of knight-errant through 
 many lands, in turn and at his fancy colonel of infantry, 
 colonel of cavalry, and vice-admiral. He also speaks of a 
 French volunteer, another jpretty phenomenon of chivalry, 
 Comte Eoger de Damas, of whom he says : " Frani^ois I., the 
 Great Cond^, and the Mar&hal de Saxe would fain have had 
 a son hke him." These were the last bouquet, if I may so 
 express it, of the flower of our old French knighthood, of 
 those valiant and gallant courtiers, civilized and refined, 
 whose swords were brave and brilliant, but sheathed in 
 silken scabbards. The Prince de Ligne was of their race. 
 At the moment of the taking of Belgrade he writes to M. de 
 S^gur, combining with true art his various sensations: "I 
 
 1 He writes to the Empress Catherine, on the death of Joseph II., a let- 
 ter which deserves to become historical. 
 
rNTEODUCTION. 25 
 
 saw with great military pleasure and great philosophical pain 
 the twelve thousand cannon-balls that I aimed at those poor 
 infidels hurtling through the air." And after entering the 
 town he says : " We smelt there, aU at the same time, death, 
 burning, and attar of rose ; for it is extraordinary to what 
 point the Turks unite their voluptuous tastes with barbar- 
 ism." He himself likes to play with such antitheses. 
 
 But now a new era was about to open, imposing, stern. 
 In the great democratic convulsion when the soil of France 
 gave birth to armies, after the first inuring to war and its 
 apprenticeship was over, there were heroes and knights also ; 
 but these Lannes, and Murats, and Neys were, each in his 
 own way, a primitive Eoland or Achilles, who knew nothing 
 of the poUshed graces and refinements of the old reigns. 
 M. de Narbonne alone, as if to honour that memory, presented 
 a last specimen of them on the emperor's staff ; all the rest 
 were of the soil, — keeping their origin visible beneath their 
 purple and gold ; lions in courage, a generation made for the 
 strife of giants. 
 
 The Prince de Ligne, in spite of his mental affiliations 
 with the eighteenth century, did not hesitate a moment in 
 his antipathy to the Kevolution; but, for all that, he was 
 one of the first to judge rightly of the great new movement, 
 its bearings, and its consequences in the future. They are 
 not predictions like those of a de Maistre that I expect of 
 him, but sallies and outlooks full of acumen and accuracy. 
 A piquant letter addressed to his old friend S^gur, who had 
 given some adhesion to the first acts of the Eevolution 
 shows us the Prince de Ligne in 1790. In the tone of the 
 letter much is true and much false, but the situation is 
 keenly felt and vividly characterized. He exhorts S^gur to 
 emigrate, which the latter has the right spirit not to do ; but 
 the priace advises it iu noble terms : " Give your hand to 
 
26 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Louis XVI. to reascend his throne, instead of helping him 
 to come down from it. Be, all of you, more royalist than 
 he." The Prince de Ligne could speak at his ease, he whose 
 country was in some sort ad libitum, and who defined him- 
 self as French in Austria, Austrian in France, and either in 
 Eussia. 
 
 But he is not long in becoming more circumspect, and 
 less ready to prognosticate. The Allied Powers have not 
 done what he wished ; they have given France the time to 
 train herself to war. The emigres, in his opinion, have 
 carried Honour (in the royalist sense) out of the country; 
 the " rebels " have kept nothing of their nation but intelli- 
 gence and courage. He forgets that the " rebels," who are 
 nearly the whole nation, have kept intact the sentiment of 
 patriotism. He is forced, however, to acknowledge that 
 talent has taken the place of the guillotine : " From Athens 
 France has been to Sparta, passing through the country of 
 the Huns." In an essay on the new French army he does 
 it, not indeed complete justice, but at least the beginning of 
 justice. As for the republic, he no more forgives it than 
 he did on its first day. In his opinion, contrary to that of 
 Montesquieu, it is terror alone that makes republics. " God 
 grant it may have virtue for six months, and it will be 
 destroyed." 
 
 He believes from the start that the most distinct result 
 of the French Eevolution and of all that happened in '93 
 would be to strengthen the monarchical principle. The 
 rule of '93 would have, he thought, the effect of the drunken 
 Helot, and disgust the nations from copying it. " We shall 
 sooner see," he says, "republics become kingdoms, than king- 
 doms become republics. They will mourn in Louis XVI. the 
 best of men, in his wife the most beautiful and perfect of 
 queens, with thousands of other victims, and they will serve 
 
INTEOBtrCTION. 27 
 
 Grod the better for it and respect their sovereigns more." 
 Here he turns to gravity of tone and thought. " It is diffi- 
 cult not to be serious at the bottom of our souls," says the 
 prince in one of his " Scattered Thoughts," " if that bottom 
 is not, as it is in some people, on the surface." 
 
 He was royalist, not from prejudice, but from reflection and 
 principle. He thought that in all the great moments of his- 
 tory which last and fix themselves permanently " everything 
 depends on a single man " or on a very small number of men. 
 Eeigns, even the most severe, seemed to him to offer more 
 chances to talent and to distinguished men than anarchy. 
 " The Scipios," he said, " were great aristocrats. Pericles 
 was a species of king. Horace and Virgil would have had 
 little success during a civil war. If Montaigne and that 
 good La Fontaine had lived in our day, the one with his 
 truths, the other with his absent mind and his naivete, they 
 would have been the first hanged." In aU of which the 
 Prince de Ligne does as others do in like cases; he twists 
 history to his own side. 
 
 There is a letter from the prince to a very distinguished 
 emigre, M. de Meilhan, a former government official, a man 
 of letters and a man of intellect. It discusses the changes 
 that the Eevolution will bring into the public manners and 
 taste. "After what has happened of late, all ideas must 
 necessarily be re-made." He thinks, first, that the universal- 
 ity of the French language will suffer, that Paris will no 
 longer be, as before, the recognized literary and intellectual 
 capital of Europe. He makes a very keen remark on the 
 emigres and the spirit of aristocracy which has found its 
 way into democracy itself : " Many persons flatter them- 
 selves they win be noblemen by emigrating ; not one of 
 them, however insignificant he may be, but thinks he is the 
 equal of a Montmorency in serving throne and altar." The 
 
28 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 result of the emigration will therefore be to vulgarize nobil- 
 ity. Unable to separate the idea of taste from that of the 
 charming society in the midst of which he had lived, he 
 concludes by saying: "They may restore the throne in 
 France, but good taste never." The lustre, grace, and urban- 
 ity of manners in the most amiable of aU nations have 
 vanished before the presence of crime ; ia their place a 
 sullen repubhc puts the spirit of discussion and false elo- 
 quence. Do not take the prince's words for more than the 
 lively and piquant talk of a man who lies in bed in the 
 morning and thinks aloud ; you may then gather in on all 
 sides witty sayings and whetted ones which will make you 
 think and swear, and say yes and no in a breath — which 
 is what the prince desires. And even when we agree 
 and approve, his sayings are still conversation, to which 
 we must supply at every moment the answers that are 
 lacking. 
 
 Speaking to this very M. de Meilhan, who had an idea 
 of writing a History of the Empress Catherine, the Prince 
 de Ligne said, while encouraging him : " It needs a man 
 of good society to write history." 
 
 But great things were doing at the war, and the Prince 
 de Ligne was not of it. This inaction, to which his Court 
 condemned him, was crueL " Apparently," he says, " I am 
 dead with Joseph IL, resuscitated a moment to be in- 
 valided with Mardchal Loudon and die again with Mar^chal 
 Lacy." There came moments when he would fain have 
 been appointed to the chief command in Italy, where he 
 could have measured himself with the conqueror of Rivoli 
 and Marengo. Such an ambition was honourable. There 
 were several ways, no doubt, of being vanquished by Buona- 
 parte; we can imagine some that were worthy of envy. 
 The Prince de Ligne concealed his warrior-pain beneath the 
 
INTRODUCTION. 29 
 
 smiles of a man of the world and the indifference of a 
 philosopher. But the wound was there. 
 
 He spent his last insensibly declining years in Vienna, 
 in his little house on the rampart, or at his " Eefuge " on 
 the Leopoldberg. He read, he wrote every morning with- 
 out fail, he printed his Works, too muddled, too swamped 
 and riddled with blunders by the printers, not to speak of 
 his own. Disillusioned as to fame, enjoyed by every one, 
 he charmed the society about him, and cheated Time as 
 best he could. When La Harpe's " Cours de Litt^rature," 
 or his " Correspondence '' with the Grand Duke of Eussia, 
 or the Memoirs of Bezenval appeared the Prince de Ligne 
 read them, pen in hand, adding curious and interesting 
 comments to page after page, which careful editors of those 
 works would do well in future to make use of. On Eaynal, 
 his tone and heaviness; on Beaumarchais, his mystifica- 
 tions and charlatanism ; on Duclos, Saint-Lambert, Cr^billOn, 
 and a hundred others, he gives strokes that are original and 
 as if he had dined with them all. Of Mme. Geoffrin he 
 says, in approving the picture that La Harpe makes of her : 
 " The portrait is of the utmost truth, but he should have 
 added her remarkable talent for definitions." We feel the 
 value of such remarks from a man who has seen so much 
 and so well, and who has no other pretension than to 
 remember with accuracy. 
 
 There is one topic to which he often returns, h propos 
 of either Bezenval or La Harpe ; it is that of Queen Marie 
 Antoinette; and each time, inspired by his heart, by a 
 faithful and tender imagination, he shows her to us in her 
 true light, with her innocent giddiness, her ingenuousness, 
 and all the glow of a face "on which could be seen to 
 develop, with blushes, her pretty regrets, her excuses, and 
 often her kindnesses." It is when he thinks the least of 
 
30 INTEODUCTION. 
 
 what he writes that he paints her best, and makes us see 
 with one stroke her goodness and her grace. After vindi- 
 cating her on all essential points, he ends, with a chivalrous 
 sentiment that recalls that of Burke, by putting her memory 
 under the protection of the young French soldiers, who had 
 never seen her and, comiag at a later day, were pure of all 
 ingratitude towards her. "At least," he writes, about the 
 date of Austerhtz and Jena, " those who have acquired such 
 glory under the banners of their emperor must pity that 
 unhappy princess whom they would have served so well." 
 That is an alliance of ideas and feelings which does him 
 honour. In making that appeal the Prince de Ligne touched 
 true; he was not mistaken; Marie Antoinette has been 
 vindicated by the new France against the old. 
 
 Old age came on, however, though the Prince de Ligne 
 adorned it to the last with charm and elegance. He became 
 aware one day that two beautiful women whom he often 
 visited lived on an upper storey, to be reached by many 
 stairs. He wrote them a lively little note, taking leave of 
 them and saying : " Adieu ; you are decidedly the last whom 
 I have loved on a third floor." But this apparent gayety 
 served only to conceal withia him regrets and memories. 
 
 " Memories ! " he cried in his moments of solitude. 
 " They call them sweet and tender, but in whatever form 
 they come to me I declare them hard and bitter. War, 
 love, success of other days, places where we have had all 
 that, you poison our present ! ' What a difference ! ' we say, 
 ' How time passes ! I was victorious, loved, and young! ' We 
 feel so far, so far from those fine moments which went by 
 so fast that a song heard then, or a tree beneath which we 
 sat recalls them, and we burst into tears. ' I was there,' we 
 say, • the night of the famous battle.' — ' Here he pressed my 
 hand.' — ' It was from there I started for those charming 
 
INTRODUCTION. 31 
 
 winter quarters.' Then I thought well of men. Woman, 
 the Court, the town, the men of business had not then 
 deceived me. My soldiers (a society of honest men, purer, 
 more delicate than men of the world) adored me, my 
 peasants hlessed me, my trees grew, that which I loved was 
 still in the world, it existed for me. Oh, memory ! memory ! 
 It returned sometimes to the Duke of Marlborough ; playing 
 in his second childhood with his pages one day, a portrait 
 before which he passed restored it for a moment, and he 
 watered with tears the hands with which he covered his 
 face." 
 
 Eloquent words ! accents escaping from the heart ! the 
 voice of nature ! Why did the amiable prince so seldom 
 use them ? 
 
 When the Congress of Vienna opened ia 1814 the Prince 
 de Ligne was by his position, and quite naturally, the grand- 
 master of the ceremonies of that brilliant reunion. The 
 younger of the diplomatists delighted in gathering about 
 him and listening to him, making him their iatroducer and 
 guide and echoiag his witticisms as he uttered them : " Le 
 Gongrls ne marche pas, il danse. . . . The web of policy 
 is embroidered with f gtes." But amid the brilliancy that sur- 
 rounds him we catch a glimpse of shadows. The Prince de 
 Ligne suffered at times from being looked on as a curiosity, 
 a mere social convenience in this great meeting of kings and 
 ministers about to determine the destinies of the world. He 
 had begun too early to seem a relic. All that he felt to be 
 a failure in his military career came back to him, at certain 
 moments, with bitterness. One morning when he had gone 
 to SchSnbrunn, where the young King of Eome was Hving, 
 the child, who was fond of the old marshal, began to play at 
 soldiering before him. The marshal joined the game and 
 commanded the manoeuvre, but as he watched the boy the 
 
32 INTEODUCTION. 
 
 thought must have come to him that it was more than a 
 score of years since he had commanded in earnest before the 
 enemy. 
 
 On a certain day, when he had received one of those little 
 affronts that even the most amiable old age cannot always 
 avoid when it persists in wishing to seem ever young, a 
 few words escaped him, kindly as he was, against youth. 
 " My day is gone," he said ; " my world is dead. But after 
 aU, what is the merit of the youth of to-day that aU the 
 world should shower it with favours ? " That merit was 
 simply smiling and being young in its turn. The Prince de 
 ligne, in spite of his habitual sweetness of temper and man- 
 ners, cannot quite protect himself from an attack of mis- 
 anthropy. He was vexed at infatuations and all the 
 imitations of talent and wit which usurped the reputation 
 of that which was truer and more original. " There is such 
 brigandage of success in society," he said, " that it disgusts 
 me." But it was more in the spirit of his own philosophy 
 that he wrote the following thought, which is the summary 
 of his last views of happiness : — 
 
 " Evening is the old age of the day ; winter the old age of 
 the year ; iasensibility the old age of the heart ; reason the 
 old age of the spirit ; illness that of the body ; decline the 
 old age of life. Each instant brings with it a sense of de- 
 crease ; all things move, but faster in ill than in good. We 
 are not as gay at fifteen as we were at ten, at thirty as at 
 twenty, and so on till death. What wounds, accidents, falls, 
 griefs, and derangements of the stomach have we not felt by 
 the time we are thirty ! and we suffer their effects to the 
 end of our lives. Employments, ribbons, glory, — do they, 
 after all, give as much pleasure as the first doll, the first 
 sailor's suit ? The child eats four meals a day ; the hero 
 often goes without his supper. Happy he who by the value 
 
INTKODTTCTION. 33 
 
 he places upon little things and his enjoyment of them pro- 
 longs his childhood. The happiest days are those that have 
 a long morniag and a short evening." 
 
 The Prince de Ligne died in Vienna December 13, 1814, 
 in his eightieth year, during the session of the Congress, to 
 which he procured, betvfeen two balls, the spectacle of a 
 magnificent funeral. A Protestant writer is severe to the 
 point of injustice upon this end of the Prince de Ligne. 
 But the latter, in spite of his failings and his maxims ti la 
 Hamilton and Aristippus, was far from being an unbeliever 
 or an atheist. " All that is very pretty," he said of the 
 boast of scepticism, " so long as the death-knell is not heard." 
 No one has spoken better than he on the origin of irreligion 
 in Voltaire : " that desire to be new, piquant, and quoted, to 
 laugh and create a laugh, to be what was called in those 
 days a bold writer," — things which, in his opinion, actuated 
 Voltaire more than any positive conviction. It was the 
 Prince de Ligne who gave utterance to this fine thought: 
 
 " Unbelief is so surely an assumed air that if any one sin- 
 cerely had it I do not see why he should not kill himself at 
 his first pain of body or mind. People do not sufficiently 
 think what human Hfe would be with a real irreligion; 
 atheists live under the shade of religion." 
 
 In what I have now said I have not meant to make a 
 biography, or even a portrait of the Prince de Ligne, but 
 merely to present him, and to save, so to speak, from the 
 wreckage of his Works a few fine or charming passages, and 
 to recall him to attention as one of the most sensible of the 
 arbiters of elegance, and the most truly amiable of the 
 fortunate of the earth. 
 
TRANSLATOR'S NOTE. 
 
 "L'homme aimable," tlie term by which Sainte-Beuve 
 justly charactemes the Prince de Ligne, is not translatable 
 into English. Ehomme aimable is pre-eminently a man of 
 society ; but the words " amiable/' " agreeable," " lovable," 
 " charming " do not singly represent him ; he is all of these 
 and something more. The genius of social life is not that 
 of the Anglo-Saxon; and this may be the reason why his 
 language so inadequately renders l'homme aimaUe. The 
 prince's own definition, given by Sainte-Beuve, and his life 
 in practice stand for that man. 
 
 His was a life lived for pleasure and to give pleasure; 
 but it was not a selfish life. He believed that to be happy 
 and to make others happy was a proper object of existence ; 
 he looked to good and not to evil. In these days of intro- 
 spection, when the discovery and study of evils prevail, it 
 is comfortable to meet with a nature like his. For one 
 thing, he thought no evU ; his interpretations were generous, 
 even of those, happily few, who wronged him. Throughout 
 his writings scarcely a harsh word can be found, certainly 
 never a harsh, unqualified judgment, although he freely 
 expresses disapproval, and is not weak in doing so. When 
 thwarted and mortified by Prince Potemkin he makes 
 an inimitable portrait of him, in which generosity, and a 
 loving generosity, prevails. Married by his father at nine- 
 teen without even knowing his wife, and living, certainly at 
 
36 TRANSLATOR'S NOTE. 
 
 times, the life of a bachelor who did not feel himself bound 
 by his conventional marriage vows, he nevertheless says, 
 quite incidentally: "I have known only one really united 
 family, and that is my own." 
 
 His love for his eldest son, Charles (he had seven children), 
 was passionate; and the death of that gallant son, in the 
 first war of the Eevolution, broke his inmost heart; he 
 never mentioned him again without tears, although he still 
 continued to be the same homme aimable of society until he 
 died in his eightieth year. 
 
 His memory has suffered a little from the fragmentary 
 manner in which his writings and the records of his life 
 have been given to the public; he himself having set the 
 example. The varied, not to say romantic incidents of his 
 career, and his own versatility have led his editors and com- 
 mentators to present him not as a whole but in parts, and 
 these dressed-up a little to suit their own interpretation of 
 what he was. Sainte-Beuve, always sincerely seeking to 
 understand and make clear to others the person of whom he 
 writes, and subordinating himself to that purpose, is an 
 exception. His portrait of the Prince de Ligne makes itself 
 felt to be the best we have ; his gTeat merit of sincerity is 
 nowhere more visible. 
 
 The present volumes seek to do what has not been done 
 before with the life of the Prince de Ligne. They take his 
 Fragmentary Memoir and fill its gaps with facts, sketches, 
 letters, and opinions found in his Works. Thus the only 
 consecutive history of the prince is here given, and given 
 in his own words. It seems to bring out certain of his 
 qualities that were not so distinctively social; such, for 
 instance, as his sense of duty in his profession, his warm 
 appreciation of others, his love of reading and of Nature, and 
 his happiness in solitude. His was not a life of achieve- 
 
TRAiJSLATOR'S NOTE. 37 
 
 ment, and it is doubtful whether a certain volatility would 
 not have counteracted the value of his military genius (for 
 he had that genius and the soldier's eye) had he obtained the 
 object of his ambition, namely, a command-in-chief. He was 
 therefore a disappointed man, but never an embittered one ; 
 nor was he at any time self-seeking. All these are fine 
 qualities which have hitherto been a little overshadowed by 
 his great social reputation, and also by a sort of giddiness 
 of high spirits, most amusing, and even lovable in his youth, 
 but which lasted in a modified form all his Hfe. 
 
 If the reader should find that the Memoir thus fiUed in 
 and amplified with the prince's own words is stiU fragmen- 
 tary and lacks co-ordination he must kindly believe that 
 there were difficulties in the way, especially in the fact that 
 the prince seldom, except in his campaign journals and 
 some of his letters, gives the date of either time or place, 
 and that more than half his volumes have no index. 
 
 To avoid what to many persons is the great annoyance of 
 footnotes, dates and short elucidating remarks are put into 
 the text between brackets; and a few of the chapters are 
 headed (also between brackets) with' short statements in- 
 tended to assist the reader in following the Memoir under- 
 standingly. 
 
 The Prince de Ligne, who speaks of his lineage ia a few 
 airy sentences with his accustomed carelessness, came of a 
 very ancient and distinguished family. " We were aU brave 
 from father to son," he says. In the Memoirs of the Due 
 de Saint-Simon more facts are given about his ancestry than 
 he himself takes the trouble to teU us. In a list of the 
 Grandees of Spain Saint-Simon says of his great-grand- 
 father: "The Prince de Ligne of Flanders, whose mother 
 was a Lorraine-Chaligny, niece of Queen Louise, wife of King 
 Henri IIL, was grandson of the first Prince de ligne, created 
 
38 TEAKSLATOR'S NOTE. 
 
 1601 by the Emperor Eodolphe II. He had the Golden 
 Pleece, as did his father, his grandfather, and his great- 
 grandfather, also his elder brother, who died without children 
 in 1641. He was general of cavalry in the Low Countries, 
 ambassador of Spain to England, viceroy of Sicily, governor- 
 general of the Milanais, Grandee of Spain 1650, councillor 
 of State, and died in Madrid, December, 1679. He married 
 a Nassau-Dilembourg-Seigen, widow of his elder brother, by 
 dispensation. The grandeeship has descended to his male 
 posterity, who all served Philippe V., and returned to the 
 service of the emperor when the Spanish Low Countries were 
 again under Austrian dominion." 
 
 The Prince de Ligne with whom we are concerned was 
 this man's great-grandson. He was a last product of the 
 eighteenth century, stopping short of its ultimate conclu- 
 sions, and marking, as Sainte-Beuve says, the parting of its 
 ways, or, more truly, its transition. His nature, sagacious, 
 witty, inquiring, fearless, shrewd, and argumentative, threw 
 him into the philosophy of the latter half of that century 
 with the spirit of a Frenchman; his traditional instincts, 
 and more than that his convictions, held him back. l^Tever- 
 theless, at the beginning of the French Eevolution he was 
 thought by the Austrian Court to be affected by its princi- 
 ples and to have fostered them in the Low Countries. The 
 injustice of these suspicions was proved by circumstances. 
 
 To Sainte-Beuve's wise and discriminating perception of 
 the Prince de Ligne it is superfluous to add anything. Of 
 late it has become the fashion with some to say that Sainte- 
 Beuve is out of date, " academic," and that the new blood 
 and spirit of the day needs another form of criticism. But 
 let us take a topic, — the Prince de Ligne, for instance, ' — 
 study it ourselves, and then read Sainte-Beuve upon it. We 
 shall see that he goes to the essential truth of things with 
 
TRANSLATOR'S NOTE. 39 
 
 strong sincerity ; and if to this he adds the quality of being 
 academic, so much the better. It is the union of these 
 two gifts which has made him one of the greatest critics 
 the world has had ; and such he will remain, for the periods 
 of which he writes, so long as true Hterature lasts. 
 
 The bibliographical history of the Prince de Ligne and 
 his Works is as follows : After the French occupation of 
 Belgium, when his httle principality and his " dear Belceil " 
 with its splendid revenues were confiscated, he retired to 
 Vienna, where he employed himself in writing and in 
 arranging his papers, which he published at intervals from 
 1795 to 1811, in 34 volumes under the title of : — 
 
 MELANGES MiLITAIEES, LlTT^EAIEES ET SeNTIMENTAIEES. 
 
 A mon Eefuge sur le Leopoldberg, prfes de Vienne. Et se 
 vend h, Dresde chez les Frferes Walther. 
 
 A list of the contents of these 34 volumes wiU be found 
 in the Appendix to the present volume. Though many in 
 number, the volumes are small. The average number of 
 pages in each is 252 ; the longest page (without a paragraph) 
 has only 184 words. 
 
 Subsequently, in 1812, the Prince de Ligne published a 
 volume entitled : — 
 
 New Collection of Letters by Field Marshal the Prince de 
 Ligne. 
 
 After his death appeared in Berlin, 1816 : — 
 
 Philosophy of Catholicism, by the Prince de Ligne, with 
 answer by Mme. la Comtesse M. de B . 
 
 In the catalogue of one bibliographer, Qu^rard, the fol- 
 lowing publication is mentioned : — 
 
 Posthumous Works of the Prince de Ligne. Dresden and 
 Vienna, 1817, 6 vols. 18mo. 
 
40 TRAIfSLATOE'S NOTE. 
 
 Of these six volumes no trace remains except in the one 
 catalogue named above. 
 
 In Vol. XVII., of his Melanges, printed in 1796, the 
 prince inserts a notice that his " Posthumous Works " wUl 
 be as foUows : — 
 
 1. Journals of Three Campaigns in 1787, 1788, 1789. 
 
 2. Parthenizza ; philosophical and historical work. 
 
 3. Fragments of the History of my Life. 
 
 4. Tales which are not tales ; or. Confidences of my 
 Friends. 
 
 5. My Posthumous Scattered Thoughts. 
 
 6. Interesting letters written to me ; with a few answers 
 from me, copied without my knowledge, for I never make 
 rough drafts or copies. 
 
 By his wiU the Prince de Ligne bequeathed his " Posthu- 
 mous Works " to his regiment of halberdiers, in compliance 
 with an ancient custom which required that each commander 
 should leave a present at his death to the force. To this 
 bequest a condition was attached that the papers should 
 not be published until all the persons named therein were 
 dead. The first act of the legatees was to relinquish their 
 possession, with the restriction upon it, to M. Cotta, pub- 
 lisher, at Stuttgard. Since then nothing definite is known 
 of it. 
 
 A topic of discussion among the various editors and com- 
 mentators of the Prince de Ligne is the question : What has 
 become of the " Posthumous Works " bequeathed as above ? 
 and is there some unpublished Memoir now in existence ? 
 Several attempts have been made to clear this up, especially 
 by MM. Lacroix and de Lescure, but without any definite 
 results. If the present writer may be allowed to offer an 
 opinion it is as follows, — on the understanding of course 
 that this is only conjecture : The " Posthumous Works " in 
 
TEANSLATOE'S NOTE. 41 
 
 six volumes, stated by the bibliographer Qu^rard to have 
 been published in 1817, were the works (in six parts) 
 named in the prince's will and described by him in Vol. 
 XVII. of his published "Works. These M. Cotta may 
 have passed to other publishers ; possibly to the Fr^res 
 Walther of Dresden, who published the prince's other 
 books from 1795 to 1811. Or, inasmuch as the prince 
 states in the seventeenth volume that his " Posthumous 
 Works" are then in the hands of the Frferes Walther, there 
 may have arisen between them and M. Cotta some ques- 
 tion of prior rights. It is certain that the Cotta house, 
 which was a much respected one, never made any state- 
 ment as to what became of the papers they had purchased 
 from the regiment. 
 
 But in whosoever hands they were when the edition of 
 1817 was announced — it can never have been published, 
 for if it had, all trace of it could not have disappeared so 
 completely that no one has been found who has seen a copy 
 — the family, in all probability, bought it up, destroyed it 
 (if it was ever really printed), and recovered the manuscript. 
 At any rate, the manuscripts of No. 3, " Fragments of the 
 History of my Life," and of No. 5, " My Posthumous Scat- 
 tered Thoughts," were in the possession of the prince's 
 grandson, who was Belgian ambassador to France in 1845, 
 for he permitted their publication in " La Eevue Nouvelle " 
 of that year, and again in 1860 ia book form (see following 
 list of publications relating to Prince de Ligne). 
 
 The fragmentary Memoir thus published answers fully to 
 the prince's description of it, and is in itself extremely char- 
 acteristic of his heedless, inconsecutive way of throwing his 
 thoughts and his writings together. In all probability there 
 is little or nothing in possession of the family to add to it. 
 If, as appears likely, some parts of the " Posthumous Works " 
 
42 TRANSLATOR'S NOTE. 
 
 have been suppressed, they are probably Nos. 4 and 6, de- 
 scribed by the prince as " Confidences of my friends " and 
 " Interesting letters addressed to me," which the family may 
 think it is not desirable or proper to give to the curiosity of 
 the world. 
 
 List of Publications relating to the Prince de Ligne, in 
 THE Order of their Publication. 
 
 It is by the help of these Works that the following Memoir, which 
 is, however, chiefly in the prince's own words, has been prepared. 
 
 1809. Lettres et Pensees du Marechal Prince de Ligne, pr^c^d^es 
 
 d'une Preface par Mme. la Baronne de Stael-Holstein. 1 vol. 
 
 8vo. Paschoud : Geneve et Paris. 1809. 
 [The preface is given in this edition ; the selection is small 
 
 and limited.] 
 1809. CEuvres choisies du Mardchal Prince de Ligne, par M. de Pro- 
 
 priac. 1 vol. 8vo. Chaumerot : Paris. 1809. 
 1809. (Euvres choisies du Prince de Ligne, preceddes de quelques 
 
 details biographiques par un de ses amis (Malte-Brun). 
 
 2 vols. 8vo. P. Buisson : Paris. Paschoud : Grenfeve. 1809. 
 1812. Nouveau receuil de lettres du Feld-Mar^chal Prince de Ligne. 
 
 Deux parties. 8vo. Weimar. 1812. 
 1829. M^moires et Melanges Historiques et Littdraires du Prince de 
 
 Ligne. A. Dupont. 5 vols. Svo. Paris. 1829. 
 1840. Fetes et Souvenirs du Congres de Vienne, par le Comte de La 
 
 Garde. Paris et Bruxelles. 1840. 
 [The parts relating to the Prince de Ligne form the 
 
 eleventh chapter of Vol. II. of this edition.] 
 1845. Notice sur le Prince de Ligne par M. de ReifEenberg. Memoires 
 
 de I'Academie Royale des Sciences et Belles-Lettres de 
 
 Bruxelles, Vol. XIX. 1845. 
 1845. Fragments in^dits des Mdmoires du Prince de Ligne. La 
 
 Revue Nouvelle. Paris. 1845, 1846. 
 [The Prince de Ligne, his grandson, was then Belgian 
 
 ambassador to France, and he gave these Fragments for 
 
 publication.] 
 1848. Esquisses Politiques et Litt^raires, par le Comte Ouvaroff. 
 
 Paris : Gide et Cie. 1848. 
 
 [The parts relating to the Prince de Ligne are given in the 
 
 tenth chapter of Vol. II. of this edition.] 
 
TRANSLATOR'S NOTE. 43 
 
 1857. Le Prince de Ligne, ou Ecrivain grand seigneur k la fin du 
 XVIIIfeme Si^ole. Par M. N. Peetermans. 1 vol. 8vo. 
 Paris et Leipzig. 1857. 
 
 1860. CEuvres du Prince de Ligne, prec^d^es d'une Notice par Albert 
 Lacroix. 4 vols. Bruxelles. A Bobn€ : Paris. 1860. 
 
 1860. Mdmoires du Prince de Ligne, suivis de Pensdes, et preced^es 
 d'une Introduction par Albert Lacroix. 1 vol. 8vo. Brux- 
 elles. A Bohne : Paris. 1860. 
 
 [These are the " Fragments inedits " of the Kevue Xouvelle, 
 published in book form by permission of the Prince de Ligne, 
 then President of the Belgian Senate ; and this book is the 
 Fragmentary Memoir of the present translated edition ; the 
 gaps in which have been filled by facts, sketches, letters, and 
 opinions taken, in the prince's own words, from his Works.] 
 
 1878. Lettres inddites du Feld-Mar^chal Prince de Ligne, avec une 
 Introduction par J. Petit. 1 vol. 8vo. Soci^te des Biblio- 
 philes. Bruxelles. 1878. 
 
 1886. Souvenirs du feu Due de Broglie. 1 vol. 8vo. Calmann 
 
 Ldvy: Paris. 1886. 
 
 [The passages relating to the Prince de Ligne are given in 
 the tenth chapter of Vol. 11. of this edition.] 
 
 1887. Histou-e d'une Grande Dame an XVIUe Sifecle, Princesse 
 
 Helfene de Ligne, Comtesse Potocka, par Lucien Perey. 
 
 2 vols. 8vo. Calmann Levy : Paris. 1887. 
 
 [Taken largely from manuscripts at Belceil by permission 
 
 of the Prince de Ligne, and used and partly translated in 
 
 the eighth chapter of Vol. II. of this edition.] 
 1890. Lettres du Prince de Ligne k Mme. la Marquise de Coigny, avec 
 
 une preface par M. de Lescure. 1 vol. 8vo. Librairie des 
 
 Bibliophiles. Paris. 1890. 
 1890. CEuvres choisies du Prince de Ligne. Avec une notice par 
 
 M. de Lescure. 1 vol. 8vo. Librairie des Bibliophiles. 
 
 Paris. 1890. 
 1895. L'Impdratrice Catherine et le Prince de Ligne, par Lucien 
 
 Perey. Kevue de Paris. 1895. 
 [From these articles are taken the letters of the Empress 
 
 Catherine contained in this edition.] 
 
PREFACE 
 
 Bt MME. DE STAEL-HOLSTEm 
 
 To "Letters and Thoughts op the Peince De Ligne," 
 Selected by hek in 1809. 
 
 We always regret when we have not enjoyed an inter- 
 course with the spirit of celebrated men through their 
 spoken words ; for what is quoted of them gives but a very 
 imperfect idea of their conversation. Phrases, witty sayings, 
 all that is retained and repeated, can never picture the grace 
 of every movement, the nicety of expression, the elegance of 
 manner which form the charm of personal intercourse. The 
 Mar^chal Prince de Ligne has been acknowledged by all 
 Frenchmen to be one of the most agreeable men in France ; 
 and rarely do they accord that suffrage to one not born in 
 their midst. Perhaps, indeed, the Prince de Ligne is the 
 only foreigner who has become a model of French style, in- 
 stead of being only an imitator. He has printed a number 
 of useful and profound essays on history and on the military 
 art. He has published both prose and verse, which the cir- 
 cumstances of his life have inspired. Wit and originality 
 are in all that comes from him, but often his style is the 
 spoken style, if I may so express myself. We who know 
 him need to recall the expression of his fine countenance, 
 the characteristic gayety of his narratives, the simplicity with 
 which he abandoned himself to merriment, in order to like 
 the very negligences of his manner of writing. But those 
 who are not beneath the charm of his presence analyze as 
 an author one to whom they ought to listen even while they 
 
46 PKEFACE. 
 
 read him ; for tlie very defects of his style are the graces of 
 his conversation. That which is not always very clear 
 grammatically becomes so through the h propos of speech, 
 the subtlety of the glance, the inflections of the voice ; 
 through all, in short, that gives to the art of speaking a 
 thousand times more charm and more resource than that of 
 writing. 
 
 It is therefore difficult to make known by what we must 
 call dead letters a man whose intercourse the greatest living 
 geniuses and the most illustrious sovereigns have sought as 
 their choicest relaxation. Nevertheless, attempting to do so 
 as much as possible, I have made a selection from his cor- 
 respondence, and also from his detached thoughts. No form 
 of writing can take the place of personal acquaintance. A 
 book is always made on some system or another which 
 places the author at a distance from the reader. We may 
 of course divine the writer's character, but his very talent 
 puts a species of fiction between him and us. The letters 
 and thoughts which I publish to-day [1809] convey a picture 
 of the meditation and also the ease of the Prince de Ligne's 
 mind ; it is to himself and to his friends that he speaks thus. 
 There is never in him, as in La Eochefoucauld, an always 
 consistent opinion, steadily pursued. Men and things and 
 events have passed before his eyes ; he judges them without 
 a plan, without an object, never seeking to impose upon them 
 the despotism of a system ; they were such, at any rate they 
 seemed to him such, as he relates on that particular day. If 
 there is harmony and completeness in his ideas it is that 
 which nature and truth put into everything. 
 
 We may notice in the account of the conversations which 
 the Prince de Ligne held with Voltaire and Kousseau the 
 profound respect he felt and showed for superiority of mind ; 
 it needed as much as he had himself to be neither a prince 
 
PREFACE. 47 
 
 nor a great seigneur with men of genius. He knew that it 
 was nobler to admire than to patronize; he was flattered 
 by the visit of Eousseau, and did not shrink from showing 
 that feeling. It is one of the advantages of high rank and 
 illustrious blood that they quiet all that tends to vanity; 
 for to judge truly of society and of nature we should, perhaps, 
 be conscious of gratitude to the one and to the other. 
 
 Correspondence coming nearest to conversation, we may 
 follow the Prince de Ligne through his letters into active 
 hfe and discover there the unwearying youthfuhiess of his 
 mind, the independence of his soul, the chivalrous gayety 
 which perilous positions inspired in him. His letters are 
 addressed to the King of Poland, giving him an account of 
 two interviews with the great King of Prussia, to the 
 Empress Catherine of Eussia, to the Emperor Joseph II., to 
 M. de Sdgur, to Mme. de Coigny during the famous journey 
 to the Crimea, and to several others. Thus the subject of 
 the letters and the persons to whom they are addressed 
 inspire a double interest. The Prince de Ligne knew 
 Frederick the Great, and above all the Empress of Eussia, 
 in the familiarity of private life, and what he says of them 
 makes us Uve in their society. The portrait of Prince 
 Potemkin, which will be found in the letters to M. de S^gur, 
 is truly a masterpiece. It is not worked up like those por- 
 traits that serve to make the painter known rather than 
 his sitter. You see before you the man the Prince de Ligne 
 describes ; he gives life to the portrait because he has put 
 no art into it. Those who know him know it is impossible 
 to be more ahen than he to all species of calculation. His 
 actions always have the effect of spontaneous impulse; he 
 comprehends both men and things by sudden inspiration, 
 and lightning, rather than daylight, seems to guide him. 
 
 Adored by a charming family, cherished by his fellow- 
 
48 FUEJ-ACE. 
 
 citizens, who see in him an ornament to their city [Vienna], 
 and who deck it with his presence to the eyes of foreigners as 
 if with a gift of Nature, the Prince de Ligne has, nevertheless, 
 lavished his life in camps, from taste and from allurement, far 
 more than his mihtary career demanded. He helieves he is 
 bom lucky because he is ever kind ; and he thinks that he 
 pleases fate while he pleases friends. He enjoys life like 
 Horace, but he exposes it as if he set no value on its enjoy- 
 ment. His valour is of that briUiant nature which we are 
 wont to attribute to French valour. It is, perhaps, suspected 
 that during the last war the Prince de Ligne may have 
 longed for an occasion to exercise his French valour against 
 Frenchmen ; that is the only blemish of ambition that we 
 can perceive in a man whose philosophy we must praise — 
 if philosophy there be in contenting one's self with pleasing 
 and succeeding in all things. 
 
 He has lost a great fortune with admirable equanimity ; 
 and he has shown rare pride in doing nothing to repair the 
 loss. The calmness of his soul has been troubled only once, 
 by the death of his eldest son, killed when exposing himself 
 in battle like his father. In vain did the Prince de Ligne 
 call reason to his succour, and even the volatility of mind 
 which not only serves to charm, but is sometimes able to 
 distract the soul from grief. He was wounded to the heart ; 
 and his efforts to hide it made the tears that did escape 
 him the more agonizing. This fear of appearing to feel 
 when we have allowed ourselves sometimes to laugh at 
 feeling, this pudicity of paternal tenderness in a man who 
 had never shown aught to others but his gifts of pleasing 
 and captivating, this contrast, this mixture of gravity and 
 gayety, pleasantry and reason, levity and depth, make the 
 Prince de Ligne a true phenomenon; for the spirit of 
 society, in the eminent degree in which he possesses it. 
 
PREFACE. 49 
 
 rarely gives such graces permitting at the same time such 
 high quahties to remain. One might say that civilization 
 stopped in him at a point where nations never remain ; 
 namely, where all rude forms are softened without any 
 change in the essence of things. 
 
 It is unnecessary to say that the Editor does not take 
 the liberty to support or refute the opinions of the Prince 
 de Ligne on various subjects as exnibited in this Selection. 
 I have merely wished to gather together a few scattered 
 flashes of a conversation always varied, always piquant, in 
 which the play of words and ideas, the force and the play- 
 fulness, are always in their proper place and suited to the 
 topic of each day, whatever may be said on the morrow. 
 The privilege of grace seems to be to harmonize itself 
 equally with all styles, all courses, all methods of seeing 
 things. It touches nothing harshly enough to wound, or 
 seriously enough to convince; and never does it roughly 
 shake the life which it embellishes. 
 
 I could continue still longer this portrait of the Prince 
 de Ligne ; for one seeks a hundred differeiit ways to picture 
 that which is inexpressible — a natural nature full of charm. 
 But after essaying many words, I should still be forced to 
 say with .iEschines : " If you are amazed by what I tell you 
 of him, what would it be if you had listened to him ? " 
 
 VOL. I.— 4 
 
MEMOIE 
 
 OP 
 
 CHARLES-JOSEPH, PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 I. 
 
 1735-1757. 
 BIRTH: EDUCATION: MARRIAGE. 
 
 The year of my birth seems to me uncertain. Baptized 
 without ceremony by the almoner of my father's regiment, 
 I lost, in after years, a suit which depended on the produc- 
 tion of my baptismal register, which could not be found. 
 AU I know is that I was bom before the year 1740, and 
 that I had scarcely heard of Prince Eugene (then lately 
 dead) before I wanted, I said, small as I was, to take his 
 place. That is the first thought that I can remember. The 
 second is that a war was being fought ; and it turned my 
 head. I remember that they talked before me of the 
 battle of Dettingen [1743], where the Ligne-Infantry and 
 the Ligne-Dragoons did wonders. 
 
 A man in my chancellor's office, my German secretary, 
 named Leygeb, thinks (and I, too, for that matter) that he 
 has read on an old parchment that we are descended from 
 a king of Bohemia. He also says that he has seen on a 
 tomb, I do not know where, that we are descended from 
 Charlemagne, through a certain Thierri d'Enfer; he says 
 that genealogists give us the same stock as the house of 
 
52 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 Lorraine, and that others declare we are a branch of that 
 of Baden. There must be something in all this, for my 
 father was devilishly proud. And what makes me think 
 there may be a touch of Charlemagne or of Wittikind in 
 our blood is that we have had the Golden Fleece for the 
 last four centuries, and are Princes of the Empire for the 
 last two. 
 
 We have always been brave, from father to son; even 
 the bastards, who gloried in being called so, and had the 
 rank of nobles. I have seen a tomb with this inscription : 
 " Bastard of Ligne, killed in Africa." Many of my ancestors 
 have been killed in battle. My great-grandfather, a man 
 of much merit, was imprisoned because of his bravery in 
 Spain, where he was president of the council of war in 
 Castile, viceroy of Sicily, governor-general of the MUanais, 
 etc.; often beating, sometimes beaten, and captured at last 
 after marvellous deeds. My great-grandmother — a Princess 
 of Nassau, daughter-in-law of the Lorraine, niece of Henri 
 IIL — and my grandfather were killed hunting at Baudour 
 [hunting-box near Beloeil] in the woods, while waiting at 
 their post for the boar. 
 
 My father did not like me ; I do not know why, for we 
 never knew each other. It was not the fashion in those 
 days to be a good husband or a good father. My mother 
 [Elisabeth-Alexandrine-Charlotte, Princesse de Salm] was 
 very much afraid of him. She lay-in with me in a great 
 farthingale, and died in the same a few weeks later ; so much 
 did he care for ceremonies and an air of dignity. I often 
 received from him certain marks of attention in the way 
 of abuse and prognostics that I should turn out detestably. 
 Nevertheless, his death, which I will relate by and by, 
 had a great effect upon me. He had turned me out of 
 his house, and was living at the time of his death in the 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 53 
 
 country. I returned from the war, not having seen him 
 more than two or three times between the two events ; but 
 in death one remembers only the good and the great things. 
 He had much loftiness of soul, and was as proud within as 
 he was without. He thought himself a Louis XIV. ; and he 
 almost was so in gardens and in magnificence, for which 
 he substituted sometimes very comical little meannesses. 
 For instance, he who spent millions in creating Beloeil, and 
 millions at Beloeil in giving superb fetes and in keeping up 
 the state of a king, scolded his servants if they gave a 
 glass of wine to the village cure or to the capuchin who 
 came to preach in Lent, saying, aloud, that " beer was 
 good enough for such people." This was mere oddity, for 
 he was really noble in his manners and actions. He had 
 been distiuguished for bravery in the "War of the Succession 
 and at the battle and siege of Belgrade. When a very 
 young colonel, being compelled to capitulate in the citadel 
 of Antwerp, he said to the commander-in-chief: "The 
 enemy shall not have my flags, at any rate ; " and he carried 
 them off on his shoulders and hid them. 
 
 Prince Ferdinand, my uncle, was a marshal like my 
 father, and distinguished himself at Eamillies, Audenarde, 
 Malplaquet, and elsewhere; but he was over-pious and 
 petty. He had some good qualities ; for instance, he con- 
 tributed not a little to my love for war. He often talked 
 to me about it, and sent me constantly to his dragoons, or 
 made those who had greatly distinguished themselves and 
 taken banners come to see me. He so inspired me with his 
 hatred for the French that I abhorred them for a very long 
 time. He was a poor Hamilcar, and I was a poor Hannibal. 
 The Due de Croy was the first soldier who came to us after 
 the taking of Brussels in 1746, and I did not look at him 
 with composure. 
 
54 MEMOm OF THE PEINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 I Had another uncle of whom I knew nothing. He was 
 older than my father, handsome as the day, brave as Caesar, 
 amorous as a cat, and apparently faithful as a dog, for he 
 wanted to marry the lady of his thoughts. She was a 
 charming creature of some position, but not enough, I 
 fancy, for his relations to approve. They opposed him ; he 
 was angry and left the service, in which he was distin- 
 guished. They were angry, and he left society. They dis- 
 approved of him still more, and he shut himself up in a 
 convent. They were furious ; on which he made over all 
 his property to my father, reserving nothing for himself 
 but the third floor of the small hStel de Ligne, an almoner, 
 a valet, and for aU furniture a chair and a crucifix. During 
 the siege of Brussels [in 1746] the great hStel de Ligne was 
 raked by a number of cannon-balls, and my father, marshal 
 though he was, being surprised and shut up in the town, 
 took his whole family and all his servants to the small 
 hStel de Ligne because it was less exposed. Nevertheless, 
 three balls entered the door one day as I was standing at 
 the window above it. I was about ten years old. I do 
 not know what possessed me to be always wanting to run 
 up to the corridor on which my uncle, quite unknown to 
 me, lived. They stopped me again and again ; on which I 
 went to play elsewhere and thought no more about it. Some 
 six or seven years later I said one morning as I woke, to my 
 tutor, M. de la Porte, that I had dreamed my uncle was 
 dead. But as I knew of only one uncle, the one named 
 Prince Ferdinand, I said : " My uncle. Prince Ferdinand, 
 died at five o'clock this morning." Two days later I heard, 
 for the iirst time, of the existence and the death of the 
 hermit. I asseverate that nothing can be truer than this. 
 
 My eldest sister was certainly no beauty, and my father 
 said to her one day : " My son will be killed in the war, for 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PEINCE DE LIGNE. 55 
 
 you have the face of an heiress." I have hardly ever seen 
 her (or my other sister either, who was not less ugly) ; she 
 is now the superior of the convent at Essen, and a good 
 woman, so they say. 
 
 My father was more or less in love with the Princesse 
 
 C . Certain verses which my tutor, the Abbe Verdier, 
 
 wrote for her, in which there were allegories that my father 
 did not understand, made him jealous. He sent away the 
 abb^; and before they could find another tutor, imagine 
 the hands into which they put me, — those of my father's 
 pages ! They were two Barons de Hayden, who both died 
 stafif-officers. Knowing they could teach me nothing but 
 the exercise, and being quartered with the regiment, they 
 used to come over from Mons for that purpose only. 
 
 The Abb6 Verdier's place was filled by another abb^, the 
 only one of my tutors who behoved in God. He was a 
 true country vicar; said his breviary, sketched, went out 
 shooting or snaring quail, and made me carry his powder 
 and shot, and pick up the game. I fought for it with his 
 little spaniel, which made me active, and I grew. It was 
 thought my abb6 taught me nothiag except to fetch, so he 
 was sent away. 
 
 M. Dutertre [the next] was accused to my father of 
 trying to make learned persons and eclogues in the village, 
 where he had found certain milkmaids to his fancy. So 
 here I was again in other hands. A ChevaHer des Essarts, 
 a very limited gentleman, returning from the wars in 
 Bohemia and Bavaria (which he never ceased recounting), 
 undertook to give me the education that he lacked himself. 
 He brought me back, however, to my mihtary ardour. The 
 siege of Prague, the sortie, the assault, turned my head. 
 While he scarcely knew there was ever an Alexander or a 
 Caesar, I devoured Quintus Curtius and the Commentaries 
 
56 MEMOIE OF THE PEINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 (found in an old bookcase in the cMteau ds Baudour), and 
 fancied myself becoming what they had been. He had but 
 one book, the fables of Phaedrus [^sop's, translated by 
 Phsedrus], and he made me learn them by heart, while he 
 himself went to ride on horseback. Once, when he tried 
 to thrash me for not remembering them I flew at his face, 
 and ran for my little sword to fight him. They parted me 
 from my poor, ignorant, and angry Mentor. He was the 
 one, next to the second abb^, whom I cared for least. 
 
 The Jesuits and the cavalry having so ill responded to 
 my father's intention of making me a youthful prodigy, he 
 threw himself upon a totally different line. A successor of 
 the Arnaulds, the Pascals, as enlightened, as enthusiastic, 
 as eloquent, as sublime as the best of Port-Eoyal, was chosen 
 to put the last touch to my education — the last touch, 
 they said ; but how many more hands were put to it after 
 that ! He was named M. Eenault de la Eoche-Valain, was 
 a great arguer, a profound theologian, and called the preacher 
 of our village " a cawing crow in the Church of God." The 
 latter had much influence over my uncle, a narrow-minded 
 little marshal ; so the tutor was accused of being a Jan- 
 senist. I can stUl see two asses, laden with Saint Augustine 
 and various other fathers of the Church and of the Bible, 
 arriving, with the prior of the convent, to confound my 
 tutor. He was right ; and nothing more was needed to 
 put him in the wrong. So the monastic cabal deprived me 
 of a man who was full of ideas. I had been a Molinist 
 (without knowing it) under my two Jesuits, who discoursed 
 to me about Mme. Guyon, Pdnelon, and quietism. I be- 
 came a Jansenist with my ex-Oratorian, who talked to me 
 of nothing but Bossuet, and made me learn the catechism 
 of MontpeUier, and read the Old Testament of M^zenguy 
 and the "History of Variations," etc. The Jesuits ha'd 
 
MEMOIR OP THE PEINCE DE LIGNE. 57 
 
 made me learned on Molina and Molinos ; the abbd whom 
 I mentioned as the one who believed in God gave me Marie 
 d'Agr^da and Marie Alacoque ; but with all my ecclesiasti- 
 cal erudition I did not know one word of religion. They 
 found this out by the time I was fourteen, when they talked 
 about my making my first communion. I was sent to the 
 village rector to learn everything, from the creation to the 
 mysteries. He told me that he did not understand them 
 any more than I did. I thought I believed in Christianity, 
 of which no one had ever spoken to me, and for two weeks 
 I was very devout. 
 
 I would like to know what are the principles of educa- 
 tion. We deceive our children all the time. We teach 
 them things that we do not believe ourselves, and what we 
 know that, in the end, they will not believe either. We 
 expect this change in their ideas, but we never prepare them 
 for it. We say: "Flee from pleasure." On the contrary, 
 give it to them, or at least let them take it early. They 
 wiU not desire it so much. One would really think that a 
 shrewd school of vice had trained the race of tutors to make 
 it more enticing to their pupils. It is better for young men 
 to have their fiing and be blas^ on pleasure early, for then 
 they will seek it afresh in study, apphcation, morality, duty. 
 We exact all that at the age of the passions, and the youth 
 is disgusted. 
 
 The father or the tutor never says to him : " You will faU 
 in love ; attach yourself to none but an honest woman, who 
 wUl love you for yourself." His abb^ says to him : " Monsieur, 
 you will be damned if you fall in love." His father's man 
 of business tells him : " Monsieur, keep away from women, 
 or you will lose your reputation on entering the world." 
 The youth wUl soon find out there is no truth in all that. 
 They teU him : " Theatres are a school of vice and frivohty," 
 
58 MEMOIE OP THE PEINCB DE LIGNE. 
 
 and he sees the whole town rushing to them; "Never, miss 
 a mass," and he finds, unfortunately, that very many persons 
 miss them ; " Do not lie," and he goes to Court without 
 having been shown the difference between lies and reserva- 
 tions. Talk to him of poisons, but give him the antidote. 
 A young man from whom all knowledge of evil has been 
 kept is elated on entering life; his brain whirls; he is 
 startled, excited, and free as a young horse iu the fields 
 which cannot be caught; he confounds the virtue of the 
 catechism with that of morahty; he detests the first, and 
 neglects the second. And because he was never taught to 
 know the true value of things he is made a young scamp in 
 spite of himself. 
 
 My father, fearing that all these controversial matters, 
 Jesuitical and other, would injure my mind, again had recourse 
 to the French army to form my morals and my religion. 
 Eecollecting that the Chevalier des Essarts was a deist 
 (and I too, in consequence), he asked a Chevalier de Saint- 
 Maurice, a captain of the hussars of the Morlifere, whether 
 he was a deist also. On being assured that he was not, he 
 took him as my tutor. The chevalier did not lie, for he was 
 an atheist. So now we were two atheists ; or rather, we did 
 not think anything at aU about the matter. 
 
 Instead of teaching children geography and so many other 
 things they forget as soon as they cease to be children, why 
 not teach them to form a judgment on the right and the 
 wrong, the just and the unjust? Take a little boy of six 
 years old about with you among the poor ; let him see the 
 obligation and the pleasure of easing their troubles ; let him 
 notice the hardness of a superior who scolds and humiliates, 
 and the pain of a subordinate who is forced to endure it. 
 Show him a miser, a malignant man, an ignorant one, a man 
 who makes a bad argument, or does a bad action ; also the 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE EIGNE. 59 
 
 respect shown to those who do good ones, the pure joy of 
 a pure conscience, the innocent pleasures of country life. 
 If we took the little boy always with us and talked with 
 him, instead of making him learn Eoman history, we could 
 make him good, obedient, compassionate, generous, reasonable, 
 and happy all his life. 
 
 But no, a father thinks he has done aU when he pays two 
 hundred ducats to a tutor, whose chief concern is to main- 
 tain his own dignity in the household. He teaches what he 
 calls Poetry, but not to understand it or to make verses, and 
 Philosophy, or rather the terms of sciences included under 
 that name, so ill-applied. Then in due time he iaforms the 
 father that he can iavite all the Family Eelations to dinner 
 and be present afterwards at what is called an examination. 
 The youth appears, armed with answers to aU the questions 
 that will be put to him. A cousin says : " What a mind ! " 
 The aunts say : " What a memory ! " The pedants smile. 
 The mother says nothing and takes it all for granted ; the 
 father, himself as badly brought up, is lost in astonishment 
 that he has forgotten all that. Everybody is pleased, and my 
 young man is a fool. Where is the logic and the morahty 
 of such an education ? Go on an embassy, young man, and 
 you will soon find out that you know nothing, and that you 
 ought to have been put upon the right track to know men. 
 Be employed in your own country, or govern your own 
 affairs, and you will see the injustices that you commit under 
 the shadow of justice, you will learn the truths and the 
 reasons that M. I'Abb^ ought to have taught you by con- 
 versation, not by lessons. Where is the Professor and the 
 University of the human heart ? 
 
 But the Chevalier de Saint-Maurice proving no better 
 than the rest, here I was again without a tutor. The studies 
 I had followed imder all of them had given me a liking for 
 
60 MEMOIE or THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 none. That of history was the one continual object of my 
 thoughts. I was n^ad for heroism. Charles XII. and Cond^ 
 kept me from sleeping; I even fancied I could do better 
 than they. I gasped over Polybius ; I commentated the 
 commentaries of Folard. I longed to be off to the wars. 
 But what can one do at fifteen? I tried to stir the im- 
 agination of my family and my masters. I wrote a " Treatise 
 on Arms," hoping to convince them that that was my voca- 
 tion. It began: — 
 
 " No man was ever bom who did not receive from Nature 
 some dominant inclination which will lead him to success 
 in one way or, another. Unhappy he who allows it to escape 
 him ! He who was made, perhaps, to defend the Honour 
 or the life of citizens is lost to the Country he was born to 
 defend. He whom this noble duty suited dishonours the 
 garment of a servant of the God of Israel, and shakes the 
 foundations of the Church of which he would fain have been 
 a powerful column. . . . The glory of arms sheds so daz- 
 zling a radiance that it conquers the soul at the first glance. 
 And what is the source of that Light ? This is something 
 we take no pains to discover ; often we enjoy the light of 
 day and never think of the Sun which is its principle. 
 Little content myself to consider superficially an object that 
 concerns me so closely, I sound the depths ; I find that glory 
 to be that we render services, we endure pains, we receive 
 praise. And what are the objects on which the Warrior's 
 eye is fixed as he renders service ? His Prince, his Country, 
 Justice. 
 
 " It is impossible to utter that word ' Country ' without 
 remembering what the ancient Eomans, filled with the 
 most sublime Virtue, did for theirs. Decius, Curtius, and 
 other Heroes who sacrificed themselves for her good have 
 left, no doubt, a great example to be followed, but do we 
 
MEMOIR OP THE PBINCE DE LIGNE. 61 
 
 need it ? Is not love of Country innate within us ? Does 
 not the same bond that binds us one to another attach us, 
 each and all, to the good of our common Mother ? . . . The 
 soldier is the eagle of Jupiter the Thunder-bearer. It is 
 living twice to die as he dies. Great Heroes ! conquerors 
 over so many pains of body and of mind, I hold you in 
 veneration. Mars ! guide my steps. Pardon me if I 
 invoke you instead of the god of Eloquence. Had I done 
 otherwise this would have been a Hymn, and not a Treatise. 
 Speak, my soul ! and may the enthusiasm which I have here 
 restrained as much as possible find grace before you, my 
 Master ! " (This passage was particularly addressed to the 
 tutor who was then endeavouring to form my mind.) " My 
 Soul will take care of herself; 'tis She who from your 
 hands will pass me soon to those of Victory." 
 
 I considered that I already belonged to the army, be- 
 cause the old dragoons of my uncle's brave regiment carried 
 me on their muskets and told me tales of Clausen, Dettingen, 
 and Bonef. At nine or ten years of age I had already heard 
 the guns of a battle [Fontenoy], I had been in a besieged 
 town. A little later, and I was surrounded by military men. 
 Old officers, retired after long service on their estates neigh- 
 bouring those of my father, fed my passion. " Turenne," I 
 said to myself, " slept on a gun-carriage when he was ten ; 
 Hannibal swore eternal hatred to the Eomans when he was 
 nine." I swore it in my heart to the French, whom I was 
 taught to believe our inevitable enemies. I have since 
 recovered from that idea very thoroughly. 
 
 War was beginning to be talked of. I made a certain 
 M. de Chaponais, captain in Eoyal-Vaisseaux, promise to 
 engage me in his company. I meant to have run away from 
 my father's house under a feigned name ; and already I was 
 imagining the joy of not being recognized until after I had 
 
62 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 done the most dazzling deeds. Instead of this fine project, 
 a tutor, much wiser than the others, and who, unluckily, 
 gave me no chance against him, arrived at this juncture to 
 take me in hand. He seconded my liking for study ; he 
 divided my studies in a way to make them fruitful, and gave 
 me by way of relaxation my military authors ; among whom 
 I then hegan, though very slightly, to take the place I now 
 occupy. M. de la Porte (that was my tutor's name) was 
 the third ex-Jesuit that I had over me. He brought to me 
 from the College of Louis-le-Grand that fine flower of the 
 humanities, of literature, of urbanity which has since made 
 the charm of my existence, and in forming my soul at the 
 same time as my mind, he won the more right to my grat- 
 itude, because I believe that if I have ever been worth 
 anything it is to him I owe it. 
 
 But whoever was my tutor, no one could make me learn 
 anything I did not like ; and they discovered at last the 
 impossibility of teaching me chemistry, mathematics (except 
 what sufl&ced for fortifications), astronomy, or even arith- 
 metic. This deficiency goes to such a point that I have 
 never been able to learn a game of cards, or chess, or back- 
 gammon. 
 
 During the five or six summer months, which I always 
 spent at Beloeil, I learned hunting and economy — the 
 economy of my father — in a singular way. As he did not 
 choose that I should waste his powder on sparrows, he made 
 me buy my own and the shot too, and agreed to pay me 
 four sous for every head of small game I brought home, 
 half a crown for a fox or a deer, a whole crown for a boar or 
 a wolf. I never had any other money than what I earned 
 thus until the day of my marriage. 
 
 My father, who shared his opera-box with the Princesse 
 de Home, who was just married and as beautiful as she was 
 
,j:^rtf/n-(^^. 
 
 &/^: 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PKINCE DE LIGNE. 63 
 
 amiable, fearing that I should fall in love with her, would 
 not let me go there. My tutor liked the theatre. " Very 
 well," said my father, " then you must sit on the benches of 
 the stage;" — they were placed about the stage in those 
 days. There I saw the charming actresses more closely, 
 and I lost nothing of much that was little instructive in the 
 pretty vaudevUle-operas. One evening I pretended to be 
 obliged to go out, but I stopped in the coulisse, where I 
 found a danseuse, a Demoiselle Grdgoire, whose fine eyes, 
 as I believed, being very vain in those days, were sometimes 
 turned on me. I made her my declaration, and she laughed. 
 Speechless at first, then mortified, I said to myself : " This 
 scene in the coulisse shall serve for something." M. de 
 Turenne's duel at nine years of age had turned my head. 
 " I am thirteen," I thought, " and I have never fought yet." 
 An ofi&cer about thirty years old was entering the house to 
 take a seat on the benches. I trod on his toes. " The 
 deuce! prince," he said, "you are very awkward." "No, 
 monsieur," I replied, " I did it on purpose, for you looked at 
 me with such an air." He began to laugh like Mile. 
 Gr^goire ; and there was I, ia one quarter of an hour twice 
 scarified as a child ! 
 
 We went to Vienna and my father took me to Court. 
 While he was with the empress the emperor sent for me, 
 treated me very kindly, and took me iuto the antechamber, 
 where my father soon arrived. Easily infuriated, the latter 
 began to scold me for being where no one was allowed to 
 enter but the chamberlaias. " That is precisely what he is," 
 said Francis I. ; "I meant to surprise you." 
 
 We are aU more or less silly at that age, and self-impor- 
 tant, which naturally follows. I never made a drawing or 
 wrote a letter without signing at the bottom : " Charles de 
 Ligne, chamberlain." In fact, my joy was extreme. A man 
 
64 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 of the Court at fifteen ! " And then, too," I said to my- 
 self, " M. de la Porte " (though I loved him well) " can't be 
 a chamberlain; I shall be at Court, at church, without 
 him. What pleasure ! What honour ! " Alas ! once back 
 at Belceil my chamberlainship did not prevent my being 
 treated as a child. 
 
 My father never talked with me. One day he made me 
 get into the carriage with him and took me to Vienna and 
 married me. We went to a house where there were a quan- 
 tity of pretty faces, married or to be married, I did not know 
 which. I was told to sit at table beside the youngest. My 
 servants had told me that my marriage was arranged, but 
 when we left the table and I thought over all that I had 
 seen, I could not tell whether it was my mother-in-law 
 or an aunt, or one of the little young girls who was des- 
 tined for me. Eight days later I was married [1755]. I 
 was nineteen years old, and my little wife [the Princesse 
 Franqoise-Xavifere de Lichtenstein, daughter of Emmanuel, 
 Prince de Lichtenstein, and Marie-Antoinette de Dietrich- 
 stein- Weichselstadt] was fifteen. We had never spoken to 
 each other. It was thus that I did what is said to be the 
 most serious act of one's life. I thought it a good joke for 
 some weeks ; after that I was indifferent. 
 
 My tutor, M. de la Porte, left me the day after my mar- 
 riage. This caused me a grief I cannot express. He went 
 away with my father, who left him in France and gave him 
 a pension too small to satisfy me. I then incurred the first 
 debt of my life ; namely, twelve hundred ducats, to buy him 
 a little property in the Ag^nois, his native region, where he 
 died soon after. 
 
 At the marriage benediction in the Austrian (or Moravian) 
 village church, where the litanies are said, it is the custom to 
 appear in dressing-gowns. What was my astonishment 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 65 
 
 when my father made me put my arms into an old garment 
 of his in which I had seen him go through fifty attacks of 
 gout. It was made of flame-coloured satin, with parrots 
 embroidered in gold perched on innumerable little trees 
 embroidered in green ; ahd this, too, in the heat of summer 
 My father himself looked more like the bridegroom, and 
 wore a coat with gold lace on every seam. He had, I admit, 
 rained silver about me on the day of the betrothal, and show- 
 ers of gold on the wedding-day. In the evening there were 
 fireworks. Some one had imagined the idea, — a novel im- 
 age — of uniting two fiery hearts ; but the groove on which 
 they were to shde missed action. My wife's heart went off, 
 but mine stayed behind. This alarmed my relations, who 
 thought it a bad omen. 
 
 I do not remember whether it was a piece of afi'ectation or 
 from real love of the chase that I went out hunting at six 
 o'clock in the morning after my wedding night. It is true 
 that my mother-in-law came to wake us before daylight, 
 " for fear," she said, " some evil-minded person might cast a 
 spell upon us." 1 was not long in finding out that the fam- 
 ily I had entered were no sorcerers. 
 
 My wife's great-aunt, the Princess of Saxe-Weissenfels, 
 enchanted perhaps with her new great-nephew, said to me : 
 " I will pay all your expenses in Dresden." I therefore in- 
 vited all Saxony and Poland to dinner at the Hotel de la 
 Pologne. It cost the good princess not a little, but I left her 
 charmed with a couple whose united ages were thirty-four, 
 and continued my way to the Low Countries. My wife is 
 an excellent woman, — full of delicacy, sensibility, and noble- 
 ness. She is not at all selfish. Her iU-humour soon passes 
 off and her eyes are wet with tears for the merest trifle. 
 There is no unpleasantness in her because she has an excel- 
 lent heart. She grants her children aU they ask, and is just 
 
 VOL. I. — 5 
 
66 MEMOIR OF THE PEINCE DB LIGNE. 
 
 as complying to even me. If people are really amiable at 
 home they can, with a trifle less success owing to locality, 
 succeed elsewhere. I have no opinion of those who are not 
 amiable in their families ; not to speak of the bad heart that 
 that implies, a man must be pretty poor to show himself so 
 economical of wit and grace. 
 
 If I had won battles instead of merely helping to win 
 them, I could never have been more pleased and proud than 
 I was when I first went on guard, and that other day when 
 I started for my first campaign in 1757. To beginners in 
 war I say : Be you of the blood of heroes, be you of the race 
 of demigods, if glory does not intoxicate you continually do 
 not stand beneath her banners. Say not that you have a 
 liking for your profession; if that cold word suf&ces you, 
 embrace another. Be sure of this: you may perform your 
 service without blame, you may know the principles of the 
 art of war, but you are only artisans ; you may even attain 
 to a certain point, but you are not artists. Love the profes- 
 sion of arms before all else ; love it with passion — yes, pas- 
 sion is the word. If you do not dream of soldiering, if you 
 do not devour books and plans of war, if you do not kiss the 
 footprints of old soldiers, if you do not weep at the recital of 
 their combats, if you are not consumed with desire to see 
 war, and with shame that you have never yet done so, tear 
 off in haste the uniform you dishonour. If the exercise of a 
 mere battahon does not excite you, if you do not feel the 
 longing to be everywhere, if your mind is absent, if you 
 do not dread lest rain should hinder your regiment from 
 manoeuvring, give your place to some young man such as 
 I wish him to be, — a young man mad for the art of 
 Maurice and Eugfene ; one who will ever be convinced that 
 he must do his duty trebly to do it passably. Sorrow to the 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 67 
 
 lukewarm! Eeturn them to the bosom of their families; 
 let such degraded beings, the unfortunate mob who are con- 
 stantly soliciting favours they do not deserve, let such men 
 cease to hinder old soldiers from showing to the sovereign 
 their honourable scars. True consideration belongs to the 
 truly brave, and not to those who, pretending to serve, rob 
 the real soldier of his recompense. 
 
 In short, to be a soldier, enthusiasm must go to our heads, 
 honour must electrify our hearts, the fire of victory must 
 shine in our eyes, our souls must be lifted up as we uplift 
 the banner of glory. I ask pardon for this enthusiasm, 
 which may be too great at the present moment, driving me, 
 against my will, into a Httle declamation. 
 
II. 
 
 1757-1758. 
 FIRST MILITAEY SERVICE: SEVEN YEARS' WAR. 
 
 In 1757 the Prussians, being resolved to open the 
 campaign before we did, never a very difficult matter, en- 
 tered Bohemia on five different sides, as everybody knows. 
 The Ligne battalions were hurried out of cantonments with 
 orders to go to KBnigingrStz. We arrived at Eothwesely 
 at the same time as the Saxe Gotha contingent, whose blue 
 jackets, seen from afar, misled our general into thinking 
 they were the enemy; whereupon he halted us. We soon 
 joined forces, and camped together, April 22, near the 
 village of Nechanitz. Such was the singular beginning of 
 a singular campaign, in which the regiments hunted for 
 the generals and the generals for the regiments, and some- 
 times did not find each other at all. 
 
 That night we were ordered to strike tents at ten o'clock 
 and march in the deepest silence to Konigiagratz. I was 
 ordered forward with forty of my men as an advanced 
 guard, and, in spite of the precautions which I took to get 
 the road well mended, a bridge broke down and delayed 
 the march some hours on account of the supply waggons 
 which they did not wish to leave behind. Never was there 
 so dark a night; no one knew where he was going. We 
 needed guides, but the country people were afraid of us. 
 I did not reach the gates of KbnigingrStz till daylight. 
 M. de Serbelloni, whom I informed that the rest of the 
 corps would soon join him, had given us up. He sent me 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 69 
 
 t 
 
 the other side of the Adler to mark out the camp, and little 
 by little the rest of the force arrived. We were under 
 arms all day. 
 
 May 8 Mar^chal Daun arrived from Vienna to take 
 command of our army, and he must have formed a bad 
 opinion of us. Impossible to be worse encamped. The 
 regiments were one above another in a valley with their 
 whole right flank exposed. I desire to do justice to the 
 indefatigable care of Mardchal Daun, who visited the troops, 
 talked to them, encouraged them, and issued an order 
 saying that circumstances obliged him to make a few 
 marches to meet his reinforcements, but that the moment 
 they joined him he would march upon the enemy. 
 
 On the 17th we threw up a few redoubts, good and bad, 
 and I had leisure for the first time to go off and see the 
 outposts. I got there almost too late for a little skirmish 
 which M. de Nauendorf carried off successfully ; but he 
 was still firing, and I did not care ; I had heard the balls 
 whistle for the first time in my Hfe, and I was happy as 
 a king. 
 
 On the 13th the army marched to Kolin. The marshal 
 had conceived the fine idea of advancing to the eastward 
 and turning the enemy's flank. Secrecy was necessary, and 
 what chance of that with us? However, we almost suc- 
 ceeded ; though a defile (which could have been foreseen) 
 made us lose a whole day. The cavalry had to pass single 
 file ; it took us thirteen hours to do three leagues. But at 
 last we came so close to the enemy that their pickets and 
 ours were in the same wood. I was ordered there, and my 
 patrols went almost up to theirs. Suddenly the unlucky 
 discharge of a musket, fired accidentally, which was taken 
 for a signal, set aU our drums to beating. In spite of this, 
 however, the enemy could have been surprised if we had 
 
70 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE iJii l-IGNE. 
 
 marched on at midnight instead of waiting for the next 
 day, if the columns had debouched on the level of the 
 plain, and if they had not formed in line of battle instead 
 of advancing instantly on the Prussians, as they well could. 
 And yet these very blunders brought us luck; for if, as 
 was intended, we had surprised, fought, and captured the 
 Prince de Bevem, there would have been no battle of Kolin 
 on the 18th [June]. 
 
 A singular thing happened at that battle. A fancy 
 seized, no one ever knew why, the whole Ligne battaUon 
 to fire off a/ew de joie of rejoicing, which came near having 
 dangerous results. The regiments before us thought they 
 were attacked in their rear. It cost the lives of several of 
 our officers. In fact, I do not know why a great many 
 more were not killed, for we were just behind the front 
 and got their volley at close quarters. My lieutenant had 
 his coat burned. It was only seven o'clock. Victory was 
 not yet decided. But aU our troops of different nations 
 did marvels. The marshal, who rode in the heaviest fire, 
 had all his orderlies killed around him. I fuUy expected 
 to see the remains of the Prussian army driven into the 
 Elbe, and I shall never understand why there was no 
 pursuit. M. de Nadasdy, who ought to have charged with 
 his hussars, received no orders, and issued none. I re- 
 member that I gave myself airs, and advised my own 
 general. The king's right retired towards Bohmischbrod, 
 his left to Nimburg. Our army passed the night on the 
 field of battle, with all the joy that can be imagined in 
 those who were not accustomed to it. On the 21st was a 
 Te Deum, which made us lose still more time. 
 
 The Ligne Dragoons, who have done such honour, on so 
 many different occasions, to our name, won this battle by 
 a vigorous charge at the very moment the order of retreat 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 71 
 
 was given, the battle being considered lost ; and tbey were 
 the first to break the Prussian battalions. Some squadrons 
 of Savoie and Wiirtemberg and the Saxon light-horse also 
 did marvels. As for me, inasmuch as, thanks to my briga- 
 dier who was confused, we were not yet under fire, I was 
 so tired of being out of it I fired a cannon into the midst 
 of a lot of blue which I saw on a hUl the other side of the 
 high-road. They said afterwards that the kiug was there 
 until the moment when he himself led his cavalry to the 
 charge. 
 
 On the 26th we met the besieged army, which took ad- 
 vantage of our victory to come out of Prague. On the 30th, 
 Mar^chal Brown [Maximilian Ulysses] died in Prague, of 
 his wounds and of the visit of his victorious rival, Mardchal 
 Daun. I went to Prague myself to see if there was any- 
 thiag to be learned. I saw nothing but the remains of a 
 quantity of ignorances committed on both sides, particu- 
 larly iu the works of the Prussians, for they know nothing 
 of the engineering side of war. I saw how it was that the 
 right wiag of our army, beaten at MaUeschitz, was taken in 
 flank; and how the enemy had separated one half from 
 the other half and had cut it off entirely, thanks to the 
 Ul-behaviour of our cavalry, which was seized with a panic 
 terror at the same time as the Prussian cavalry, which fled 
 in the other direction with just as little reason. I saw, in 
 short, the most viUanous beginidng of a campaign, and one 
 which cost us much to repair. 
 
 July -21 the enemy, haviag retreated as we advanced, 
 threw himself into Zittau, and it seemed probable some- 
 thing interesting would happen. I started from camp with- 
 out leave with several other young officers, who, like me, 
 risked the provost and being shot to satisfy our curiosity. 
 But the Prussian chasseurs gave us more than we wanted. 
 
72 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 I afterwards accompanied the marshal to the suburbs of 
 the town, whence he sent two colonels to propose terms to 
 the garrison, which were rather severe. He would have 
 done much better to invest the town, for the enemy were 
 only trying to gain time, in order to send away their 
 treasure and then escape themselves — which they did, 
 to our shame. 
 
 Instead of being the first in the attack as I flattered 
 myself, I was forced to rejoia my battahon, which, under 
 orders of General Wied, was now brought up with the rest 
 of the reserve corps. We arrived in time to witness the 
 barbarity that was exercised on Zittau. What a scene ! 
 They reduced to ashes a splendid city, perfectly well built, 
 the most commercial town in Saxony after Leipzig, and — 
 most distressing of all — a number of the prettiest women 
 in the world. This was discovered the next day, as soon 
 as the terrible conflagration, lasting more than twenty-four 
 hours, allowed us to visit the lugubrious remains of a brilliant 
 city that existed no longer. It was dangerous to ride about 
 on account of the still falling stones, and awful to look into 
 the cellars where whole f amUies were smothered, — children 
 lying dead upon their mothers' breasts. I turn my thoughts 
 away from this horrible event, fit to disgust one forever with 
 war. 
 
 On the 25 th we went into camp near Zittau, and there 
 we spent the greater part of the summer, in the most in- 
 jurious inaction for the army, because desertion, sickness, 
 lack of supphes, marauding, and want of discipline made 
 their appearance, and with evil results. 
 
 On the 6th of September Prince Charles of Lorraine, in 
 order to attract the attention of the Prince de Bevern (to 
 whom the King of Prussia had left the command of his 
 army while he marched against the French), posted his 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIG2SE. 73 
 
 left at Jauemick and occupied the camp at Schonau. At 
 midnight an order came to us to start in great silence, and 
 leave our tents standing. We marched to glory. Nadasdy's 
 companies of Hungarian and German grenadiers, joined to 
 our Wallons, were ordered to chmb the mountain, the Holz- 
 berg, and drive away the Prussian grenadiers, while the 
 Croats, slipping round by the ravines were to take them in 
 flank and join us at the battery. The dispositions were 
 aU excellent. The attack was ■ to be supported by the bat- 
 talions of the Fusileers, who were ordered to advance in 
 two lines accordiag as the grenadiers advanced themselves. 
 But they, carried away by too much ardour for glory and 
 booty, did not stop at the battery; some pursued the 
 Prussians in great disorder, others entered the tents. The 
 enemy returned in force, and matters went ill. 
 
 It was for us to repair them ; I say «ts, and I mean our 
 battalion, that of Saxe-Gotha and a few of the Arberg. It 
 was the Wallon day ! for our companies of the grenadiers 
 were the first up. It was fine to see them mount without 
 firing a shot until they were sure of the mountain. Man- 
 teufel and Treskow were the troops with whom we had to 
 do. I have never seen anything finer or so brave. M. de 
 Winterfeld was kiUed at their head marching against us 
 like a madman. He mounted the hiU on. one side as our 
 men mounted it on the other. Eeaching the crest of the 
 mountain at the same time, we had a moment of flux and 
 reflux, as they do at the opera. I tried to stop it, and to 
 fix and form a line with my battle-axe and the halberds ]oi 
 my sub-officers. It was rough to be between the hottest 
 fire the enemy had made throughout the war and that of 
 the Platz regiment, which, instead of keeping on our right 
 as it should, was hurrying to fire off its cartridges from 
 behind us, and so have a pretext for going away. 
 
74 MEMOIE OF THE PKINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 The first rank of the Prussians and ours were so close 
 together that the muskets almost crossed each other. It 
 was then that the affair became terrible ; the barracks, 
 kitchens, tents, etc., took fire and blazed up. The enemy 
 used them as a parapet to shoot us at close quarters; the 
 wounds were so large they looked as if made by cannon- 
 balls. The smoke was dense ; we did not know with whom 
 we were. Several times I got beyond the Prussians, who, 
 turning round upon us, gave and received bayonet thrusts ; 
 a number of my men were wounded in that way. There 
 was such slaughter, my neighbours and the clumsy fellows 
 in the rear ranks were killing so many, that it was abso- 
 lutely necessary to stop their wild firing. My staff-officers 
 could not be everywhere, my oldest comrades were all 
 killed, nearly all our officers were wounded. I shouted : 
 "Shoulder arms!" as hard as I could; but if I stopped ten 
 or twelve, the thirteenth man, who did not hear me, fired, 
 and all the others began again. I saw the moment coming 
 when we should have to yield. More than ever I roared 
 myself hoarse for the honour of the nation, and shout- 
 ing, " Vive Maria Theresa ! Bayonets and the Wallons I " I 
 rushed on with a small following of Lignes and Saxe- 
 Gothas ; and well they served me ! It was a race pell-mell 
 with the enemy; each man picked and followed his own. 
 Two soldiers got to the bottom of the mountain when I 
 did, and each of them captured a flag. This helter-skelter 
 rush was the thing that decided the enemy to retreat. We 
 went at this pace to the village of Moys. There I rallied 
 my troop with the one sub-lieutenant who had kept up 
 with me. "We ran the risk of being sabred by hussars if 
 any had come up. That reflection decided me to bring my 
 company back to the battalion, which I found, formed in 
 good order, at the foot of the mountain. All the officers 
 
MEMOIR 01" THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 75 
 
 were hors de combat except two, and they had cuts through 
 their hats and coats, for everyhody had something. While 
 I was addressing my remains, a cannon-ball carried off four 
 grenadiers between the Prince de Stolberg and me ; another 
 at the same instant covered me with earth, and a third 
 knocked me over. I did not know what to look to. We 
 were left there a long time exposed very improperly. It 
 did not come into anybody's head to order us under shel- 
 ter ; the fight was over, and our artillery was replying very 
 badly to that of the Prussians. But one does not like to 
 give advice in such cases. 
 
 Two or three times [during this campaign] I had talks 
 with the enemy. Prince Louis of Wurtemberg and I went 
 to the outposts one day and twirled our caps, which is a sign 
 of good friendship. Some hussars came to us ; this was near 
 Breslau. We told them we should come back the next day 
 at the same hour, to the same place, and they must tell 
 Prince Frederick and his brother, a major-general in their 
 service. The prince came, and brought with him Priace 
 Frangois of Brunswick, who was quite wrong to want a 
 talk, for he could not say a word, he stuttered so. All the 
 students at Breslau came out to look at us. Many of the 
 Prussian general officers were walking about at no great dis- 
 tance, but they did not dare to join us. Such interviews 
 were scarcely tolerated on their side, and strictly forbidden 
 on ours. During the conversation I tried all I could to 
 examine the lay of the land beyond the river and the 
 redoubt. 
 
 November 25 the capitulation of Breslau was signed. 
 The garrison was to leave with the honours of war. As the 
 order forbidding officers to ride over there was very badly 
 enforced, I went with the Princes of Saxony to witness the 
 affair. It was the saddest sight in the world. I looked for 
 
76 MEMOIR OF THE PEINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 the garrison, but saw none. There was a troop in the market 
 place, not drawn up in order, which diminished every minute, 
 for a ducat was being given to each deserter. Scarcely any 
 but the officers left the place, and they carried off their 
 flags themselves, sadly enough. Seventeen thousand of our 
 men were marched in under orders of M. de Sprecher. 
 
 ISTovember 27 we learned that the King of Prussia was ad- 
 vancing ; that the fragments of his beaten army had rejoined 
 him and that even the deserters were flocking back. If the 
 resolution had then been taken instantly to post ourselves 
 at Parchnitz, or to stay where we were and await the enemy, 
 or to attack him at the passage of the Schweidnitz (if he 
 attempted it), or to camp at Marchdorf, we should have kept 
 Silesia; Liegnitz would have fallen. Our quarters might 
 have been a little cramped, but the king would have had to 
 turn back for want of supplies. As for us, we could have 
 drawn ours from Poland and Bohemia. Of aU those plans 
 none were taken, and a worse was chosen ; namely, a march, 
 and the passage of the Schweidnitz. General Lucchesi, who 
 gave this bad advice, was punished for it two days later by a 
 cannon-ball which took off his head. 
 
 On the morning of December 5 our Saxon light-horse 
 cavalry were utterly defeated [battle of Leuthen] ; they were 
 pushed too far forward, and the hussars were unable to sup- 
 port them against the Prussian cavalry. The king, by help 
 of a ravine, covered the manoeuvre. We ought not to have 
 been deceived ; it was plain that he meant to attack upon 
 our left; which should have rested on the river, and not 
 have been presented to the enemy as it was, for the flank 
 was formed in front in a manner to give him the idea of 
 overwhelming it. We ought at least to have put brave men 
 on that flank, and to have taken one or other of the two 
 position^ in the rear of it which were offered by Nature her- 
 
MEMOIE OF THE PEINCE DE LIGNE. 77 
 
 self ; we ought never to have hstened to Lucchesi ; we ought 
 to have obliged him to attack the enemy on his left; we 
 ought to have burned the houses in Leuthen, and we ought 
 not to have engaged the whole army, and each regiment sep- 
 arately, after the ill-success of our left. 
 
 The few Wiirtemburgers who did not run away surren- 
 dered to the Prussians. The Bavarians departed a few 
 moments later. Nadasdy's corps was then, necessarily, with- 
 drawn. The thing was all over in half an hour. They 
 shouted for the Eeserve to come up as fast as possible. We 
 made but one rush; my lieutenant-colonel was killed in- 
 stantly. I lost, besides, the major, all my officers except 
 three, and eleven or twelve cadets or volunteers. We passed 
 to the left of the houses of Leuthen ; but it was impossible 
 to hold our ground. Besides an incredible cannonading and 
 the musket-balls that rained upon the battalion which I was 
 then commandiag (for we had no colonel, and I called out : 
 "Messieurs, awaiting the decision of a Council of War, I 
 take this upon myself " — -a good deal is forgiven to the son 
 of a proprietary colonel), the third battalion of the King's 
 Guards kept at us with their hottest fire. They were not 
 eighty paces distant, drawn up and awaiting us as if on 
 parade. My soldiers, jaded with their march and without 
 cannon (for none could or perhaps would follow us), scattered, 
 and fought no longer except from temper; it was for our 
 honour rather than for the good of the thing that we did not 
 go off the ground. An ensign of the Arberg battalion helped 
 me for a time to make a line with his remains and mine. 
 When he was killed, two officers of grenadiers brought me 
 theirs. When I had, with these and the remains of my 
 own brave battalion and a few Hungarians, about two hun- 
 dred men I withdrew to the Moulin height (as the rest of 
 the army ought to have done). From there I proposed to 
 
78 MEMOIR OP THE PRINCE DB LIGNE. 
 
 attack the village, and taking a flag ia my hand, I advanced 
 vrith my troop in good order, everybody fleeing to right 
 and left of us. But, desperate at seeing no one imitate our 
 example, and that two brigades, which were always march- 
 ing about and doing nothing, would not support us, I now 
 thought only of how to retire more honourably than the 
 rest. It was high time ; a few minutes later we should all 
 have been made prisoners. I managed to lodge the few men 
 left to me of my Ligne regiment in the first hovels I found 
 on the other side of the river. Towards the end of the 
 battle I had found my horse, on which I gave myself the 
 airs of a staff-officer ; it is- true I was tired out, and could 
 do no more ; but he gave me a bad fall into a ditch in the 
 course of the night. 
 
 About five in the morning the Due d'Aremberg passed 
 the place where I was, and ordered me to go with him to 
 Grabischen, where I saw the prince [Charles of Lorraine] 
 and the mar&hal [Daun], as sad as can well be imagined. 
 One seemed to be saying, " I never could have believed it ; " 
 and the other, " I told you so." 
 
 December 24 we reached Jaromirz. The prince and the 
 mar^chal established their winter quarters at KonigingrStz : 
 and it was there, where I began, that I ended my first 
 campaign. 
 
 The colonel of the Ligne regiment having been detached 
 before the battle of Breslau, and the lieutenant-colonel and 
 staff-officers and other captains having been killed at Leuthen, 
 I found myself, as I have said, in command of the battalion. 
 I was soon after promoted lieutenant-colonel and commanded 
 the two battalions of my father's regiment of Wallons. "We 
 are ignorant of the origin of that name. No one has ever 
 been able to tell how the word " Wallons " or " Vallons " came 
 to us. Our region is that of what the Eomans called the 
 
MEMOIR OP THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 79 
 
 Nervii, and the origin must be there. But as to the usage 
 that history had since made of the name, it seems to have 
 long been the custom to call aU French-speaking inhabitants 
 of the Austrian Low Countries Wallons, and the neighbours 
 of the Kervii, such as the Eburones and the Tongris, were 
 included. Hence the ancient Vallonne hordes, so famous in 
 other days, and the Vallon Guards, regiments which have 
 served with such honour in the Austrian armies. There are 
 companies who still bear that name in the armies of France, 
 Naples, and Holland. In the latter country they talk of 
 the VaUon Church. In the regions where they speak 
 Vallon, that is to say, bad French, the name is pronounced 
 Ouallon, and spelt with a "W. 
 
 [The foUowiag year, 1758] the army, fated to be com- 
 manded by Mar^chal Daun, came out of its very bad winter 
 quarters with aU the more satisfaction because contagious 
 diseases were rife and had carried off a good number of those 
 whom the preceding campaign had spared. The King of 
 Prussia, neither conqueror nor conquered, content with a 
 state of indecision, did not think of attacking us ; that was 
 not his game ; on the contrary, he was anxious not to come 
 to a general engagement, which might cause him to lose 
 Saxony. He therefore enjoyed his usual pleasure of keeping 
 us in a state of suspense. 
 
 Meanwhile, however, the siege of Olmutz was progressing 
 considerably. The enemy was said to be not more than 
 sixty yards from the covered way. It was time to do 
 something. 
 
 June 30 we suddenly received orders to strike tents and 
 start instantly. This was shortening formalities mightily; 
 but it is thus, by wasting no time, that the secrecy of an 
 expedition is secured. We marched without really know- 
 ing where we were going, but, in the main, we felt sure it 
 
80 MEMOIR OF THE PEINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 must be to relieve the besieged town. "We marched slowly 
 Meantime wonders were being done by M. de Loudon with 
 his Croats, who had long been on the watch for a favourable 
 enterprise. He knew well how to distinguish good reports 
 from bad ones ; rejecting those dictated by fear, he made 
 the most of the others. Eeceiving news of a convoy near 
 Domstattl, he sent forward his hght troops, supported them 
 with his dragoons, captured the convoy and escort, took 
 quantities of prisoners, destroyed the, enemy's supphes, 
 succeeded in capturing every waggon, saved Olmutz, and 
 covered himself with glory. 
 
 The heat was extreme ; but we stood it well and patiently 
 because we knew we were advancing against the enemy. 
 July 1, from the heights above Olmutz, we could see the 
 besieged and the besiegers ; only a short march remained to 
 be made. On the 2nd, we were amazed to find the trenches 
 abandoned and the garrison employed in destroying them. 
 Everybody was pleased: Marfohal Daun for having made 
 a wise march ; somebody else for having advised it ; M. de 
 Loudon for having fought and decided what might have 
 hung on for some time longer; and Comte de Marschall for 
 having defended the place vigorously. But why was not 
 M. de Bucknow, so useless hitherto, close at the king's heels ? 
 We might have got his artillery and baggage. Ah ! if that 
 enthusiasm which the king knew so well how to inspire 
 in his army had only been in ours ! Some one was wanted 
 to stir its imagination. But we had learned this year 
 how to camp and how to march, and that was a good deal 
 for us. 
 
 I spent the two days we were under the walls of Olmutz 
 in visiting the fortifications. They had suffered very little 
 from a six weeks' cannonading. They were already being 
 repaired in two or three places. It seemed to me that the 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRIlSrCE DE LlGNE. 81 
 
 breach made in the wall of the Corps de Place was sufficient 
 for an assault as soon as the enemy were masters of the 
 covered way. Olmutz might have been better attacked, but 
 it could not have been better defended. 
 
 We entered Saxony August 31, by way of Konigsbriick, 
 with the intention of reheving Dresden by crossing the Elbe 
 above the woods of Eadeburg. It was here that the rumour 
 of a battle with the Eussians began to be bruited about 
 [Frederick the Great had defeated the Eussians at Dornsdorf, 
 August 25]. Our march was greatly retarded by the confu- 
 sion of two columns that crossed each other. September 3rd 
 the project of relieving Dresden was abandoned; we had 
 scarcely reached Eadeburg before this retrograde resolution, 
 which put it out of our power to undertake anything good, 
 was formed. The army marched at once to Stolpen; the 
 Prussian hussars attacked our baggage, and came near cap- 
 turing the whole of it. 
 
 Prince Henry [of Prussia], who from the beginning of the 
 campaign had no other object than to cover Saxony, was in 
 camp at Dohna. The defeat of his corps would have 
 brought about the taking of Dresden and the evacuation of 
 Saxony. The day for it was iixed, but a parade and review 
 in honour of the Comte de Haugwitz delayed the march ; and 
 so an army that ought only to have taken up arms to force 
 the enemy to lay down theirs, took them up for a minister 
 who was so near-sighted that he only pretended to see the 
 troops. The march was therefore postponed till the follow- 
 ing day. This was September 22. The grenadiers, under 
 M. de Lacy, were ready to cross the river; the bridges 
 were thrown over ; the army had orders to leave its bag- 
 gage, and was only waiting the word to march, when false 
 information, fear of results, what shall I say ? fatal irreso- 
 lution, so destructive in war, upset the whole plan. The 
 
 VOL. I. — 6 
 
82 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 grenadiers came back to camp, and the army returned to its 
 tranquillity. 
 
 I saw a great deal during this time of the famous Com- 
 tesse de Cossel, who for forty-eight years had been shut up 
 in the neighbouring castle of Stolpen for having tried to kill 
 her august lover, Augustus [Elector of Saxony and King of 
 Poland]. She took a great liking for me, and told me that, 
 being able to go free on the death of her king [1733], that 
 is, at the end of twenty-three years' imprisonment, she had 
 remained in the castle twenty-five years longer, because she 
 then knew no one and expected to die soon. She said that, 
 having had time to study all religions, she had chosen the 
 Jewish, and exhorted me to do the same. For which pur- 
 pose she gave me, the last time I saw her, her Bible, with 
 her notes in broad red pencil. This gift she announced to 
 me in a way that made me suppose it was the largest of her 
 diamonds she was going to present to me. 
 
 She gave me an account of the arrival of Charles XII. in 
 Dresden, so well known to history. Augustus and herself 
 were in the latter's arsenal, where he practised his feats of 
 strength, especially with his wrists, in which his great power 
 lay. Some one knocked at the door. Augustus said, " Come 
 in ! " and Charles entered and embraced him, saying, " Good- 
 morning, my brother." Mme. de Cossel went up to the king 
 to advise him to arrest this wandering royal brother. 
 Charles perceiving her intention, or else dishking women, 
 made a face, which induced Augustus to make a sign to 
 Mme. de Cossel to withdraw. She did so, with a furious 
 glance at the King of Sweden, miserable that the King of 
 Poland should draw no benefit from a visit that amazed all 
 Europe. She told me a hundred interesting things, and ad- 
 vised me not to drink and not to gamble, and to give up 
 great adventures at Court, where no one could long be 
 
MEMOIR OF THE JPRINCE DE LIGNB. 83 
 
 happy, and also in the army after I had won the fame she 
 predicted for me. 
 
 The last time I saw her she said, with great coolness and 
 yet with much earnestness : " This is Friday, and it is nearly 
 seven o'clock ; my Sabbath is about to begin. You leave in 
 a few days and I shall not see you again. In three years 
 you will lose your best friend, who bids you farewell at this 
 moment forever." I was much moved ; she kissed me and 
 I left her. She wrote me a letter some time after, scarcely 
 legible, still less intelligible, full of mystical or magic mean- 
 ings, which the devil alone could have deciphered. She kept 
 her word and I never saw her again. 
 
 There had long been talk of a possible deficiency of provi- 
 sions which sooner or later would force Mar^chal Daun to 
 leave Stolpen, but he seemed to be reluctant to do so. He 
 had not known how to profit by the diversion of the Eus- 
 sians and the battle of Dornsdorf to establish himself, as he 
 ought to have done, in Brandebourg. It was not until 
 October 5 that we moved from Stolpen. We Wallons, who 
 had been for some time past the Croats of the army, were 
 to cover the retreat. The Due d'Aremberg commanded the 
 rear guard of the reserve corps ; Loudon that of the main 
 army. We struck tents with a show of mystery and spent 
 the night under arms between Neukirch and Tautwalden. 
 My regiment marched four or five hours behind the others, 
 but was not attacked. 
 
 On the 7th our position was secure, and the heights of 
 Hochkirch were occupied by six hundred of our cavalry. On 
 the 10th a few pistol-shots, heard on the Hochkirch at day- 
 break, announced the intention of the enemy to carry it. 
 The commanders of our cavalry might perhaps 'have held 
 their ground some time without being supported; but the 
 fact is it was the King of Prussia himself, with his whole 
 
84 MEMOIR OF THE PEINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 army, advancing to occupy the heights. I can render no 
 better account of the glorious day of October 14 than by 
 copying the orders of the commander-in-chief and showing 
 in what they were followed and in what they were not 
 followed.^ . . . 
 
 My two battalions were drawn, by special distinction of 
 the marshal, from the rear of the right, to be the iirst of all 
 to attack on the left, after a march of twelve hours through 
 woods and stony ravines, where we saw neither sky nor 
 earth. We had our instructions to dislodge from the under- 
 brush round the enemy's camp all the sharp-shooters that we 
 believed to be there; and for this light and rapid move- 
 ment we were ordered to leave our flags behind us. This 
 last order alarmed the sensibilities of my regiment, and I had 
 difficulty in making them understand it was doing us great 
 honour to treat us as grenadiers without a flag, so that we 
 could take those of the enemy. Brown's regiment [son of 
 Mar^chal Brown, killed at Prague] had orders to march 
 behind mine with as much order as was needed to second 
 our eagerness, which was greater than ever. . . . 
 
 It was five o'clock in the morning when General Brown 
 drew up the two battalions of his father's regiment and the 
 two of the Ligne in a little thicket, close to a pond, at the 
 extremity of the camp of the Prussian hussars. While I, 
 with Fabris, was reconnoitring the underbrush in front of 
 us. Brown ordered his father's regiment to advance. Ee- 
 turning a moment later I found it already started and 
 firing, and I marched my own men along very fast. On 
 the way I met Brown, looking for his horse ; he told me to 
 
 1 The battle of Hochkirch, Oct. 14, 1758, in which Frederick the Great 
 was defeated by Mar^chal Baun. The particulars of this and of all the 
 other campaigns of the Seven Years' War are given by the Prince de Ligne 
 in his Melanges Militaires, etc., vols, xiv., xv., xvi. The chief events only 
 are told in this Memoir. — Tk. 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 85 
 
 go straight before me, for he was dangerously wounded 
 (they were firing at us from the underbrush on all sides) ; 
 and after that I was my own general for the rest of the 
 battle. 
 
 I went as fast as I could, spreading my front as wide as 
 possible. My battalion on the right entered the camp of 
 the Prussian grenadiers, and they, half clothed, retired to 
 form, and then returned to defend themselves. We killed 
 a great number during that time in the darkness ; mine 
 being the first line of infantry in the advance, having 
 formed in a little plain beyond the wood. Hearing M. de 
 StainviUe coming up at the full trot with the Lowenstein 
 regiments, I took him for the enemy, and what resistance 
 could I make then ? Nevertheless, I ordered, " Kuhig ! " [Be 
 still ! ] to my whole battalion, who were nothing but recrxiits, 
 and I was amazed at the self-command and obedience they 
 showed ; not a shot was fired. I went a few steps forward 
 by myself and recognized Stainville, who told me that if 
 I would go up a little hiU about two hundred paces distant 
 he would support me with his regiments. During the time 
 I was marching there, down came the gendarmes of the 
 king at full gaUop to pounce on my battalions, and they 
 would certainly have crushed them if the Lowenstein regi- 
 ments had not charged vigorously. 
 
 I occupied the height and requested a battalion of Croats, 
 which I found abandoned to itself, to take my right and 
 fill up the gap between my battalions and that of Arberg, 
 separated from me by the darkness. It was just then that 
 I encountered M. de Loudon, who approved of aU that I 
 had done. He ordered our three battalions forward to a 
 little wood to the left of the village of Hochkirch. I 
 rallied about two hundred grenadiers of the Arberg, which 
 I put on my right, Loudon having ordered M^rode and the 
 
86 MEMOIR OF THE PEINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 Croats to my left. He told me to put my whole force into 
 the quarries from which they took stone. Thus intrenched 
 by nature, I feared nothing either for myself or for the 
 grenadiers, whom I posted ia the thick underbrush. The 
 enemy turned us, but they could not break us ; and when 
 I saw that after the fusillade of my men and the Croats 
 on the hussars in front of me, the latter were trying to 
 take me from behind, I swung a half-circle to the right 
 with the grenadiers only, and so was able to make front 
 and fire on two sides at a time. The only danger was from 
 our own artillery, which was not able to advance as far as 
 I ; a cannon-ball all but killed me and M. de Loudon at 
 one shot. 
 
 It was now half-past eight; and it was then that the 
 Prussian infantry, farther to my right, rallied miraculously, 
 and, regaining its lost ground around the village, was about 
 to regain the lost battle. The mardchal saw this and 
 feared the result. M. de Lacy, who had made himself 
 responsible for everything up to this moment, did so again 
 at this crisis. It was he who had made the fine arrange- 
 ments I have quoted ; it was he who had planned the 
 attack; it was he who had decided the battle so far; and 
 it was he who now won the victory ! He charged at the 
 head of six companies of horse-grenadiers and carbineers, 
 dashed through the viQage of Hochkirch, surmounted almost 
 insurmountable obstacles, took quantities of flags, and bore 
 down everything before him. 
 
 But why did our cavalry on the right do nothing, and 
 our cavalry on the left so little ? "Why did they not pursue 
 the beaten army along the road from Lbbau to Budissin? 
 Why were the infantry intrusted to Loudon withdrawn 
 during the battle? Or rather, why not have ordered so 
 many regiments, that had so far done nothing at all, to 
 
MEMOIR OP THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 87 
 
 pursue ? The artillery should have been led from height 
 to height, the troopers sent forward at full speed as far at 
 least as Budissin, the victory completed, and not written 
 about. That miserable stone on which I saw the mar&hal 
 writing a letter in haste, that the empress might receive 
 the news before she left her room on Saint Theresa's day, 
 was our stone of stumbling, as I remember saying at the 
 time. 
 
 In the cemetery of Hochkirch I recognized Mar^chal 
 Keith (James Keith, a Scotchman, in the Prussian service) 
 by his majestic mien and his wounds. He did prodigies of 
 valour till he received the ball that pierced his heart. I 
 saw him, the Hero, lying among his soldiers and ours ; his 
 noble presence still awing those who saw it. 'T was the 
 death of the righteous. His body was all covered with old 
 wounds, his scarred face unchanged by the change that 
 took him to the home of souls Mke his own — for doubtless 
 there is one for those that leave the bodies of such brave 
 soldiers; they must after death receive the reward of all 
 their virtues. 
 
 There were many dead in the same place, among them 
 Prince Frangois of Brunswick. The Prince of Anhalt was 
 dangerously wounded and taken prisoner under the idea 
 that he was the king himself. We took one hundred 
 cannon and many flags. I repeat : they might have taken 
 the whole army, but they were too surprised at having 
 surprised it. The king returned to Bautzen, and on the 
 29th marched with his whole army into Silesia, escorted 
 by Loudon, who never lost sight of him, but followed him 
 steadily to Schonberg. 
 
 As for us, we were reserved for greater exploits ; we had 
 to pass the time until we went into winter quarters ; and so 
 we marched into Saxony. Our column crossed the Elbe 
 
88 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 near Pillnitz, on twenty-eight pontoons ; that of the Supplies 
 and Equipments on other pontoons at Pirna. I examined 
 carefully the ground where we ought to have made our 
 attack on Prince Henry's left. We should only have had 
 a short distance to climb ; and even if we had not succeeded 
 in attracting the enemy's attention ia that direction we 
 should have facilitated his defeat by our reserve corps. 
 
 General Itzenplitz, to whom Prince Henry had left the 
 command of his corps, was the king's reliance for the pres- 
 ervation of Dresden, where the garrison, of only three 
 thousand men, could easily have been reiaforced from his 
 troops. But whether he was ignorant of our advance or 
 whether he foresaw what actually happened, he remained 
 quietly ia the position he occupied. If we, instead of stop- 
 ping a day and a half at Lockwitz, had stationed ourselves 
 on the evening of the 7th between Itzenplitz and Dresden 
 we should have had Dresden and Leipzig, etc. The king 
 was in Silesia ; Dohna could do us no harm ; and Itzenplitz 
 was cut off. 
 
 November 9, one hour after mid-day our army was under 
 arms and advancing upon Dresden. Charles Lorraiue, Hild- 
 burgshausen, my regiment and that of Gaisruch, had orders 
 to carry the Great Garden, which is separated from the fau- 
 bourg by only a little esplanade of about eighty yards at the 
 most, and surrounded by a good wall. We reached the 
 gates at half-past two. My sappers battered them in, and I 
 entered with a detachment of four hundred men, which 
 served as the advanced guard. I had a number of men 
 wounded by the Prussian chasseurs who, after a gallant 
 defence, retired behiud the ruined walls of the Garden and 
 fired at us from there. It was only by cannon that I was 
 able to drive them into the faubourg and so get rid of 
 them. 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PEINCE DE LIGNE. 89 
 
 Emeric Esterhazy having himself reconnoitred with his 
 hussars a redoubt in which fifty grenadiers were stationed 
 to cover the faubourg of Pirna, I offered myself and my two 
 battalions to carry it and then post ourselves as close as 
 could be to the gates of the town. But ia vain I entreated, 
 besought, represented; the orders of the mar^chal were, 
 they said, to undertake nothing further. And thus a thing 
 so easy, which would have secured to us the possession of 
 Dresden on the following day, if the rest of the army had 
 done as it should have done, was treated as a piece of non- 
 sense on my part and utterly neglected. 
 
 Nothing could have been worse than what happened 
 the next day; and it would not have happened had I 
 carried the redoubt; because we could then have ex- 
 tinguished the conflagration, and made ourselves responsi- 
 ble against pillage. And if we think we are sheltered 
 from blame because it was not we who set fire to the fau- 
 bourgs, nor had we suffered any one to enter the town, 
 we are mightily mistaken. We had done too much not 
 to do more; having undertaken a great affair we did too 
 little. 
 
 On the 10th we saw the frightful spectacle of 6,11 those 
 beautiful houses about Dresden in flames. I could warm 
 myself by them in my tent. Days went by in making 
 plans ; and as if we seriously thought of investing Dresden, 
 there was talk of bringing up the siege guns. But it was soon 
 discovered that the king was returning ; Dohna was advanc- 
 ing against us ; and so, in order not to give a second edition 
 of Leuthen, the armies all retired, each in its own direction : 
 the Prince de Deux-Ponts gave up his enterprise at Leipzig ; 
 Haddick that of Torgau ; Daun that of Dresden ; Loudon 
 that of Cossel; and as if this wisdom of operations ex- 
 tended everywhere, even the Kussians left Colberg; and 
 
90 MEMOm OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 all at the same moment, as though the word had been 
 passed round. 
 
 The cold now becoming severe, the total lack of wood to 
 warm the right wing of the army, and the desire to have the 
 troops in a good state for the campaign of 1759, led to our 
 returning to Bohemia by the Geyersberg and the savage 
 chain of mountains which that route required us to cross. 
 They might have spared our doing it in one march ; it took 
 some regiments eighteen hours to get across, and certainly 
 there was nothing to hurry us. Every one got into winter 
 quarters as best he could. As for me, I reached mine at 
 TSplitz November 25, 1758, where I found myself under 
 the orders of General Siskowitz. 
 
 We hved in the utmost tranquillity the whole of that 
 winter ; there was not even so much as a false alarm. Twice 
 a week we reconnoitred the roads about us, and kept them 
 in good order ; also the bridges, employing for that purpose 
 the peasants of the neighbouring villages. Once I played 
 orderly corporal during the night, and left invitations for 
 everybody to dine with the generals, who never dined at 
 home. The company arrived and waited, expecting their 
 hosts to return. General Lacy was the only one who 
 dined in his own quarters ; he expected about a dozen, and 
 sixty came. He imagined it was the fault of his aides-de- 
 camp, who had each invited guests inconveniently. They, 
 on the other hand, said afterwards they could not imagine 
 what the general was thinking of to invite so many 
 persons. Every one was ill at ease, ill-fed, iU-served, and 
 in very bad humour ; the officers all left the generals' tents 
 at four o'clock, declaring they were villains and very 
 impertinent. 
 
 " Let us do justice,'' I said one day to my young officers 
 of twenty or so (for all the rest had been kiUed), " and throw 
 
7/ V^ ■ / '/■' 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 91 
 
 those flags where they ought to be" [apparently the flags 
 of some regiment that had misconducted itself]. We seized 
 the sentinel, and blindfolded him in front of the regiment's 
 quarters, so that he might have nothing to blame himself 
 for, and I gave him five ducats for his fright. The flags 
 ■went where I had said. The uproar this made can be 
 imagined. I went to see the proprietor of the regiment 
 as if nothing had happened. It was O'Kelly, who liked me 
 much. I found him in tears. "Ah! my friend," he said, 
 " if you only knew what has happened to me ! But don't 
 speak of it to any one, for pity's sake ; it is better to smother 
 the affair." " Yes," I said, " smother it by all means ; be as 
 mum as you can." 
 
 I remember that just as the battle of Hochkirch was be- 
 ginning, M. de M^rode, a captain of my regiment, thinking 
 that I had no rehgion and wanting to try me, asked if I 
 thought there was a God, hoping to send me to the devil, 
 where I sent him as I answered, " I never doubted it." 
 As if the word had been passed round to damn me, another 
 young officer, of whom I was very fond, and who may have 
 heard me talk lightly on such subjects, and whose Mahomet 
 I was in another matter, asked me nearly the same question. 
 On his part it was sincerely a desire to know, and not from 
 mischief. Cursfed human deference ! and to whom ? — a 
 young sub-lieutenant of eighteen ! I answered feebly as to 
 my belief ; but see the contradictions of the mind : the 
 balls were whistling round me, and I made the sign of the 
 cross in perfect good faith, like Henri IV. in the trenches 
 of Montalban. 
 
 Fabris, a brave ofl&cer of the headquarters staff, and I 
 had been talking at Adelsbach about a poem on the Art 
 of War. He remembered it on this occasion, and during 
 a deluge of water and fire, for there came up a great shower 
 
92 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 in the midst of the rain of balls and bullets, he repeated 
 a quotation I had made to him of two pretty poor lines : — 
 
 " These weapons, these horses, these soldiers, these cannons, 
 Can't sustain of themselves the honour of nations." 
 
 I paid him instantly in his own coin, and pointing to my 
 own regiment and Betchein's, I capped him with : — 
 
 " But see the Hungarians, there are the Wallons I " 
 
III. 
 
 1758-1762. 
 THE SEVEN YEARS' WAR: FIRST VISIT TO PARIS. 
 
 The colonel of my father's regiment would have been 
 made general if he had not been taken prisoner; and as 
 he was certain to be as soon as he was ransomed I was 
 made colonel-commander during the winter of 1758-59 ; 
 and for this promotion, as well as all others, T owed nothing 
 to favour. I was always indifferent to many things. With 
 a little pains I might have had the regiment of Ligne 
 Dragoons after the battle of Kolin, for my uncle had just 
 died. But even then I detested intrigue; I thought that 
 to write to the empress and send to Vienna would be in- 
 triguing. Otherwise I should have been a marshal at thirty. 
 As it was, I was one year captain, one year lieutenant- 
 colonel, four years colonel, then major-general. 
 
 [At the opening of the campaign of 1759] I was brigaded 
 with a Hungarian regiment, an Italian regiment, and a 
 German regiment. This assemblage of four nations was 
 often exercised together by M. de Siskowitz, who commanded 
 the brigade, in their four different languages, which he spoke 
 perfectly. When it was our turn to appear before the 
 marshal, who made the whole army manoeuvre before him 
 successively, he seemed very pleased with all of us ; but 
 I shall make bold to say that for quickness and precision 
 in wheeling, and for marching in general, the Wallons 
 carried the day. 
 
94 MEMOIK OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 August 12, the day that Loudon won the battle of Franck- 
 fort [Kunersdorf], I was at our outposts by daylight. The 
 enemy came out to insult them as usual, and then attacked 
 them in regular form by several squadrons at the same 
 moment, so that Esterhazy's Grand' Gardes were roughly 
 handled. It was a little my fault, because I advised Cap- 
 tain Nitsky to go out and meet them as they came on ; and 
 before long we were surrounded on all sides ; the Prussians 
 coming out of the houses of the village of Thiemendorf and 
 the underbrush all the time and pouncing on us. My 
 lieutenant-colonel (who had hurried up at the noise) and 
 I, after staying there longer than we ought, had to ride 
 back at a furious pace to escape them. We were be- 
 tween our own hussars and those of Prince Henry, who 
 were after us ; but the horses of the latter went so fast 
 they could not control them in time to capture us. Luckily 
 we came upon the picket of an officer of Warasdins, who 
 fired just at the right time on our pursuers (and a little 
 on us). As usual, the Prussian cavalry was supported 
 by their infantry. This little combat, which was more 
 amusing than murderous, lasted nearly four hours, and 
 served only to get me scolded. The enemy returned to 
 their outposts, and we to ours. It was here that I heard 
 of the birth of my son. "Ah!" I cried joyfuUy, "how 
 I shall love him ! I wish I could write it to him now. 
 If I return alive from this war I shall say to him: 
 ' You are welcome, and I am going to love you with all 
 my heart.' " 
 
 [Prince Henry of Prussia, then in command of the army 
 of his brother, Frederick the Great, ia Saxony, was in camp 
 at Torgau ; the king being engaged with Loudon near 
 Franckfort.] 
 
 On the 20th of October, General Lacy, while reconnoitring 
 
MBMOIE OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 95 
 
 as closely as he could the camp at Torgau, which was 
 hidden by the brushwood on all sides, was shot in the arm 
 by a chasseur. There is never so much marching to and fro 
 as when you don't want to fight. You are always thinking 
 that by keeping on the flank of the enemy you can force 
 him to decamp, and often you are wrong. All our strata- 
 gems and efforts proved useless on this occasion. Prince 
 Henry eluded them until the end of his authority; and 
 that is a justice I ought to do him. 
 
 On the 22nd the Due d'Aremberg was detached to 
 Strehlin by the marshal, with a corps of twenty thousand 
 men. That of Brentano was added to ours. I say ours, 
 because it was now plain that no detachment could leave 
 the army without my regiment being part of it. I found 
 this in aU the campaigns, and it gave me a great deal of 
 pleasure. Brentano camped in front of us. The marshal 
 came over to inspect our position, which would have been 
 good for a larger force, if the heights above the chapel had 
 been occupied. 
 
 On the 26th a Prussian corps was seen advancing, which 
 was rightly supposed to be thirty squadrons of horse and ten 
 battahons of infantry detached from Torgau, under com- 
 mand of General Finck, who at first showed signs of attack- 
 ing Brentano, but withdrew to Dommitsch. . . . Brentano, 
 finding himself cut off from us, was not uneasy ; he fought 
 his little fight and retired to Diiben, which was his only re- 
 source, where we were charmed to rejoin him the following 
 day. He had not suffered much. During the action his 
 Croats had abandoned two cannon. M. de Beaud^ans, cap- 
 tain of the WaUon dragoons, dismounted his squadron and 
 chased Finck's infantry. His lieutenant, M. de Pfortzheim, 
 recaptured the guns, harnessed the dragoon horses to them, 
 and brought them safely in. Such deeds as these deserve 
 
96 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 to go down to posterity with the names of those who did 
 them. 
 
 By November 6 the king had returned with rapid marches 
 and joined his brother Henry, having quite recovered from 
 his losses before Franckfort. Brentano was put on his left 
 to watch him. On the 14th of November the whole army 
 was ordered to make a retrograde movement ia the deepest 
 secrecy. Our column marched by Meissen, and there, after 
 my regiment had passed through the town, an obstruction 
 of waggon-trains and artillery lasted so long that the Prus- 
 sian hussars came up and pillaged the baggage ; which gave 
 us time to save the cannon, although they were quite ia the 
 enemy's power. I lost my provision-waggons and other sup 
 plies; also my tents and bullocks, with their guards, who 
 defended them as long as they could. On the 17th the 
 army halted before Dresden, and Brentano had orders to go 
 to Maxen ; he was the rear-guard, with the cavalry. Finck 
 and Wunsch arrived at Maxen at almost the same time. 
 The king, who was at Lommatsch, believed that nothing but 
 his presence was now lacking to crown the campaign. 
 
 We wanted to attack, but we did not know where. The 
 Prussian general, Eebentisch, had started for Maxen to join 
 Finck and Wunsch ; and the question was, should we attack 
 those three generals ? Fabris had found two roads through 
 the woods by which to debouch two columns and attack on 
 our side ; Brentano was ready on his ; and the imperial 
 army was at Dohna. But difficulties were talked of. Lacy 
 smoothed them all, gave his word of honour, wagered his 
 head. Almost all the generals opposed him ; but at last he 
 convinced Mardchal Daun that he would lose his artillery 
 and baggage, and, worse stiU, be forced to retreat into Bo- 
 hemia, if he did not fight and capture the Prussian army 
 of nearly twenty thousand men at Maxen. The marshal 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 97 
 
 agreed, and Lacy drew up as good a plan of operations as 
 he had done for Hochkirch.^ 
 
 At eight in the morning of November 20, in horrible 
 weather, and after waiting three hours with our feet in the 
 snow, the march began. Every one had his instructions, 
 which were clear and precise. Mar^chal Daun drove over 
 from his own army in a carriage, and, mounting his horse, 
 put himself at the head of ours. He was no longer irresolute 
 after the thing had once begun ; he saw clearer under fire 
 than he did in his cabinet. He himself formed the grena- 
 diers on the first height beyond the woods, under a heavy 
 cannonading. If the enemy had posted twenty cannon on 
 that height they could have prevented our debouching. But, 
 in point of fact, they advanced towards us in a manner that 
 facilitated our project of surrounding them. 
 
 The grenadiers of the Ligne were the first in the village 
 aCnd castle of Maxen, where all who defended them threw 
 down their arms. The Wallon dragoons also defeated the 
 Finck cavalry, in spite of its superiority. During the 
 greater part of the time the marshal was in front of my 
 front, only leaving it now and then to expose himself still 
 more in leading and animating the different troops. The 
 whole affair lasted barely three hours, and the enemy could 
 have made better use of the lay of the land and the severely 
 cold weather. 
 
 Towards evening I took my stand at the great battery, 
 where I gathered together the prisoners and deserters, whom 
 the grenadiers were bringing in at every moment. They told 
 me that the three Prussian generals lost their heads. Maxen 
 was set on fire, and there was some pillage. I put a guard in 
 the castla A quantity of young ladies, in tears, begged me to 
 
 ^ This account of the tattle of Maxen is much abridged in the trans- 
 lation. — Tb. 
 
 VOL. I. — 7 
 
98 MEMOIR OP THE tKlKCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 lodge there. The marshal came, and I gave him, also the 
 volunteer princes and generals, a good supper. M. de Lacy, 
 who had well earned it, said to me, laughing: "At what 
 o'clock to-morrow will you take for your reward the birds 
 that we have caught to put in the cage ? We have them 
 all." The marshal said to him, "Do you think that is reaUy 
 so ? " Lacy assured him it was so. I gave another supper 
 to the officers whom we had taken prisoners. 
 
 The next day I received a summons from General O'Don- 
 nell, to go to him. He told me of the favour I had obtained 
 in being chosen to carry to the King of France the news of 
 the battle of Maxen and the capture of nine generals and 
 eighteen thousand men. O'DonneU sent me to the mar6- 
 chal's headquarters in Dresden to receive my instructions. 
 Though it was a frost like that on the day of the action, 
 during which (I forgot to say) I almost broke my neck by 
 my horse f alliug with me, I galloped to Dresden in an hour 
 and a half, at the risk of twenty other falls. I was beside 
 myself with joy. The mar^chal sent me off that very day. I 
 never was so happy in my life. 
 
 The nation which knew the most about glory would be 
 forgotten at the present day. Like so many others, were it 
 not for the noble public works it has left to posterity. It 
 foresaw that the fame of its arms needed that support. 
 There were deeds as brilliant no doubt in the history of all 
 the Peoples that are now buried in eternal oblivion ; but 't is 
 only those who cultivate the arts who can perpetuate them- 
 selves. It is against Time, that destroyer of Nature, that 
 they should arm. The Eomans knew how to conquer it. 
 In seeing the amphitheatres, the columns, the roads, the 
 aqueducts that stiU remain to us, we are made to feel that 
 they had their Virgils, Horaces, and Ovids because Genius 
 
MEMOIR OP THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 99 
 
 drives her chariot with all the sciences abreast. France 
 alone can aspire to the many-sided fame of Eome. But she 
 has no ambitions incompatible with pleasing ; that delightful 
 nation knows how to enjoy. Let her enjoy ; for she unites 
 in herself the heritage of Eome and Athens. 
 
 Nevertheless the climate, the gloom, the deserted spaces, 
 the remoteness of Versailles are distasteful to everyone. The 
 queen of that country is Gayety. She who reigns there at 
 the present moment is therefore doubly a queen. The beauty 
 of her soul is pictured in her face, grace directs her every 
 movement; she wears a look of happiness, she inspires it, 
 and thus contributes to that of her kingdom. If her subjects 
 could see and admire her daily they would be the better for 
 it. For this reason Paris and the Louvre should once more 
 be made the residence of the king and Court. But when I 
 was sent to France, in 1759-60, to carry the news of the 
 victory and capture of eighteen thousand Prussians to Louis 
 XV., the Court was buried at Versailles. The king received 
 me at his lever and asked a score of siQy questions, as he 
 did to others who were present. For instance, he asked 
 the rector of Saint-Germains if there had been many 
 deaths during the winter. "Bad year, bad year," he re- 
 peated a dozen times, addressing that phrase to every one 
 who was present at the lever. He asked our ambassador, 
 Stahrenberg, what weather it was in Vienna, and whether 
 there were many old men ; he asked the nuncio how the 
 pope's pages were dressed ; and me whether Mar^chal Daun 
 wore a wig. 
 
 What was my astonishment when, after the round of 
 ceremonious bows which I was taken to make on all the 
 individuals of the royal family, I was conducted to a species 
 of second queen — she had more the air of a queen than the 
 first, who was a dowdy old woman. Madame de Pompadour 
 
100 MEMOIR OP THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 (it was she) talked a quantity of politico-ministerial and 
 politico-military nonsense. She made me three or four plans 
 of campaign, and said with emphasis : " You know, monsieur, 
 what we are doing for you; are you not satisfied?" "I 
 assure you, madame," I said, " that I know nothing about it." 
 She replied : " We are selling our gold and silver plate to 
 support your war." And then she actually took it into her 
 head to say : " I am much dissatisfied with your women of 
 Prague." " So am I," I rephed, " I have often been ?o." 
 " They are very ill brought-up," she added. " "WTiy do they 
 not pay better court to the sisters of Madame la Dauphine ? " 
 There was no answer to make to such a piece of ignorance, 
 so I retired. 
 
 I wish to deny here the letters and anecdotes which 
 report that the Empress Maria Theresa wrote to Mme. de 
 Pompadour calling her " my pretty little cousin," and that 
 the latter replied, " my dear little queen." The empress 
 addressed her through our ambassador as she would a 
 minister, which, in fact, she was. That is how I myself 
 was presented. She put to me on several occasions most 
 ridiculous questions, but not more so, after all, than those of 
 the other ministers. One day she was trying to find Saxony 
 on a great atlas spread out before her, and when the king 
 asked me if we had completely surrounded the Prussians, 
 she said, rather sensibly : " You can see. Sire, it was not 
 necessary, because here is the river Elbe to shut them in 
 on this side." 
 
 It is singular that even without a war being in progress 
 France has always felt ill-will to the house of Austria. I 
 have never felt it to the house of Bourbon ; on the contrary, 
 I adored the heads of that house, such of them as I knew, 
 and they deserved a general interest. But if, in after years, 
 their throne had been restored to them, through the interest 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 101 
 
 they inspired or for the sake of other thrones, we ought to 
 have said firmly : " Be careful that your infernal, or lazy, or 
 frivolous, or ignorant, or intriguing, or haughty minister leaves 
 us in peace and stirs up neither our subjects nor our neigh- 
 bours against us, and does not meddle again with Flanders, 
 Himgary, the Empire, and Holland." Did not M. d'AiguOlon 
 refuse us the help of men and money to prevent that first 
 partition of Poland ? Did not M. de Vergennes sound the 
 tocsin against our claims in Bavaria and our rights to the 
 freedom of the Scheldt? I myself experienced the result 
 of French antipathy on this visit of mine to Versailles. 
 "You are very late in winning your victories," Mar^chal 
 Belleisle, then minister of war, said to me. " In last year's 
 campaign Hochkirch only came in October, and this year 
 your Maxen is put off till November." " I think, monsieur," 
 I replied, with more temper than he had dared to show to 
 me, " that it is better to beat in the autumn, and even in 
 the winter, than to be beaten in summer." The French had 
 been totally beaten in August of this year, at Minden. 
 
 The people I met could not get over their surprise that I 
 knew French so well and did not know Hungarian. After 
 making many acquaintances, many observations, folhes, and 
 debts, after the most charming winter I ever passed in my 
 life, in the midst of all sorts of pleasures, I returned to the 
 army, which I found near Dresden, about where it was when 
 I left it. Louis XV., among other presents, gave me a 
 superb ring, which I put in pawn the next day, so ready was 
 I to make light of everything in those days. I wanted 
 money ; I was in haste to live, and finding how lively the 
 war was, I was afraid of not getting pleasure enough before 
 I was kiUed. On returning to Vienna I sold to the empress 
 a snuff-box the king had also given me. It had his portrait 
 surrounded with diamonds. I let the empregs have the box 
 
102 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 and the diamonds but I kept the portrait. This made her 
 angry, and I made her more so by sending her word (the 
 negotiation lasted a year) that I was all the more determined 
 to keep it, as it was a memorial of the last victory her arms 
 had won — we had just been defeated at Torgau. Stupidity 
 suits none but men of genius like La Fontaine. I have done 
 several things in the style of " Whose purse is this ? " in 
 Molifere's Etourdi. For instance, I once read the first lines 
 of a letter sent me from the empress, in which I was told that 
 she had given the command I had asked her for to another 
 general. I wrote at once and told him of it and congratu- 
 lated him. He immediately sent his thanks to the Court 
 and to me. Afterwards I read at the bottom of the letter : 
 " Say nothing about this ; the appointment is just changed, 
 and I think you will have it." The other general's thanks 
 arrived in Vienna the day my appointment was about to be 
 sent to me, and to punish me for my obliging precipitation 
 and my indiscretion I was deprived of it. 
 
 When I returned from Paris I found the two armies, as I 
 have said, pretty much where I left them, the snow having 
 put an end to all enterprises for the winter. The campaign 
 which followed, that of 1760, was enough to immortalize a 
 man, as it did General Lacy. It wiU be good to read of in 
 my Posthumous Works. Meantime I shall only say here 
 that the corps of Comte de Lacy, to which I belonged, con- 
 tinually exposed to being captured, or at least beaten, always 
 neglected by its neighbours and almost sacrificed, retired 
 from Silesia to Saxony without discomfiture ; never ten min- 
 utes too soon or too late before the king's forces, and having 
 always the advantage over them, even with our rear-guard ; 
 so that we came in time to save the imperial army at Dres- 
 den, and by arriving at Listvorwerk at five o'clock in the 
 morning, two hours before the time agreed upon, we could 
 
MEMOIR 01" THE PRINCE DE LIGNB. 103 
 
 have saved Loudon at Liegnitz on the 15th of August, and 
 did save, November 5, Mar^chal Daun, who, having his three 
 bridges close to one another, would have been flung into the 
 Elbe if we had not driven off the corps of General Ziethen. 
 After that we covered the retreat of the whole army to 
 the camp at Plauen. We slept upon our fields of battle 
 and were never beaten. We returned to Brandebourg, and 
 with the enemy sometimes on our flank and always at our 
 rear, we marched in seventeen days from Charlottenburg 
 to Berlin. 
 
 This expedition, this splendid taking of Frederick's capi- 
 tal, was so precisely calculated by General Lacy that if it 
 had not been for Todleben, the Eussian general, we should 
 have captured the whole Prussian corps camped before the 
 Halle gate ; and after having thus fulfilled and executed the 
 object of this diversion, we should, so far from being driven 
 back, have compelled the Prince de Deux-Ponts to surrender 
 Wittenberg. 
 
 My Journal wiU. explain all this in detail, with a truth 
 that will do still greater honour to the Comte de Lacy. Let 
 it be studied whenever it is published. It will be found one 
 of the finest of lessons for war.^ 
 
 We entered Berlin [as said above] on the 9th of October 
 by three gates. My regiment held that of Halle, and 
 thought only of getting back the trophies carried off in so 
 many battles won by the king against our troops. It recov- 
 ered them all and fifteen bronze cannon to boot, and will- 
 ingly abandoned to Todleben and his Eussians the tributes 
 and pillage. The arsenal and the enormous magazines had 
 previously been surrendered by negotiation. 
 
 1 Melanges Militaires, etc., of Field-Marshal the Prince de Ligne, vols. 
 xiv.,XT., xvi.," My Journal of the Seven Years' War,'' published in Vienna 
 andDresden, 1796.— Tb. 
 
104 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 The people of Berlin were satisfied with my grenadiers, 
 who did no harm to the houses where they were lodged. 
 They hung their pouches and their sabres on the bronzes, 
 the chandeliers, and the picture-frames, and they gave them- 
 selves airs, but they took nothing and they spoilt nothing. 
 I myself ordered my guard to shoot down the Cossacks who 
 tried to force their way ia by the Halle gate, and they killed, 
 I believe, two or three of them. I wanted to procure some 
 clothing for my regiment at the cost of the King of Prussia, 
 who had an enormous equipment warehouse in Berlin for his 
 armies. For this I stole in person breeches, cloaks, and 
 blankets, in spite of those who tried to prevent me. They 
 got angry and I got angry, and I elbowed and punched 
 them all ; on which they flung themselves on my chaplain 
 and me. I narrowly escaped a bayonet thrust, which my 
 orderly got in my place. Pappenheim came to. my assistance 
 and separated us. 
 
 Lacy sent Emeric Esterhazy with the Imperial regiment 
 to take possession of Potsdam. He posted guards every- 
 where, saved Sans Souci, taxed the town sixty thousand 
 crowns, which were divided among the corps, took a picture 
 for himself, an inkstand for Lacy, a flute for O'Donnell, and 
 a pen for me. He kept the best order in the world. If the 
 Eetreat of the philosopher of Sans Souci was thus saved 
 to him by the kind care of Austrians, his beautiful house 
 at Charlottenburg was not so fortunate. The Cossacks got 
 there first and ruined everything. Our hussars would not 
 be left out, and they afterwards did some damage. They 
 waded knee-deep in broken glass and china ; the splendid 
 picture-gallery of Cardinal de Polignac, the consolation of 
 a king who was fond of art and a treasure that might 
 have found grace in the eyes of the Goths, was ruined in 
 an instant. 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 105 
 
 I admit that while every one was in the way of taking, 
 I felt a frantic desire within me to do the same. As there 
 had been some talk of not sparing Sans Souci, I had asked 
 to be allowed to conduct the affair, at least So far as related 
 to the king's cabinet, where I had my plan all laid. His 
 books, his own works, his military maps, his Eeflections 
 on the Campaigns, which had not then appeared, his Palla- 
 dium (the very place of which I knew in his desk) would 
 have fallen to my share; and I should have made it a 
 festal joy to send them to the king with all the respect 
 that an . author, and so illustrious a foe deserved. Mon 
 Bijou escaped, I scarcely know how, for there were many 
 things of value there, — the most beautiful porcelains in the 
 world and some fine lacc[uer. I did not give the concierge 
 any money for his trouble in showing me about, but I gave 
 him advice that was worth gold to him : I told him not 
 to open the door to any one. 
 
 The three days that we passed before Berlin I spent in 
 comforting the aflSicted and in visiting the establishments 
 of the king. 
 
 After the battle of Torgau [November 3] the empress sent 
 General de Lacy the patent of marshal, which he returned 
 to her, because he would not do a wrong to O'Donnell, his 
 superior in rank and his friend. The army went into 
 winter-quarters in camp at Plauen, and O'DonneU sent me 
 to Vienna with important despatches to the emperor. 
 
 The campaign of 1761 was the most wearisome and 
 insignificant that was ever carried on. All General de 
 Lacy's plans were opposed. Mar^chal Daun was reduced 
 to the most melancholy inaction in Saxony vis-k^is to 
 Prince Henry. If M. de Lacy had been listened to we 
 should have conquered Silesia this summer. Therefore it 
 would have been conquered if he had commanded the 
 
106 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 army ; therefore the Empress Maria Theresa was right to 
 make him marshal ; therefore he was very wrong to re- 
 fuse that rank, and show a scruple of delicacy for which 
 his comrades never thanked him, and which the world in 
 ' general has never known, owing to his bad habits of modesty 
 and silent discretion. 
 
 Maurice Petrowitz, Comte de Lacy, was bom in Peters- 
 burg, Oct. 10, 1725. He was the son of Comte Pierre de 
 Lacy, the Eussian marshal, who was born at Ballin- 
 garry, county Limerick, Ireland, and quitted Limerick after 
 its capitulation in 1691, with his uncle James de Lacy, 
 quartermaster-general, brigadier, and colonel of the Prince 
 of Wales' regiment, in which he, Pierre, was an ensign. 
 He entered the French army as lieutenant in the Athlone 
 regiment of Irishmen at Nantes in 1692, and served under 
 Catiaat. After the peace of Eyswick that regiment was 
 disbanded, and he quitted the French army, intending to 
 take service under the emperor against the Turks ; but 
 when he reached Hungary peace was proclaimed ; on which 
 he offered his services to the King of Poland, and the fol- 
 lowing year, 1700, received a command in the Eussian 
 army under Peter the Great. His wife, the mother of 
 Maurice, followed her husband, as the Empress Catherine 
 followed Peter the Great, to the imfortunate camp at Pruth, 
 where, sitting in her carriage, she received a ball through 
 her hood from the Turks. When Maurice was of age to 
 serve, Eussia was at peace; otherwise his father would 
 surely have made him his aide-de-camp, and the Eussian 
 Court would have gained a great general He was per- 
 mitted to come to us in search of cannon-balls, as the War 
 of the Succession of Charles VI. was then beginning. 
 
 That was a campaign about which Lacy never dared to 
 speak, because of aU the extraordinary and foolhardy things 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PMNCE DE LIGNE. 107 
 
 that the impetuosity of his nature led him to do with his 
 troop of light-horse. He was more with the enemy than he 
 was with his friends, for he harried them ceaselessly, even 
 going into the rear of their camps and making prisoners, 
 pillaging the Spanish waggon-trains, attacking and driving-in 
 the outposts. Nevertheless, I am persuaded that that cam- 
 paign was the best school the marshal could have had, 
 and that he learned from these little expeditions, in which 
 he was his own general, how to carry on those we have 
 seen him make so briUiantly on a larger scale. From 
 the little enhghtenment I was able to drag out of him, 
 it was plain that he had been very useful to the Comte 
 de Brown, whose pupil, relation, friend, und aide-de-camp 
 he was. 
 
 But Mar^chal Lacy has never been able to correct himself 
 of one fault ; and it was that with which he seemed to re- 
 proach himself in his first campaign. It was certainly not 
 bravado ; but in every rank which he has held in the army 
 he has always been too much engrossed with the object ia 
 hand to think of dangers. Personally he does not run as 
 great risks as others, because, besides his presence of mind, 
 he has incredible agiUty and strength, and there never was a 
 better or bolder horseman. In moments of danger his soul is 
 alive to friendship. In 1760, at an attack on a cavalry post 
 which obstructed him near Eadeburg in Saxony, the fight 
 began, in spite of his wishes, before daylight, and there was 
 such confusion that he and his aides-de-camp, and I who 
 followed him, got between the pistol-shots of the enemy 
 and those of our own men. He turned round to me and said : 
 "All this wlU clear up as soon as the hght dawns. My 
 horse being white you can easily see it; don't lose sight 
 of me for an instant. If you do, I shall be anxious ; you 
 might be captured. We shaU get out of this presently." 
 
108 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 In 1788 lie saved the life of my son Charles, by killing a 
 Wallachian who was about to sabre him. 
 
 The talents of General Lacy had so impressed the Court, 
 the city, and the army that in 1757 there was but one cry 
 to make him a lieutenant-general and quartermaster-general. 
 As lieutenant-general he taught the army two things that 
 it did not know, namely : how to put itself in motion, and 
 how to march. Also he ta,ught the generals how to camp. 
 If Mar^chal Daun, who esteemed him, but did not know 
 him enough to love him, had been entirely without talent 
 he would have been easier to lead. But, soldier and man 
 of war, Daun feared to compromise his Kohn laurels and 
 his credit with the empress. Brave and clearsighted under 
 fire, he was not so in his cabinet ; and it was necessary to 
 carry him off his feet and make him a hero in spite of him- 
 self. It is only necessary to read through my twelve 
 campaigns (which wiU be published after my death) to 
 understand the Comte de Lacy; this is but a sketch of 
 him. 
 
 These few words about the two de Lacys lead me to a 
 recollection very bitter to my mind, but tender to my heart : 
 to that of Lacy's nephew, Comte George de Brown, whom 
 we stiU mourn, and who was worthy of the lasting regret 
 of those who love honour, virtue, intellect, talents, and all 
 the lovable and essential qualities. General Brown was 
 agreeable, as well as trusty and attached to his friends. 
 His repartees, his way of seizing everything rapidly, seeing 
 and apprehending at once, were quahties sufficiently ap- 
 parent in social life to show that he would certainly have 
 the same sort of promptitude in war. He had a taste for 
 the fine arts, a cultivated mind, as well as natural wit and 
 a turn for humour. He laughed with all his heart at the 
 merest trifle, but he was also an observer; nothing escaped 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 109 
 
 him. His only defect was that he did not sufficiently show 
 what there was in him that was lovable and profound. He 
 had astonishing application, and great knowledge of all 
 kinds, — especially of military theories and erudition. He 
 knew by heart Caesar, Horace, Ovid, Tacitus, Montesquieu, 
 Voltaire, and Eousseau, and disdained no source of instruc- 
 tion in any direction. 
 
 But I perceive that I have not said a word of his virtues. 
 He possessed true generosity, to which he added benevo- 
 lence ; one was the need of his mind, the other of his heart. 
 By one he loved to give, to refuse nothing, to spend (for 
 which he had more desire than opportunity). By the other 
 he loved to assist. The one made him give to his regiment 
 for its embellishment and recruiting his pay as its pro- 
 prietor; the other made him help and succour its widows 
 and children. The one induced him to do good to artists, 
 men of letters and of talents ; the other led him to seek out 
 the unfortunate.- He was drawn to men of integrity, and 
 he scoffed at those who had little, — without, however, giv- 
 ing himself the trouble to hate them. He feared nothing in 
 this world but bores ; his taste was exquisite, and his tact 
 as sure as it was delicate. Throughout the Seven Years' 
 War he was a model for the infantry (in which he served), 
 as much for his conduct as for his talents and the 
 punctihous discharge of his duty. He comprehended dis- 
 ciphne, and was feared before he was loved ; but when the 
 troops under his orders, the grenadiers for instance, had 
 time to know him they loved him even more than they 
 respected him. They noticed the trouble he would give 
 himself that they might want for nothing, and be spared 
 all useless fatigue, — two things which win the heart of 
 every soldier. " There 's a man," said Mar&hal Loudon to 
 me after the siege of Belgrade [in 1789], " who ought 
 
110 MEMOIR OF THE PBINCB DE LIGNE. 
 
 to be put as soon as possible at the head of armies." The 
 thing that completely won the marshal's heart was the 
 manner in which Brown tossed his overcoat on a fence as 
 he leaped over, so that he might lead the attack brilliantly 
 in his general's uniform, as if at a review. 
 
 During the campaign of 1762 General Lacy, although 
 commanding one wiag of the army, was practically quarter- 
 master-general of the forces, and did great service in that 
 line. He saved O'KeUy's corps on the 22nd of July; and 
 by placing me and four other regiments on the Eulenberg 
 [Owl's Crag] the name of which shows that the devil alone 
 could have clambered there, he covered Glatz, which ended 
 the war. We had orders to hold the Eulenberg until the 
 enemy abandoned their own heights. There I stayed two 
 months, and there I finished, under Loudon, who had taken 
 the command of our corps, this last campaign in Silesia. The 
 war continued to be feebly carried on for a while in Saxony. 
 Our corps, chilled to the marrow with snow, ice, and fog, 
 was pitiable to see. Ten days after the taking of Schweid- 
 nitz it was put into cantonments, being relieved on the 
 Eulenberg by detachments from all the other regiments, 
 which to the number of four hundred men and forty Croats 
 occupied my dreadful mountain. 
 
 Peace was now talked about; and I went off as fast as 
 I could to Vienna. It was concluded, as everybody knows, 
 at Hubertsburg [Feb. 15, 1763]. We remained conquerors, 
 inasmuch as, thanks to Loudon, we retained possession of 
 the province of Glatz; which was afterwards returned, I 
 don't know why, to Frederick II., who well deserved the 
 name of Frederick the Great. 
 
IV. 
 
 1763-1767. 
 LIFE EST VIENNA. 
 
 Can any one be freer than a soldier who is known to be 
 a good fellow? He has the confidence of his chiefs, the 
 regard of his equals, and the respect of his younger com- 
 rades. Nobody asks him what he has done ; they only wish 
 him to amuse himself and prosper if he can. I always 
 wanted as a young man to do better and more than what I 
 saw others do. I drank, and I managed it so that no one 
 ever succeeded in making me drunk. But at cards I felt 
 myself hampered by a sort of self-respect. However, coming 
 home one night from huntiag, very tired and half asleep, I won 
 thirty thousand ducats; I could not wake myself up until 
 an old woman pulled me by the arm to pay her six francs 
 out of which she was cheating me. Led by this success into 
 taking great risks at play, I soon lost the double of what I 
 had won ; but after playing a stake of eight thousand ducats 
 and ending the evening by losing seven thousand, I aban- 
 doned for ever the silhest of pleasures. I won four or five 
 hundred ducats from a General Wbra, a Comte DesofB, and 
 three other officers the night before the battle of Breslau, 
 and I lost a thousand to Eodeni, Tomasoli, and Blankenstein. 
 The next evening I asked how they all were. Those who 
 owed me had been killed ; the others were quite well. 
 
 I never was drunk but once, and that was at the theatre 
 one night when I played Hortensius. After keeping the 
 whole town waiting, I appeared half laughing, half asleep, 
 
112 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 leaning at times against the wings. As they did not know 
 much in Vienna about French plays or this particular piece, 
 which was called " The Overcoming of Love," they thought 
 it was all in my part, and complimented me on playing it 
 so naturally. 'T was more the overcoming of wine than of 
 love. I was, however, a little drunk one other time, at 
 Karlsbad, where I drank a dozen bottles of wine with Lord 
 Eiversdale to drown my vexation at finding that a husband 
 had carried off, the very day I arrived, his pretty wife whom 
 I admired. But it is an abominable thing to disturb a 
 marriage of love. We may be envious of the external 
 prosperities of a man and think his luck unfair ; but the 
 happiness that comes within the soul is always deserved. 
 
 I have made emperors and empresses wait for me, but 
 never a soldier ; in fact, I had rather wait for my troops than 
 arrive myself too late. One day, when I was loitering too 
 long on the steps of the courtyard of the palace with a pretty 
 woman, the Empress Maria Theresa waited a whole hour 
 for me. She was angry, and sent me word to come every 
 day to her antechamber and send in my name by the 
 chamberlain on service, who would not admit me until I 
 had learned that it was / whose place it was to wait. I 
 took pens and paper and wrote in her antechamber every 
 morning so as not to waste my time ; and each day the 
 chamberlain would teU me to come back the next day. At 
 last, after two weeks of this public punishment, and when I 
 thought my hair must be combed enough, the empress sent 
 for me and said, with the pleasantest look in the world: 
 " Do you know that I have made you a colonel during our 
 little quarrel ? I don't regard my own interests ; you killed 
 me a whole company in the campaign of 1757, and now, I 
 suppose, you will kill me a regiment. Spare my service and 
 yourself, for my sake." 
 
fi'/yn,. 
 
MEMOIR OF THE tRlNCE DE LlGNfi. US 
 
 M, N^ny told me one day that the empress had com- 
 plained to him that I never went to mass. I begged him to 
 represent to her that if my forefathers had not been so 
 faithful to hers two centuries back we should now be ex- 
 cused from going at all. [The Princes of the house of Ligne 
 refused, during the religious revolution of the Low Countries 
 in the sixteenth century, to abandon the Catholic cause and 
 the Austrian dynasty.] That did not satisfy her. So the 
 first time I happened to go to her to ask for some trifling 
 favour, she reproached me for having so little religion. I 
 could not help telling her that the little I had was sound, 
 for no one could find fault with me for being a hypocrite, 
 and that I was a better Christian than those who said I 
 was none. I happened to face the window and the sunlight 
 hurt my eyes. The empress thought I wept, and I did not 
 have the honesty to undeceive her. So she said : " You have 
 a good heart, and I still hope for your conversion. Stay in 
 my cabinet ; I do not wish you to be seen to leave my room 
 looking unhappy." That time I really did come near 
 weeping from gratitude; but it did not prevent me from 
 laughing when I got out, and telling the whole story. The 
 empress heard of it ; but she forgave me for it, as she did 
 for a hundred other folHes of all kinds. 
 
 I always did things with my whole heart. Being obliged 
 to take the communion with the empress, I could not find, 
 as late as ten o'clock of the night before, a confessor who 
 spoke French, for I would not confess my sins in coarse 
 German. Some one told me of a Father Aubri, or Aubr^, 
 and pointed out his house. I rushed there at eleven o'clock 
 and woke up the whole establishment. I mistook the stair- 
 case and appeared in the antechamber of a pretty woman, 
 where I was taken for a lover and chased. I opened a 
 door, it closed after me, and I found myself in a garret ; the 
 
114 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 people below heard me and ran up and caught me for a 
 thief. I got away, cursing myself for such mistakes, and, at 
 last, I found the staircase of my reverend father. Being 
 determined to do the thing sincerely, I said to him: " Mon- 
 sieur, you are a Jesuit, and indulgent, no doubt. Don't 
 rise, I wiU kneel here." I began my prayer and confession. 
 He must have thought it was a hoax, and, frightened by 
 my impious insolence or else by the multiplicity of my httle 
 crimes, he jumped up and turned me out of his room. 
 
 If I seem sometimes to swerve from Christianity or 
 Catholicism, I wish to be warned of it. It is not my in- 
 tention. If I give myself, perhaps without perceiving it, 
 a Pyrrhonian little air, it is to clear up doubts, which I 
 have not myself, but which I see in others ; if I make risky 
 propositions it is only for those who are out of the pale of 
 the Church ; for those who are in it there is nothing risky. 
 Another thing I ought to say : When I talk of loving, it is 
 often legitimately. When I say having, I mean the heart, 
 and not the person. When I speak of love, gallantry, 
 marriage, infidelity, I am not saying that things ought 
 to be so ; it is as if I said, " Inasmuch as such things 
 are so." 
 
 I was so indiscreet, so imprudent, so conceited, when I was 
 young (and am even now), and so fond of fun, though never 
 malicious or dangerous, that I don't know why I did not 
 have a score of duels on my hands. I was very near it 
 several times, but always with persons who ended by making 
 excuses, or by saying, what is usually said by those who do 
 not want to fight : " It is true, monsieur, is it not, that you 
 had no fixed intention of insulting me ? " Once, however, I 
 challenged Jean Palffy, to avenge myself for a slander he 
 had circulated about me. He was a general and I was only 
 a colonel at the time. He had the air and manner of a 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PBINCE DE LIGNE. 115 
 
 great seigneur, and was very brave and handsome. Joseph 
 CoUoredo, who was present, disturbed at seeiag me involved 
 in an adventure which might have serious results, wrote to 
 Mar^chal Lacy in these words : " I have the honour to in- 
 form his Excellency that Ligne's heedlessness has involved 
 him in a quarrel" The marshal took that him to mean 
 himself ; and, supposing that I had thoughtlessly stirred up 
 trouble for him, he passed a very bad night. He sent for 
 CoUoredo to come and explain what the matter was. Ee- 
 assured about himself he wanted to be so about me, and he 
 went at once to Jean Palffy to see if there was no way to 
 stop his wrath. He might have succeeded, but I happened 
 to arrive at the same moment, with my second, the Prince 
 of Nassau-Usingen. I supposed the marshal was there by 
 accident, so I waited. Palffy was booted and spurred and 
 wore gloves hke Crispin. " The devil ! " I thought to myself, 
 " is he so sure of killing me ? I wonder if he has a horse 
 all ready for escape." After a moment's silence, M. de Lacy 
 said : " If that is your last word, M. le Comte, I wUl push 
 the bolt. Begin." I stared in astonishment at such a 
 second, who, out of kindness to me, was risking disgrace at 
 Court if the afifair should become known. However, I 
 laughed and took my sword and broke Palffy's into I don't 
 know how many bits, for I thrust hke the devU, and held 
 him pressed against the waU. He parried in the same way 
 and sabred, which, for fear I should be scarred in the face, 
 made me so angry that I did not see when he was disarmed 
 and slightly scratched, and I should have nailed him to his 
 own wall but for the marshal's cane which struck down my 
 sword. "I'U take another, and begin again," said Palffy. 
 " And I," said the marshal, drawing his, " will take mine to 
 prevent it. Come, monsieur, let us make haste." But I 
 opposed that. The marshal reaUy desired nothing better 
 
116 MEMOIR OF THE PEmCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 than to be the belligerent instead of the auxiliary. Seeing 
 that I exacted my rights, he insisted on our ending the 
 matter there and then. 
 
 A coward never calculates welL The uncertainty of a 
 sword-thrust or a cannon-ball should be weighed against the 
 certainty of dishonour and the probability of a score of 
 horrid affairs he will have to meet because he did not face 
 the first properly. Cowards always end by being killed. 
 
 I happened one day to be driving to the MontecucuU 
 gardens (now called Eazumowsky) and I passed very 
 rapidly before a little chapel without observing that its 
 little saint was just then expecting a procession that turned 
 into the street at the same moment. One of the devout, 
 very angry, seized my leaders and almost flung them over ; 
 another threw himself on the postihon ; a third, more pious 
 still, began to beat him. I called out to him, " Fahrt zu 
 zum Teufel ! " (words which appeared in the complaint, and 
 came near getting me broke). My postilion whipped up, 
 but they stopped the four horses; the angry devout ones 
 held the wheels, intending perhaps to thrash me too. I 
 jumped out, and as, unluckily, I did not have a cane, I 
 dispersed the procession with my sword. The priest was 
 left aU by himself in his little chapel, and I pursued my 
 way. 
 
 Two days later the devil was after me, clergy, bourgeoisie, 
 poHce, lawyers, thirty quires of paper ! Mar^chal Neipperg 
 summoned me to go to him. " What have you done ? " he 
 said. " It was all very well in the olden time. Charles Vl, 
 stern as he was, would have laughed at Prince Eugfene or 
 Vaudemont in the hands of the police, but now! a pro- 
 cession! the empress! You are lost. Go and see M. de 
 Scrottenbach." "I shall do nothing of the kind," I said. 
 " If I meet him perhaps I may speak to him. Much obliged. 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNB. 117 
 
 Monsieur le mar^clial; your habitual kindness and your 
 interest at this moment have my tenderest gratitude." 
 
 But matters went from bad to worse. I was more afraid 
 of a lecture from the empress than of being broke. I saw 
 the fat chief of pohce entering his opera box, and I followed 
 him and told him of the insult offered to my livery and 
 person ; and the damage done to my horses and postilion ; 
 and the fresh injury they were now trying to do me. His 
 Excellency said they were quite right, and that they might, 
 and perhaps had better, have killed my man. I was angry ; 
 his Excellency asked me for further particulars; I gave 
 them ; his Excellency replied that he did not know if they 
 were true ; I was furious, and said to him, with the precipi- 
 tancy and delicacy of my years : " Believe what I tell you 
 at once, or — " and T made a motion to throw him over into 
 the pit. On which his Excellency made believe to beheve 
 me, and the whole affair quieted down. 
 
 My father, who never gave himself the trouble to make 
 my acquaintance, did so Uttle for me that I usually spent 
 ill a month what he gave me for a year. He foresaw, of 
 course, that I should make debts. It was natural that I 
 should do so, as he left me without a penny. Three Jews, 
 Henzelkne, Schimmelkne, and a Levi, whose daughter was 
 beautiful as the day, had pity upon me and lent me money 
 at six per cent at the risk of losing all if I were killed. I 
 only owed them about 200,000 florins at the time of my 
 father's death. 
 
 During our youth, our wars, and our loves, neither of us 
 having anything. Prince Louis of Wtirtemburg was con- 
 stantly saying to me : " Ah ! my friend, if my brother dies 
 before your father aU my duchy is yours." Generosity of 
 money is easy enough ; we only need to be rich to be 
 generous. It is the generosity that does not cost a penny — 
 
118 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 that of the soul — that I value. 'Tis a fine thing, a man 
 truly generous; there is no real grandeur upon earth but 
 in the sacrifice of self. 
 
 I should like to know how many men it would take to 
 make a perfect man. One of the noblest souls I have ever 
 known and one which I would select for this collection, a 
 soul that smiled on Good, lively, gentle, gay, and quick to 
 feel, was that of Prince Charles of Lorraine, brother of our 
 good Emperor Francis, who was very near perfection. The 
 frankness of that soul was painted on his forehead, a kiudly 
 and communicative gayety was iu his smile, which years 
 never changed, nor the wars, nor the small-pox, which had 
 carried off his beauty. That first smile of his was ever ready 
 to be replaced by a laugh of such heartiness that that of 
 others followed blindly, sometimes about a mere nothiag. 
 His bursts of laughter were so merrily noisy or so comically 
 smothered that the public, whom he was wont to disturb in 
 this way at the theatre, surprised at first iato a smile ended 
 in a peal of laughter like his own. There was neither look 
 nor gesture of Harlequin or Crispin about it, — it was always 
 spontaneous. He was the most frankly gay man I have ever 
 known ; you could not see him once without loving him 
 always. It was droll to see him at a Court ceremony or 
 presentation when assailed by a spirit of mischief or some 
 childish nonsense, — for he had the innocence and the fun of 
 childhood ; his arrested gayety would be visibly curbed, 
 at the same time the dignity and gentle majesty of his 
 figure and rank accorded with the kiudhness of his manner 
 and speech. I speak of his spirit, painted here like a 
 study such as we make of the leg or arm of the ApoUo 
 Belvidere, — with this difference, that I do not propose it 
 for imitation, because we can neither teach nor learn that 
 which comes naturally. But I present it to give an idea of 
 
MEMOIR OP THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 119 
 
 something fine. It is plain that as there was never in that 
 soul the shghtest shadow of mahciousness, the outcome was 
 generosity, amiable disorder ia his finances, indulgence, and 
 kindhness, which his grace of manner and his amusing spirit, 
 so easily amusable, made more charming still. He was so 
 kind that it showed in his angers, if by chance he had any. 
 I remember in. after years, when hunting in the forest of 
 Belceil, where he played the important man as an old 
 huntsman, that, being very angry with a crowd of spectators 
 who fiUed the alleys and hindered the chase, he called out : 
 " Go to the devU ! — gentlemen, if you please," he added, 
 raising his hat to them. 
 
 Therefore his figure and his soul must form part of the 
 ideal perfection that I am seeking. I even turn to him 
 for valour, and for several mihtary qualities. But for others 
 that I would rather call mihtary talents, vastness, firmness, 
 knowledge, and the art of making himself feared and obeyed, 
 I find them in another style of mind, that of the Great Fred- 
 erick ; so I take him for those, adding also his love for letters 
 and philosophy, theoretical and practical. 
 
 For the virtues, for love of duty joined to firmness under 
 fire, and the strictest honesty and logic, I join to the two 
 others the Prince of Anhalt, a hero in history. And lastly, 
 here comes the element of romance. With the courage of 
 the others, which made him amorous of danger, the chi- 
 valrous bearing of my fourth gives brilliancy to all. This 
 one has something of the Moor and the Saracen in their best 
 days. He has gallantry and magnificence. He is a poet in 
 war and in society, without writing verses, except in his 
 own Lusitanian language. There, indeed, he is another 
 Gamoens — he is also a Camoens in aU that he says and 
 does: I speak of the Duke of Braganqa. I do not mean 
 that these four men have not each the noble qualities of 
 
120 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 the others; but those that I have pointed out in each are 
 the ones that they have carried to the highest degree ia 
 their own personality ; and by uniting them all in a single 
 individual I pretend to do what they say was done for the 
 Venus de' Medici, who was composed of twenty different 
 beauties taken from twenty different women ; and I thiak 
 I have succeeded iu making the portrait of a perfect man 
 out of these detached features of four individuals. 
 
 In the days when I shared the good graces of the prettiest 
 woman in the world and the greatest lady in Vienna with 
 the emperor of those days, the good, excellent, safe, amiable, 
 even handsome, the clean, gay, honest Francis I., the empress 
 stiU. went sometimes to the theatre ; and on such occasions the 
 emperor dared not leave her box. But one night, as Maria 
 Theresa seemed preoccupied, he slipped away to the one 
 where I was sitting with his dear friend. We were rather 
 alarmed at his apparition, but we knew he loved us both. He 
 asked me what was the name of the afterpiece. It chanced to 
 be " Crispin, the Eival of his Master." I did not know how 
 to tell him. He asked again, and I told him, half embarrassed 
 and half choking with laughter at having to say what de- 
 scribed our mutual position. After which I got away as fast 
 as I could, leaving the pretty and charming lady to find in her 
 brilliant imagiaation some natural excuse for my departure. 
 
 That kiud sovereign, Francis I., loved fUes without cere- 
 mony, and women, and young people. One day he dressed 
 me up as a Court lady, and tried to make a bridegroom be- 
 lieve that I was the woman he had asked in marriage. I 
 committed aU sorts of foUy, and kissed everybody. The 
 bridegroom, much displeased, wanted to carry me off, and as 
 he was grand master of the kitchen, he marched at the head 
 of fifty scullions, making music on their saucepans. They 
 took us ia flank, on the road to Etzendorff, where we were 
 
MEMOIR OP THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 121 
 
 going to sup. The grand equerry, with a reserve corps of 
 fifty grooms, fell upon the scullions. I was defended and 
 the sham fight concluded by the real bride arriving very 
 decently with her Frau Hoffmeisterinn, and asking what it 
 all meant, and scolding her lover for ever supposing she was 
 such a trollop as I. 
 
 Do you like miniatures ? I know one that is precious, 
 — the prettiest features, the prettiest little countenance, the 
 prettiest little waist, the prettiest motions in the world, and 
 the sweetest eyes. Grace descends from the crown of her 
 head to the soles of her little feet, passing on its way, appar- 
 ently, to all the little hidden charms of her person. After 
 you have watched her walk, dance, jump, run, talk eagerly 
 with animation, and animating others, go and listen to 
 her. You will then admire the grace of her mind, which 
 resembles, feature for feature, that of her manners. Hear 
 how prettily she expresses herself; and if there is occasion 
 after some anecdote or pleasantry has been related, or if 
 some obligation is upon her to speak, feel, or show her sen- 
 sibility, see how her pretty eyes and her whole person 
 express it so well that we are sure that her soul is in unison 
 with her face and her manner. She thinks of everything 
 and for everybody. AU who leave her are pleased with her 
 and with themselves, for she knows how to bring the best 
 out of all. Her virtue is not perhaps what I like the most ; 
 but see what it is : she is not a daughter of religion or pru- 
 dery. If she were she would have a touch of sham austerity 
 or the sternness of rigid vanity. Her virtue never made any 
 one frown. On the contrary it gives her a kinder look than 
 others. Her virtue lets every one live. Between ourselves 
 I think that this may be the effect of a slight calculation of 
 selfishness, of which she is incapable in other things ; for 
 egotism in her is something that does not exist. She knows 
 
122 MEMOIR OF THE PEINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 she is winning, and pretty, and gay, and perhaps she may 
 say to herself: "I shall be courted; to save myself the 
 trouble of defence, I will make for myself at once the repu- 
 tation of coldness, which wOl give me more freedom in so- 
 ciety and not alarm the other women." Besides, just as she 
 likes to stand weU with the world, she is not, I think, averse 
 to standing well with God. It is amusing to see her take 
 the part of an absent person, or of one of her friends and 
 acquaintance. Her industry is great; it is wonderful how 
 much she can do in a day. But no work was ever better 
 done than the making of her. You will see her and hear of 
 her everywhere, so that I need not name her ; all Vienna 
 knows her and society follows her lead. Women certainly 
 make our manners and ways. Even though we sometimes 
 find fault with them it is none the less true that men 
 who avoid their company cease to be amiable and can never 
 again become so. 
 
 After the accession of Joseph II. to the crown of Germany 
 in 1765 he held many peace camps in various parts of the 
 country. I [then a general] was on my way to one with 
 two colonels, Schorlemer and Clerfayt, when we found our- 
 selves detained at Augsburg by the want of post-horses. 
 Bored by waiting we went to a tavern, which turned out to 
 be the usual rendezvous of Prussian recruiters. I noticed 
 that I was observed ; my height, which is five feet ten, 
 attracted attention. Finally they proposed to me to enlist 
 for fifty ducats. I agreed, on condition that they would 
 take my friends as well. They consented to take Schor- 
 lemer, who was fine-looking, but they would not have Cler- 
 fayt, whom they thought puny and ugly, which was true. 
 I laughed, but it was no laughing matter with them ; and 
 they were for marching me off, when my name, already 
 given at the post-house, luckily saved me. 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE BE LIGNE. 123 
 
 Another time I was at Lifege and passed myself off for a 
 cardinal sent by the pope to admonish the prince-bishop on 
 the irregularity of his morals. He nearly died of terror and 
 of the scandal, for all the piibhc papers made mention of it. 
 When he found me out he wrote against me to Prince 
 Charles of Lorraine. But that was addressing the wrong 
 person, for the prince laughed like a maniac over the adven- 
 ture when he questioned me about it. 
 
 [During the winters between 1763 and 1767, the date of 
 his father's death, the prince spent much of his time in Paris, 
 but not at the Court.] 
 
 In Paris I was intoxicated with pleasures, — fgtes, wonders, 
 and enchantments of all kinds. It can be imagined, there- 
 fore, what I felt when I had to leave that fairy-land to see 
 my father at Baudour. I found him in a vast, ill-lighted 
 hall, in wintry weather, with the gout and two blackbirds for 
 supper. He told me that when he was in Paris in the olden 
 time he always sat in the balcony of the opera, as that was 
 the most noble place. " So do I," I said, " beside the Nea- 
 politan ambassador." "That is very right," he said, "I 
 know the place." Instead of doing any such thing, there 
 was no sort of extravagant nonsense I did not commit with 
 Letorifere and other young fellows of my age at the three 
 theatres where we put ourselves on exhibition ; for in those 
 days there were seats upon the stage. 
 
 Young, extravagant, ostentatious, and full of fancies of 
 every kind, I had made a quantity of bills of exchange in 
 Paris, not knowing what they were but wanting the money. 
 They reached my father almost as soon as I did, and I left 
 in a hurry for my regiment. However, I really had not time 
 to stay longer. He had received me very badly, as usual, 
 and asked me if I had not been surprised at his liberality in 
 sending me fifty louis. "Certainly," I replied, "and they 
 
124 MEMOIR OF THE PEINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 were almost enough to pay for my posting here." It is true 
 that I had added three or four thousand more to them, 
 which I had spent on all sorts of folly. While at Baudour 
 I kept out of sight as weU as I could my two outriders in 
 my pink liveries with gold lace on aU the seams, and my 
 hussars and negroes, hut my father always happened to meet 
 one or other of them on the road. 
 
 In spite of the enormous change which my father's death 
 produced in my situation, when it happened it affected me 
 greatly. What touched me most of all and cost me tears 
 was that one day he charged me to attend to a certain 
 matter, and spoke to me (almost for the first time in my 
 life) saying that this affair would concern me more than it 
 did him, because — That iecause made me hurst into tears. 
 
 When I was made colonel of his regiment, I wrote him as 
 follows : " Monseigneur, I have the honour to inform your 
 Highness that I have just been appointed colonel of your 
 regiment. I am, with profound respect, etc." This is what 
 he answered : " Monsieur, after the misfortune of having 
 you for a son, nothing could more keenly affect me than the 
 misfortune of having you for colonel. Eeceive, etc." I re- 
 plied, in a respectful letter : " Monseigneur, neither the one 
 nor the other is my fault. It is to the emperor that your 
 Highness should complain for the second misfortune." He 
 exacted that I should write to him, as other colonels did, 
 about the regiment and its services ; but never did he give 
 me a kind word, or write to tell me that he was satisfied 
 with the honour I had done to his name and that of his regi- 
 ment. He took no notice of my having the small-pox [com- 
 municated to him by Prince Auguste d'Aremberg, who had 
 the disease and whom he insisted on kissing to see if it were 
 contagious], and he drove me out of his house twice when I 
 tried to see him just before the coronation of Joseph 11. at 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 125 
 
 Franckfort in 1765, where I attended the emperor. After 
 that I travelled in Eussia, England, and Italy until his 
 death in 1767. 
 
 And yet, I forgot all his harshness at the solemn moment 
 when we remember only the kind things that we have either 
 seen or heard of. I remembered how brave he had been in 
 war, and with what an air of grand seigneur he bore himself, 
 and how tenderly I would have loved liim had he been will- 
 ing. Maria Theresa used to amuse herself with the terror I 
 had of him ; and one day when I was laughing and making 
 the ladies of the Court laugh, she came behind me and said : 
 " Here he comes ! " 
 
 Being very much out of temper at not receiviag at my 
 father's death his regiment and his Golden Fleece, I wrote to 
 M. Neny, whom the empress used to call in fun my minister 
 at her Court, as follows : " Born m a land where there are 
 no slaves, I shall carry elsewhere my small merits and my 
 fortunes." She read the letter and, furious at that sentence 
 in it, she sent for her son, Mar^chal Lacy, and Prince Venzl 
 Lichtenstein, my uncle, to hold a council of war upon me. 
 The emperor, sterner then than he was later, and who made 
 himself stem on a system, proposed to dismiss me. " For," 
 he said, " we are dismissed ourselves if we allow this." My 
 uncle, to play the Eoman at my expense, proposed to shut 
 me up iu a citadel, to teach me to make bargains with my 
 sovereigns. "And you. Monsieur le mar^chal?" said the 
 empress. " I shall be more severe," he answered, " than the 
 emperor and the prince ; neither of their punishments is 
 enough for his crime. Ligne will arrive here soon; your 
 Majesty must turn your head away when he kisses your hand, 
 and not say one word to him during the three months he 
 expects to stay in Vienna." This is what she did, and with 
 such an affectation of severity, that I am certain I saw her 
 
126 MEMOIK OF THE PRINCE DB LIGNE. 
 
 once on the point of laughing out herself. I consented to 
 be employed (which I did not much like in times of peace), 
 and when, at the risk of her turning on her heel and not 
 looking at me, I thanked her for giving me a brigade and a 
 garrison, behold, instead of the thundering mien or the sharp 
 reply I was told to expect if she deigned to speak to me, she 
 said : " It is for me to thank you for sacrificing your liberty 
 during peace, after being so ready to sacrifice your life to me 
 during war." 
 
 I had been invited during one of my little quarrels with 
 the Court of Vienna to accept the command of a German 
 regiment in Prance, with the promise of the cordon lieu, and 
 the rank of lieutenant-general. M. de Choiseul said to me : 
 " I will give you all that, but you wiU commit a folly if you 
 accept it. Believe me, stay at home ; you are more bored at 
 your Court than you are angry with it." He was right ; I 
 made up the quarrel, and things went as well as ever. This 
 reminds me of another proposal of the same kind. It was 
 impossible for me to accept what Prince Henry made the 
 late King of Prussia promise me when his uncle died. Could 
 I have done so I should have been lieutenant-general and 
 governor of Stettin, etc. These propositions were made to 
 the two Courts without my knowledge. It has always been 
 the fashion to treat me well everywhere, and I have experi- 
 enced pleasant things in many lands. In fact, I have at the 
 present moment of writing, six or seven countries : Empire, 
 Planders, Prance, Austria, Poland, Russia, and almost Hun- 
 gary, where they are obliged to naturalize aU those who 
 fight against the Turks. 
 
 Paris, in truth, has been another home to me. How 
 often when there I used to wish that the Louvre might 
 once more become the residence of the kings. For a long 
 time past the look of ruin in the old building and the garden 
 
MEMOIK OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 127 
 
 of the infanta has given an air of melancholy to the quay. 
 They ought to make a fine open plaza between the Tuileries 
 and the old Louvre. It would be a very simple thiag to do, 
 and should be done. The whole Carrousel, those miserable 
 buildings, and the rue Saint-Nicaise dishonour Paris, for the 
 unworthy reason of making money out of everything. But 
 the spending of gold brings gold, and magnificence is the 
 true support of monarchy. Can any one teU me why in 
 the countries where there are no rivers three-masted ships 
 are seen unloading the riches of the Western world at the 
 very doors of the merchants, while in Paris there is nothing 
 on the Seine but a barge to Saint-Cloud and the ferry-boat to 
 the Invalides ? It is true that the water is low at certain 
 seasons of the year ; but it might be deepened in places, es- 
 pecially among the islands where the labour would be less. 
 The course of the Seine to the sea is not so long that it 
 could not be kept in order. They are not ships of war that I 
 want to bring to Paris, but I would like to see the river from 
 the Pont Eoyal to Chaillot covered with merchant vessels of 
 500 tons each, or more if they Hked. A vessel of 110 tons 
 draws only ten feet of water, and they ought to calculate on 
 that basis.^ They should build up the Place Louis XV. on 
 the side towards the quay and also on that towards the 
 Champs Elys^es in the same style as the two buildings on 
 either side of the rue Eoyale. There is enough open space 
 ia the gardens of the Tuileries ; and the bank of the river 
 should be built upon as far up as opposite to the Ecole 
 Militaire, where I think Paris ought to end. 
 
 I often took to drive in a great berline, around the 
 
 environs of Paris, a woman distinguished for her many 
 
 adventures and her witty sayings, — Mme. du Deffand; 
 
 also the Mar^chale de Mirepoix. The latter had a sweet 
 
 1 Is this a misprint, or a blunder of the prince ? — Te. 
 
128 MEMOiK o:e the peince de ligne. 
 
 and siren spirit, which enabled her to please every one 
 without insipidity, without compliments, and yet with a 
 nameless way of putting everybody at their best and at- 
 taching them to her. You would have sworn she had 
 thought of you only all her life. What a society ! where 
 shall we find its like again ? There was a Comtesse de 
 Boufflers, a httle paradoxical perhaps, but in her frame of 
 simplicity making you forgive her sophisms and her claims 
 to eloquence ; always kind and protecting in society and 
 easy to live with. I greatly regretted Mme. du Defifand 
 [after her death ia 1780]. She used to sit iu a great arm- 
 chair which looked like a barrel and reminded me of that 
 of Diogenes ; and there she would keep me, sitting up with 
 her, tUe-ii-tete, sometimes tiU six iu the morning. She 
 could guess the figures and almost the features of every one 
 by fingering them, which she did sometimes, because, as 
 she said, she wanted to know with whom she had to do. 
 A sort of rivalry existed between her and Mme. Geoffrin, 
 but in place of the solid good sense of the latter the con- 
 versation of Mme. du Deffand was fuU of wit, with epigram 
 and couplet well in hand. 
 
 The portrait given by La Harpe of Mme. Geoffrin is 
 absolutely true, but he ought to have mentioned her great 
 talent for definitions. If I had not known her previously, 
 on the occasion of her passing through Vienna, I should 
 never have made her acquaintance in Paris. I supposed 
 her to be a tribunal of wit and intellect, whereas she was 
 far more that of sense and reason. The witty people who 
 went to see her did not make wit when there ; on the con- 
 trary, they became almost kind-hearted. Mme. Geoffrin's 
 line was that of a guardian of taste, just as the Mar^chal 
 de Luxembourg was the guardian of the tone and traditions 
 of the great world. I often saw MUe. de I'Espinasse at 
 
,,y^'l^?iye^. tl^^ef^f^frt^t 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE BE LIGNE. 129 
 
 Mme. du Deffand's, but I never noticed anything that was 
 striking about her. Mme. Geoffrin died of apoplexy in 
 1777 ; and while she was in the unconscious state preced- 
 ing death, a valet, who was despatched to make inquiries 
 about her, brought back a message that Madame was very 
 grateful for the inquiries and sent Monsieur word, with her 
 comphments, that she had lost the use of speech. 
 
 Of all the clever men with whom I used to sup in 
 those days, there was scarcely one except the Abb^ Arnault 
 who was reaUy witty, possessing the gift of the k propos 
 and the spice of epigram. The abba's bugbear and butt 
 was Marmontel. Laplace was an excellent man, but very 
 heavy, especially when he tried to be lively ; Saint-Laurent 
 was silent. Those who supped with Mile. Sophie Arnoult 
 and Mile. Julie, whose houses were for some time very 
 charming and the resort of good company, were the most 
 agreeable, such as the Chevalier de Beauvau, a man of the 
 world and the most so I ever knew, the Chevalier de 
 Luxembourg, the Comte de Coigny, Louis de Narbonne, 
 M. de Sdgur, the Chevalier de Boufflers, Conflans-even, the 
 Due d'Orl^ans, and the Prince de Conti 
 
 Apropos of the Prince de Conti he asked me one day to 
 do him the favour to have Beaumarchais picked up in a 
 hackney-coach at the corner of the rue Colbert near an 
 extinguished street lamp, driven to Bourget, and sent thence 
 in one of my carriages to Ghent, and have him consigned 
 there to an agent of mine with orders to contrive a way 
 to send him over to England. That singular man as- 
 sured me that otherwise he should certainly be arrested. 
 Within a week he was in the cabinet of Louis XV., who 
 had sent him on a secret errand, and he took this means 
 to cover up his traces and throw us off the scent. ^ 
 
 It was thought very flattering to beldng to the Prince de 
 
 TOt. I. — 9 
 
130 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 Conti's society and be invited to his " teas " and his battues 
 at Bertichferes and other hunting-boxes. Wishing to make 
 my acknowledgments by a present which, to my think- 
 ing, would be interesting in France for its singularity 
 and choiceness, I sent him from Brussels in a carriage 
 mounted in his own style, a very handsome young cook, 
 twenty-five years of age, with the face and colour of a 
 Eubens, carrying with her specimens of everything the 
 Low Countries produced in the way of dainties and luxuries. 
 This excellent cook was literally buried under good things 
 to eat. She arrived at I'lle-Adam. The prince and his 
 company were talking and playing cards ; the arrival was 
 announced. " Ah ! that dear Ligne, how is he ? " cried the 
 priace. " How I love him ! Is he there ? Well, ask how 
 soon he is coming, and put the things he sends anywhere 
 you choose." I will bet that all that, with the journey, had 
 cost me more than five hundred ducats. 
 
 My aversion to business and all sorts of thrift and cal- 
 culation, sometimes caused by the dread of giving pain, 
 often led me to make gifts to some and allow myself to be 
 robbed by others. One day I counted fourteen barbers, 
 or servants of my servants, who called them messengers. 
 They were all on the alert to be taken into my service, 
 or rather to take me into theirs. They succeeded; but I 
 was never the better served in consequence. I have always 
 been punished by the sin itself whenever I have yielded to 
 the vanity of extravagance. Once I gave up a hundred 
 thousand crowns in a transaction I had with a species of 
 country cousin. I did it at the prayers and entreaties of 
 the Due de Bouillon, also his relation, who thought what 
 I did very pretty. People talked about my disinterested- 
 ness for three days. I supposed the talk would last, and 
 that all Paris would say : " There 's the man who would not 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 131 
 
 ruin that poor little young man by forcing him to sell his 
 estate of Saint-F^lix." They soon forgot it, and he first of 
 all Sensible people who foresaw this blamed me, and after 
 that nothing more was said about it. 
 
 I do not know why I did not profit by the friendship 
 Mme. du Barry had for me before it turned into love. 
 From delicacy, I refused to ask her assistance to gain a law- 
 suit of some consequence to me. One day at her toilet I 
 told her, when she asked me before the king for a memo- 
 randum about it, that I would give it to Lacroix, the hair- 
 dresser, for her curl-papers, for that was the only means I 
 knew of getting business into her head. She laughed, and 
 the king too, and he repeated it twenty times running, for 
 he was a kind of automaton that seemed to be wound up 
 to go by springs. I brought ill-luck, I think, to that poor 
 Louis XV., whom I had never seen tiU the last year of 
 his life since the time I was sent to him from our army 
 after Maxen. On account of friends of my friends the 
 Choiseuls, for whom however I did not care much, I did 
 not continue to visit Mme. du Barry, and scarcely saw her 
 again until within a few months of the king's death. But 
 I did have a duel on her behalf with that queen of intri- 
 guers, Mme. de N — k — rck — , who wanted to marry the 
 king, and took to religion for that purpose. In a letter of 
 explanation which I wrote to her I said, "Your grace, 
 madame, the king's graces, and the grace of God give you 
 a right to everything ; nevertheless, etc." 
 
1767-1769. 
 
 LIFE m PARIS: JEAN-JACQUES ROUSSEAU. 
 
 [The chronology of the Prince de Ligne is often difficult 
 to follow. In the absence of dates we are obliged to trace 
 him by the help of- contemporaneous events and pub- 
 lications. His father died in 1767, and he became the 
 ruler of his little principality, — hving part of the year at 
 Beloeil, his beautiful ancestral estate near Ath, on the river 
 Dender, in Belgium ; dividing the rest of his time between 
 Paris and Vienna, with trips to other countries and mili- 
 tary inspections of camps and garrisons. Before his father's 
 death we have seen him in France, and Mme. du Deffand 
 speaks of him in a letter to Horace Walpole (August 3, 
 1767) as among her acquaintance. When Eousseau re- 
 turned to Prance after his stay in England with David 
 Hume, in 1668-69, being then infirm and very poor, he went 
 to Paris and lived in the semi-concealment of a wretched 
 lodging in the rue de la Platifere, now the rue J.-J. Eousseau. 
 There the Prince de Ligne made an excuse, as he tells us 
 with something of his old boyishness, to go and see him. 
 At that time Eousseau was again threatened by clergy and 
 parliament with persecution, and it was then that the Prince 
 de Ligne offered him a home at Beloeil. This act, which is 
 rather sneered at by Baron Friedrich Grimm, the French 
 critic, may be reckoned among his first kindly deeds after 
 coming into possession of his property. 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 133 
 
 About the same time, or a little earlier, he stayed a week at 
 Terney with Voltaire. Here again he puts no date, but the 
 visit must have been before a meeting that he had with 
 Frederick the Great at a peace camp held by the Emperor 
 Joseph II. at Neustadt in 1770 ; which meeting the prince 
 relates at length in a letter addressed to Stanislas Ponia- 
 towski, king of Poland, which was afterwards published by 
 him in vol. vi. of his Works. 
 
 During these first years in Paris he hved, as he tells 
 us, among persons of note, men of rank, authors, and wits, 
 but he did not go to Court. It was not until 1774, the 
 first year of the reign of Louis XVI., that he went to Ver- 
 sailles and became the intimate friend and companion of 
 Marie Antoinette (whom he had known from childhood at 
 her mother's Court), and the adopted son of French society.] 
 
 I lived a great deal with Dorat, Bernard (Gentil Bernard), 
 Pezai, Ducis, Beaumarchais, Boufflers, S^gur, Laplace, Cr^- 
 biUon fils, Voisenon, Favart, Hume, Metastasio, Calzabizzi, 
 Castellini, and, in a more serious way, with Meilhan and 
 Pfere Griffet. I also knew Lavater, Geisner, and GaU ; and 
 I twice saw Jean-Jacques Eousseau. I cannot now recall 
 the whole of what passed between him and me, but here 
 is a part of it which I am able to remember. 
 
 He had scarcely returned after his misfortunes (some of 
 which were real, some imaginary) to seek liberty in a land 
 which he asserted, so improperly, to be a land of despotism, 
 he had scarcely quitted a land which he called, with equal 
 inaccuracy, that of freedom, when I went to stir him up in 
 his garret in the rue de la Platifere. I did not know, as I 
 mounted the staircase, how I should approach him ; but 
 being accustomed to follow my instinct, which has always 
 served m6 better than reflection, I went in and pretended 
 
134 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 to have made a mistake. " What do you want ? " said Jean- 
 Jacques. " Monsieur, pardon me, I am looking for M. Eous- 
 seau of Toulouse." " I am only Eousseau of Geneva," he 
 replied. " Oh ! " I said, " that great plant-coUeetor ? — yes, I 
 see. Good God! what quantities of plants in those big 
 books; they must be worth more than the printed ones." 
 Eousseau almost smUed, and showed me what may have 
 been his dear periwinkle, which I have not the honour of 
 knowing ; also certain plants between the leaves of a foUo 
 that lay before him. I made believe to admire this collec- 
 tion, which was very common and uninteresting. He con- 
 tinued his important work, with his nose and his spectacles 
 upon it, without looking further at me. 
 
 I begged his pardon for my heedlessness, and asked to 
 be directed to the lodging of M. Eousseau of Toulouse, and 
 then, for fear he should do so, I said : " Is it true that you 
 are so very clever at copying music ? " On that he went 
 and fetched some little books, quite, long in shape, and 
 began to talk about the difficulty of the work and his ability 
 for it, precisely as Sganarelle talks about his faggots. The 
 respect with which a man such as he inspired me, which had 
 made me, in fact, feel a sort of trembling as I opened his 
 door, prevented me from going on with a conversation which 
 would have seemed to be a species of hoax had it gone 
 any farther. I only meant it to serve as a passport, or 
 ticket of entrance. So I told him that I believed he had 
 only taken up these two trivial occupations to extinguish 
 the fire of his brilliant imagination. 
 
 " Alas ! yes," he said ; " the real occupations on which I 
 spend myself in order to learn and to teach others do me too 
 much injury." And then, not wishing to play a comedy I 
 thought unworthy of us both, I spoke openly of the only 
 thing in I his books about which I truly agreed with him, and 
 
MEMOIR or THE PRINCE DB LIGNE. 135 
 
 said that I believed with him in the danger of Knowledge, 
 especially that of Letters. 
 
 On this he instantly quitted his do, re, mi, fa, his peri- 
 winkle and his spectacles, and entering into details, superior 
 perhaps to anything he ever wrote, he defined that thought 
 of his, running over the gradations of it with the accuracy 
 that his genius gave him, but which his mind lessens and 
 even perverts in solitude, by dint of meditating and writing. 
 He cried out several times : " Men ! men ! " I had sufficient 
 hold upon him by this time to dare to contradict him. So I 
 said : " Those who complain of men are men themselves, and 
 may be mistaken on the score of others." That made him 
 reflect a moment. I said there was another point on which 
 I agreed with him : the manner of giving and receiving 
 benefits, and the burden of gratitude to those whom we 
 neither esteem nor wish to like. That seemed to please 
 him. Then I feU. back on the other extreme to be dreaded, 
 the fear of ingratitude. On that he went off like a flash, 
 and made me one of the finest manifestoes in the world, with 
 a few little sophistical maxims, which I drew upon myself 
 by saying, " If M. Hume had been really sincere — " He 
 asked me if I knew him, I replied that I had had a very 
 sharp conversation with Hume about him, Eousseau ; and I 
 added that the fear of being unjust almost always stopped 
 me in forming a judgment. 
 
 His villanous wife, or servant-woman, interrupted us now 
 and then by stupid questions that she asked him about his 
 hnen or his soup. He answered her with gentleness, and 
 would have ennobled a bit of cheese had he talked about it. 
 I could not see that he distrusted me the least in the world. 
 But, in truth, I had never let him get his breath since I 
 entered the room, lest I should give him time to reflect 
 upon my visit. I now put an end to it in spite of my 
 
136 MEMOIR OF THE PEINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 wishes, and after a silence of veneration, all the while look- 
 ing the author of the "Nouvelle Hfloise" straight in the 
 eye, I quitted that garret, the abode of rats, but the sanc- 
 tuary of virtue and of genius. He rose, conducted me to 
 the door with 9, sort of interest, and never asked my name. 
 
 He would certainly not have remembered it (for he cared 
 for none but those of Tacitus, Sallust, Pliny, and the like), 
 if I had not chanced, in the privacy of the Prince de Conti's 
 house, where I was dining with the Archbishop of Toulouse, 
 President Aligre, and other prelates and parliamentarians, to 
 hear from those two distinguished classes of corrupt men 
 that they meant to harass the man who was least so. I then 
 wrote to Jean-Jacques a letter,,which he rather improperly 
 gave to some one to read or to copy ; so that in the end it 
 found its way, I do not know how, into all the gazettes. It 
 can be read in the collected edition of Eousseau's Works, and 
 in his Dialogue with himself, which is also in his Works. 
 In that, he has the kindness to think, after his usual fashion, 
 that the offer of an asylum which I made him was a trap 
 that his enemies had induced me to set for him ; so much 
 had that form of suspicious insanity attacked the brain of 
 this unhappy great man, who was equally fascinating and 
 provoking. 
 
 But his first impulse was good ; for the day after he re- 
 ceived my letter, in which he recognized an outburst of 
 enthusiastic sensibility, he came to express his feelings. 
 " Monsieur Eousseau " was announced to me, and I could 
 scarcely believe my ears. The door opened, and I did not 
 believe my eyes. Louis XIV. could not have experienced a 
 greater feeling of vanity in receiving the ambassador of Siam. 
 It was then that I became fully convinced of the lies he has 
 told in his " Confessions." The description he gave me of 
 his misfortunes, the picture he drew of his imaginary ene- 
 
MEMOm OF THE PRINCE DE LIGM!. 137 
 
 mies, of tlie conspiracy of all Europe against him, would 
 have grieved me had the tale not been related with the full 
 chorus of his eloquence. I tried to drag him away from it, 
 and to talk of fields and herbs. I asked him how it was 
 that he who loved the country could come and lodge in the 
 heart of Paris. On which he made me several of his charm- 
 ing paradoxes: on the advantages- of writing about Hberty 
 when you were shut up ; on the delight of describing the 
 spring-tide when it snowed. I took him to Switzerland, and 
 proved to him, without seeming to do so, that I knew Julie 
 and Saint-Preux by heart. I did this, not by direct quota- 
 tion, but by adopting the same terms as he. He seemed 
 surprised and flattered. But he saw quite plainly that the 
 " Nouvelle H^loise " was the only one of his works that 
 suited me ; and also that, even if I could be profoimd, I 
 would not give myself the trouble to be so. 
 
 Never have I shown so much intellect (it was, I fear, for 
 the first and last time in my life) as I did during the eight 
 hours I passed with Jean-Jacques in these two conversations. 
 When at last he told me definitely that he should await in 
 Paris the attacks and decrees of imprisonment that priests 
 and parliament threatened against him, I told him certain 
 rather severe truths on his method of regarding celebrity. I 
 remember that I said : " Monsieur Eousseau, the more you 
 keep in hiding, the more you put yourself en evidence. The 
 more you live in this furtive way, the more you become a 
 public character, whom Europe will try to unearth." 
 
 His eyes were like two stars. Genius flashed its radiations 
 in his looks and electrified me. I remember that I ended 
 by saying two or three times, with tears in my eyes : " Be 
 happy, monsieur, be happy in spite of yourself. If you wUl 
 not inhabit the temple that I would build to Virtue in the 
 little sovereignty over which I rule, where I have neither 
 
138 MEMOIR OF THE PEINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 parliament, nor clergy, but the best sheep in the world, stay 
 in France (if they leave you in peace) but seU your books 
 and buy a little country house near Paris, or build yourself 
 one on an island in the Seiue. Open your doors to your 
 admirers, and soon there will be no further talk of disturbing 
 you." 
 
 I thiuk that that was not what he wanted. He would 
 not even have stayed long at Ermenonville [the beautiful 
 estate of the Marquis de Girardin, where Eousseau went to 
 Hve] if death had not suddenly overtaken him there. How- 
 ever, satisfied with the effect he had produced upon my 
 feeliags and enthusiasm, he showed me more interest and 
 gratitude than he usually showed to others, no matter who 
 they were ; and when he left me I was conscious of the same 
 void that we feel after waking from a beautiful dream. 
 What was my amazement when I read in his own words 
 that I was the accomplice of his enemies, who were setting 
 a trap for him by means of my offer of a home at Beloeil ! 
 I have already mentioned why I wrote to him, and how he 
 imprudently printed my imprudent letter. He must have 
 had the devil in him to thiuk I meant him any harm. What 
 interest could I, or others, have had in deceiving him? 
 However, the affair might have proved one of the follies of 
 my hfe, for if he had accepted the offer he would doubtless 
 have brought discord into my sovereignty, if not among 
 my subjects at least among my sheep, whom he would 
 certainly have asserted to be wolves. Besides, he would 
 have written against the Germanic Empire, its members, its 
 laws of hospitahty, which I was exercising upon him. He 
 would doubtless have accused me of being, or being able to be, 
 a tyrant ; he would have known no more of the province of 
 Westphalia, where I wanted him to live and be happy, than 
 he did of Poland and Corsica, about which he wrote ; he 
 
'C^au>6M^^ 
 
 l^ 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 139 
 
 would never have seen that our abnormal government — 
 abnormal from the singularity of its construction — was 
 good in practice, however defective in theory; he would 
 never have admitted that the Head, the Aulic Council, 
 the Diet and Wetzlar, were able to stop all abuses of 
 authority. 
 
 He took a prejudice against every one who did him ser- 
 vice, and suspected them of meanness. A man can be 
 properly grateful without being attached to those who do 
 not deserve his attachment. It was his weakness to believe 
 that twenty women were in love with him, and that he 
 might have had them all had he willed it ; but the height 
 of his self-love was reached in the idea that he was perse- 
 cuted, and in seeking to be so rather than be ignored. The 
 crown of sorrow to him was to end ignored, without being 
 tormented during the last dozen years of his Ufe. Let us 
 forgive him, admire him sometimes, and read him without 
 believing him; we can always reverence in his works the 
 mightiness of genius and of eloquence, simple without 
 familiarity, noble without arrogance. 
 
 I am very sure that Eousseau never committed the vil- 
 lanies he avows in his "Confessions." Pleasure and sin- 
 gularity were the two things that carried the day with him, 
 and they cost him his honour. There was no baseness of 
 sentiment, tone, or style in Jean-Jacques; there was only 
 pride and a grain of madness. To understand him we should 
 look at the splendid frame with which he has surrounded 
 his foolish nonsense, his minute and petty details, his in- 
 justices, his little lies, and his contemptible tales. But if 
 we all gave an account of every thought and action of our 
 lives as Eousseau assumes to have had the courage to do, I 
 am inclined to think we might feel more indulgent to him. 
 
 The conditions of the human mind are so jiarrowed down 
 
140 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNB. 
 
 that if we step aside ever so little from the small ideas that 
 the weakness of our organization allows they become at once 
 out of order, and genius is almost the stepping-stone to insan- 
 ity. This may be why, after taking his flight so near to sub- 
 limity, the unhappy Jean-Jacques has suffered so terribly 
 through his imagination. He has changed his worship two 
 or three times, and twenty times his belief. The " Profession 
 of Paith of a Savoyard Vicar " comes in about the middle of 
 these changes. Men of genius know no more than others on 
 those subjects. 
 
 Jean- Jacques wrote on heroism; but there, too, he is not 
 consistent with himself. He says first that heroism is the 
 most essential quality of the soul of those who seek to 
 govern well; and then, at the end of his treatise, he com- 
 plains that heroes are seldom just, prudent, or reasonable. 
 He dwells particularly on their want of prudence. I should 
 have thought that nothing was more needful for those who 
 are placed over others; and if to govern well means the 
 possession of heroism, prudence would surely be its control- 
 ling virtue. I am afraid his talk is only a dispiite of words, 
 like most disputes. It is an affair of definition. If Jean- 
 Jacques was not blind himself, he has blinded a good many 
 people iu the course of his life ; all those, for instance, down 
 on their knees before him, who fancy they see clearly into 
 all the things he has said. They persist ia believing a man 
 to be steadily consistent with himself who never sought ' to 
 be so. They imagiue that his manifest contradictions can 
 all be harmonized, and so, with perfect honesty, they become 
 dishonest. No doubt when a principle was set up, Jean- 
 Jacques was always right on that principle; but they do 
 not examine the principle, they are carried away by that 
 prophetic, inspired, authoritative air, and by an eloquence 
 the like of which no one has ever had. before him; which 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 141 
 
 he did not seek, for it came to him by nature. Admire 
 him always, but only half believe him; he does not 
 wholly believe in himself. Distrust his definitions, for he 
 changes all received conventions to suit himself, but do not 
 distrust his soul. That is pure, that is real; the soul of 
 each of us would be racked like his if we had the uneasy, 
 restless mind that governed him. Only a hypochondriac of 
 the mind, if I may use that expression, is thus affected. 
 
 A moment before he expired he summoned strength 
 to open the window and contemplate nature, fixing his 
 eyes upon the sun — dying as the eagles hve. Alas ! he 
 might have been one, with a little more reason and less 
 incompatibility. 
 
 I do not know why people should discuss so gravely the 
 style of the Chevalier de Boufflers, when his style is to have 
 none. He has never made verses merely to make them, but 
 only as he catches the flash, the sparkle, the wit, the 
 piquancy, and the amusing side of the society in which he 
 is a god. His poems have a charming neghgence ; gayety is 
 in every line, with witty nonsense, always in good taste ; 
 even if the style be bad it is never felt to be so. He has a 
 manner, entirely his own, of saying thiugs and of not saying 
 them, precisely as he wishes. I know nothing more charm- 
 ing than the letters he wrote to me, which are worth more 
 than those that are given in his Works. 
 
 M. de BoufSers has been successively abb4, soldier, writer, 
 administrator, deputy, and philosopher ; in all of which con- 
 ditions he has been out of place only in the first. He has 
 thought much ; but unfortunately, always, as it were, upon 
 the run. His perpetual motion has robbed us somewhat of 
 his intellect. One would like to gather up aU the ideas he 
 has scattered, together with time and money, on the high- 
 roads. Perhaps he had too much mind to be able to fix it 
 
142 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DB LIGNE. 
 
 when the fire of his youth gave it so much impetus. That 
 mind must have mastered its master ; it shone at first with 
 the caprice of a will o' the wisp ; age alone has given it the 
 steadiness of a beacon. Unerring sagacity, profound shrewd- 
 ness, volatility that is never frivolous, the art of sharpening 
 ideas by the contact of words, — these are the distinctive 
 marks of his talent, to which nothing is alien. Happily, 
 he does not know everything ; but he has plucked the flower 
 of knowledge, and surprises by his learning those who know 
 him to be volatile, and by his volatility those who have dis- 
 covered kow profound he is. 
 
 The basis of his nature is unstudied kindness ; he cannot 
 endure the thought of a suffering human being, and would 
 give what he needs himself to relieve others. He would go 
 without food to feed a wicked man, especially an enemy. 
 " That poor man ! " he says. At one time he had a servant- 
 woman whom everybody told him was a thief ; in spite of 
 which he kept her, and when they asked him why, replied, 
 " But who would take her ? " 
 
 Childhood is in his laugh, awkwardness in all his move- 
 ments; he carries his head a little bent; he twirls his 
 thumbs before him like Harlequin, or keeps his hands behind 
 his back as if he were warming them. His eyes are small, 
 but agreeable, and always smiling ; there is something good 
 in the expression of his countenance, — simple, gay, and 
 naive in his grace, though heaviness is apparent in his figure, 
 and his person is ill cared for. Sometimes he has the 
 vacant air they say La Fontaine wore; you would say he 
 was thinking of nothing when he thinks the most. He 
 never voluntarily puts himself forward, which makes him 
 the more piquant when he is drawn forth. Kindliness of 
 nature is the essence of his manners ; no malice escapes him, 
 except sometimes in his smile and in his eyes; he is so 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 143 
 
 mucli on his guard against his talent for epigram that in 
 writing he too often leans the other way. He has a way of 
 overdoing praise, merely to prevent his satire from peepiag 
 out, and this excess does sometimes serve to make his praise 
 suspicious. It is impossible to be a better man or a wittier, 
 but in him the two qualities have little communication, and 
 if his wit is not always kind his kindness occasionally lacks 
 wit. 
 
 M. de Boufflers will end his career as he began it, by being 
 the happiest, as he is the most amiable, of men. Why 
 should he not be ? He is too superior to have pretensions. 
 He is not on the line or in the way of any one in the world. 
 Justice is done without hesitation to his talent — which is 
 unique in a certain kind of verse ; his couplets, for instance, 
 in which each word has its point. He is admirable above all 
 when we think htm most negligent. M. de Boufflers pleases 
 us, we scarcely know how ; but it is by grace, good taste, 
 and a certain easy abandonment which makes him unlike 
 any one but himself. In after years [Stanislas de Boufflers 
 died in 1815 ; he was one year older than the Prince de 
 Ligne], filled with the natural disappointment of a superior 
 mind and a heart that loves the good, he busied himself with 
 agriculture and metaphysics, — an honourable refuge, where, 
 though he may still meet with disappointments, it will not 
 be through men. 
 
 There never was any one less gentil than my friend Gentn 
 Bernard, who often dined with me in company with Dorat 
 [Claude-Joseph, poet]. He was very amiable, just as simple 
 in Society as he was the reverse in his books, and kind 
 and modest. The " gentU " was a fat man, who looked more 
 like a German poet than a French one, and ate his dinner 
 without saying a word. He had neither figure, nor manner, 
 nor even intellect. In his verses there is more wit and 
 
144 MEMOIR OP THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 taste than there is gentillesse, which presupposes the gayety 
 and artlessness of childhood. I should not have remarked 
 him, or remarked upon him here, were it not for the name of 
 Gentil, which always makes me laugh. He was fond of eat- 
 ing, and read his " Art of Loving " wonderfully well. 
 
 I should like to see a universal academy for all Europe 
 which would form the taste of the nations. Intercommunica- 
 tion of ideas would ensure growth. But minds must be 
 shorn of prejudice. French literature would benefit by the 
 riches of foreign literatures which in turn would acquire its 
 tone, its criticism, its wit. We should have no more super- 
 ficial men in France, no more pedants in Germany, no more 
 ghostly mental puzzlers in England, no more charlatans in 
 Italy. It is a good thing that German literature is coming 
 into vogue. The only fear is that we may find there many 
 things that we are tired of already : commonplace descrip- 
 tions, rivulets meandering over flowery enamels always of 
 the same colouring and design. It has certainly not the 
 rockets of Italian poetry, the sublimity and the exaggeration 
 of the English, nor the grace and good taste of the French. 
 But without pretending to superiority in any line, it has of 
 late developed a philosophy, which will soon destroy old prej- 
 udices and make the Germans a people of thinkers, not 
 visionary as they are in England, or frivolous as they are in 
 France. 
 
 Since the above words were written a number of stiU 
 more superior works have appeared. Besides what they call 
 in German witz, there is more force, energy, and greatness in 
 them than in the modem works of other languages. But 
 let that country beware of images, and not sacrifice the light 
 of truth to false sublimity. 
 
 I am often surprised that so little has been said of the 
 superiority of the epigrams of Eob^ to those of Eousseau, 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LlGNE 145 
 
 Boileau, and others ; for his verses, though hard, are marvel- 
 lously weU-constructed and full of pith. We ought not to 
 require that a trumpet should have the same harmonious 
 tone as a flute. The subjects of which he treated are not 
 susceptible of the grace of "A bouquet to Iris." I often 
 supped with him at Mme. du Barry's before her presentation 
 to the king. She amused herself greatly with his vanity in 
 thinking he had the smallest foot in France. At that time 
 he was becoming devout, and had burned all his songs as 
 too libertine. " But come into this little cabinet," he said to 
 me one day, " and I '11 recite them to you ; I know them 
 by heart." I remember one piece he recited, beginning : 
 " Beauty ! almighty mediator between men and women." 
 
 Should a portrait be flattered ? " Gentle spirit," says 
 Saint-Laurent (in his poem on the Seasons) of the Mar^chale 
 de Luxembourg, whose bitterness was only redeemed by the 
 piquancy of her sayings, her severe but accepted taste, her 
 manner of defining and judging ; a woman who took pleasure 
 in embarrassing others by a singular manner of putting ques- 
 tions ; who dictated, without appeal, the laws of good breed- 
 ing, the traditions of which would otherwise have been lost 
 in France ; a woman who excused nothing, not an expression, 
 not a trifling familiarity, who discomfited those she did not 
 like with a word; the example and the preceptor of the 
 great world, whatever else she may have been in her earlier 
 days, — ^the days of her first husband, when the following 
 quatrain was made upon her : — 
 
 " When BouflH^ers dawned upon the sky, 
 ' 'T is Cupid's mother 1 ' was the cry ; 
 Each did his best in turn to win her, 
 And all possessed the pretty sinner." 
 
 Suspecting the Comte de Tressan of being the author, she 
 said to him : " Do you know that song ? It is so well done 
 
 TOL. I. — 10 
 
146 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 that if I knew who wrote it I would not only forgive him, 
 but kiss him." "WeU," said Tressan, lured by the scent 
 like the fox and the crow, " 'T was I, Mme. la Mar^chale." 
 Whereupon she boxed him on both ears. 
 
 The Abb4 de Bemis, with whom I was intimate in Vienna, 
 was never, as M. de La Harpe states, minister at that Court. 
 If I dared to relate an adventure that he had with a nun in 
 Venice, and quote the best verses that he ever made in his 
 life, which he left one day on my table, the story would be 
 more piquant than anything that has been said about him. 
 But why do not people add to his many portraits that al- 
 though he was a churchman, a wit, a man of the world, and 
 of letters, and a courtier, he was never malicious or vindic- 
 tive. The caprice of two women, Mme. de Pompadour and 
 Mme. Lafortane caused his rise ; the same capriciousness 
 caused his fall. After it he retained his dignity, philosophy, 
 and friends. 
 
 I had met a few years earlier, while travelling with some 
 young Poles, M. de CaraccioU [Francesco, hung in 1794], a 
 rather commonplace man, I thought, who bored me a good 
 deal. At first he seemed to me to have not even the merit 
 that belongs to the soil of his country, neither wit, repartee, 
 nor humour. By playing devotion, laughing at it possibly in 
 his sleeve (for I don't know that he had any really), he won 
 the favour of Maria Theresa, who believed him in those re- 
 spects. I had slightly recommended him to Mile. Baretta, 
 one of her ladies-in-waiting. He was, however, kind, sensi- 
 ble, and grateful, and I liked him much after he came to 
 Paris as ambassador. Scores of his speeches are quoted, 
 among them two to the king. One day at his lever the king 
 said to him, speaking of his appointment as viceroy of 
 Sicily, "They tell me it is a fine post." "Yes, Sire, but I 
 prefer that of Louis XV." "M. I'Ambassadeur," said the 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 147 
 
 king on another occasion, " are you making love in Paris ? " 
 " No, Sire," he replied, " I buy it ready-made." He told me 
 in London, where I met him, that he could not live in a 
 country where they het about everything, — " for example," 
 he said, " on my life. My horse ran away with me. ' He 
 will be killed ! ' 'He will not be killed ! ' cried two English- 
 men. ' Fifty guineas ? ' ' Done.' I came to a turnpike gate, 
 and hoped the keeper would open it. Not he. 'It is a 
 wager,' they shouted. My hat fell one side of the gate, my 
 wig the other and I too, and I never knew which side won 
 the bet." 
 
 England would be the land of eclogues, idylls, pastorals, 
 were it not so damp. I was tempted to search for Tityrus, 
 that scamp of Melibceus, and Menalcas ; methought I heard 
 in the meadows their defiance of Knowledge and of Love. I 
 listened for the shepherds' flutes, which I heard not ; 't was 
 on those verdant carpets of English turf that I thought to 
 hear the swains singing to their milkmaids' charms and 
 their faithful dogs. In England, however, the shepherds 
 are not so gentle as their sheep, and the dulcet tones of the 
 reedy pipe are little suited to those insularies. But the 
 scenes that produced the subhme, gigantic works of Shake- 
 speare, and the grotesque Hudibras will be ever felt ; they 
 have put us eternally under the deepest obhgations to 
 England. 
 
 There is scarcely an adventurer, a chevalier d'industrie, 
 a har, or a fool among the English. They are too proud 
 to be assuming ; for my part I prefer the man who scorns 
 to the man who magnifies his value. This is not sayiag 
 that they have not the faults of other nations when a great 
 self-interest comes along. An English minister, for example, 
 will lie like any other, but he will not lie as an Englishman, 
 only as a minister. His rudeness in society would be in- 
 
148 MEMom OS* THE PRINCE DE LlGNE. 
 
 tolerable incivility in a man of any other nation ; but an 
 Englishman will seldom say anything vulgar. His gener- 
 osity is not humiliating ; he seems to say, " I give this money 
 because I have too much and do not care for it." 
 
 Why, with the love of freedom that Englishmen assert in 
 aU things, have they, until the middle of this century, shut 
 themselves in behind walls and lofty hedges ? How is it, 
 learned as they profess to be in promenades, plantations, 
 lawns, and rivulets, how is it that they have never seen with 
 their eyes that which Milton, who had lost his, describes 
 so perfectly ? They had only to reduce the scale of his 
 terrestrial paradise. Yet Milton, before he was blind, saw , 
 but two gardens, and those pitiable, at Nonesuch and 
 Theobald. How is it, I say again, after reading the en- 
 chanting lines of their King of Poets, that Sir WiUiam 
 Temple could describe Moor Park as the finest garden 
 in the world ? But of late Bridgman is pulling down the 
 walls and hedges, and Kent is vaulting over them. Eyre 
 had tried to do so, but his courage failed him. Kent has 
 made the revolution, helped perhaps by the principles and 
 the example of Pope. 
 
 Voltaire says of Milton, in his stanzas on Epics, that he 
 " sang for madmen, angels, and devils." When Englishmen 
 rise to great heights it is with a sort of delirium ; foreigners 
 call that visionary, sublime, and poetic; such soaring 
 thoughts are like their dreams if written down. Milton 
 dreamed always, but on a single subject. Pope, who never 
 dreamed, does not pass in England for a great poet ; but 
 he certainly is the Englishman who in taste and reasoning 
 approaches the nearest to Frenchmen, without losing the 
 energy and depths which are the attributes of his nation. 
 Lord Mansfield, who had lived much with him, made me 
 love him. 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 149 
 
 [A portrait.] Look at Lizy, listen to her, and I will wager 
 that you will immediately write of her exactly as I do. 
 Her manner of holding herself, of dressing herself, of be- 
 having, talking, and walking, in short, everything about her 
 is extremely careless ; it is only in her method of thinking 
 that there is no carelessness at all. In that she has strength, 
 force, and accuracy, expressed less in words than in acts. 
 What she says is concise, prompt, gay, piquant, good, sen- 
 sible, and thoroughly felt. She understands quickly and 
 can make herself quickly understood. With her, theory 
 came after practice. Candour and mischief, rather surprised 
 to find each other together, have fixed themselves singularly 
 in her eyes. Her freshness bespeaks a good conscience. 
 Oh ! I advise her to have it and keep it, for she lets you 
 know very plainly what there is against her. Shyness, 
 which is often hypocrisy, or else the child of vanity, is not 
 of her acquaintance ; but in place of it she puts so much 
 discretion that she is neither embarrassed nor embarrassing. 
 She never says a word, or takes a step to please ; but the 
 air with which she does both secures to her general success. 
 I think other women are not alarmed by this ; for I have 
 heard some who know her well judge her as I do. She is 
 gowned and her hair is dressed in a manner all her own, 
 which is not like that of any one else. There is always 
 something missing about her ; she has forgotten her little 
 dog, or her gloves, or her fan. She has fine chestnut hair, 
 very long, beautiful teeth, especially beautiful for their 
 evenness, with lips precisely what they ought to be for the 
 use that should be made of them. 
 
 Her face is more interesting when seen in front than in 
 profile, where it is not pretty except for its droU shape; 
 her fuU face might inspire a great sentiment in a fool who 
 would imagine that she loved him. But for fear that a 
 
150 MEMOIR OF THE PEINCE DE LIGNB. 
 
 man who is no fool should imagine the same thiag and 
 annoy her, there issues from her Hps at the same moment 
 something unexpected, perhaps jocose, which disconcerts 
 the rising passion. Lizy would have no defect at all if she 
 were not a woman. She is never malicious, for example, 
 except in that one quality, and then only two or three times 
 a year for a quarter of an hour each time. She is never 
 out of temper ; she has more firmness than a man, and is 
 more superior to circumstances. Lizy apparently attaches 
 no value to any virtue, for she sets none on those she has. 
 If you say to her, for example, that she has delicacy, she 
 will ask : " What have I done ? You are a Frenchman, there- 
 fore I know you are flattering me." If some one says to 
 her: "You have singular moderation, and surprising self- 
 abnegation ; you have great elevation of mind without ex- 
 aggeration," she will repeat those four words ending in o n, 
 in English and French, and then say : " What does all that 
 mean ? You are worse than a Frenchman, if that he pos- 
 sible. I am an Englishwoman, and I do not need compli- 
 ments." She is not complimentary herself ; she has very 
 amusing franknesses. Lizy has no agreeable talent ; she does 
 only useful and difficult things ; she says and listens will- 
 ingly to the most serious matters. She loves the country, 
 gardens, sheep, animals, and Nature, of which she is the 
 petted child, but not the spoilt child. No, assuredly she is 
 not that. But, smiling at fate and at philosophy, without 
 exactly knowing what it is, she will be happy. Oh ! yes, 
 she will be happy. I have a presentiment of it ; and I am 
 happy in thinkiag that she will be so. 
 
VI. 
 
 1768-1770. 
 LIFE IN PARIS: VOLTAIRE. 
 
 I REMEMBER that at twelve years of age, having had the 
 joy of getting hold of a Voltaire, I read it at night ; and 
 the pleasure and longing for glory which I derived from 
 the little poem called the " Battle of Fontenoy " are inde- 
 scrihable. I was in ecstasy, and would willingly have con- 
 sented to perish in my first battle for the fate of being 
 named in verse. I had heard the cannon and the musketry 
 of Fontenoy while still a little fellow ; I had been upon the 
 field itself. I imagined the battle ; Fontenoy was mine ! All 
 this roused my enthusiasm for the poem ; on which M. de 
 Voltaire himself set no value, although it awakened and 
 inflamed the courage of even the petty court seigneurs and 
 sent them to immortahty. 
 
 [In 1768 or 1769] I was eight days with M. de Voltaire at 
 Femey, and I wish I could remember the sublime, simple, 
 gay, and interesting things that came incessantly from him. 
 But, in truth, it is impossible. They were not conversa- 
 tions that I had with him, for the best thing that I could 
 do was to have none. I talked only to make him talk ; I 
 laughed, or I wondered and admired ; I was intoxicated. 
 Even to his wrong sentiments, his false knowledge, his in- 
 fatuations, his want of taste for the Fine Arts, his caprices, 
 his pretensions to be a statesman, or profound and learned 
 almost to the point of being dull and a bore (which he 
 never could be), all was charming, novel, pic[uant, and un- 
 
152 MEMOIR OF THE PEINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 expected. At that time he was in love with the English 
 constitution. I remember that I said to him, " M. de Vol- 
 taire, add to that the ocean for its support ; without which 
 it would not last a year." " The ocean ! " he exclaimed, 
 "you wiU force me to make many reflections on that 
 subject." 
 
 He was in a fury against the King of Prussia. " They 
 say I rave against criticism ; here, have you seen this ? 
 I don't know how that devil of a man [Frederick], who 
 can't spell, and forces a poem as he would a camp, ever 
 contrived to make four such good lines upon me as these 
 beginning : Candide est un petit vaurien. He never was 
 capable of gratitude, that man. Monsieur, he never felt 
 gratitude except to his horse, on which he ran away at the 
 battle of Molwitz. The chasseur who went after him to 
 tell him the battle was won is a chasseur still — he had a 
 pension already." 
 
 " You seem to be on bad terms with him at the present 
 moment," I said ; " it is a German quarrel and a lover's 
 quarrel both." This bit of nonsense made him laugh; he 
 talked nonsense himself and liked to hear it. A man from 
 Geneva was announced. " Quick ! quick ! " he cried, " give 
 him Tronchin " — his doctor's name ; meaning, " Tell him 
 I am ill." The Genevese departed. 
 
 " What do you think of Geneva ? " he asked me one day, 
 knowing that I had been there in the morning. " Hideous 
 town," I replied (which was not true, but I knew that just 
 then he detested Geneva) ; " its porticos and arcades are in 
 the gallows style of architecture." " And its citizens ought 
 to hang there, i' faith," he said. In fact, there reaUy were 
 scaffoldings everywhere about the town, perhaps preparing 
 for better things ; and each of them looked like a gallows. 
 
 An amusing thing occurred one day with his niece, Mme. 
 
r/' /O'// re 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 153 
 
 Denis. I told her, in presence of lier uncle, of a circum- 
 stance that had happened to herself, though at this time I 
 thought it was to Mme. de Graffigny. The Marquis di 
 Ximenes defied her to make him a quotation of which he 
 could not instantly tell her the author. He did not miss 
 one. Then Mme. Denis, who had very little mind of her 
 own, managed, by dint of rubbing against that of her uncle, 
 to make four lines on the spot, in order to catch him. 
 " Well, M. le Marquis, whose are they ? " she asked. " Those 
 of a Groper after Wit, madame," he replied. " Ha ! ha ! 
 bravo ! bravo ! " cried M. de Voltaire. " Pardi ! how foolish 
 she must have felt ! Why don't you laugh, niece 1 " 
 
 As I must tell all that I heard from this celebrated man, I 
 shall own that after walking about his garden one beautiful 
 night, I climbed a large rock, whence I could look into 
 his bedroom and see him in bed, writing, with the window 
 open. At that instant he gave a loud hiccough, more like 
 that of a mason than a poet, and I rushed away at full 
 speed lest he should hear me laughing. He was then oc- 
 cupied in tearing to rags and paraphrasing that tiresome 
 " History of the Church " by the Abb^ Fleury. " It is not 
 a history," he said to me, speaking of it, " it is a rigmarole. 
 There are none but Bossuet and FMchier whom I admit 
 to be sound Christians ia history." " Ah ! M. de Voltaire," 
 I said, " and also a few reverend Fathers, whose sons brought 
 you up pretty well." He always spoke well of them. I 
 might have added that history is under the deepest obliga- 
 tions to the Jesuits, and, especially as to China, we have no 
 idea what we owe to them. 
 
 "You have just come from Venice; did you happen to 
 see there the Procuratore Pococurante?" "No," I replied, 
 "I do not remember him." "Then you have not read 
 • Candide,' " he said angrily ; for there was always a time 
 
154 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 when he was more attached to one of his works than to 
 the rest. " Pardon me, M. de Voltaire, my thoughts were 
 wandering; I was thinking how surprised I was to hear 
 the Venetian gondoliers singing Tasso's Aminta." " What ? 
 Explain that to me if you please." "The gondoliers prac- 
 tise the voices and the memory of their comrades, like 
 MeHboeus and Menalcas of other days. On the Canal' 
 Grande of a beautiful summer's night, one of them will 
 begin with a recitative, and another answers and continues. 
 I don't think the hackney-coachmen of Paris know the 
 ' Henriade ' by heart ; and if they did, they would intone 
 it very badly with their coarse voices, their hard, ignoble 
 accent, and the brandy tones of their throats." " That is 
 because the Goths are barbarians, enemies to harmony, 
 men who will cut your throat, monsieur. That is what the 
 People are. But our men of intellect [esprit] have so much 
 of it that they put it even into the titles of their books : 
 ' Livre d'Esprit,' frolicsome intellect, that one. ' Esprit des 
 Lois,' intellect put into laws; I have not the honour to 
 understand it. But I do understand the ' Lettres Persanes ; ' 
 good book that." 
 
 "There are several other men of letters of whom you 
 seem to think well." — " Yes, truly, one must. D'Alembert, 
 for instance, who for want of imagination calls himself a 
 geometrician ; Diderot, who, in order to make you sure he 
 has a mind, is bombastic and declamatory ; and Marmontel, 
 whose poetism, between you and me, is unintelligible. 
 Those men would say that I am jealous. Well, let them say 
 it. Have n't they shrieked everywhere that I was envious 
 of Eousseau? I have drunk champagne with the first, in 
 company with your father at your cousin the Due d'Arem- 
 berg's, and he went to sleep at that charming supper ; but 
 I don't choose to go on all fours after the last and crop 
 
MEMOIR OE THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 155 
 
 grass. What is that impertinent ' Profession of Faith by a 
 Savoyard Vicar,' for example ? Who knows when that man 
 is really sincere ? At Court they call me a flatterer and a 
 frondeur both ; in Paris too much of a philosopher ; at the 
 Academy a foe to philosophy; contraband at Kome for a 
 few little jokes about their actresses and gayeties of an 
 oriental kind ; Parchment says I 'm a teacher of despotism ; 
 I 'm a bad Frenchman for speaking weU of the English ; 
 a thief, and a benefactor of libraries ; a libertine on account 
 of Jeanne, whom my enemies choose to call guilty; an 
 imitator and flatterer of men of genius; and an intolerant 
 man because I preach tolerance." 
 
 He bore a grudge against Jean-Jacques for having, by 
 means of his stern partisans, forced him to give up his 
 theatre and his delightful retreat at "Mes D^lices." But 
 one day, at the very moment when he was calling him a 
 monster and saying that such a man should not be exiled, 
 he should be banished, they came to tell him that Eousseau 
 was just entering his courtyard. " Where is he, unfortunate 
 man ? " he called out. " Let him come to me ; my arms 
 are open to him. Perhaps they have driven him from 
 Neufchatel. Pind him, bring him to me ; all that I have 
 is his." 
 
 M. Constant asked him in my presence for his " History 
 of Eussia." " You are crazy," he said. " If you want to 
 know about Eussia take La Combe's History ; he never got 
 any medals or decorations, that man." He seemed at times 
 to be having squabbles with the living and also with the 
 dead. His variability made him like them sometimes 
 more, sometimes less. When I was with him Fdnelon, La 
 Fontaine, and Mohfere were in the greatest favour. 
 
 " Niece, let us give him some Moli^re," he said to Mme. 
 Denis. " Come into the salon and we will do ' Les Femmes 
 
156 MEMOIR OF THE PEBTCE DE MGNE. 
 
 Savantes ' without preparation." On whicli he did Trissotin. 
 very badly indeed; substituting Fr^ron for Trissotin and 
 amusing himself immensely with the change. He was just 
 then much out of humour with parliament, and when he 
 met his donkey at the garden gate he stepped aside and 
 said : " Pass on, I beg of you, M. le President." He mis- 
 took the tuner of his niece's piano for the shoemaker, and 
 when, after a quantity of blunders, the matter was cleared 
 up, he said : " Ah ! monsieur, man of souls ; I was putting 
 you at my feet, when I ought to be at yours." 
 
 A gentleman, in gray hat and shoes, suddenly entered the 
 salon. M. de Voltaire, who disliked visits so much that he 
 owned to me he had taken medicine to escape mine, fearing 
 it would bore him, fled towards his cabiaet. The gentle- 
 man stopped him, saying: "Monsieur, monsieur, I am the 
 son of a lady on whom you made verses." — "I can believe 
 it ; I have made so many and for so many women. Good- 
 day to you." — "But it was Mme. Fontaine-Martel." — "Ah, 
 monsieur, she was very beautiful. Your servant, sir." (He 
 was almost in his cabinet.) " But, monsieur, where did you 
 acquire such taste ? This salon, for example, is charming. 
 Is it really your own doing ? " (He was just going through 
 the door.) " Yes, yes, it is mine ; I gave the designs ; look 
 at that entrance, and the staircase, hey ? " " Monsieur, the 
 thing that chiefly brought me to Switzerland was the desire 
 to see M. de Haller." (M. de Voltaire retreats into his 
 cabinet.) " Monsieur, monsieur, how much this must have 
 cost you ! what a charming garden ! " (M. de Voltaire 
 comes out.) " Oh ! as for that, my gardener is a fool ; I 
 have done it all myself." " So I see. M. de Haller is a 
 great man." (M. de Voltaire retires.) "How much time 
 would it take, monsieur, to build a chateau as beautiful as 
 this 1 " (M. de Voltaire re-enters the salon.) Without ia- 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 157 
 
 tending it, they have played me the funniest little scene in 
 the world ; and M. de Voltaire gave me many another, more 
 comic still, from his vivacities, his tempers, his repentances, 
 his stamp of the man of Letters joined to his air of a sei- 
 gneur of the Court of Louis XIV. and a frequenter of the 
 best company.^ 
 
 He was comical when he played the village lord. He 
 talked to the peasants as if they were ambassadors of the 
 Eomans, or princes of the Trojan war. He ennobled every- 
 thing. Wishing to ask why they never gave him jugged 
 hare for dinner, he said to an old game-keeper : " My friend, 
 has the emigration of animals from my estate of Tourm^ to 
 my estate of Ferney ceased ? " 
 
 He would come in the morning and sit on my bed, and 
 talk with the simplest grace and gayety, saying and liking 
 conversational nonsense. It was thus that I said to him : 
 " Your Mile. Corneille takes after a rook [corneille] much 
 more than she does after Corneille." She was nigra, but not 
 formosa. But his sister-in-law, Mile, du Puys, pleased me 
 exceedingly, and made me sometimes inattentive when the 
 great man was talking to me. He did not like that. I re- 
 member that one day his handsome Swiss maids, waiting at 
 table with their shoulders bare on account of the heat, passed 
 between him and me in handing me the cream ; he caught 
 them, angrily, with both hands round their necks, exclaim- 
 ing : " Bosoms here and bosoms there ; go to the devil ! " 
 
 1 From the tenor of this remark is it to be inferred that the prince 
 knew, or did not know, that Arouet was the son of a notary — that of the 
 Due de Saint-Simon and his father 1 He took the name of Voltaire to con- 
 ceal his identity. Carlyle says that name is the anagram of Arouet 1. j. 
 (lejeune). At the present date, December, 1897, the bodies of Voltaire 
 and Rousseau have just been exhumed at the Pantheon in Paris. That of 
 Voltaire was so well preserved that its likeness to Houdon's statue was 
 yery noticeable. Of Rousseau's body only the skeleton remained. — Tk, 
 
158 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 He always wore gray shoes, iron-gray turned-over stock- 
 ings, a great dimity jacket coming down to his knees, a large 
 and very long wig, and a black velvet cap. On Sunday he 
 put on a handsome, spangled coat of one colour only, waist- 
 coat and breeches of the same ; but the waistcoat had great 
 flaps, edged with gold lace tt, la Bourgogne in scallops, with 
 broad lace cuffs coming down to the tips of his fingers, " be- 
 cause," he said, " with this, one has an air of nobility." M. de 
 Voltaire was kind with all his neighbours, and made them 
 laugh. He embellished what he said and what he heard. 
 He put some questions to an officer of my regiment, and 
 thought him sublime in his answers. " Of what religion are 
 you, monsieur ? " — " My parents brought me up in the Cath- 
 oUc religion." " A grand answer," remarked M. de Voltaire ; 
 " observe, he does not say that he is of it." 
 
 All this seems rather frivolous to relate, and as if I intended 
 to ridicule him ; but he ought to be seen in the light of his 
 brilliant and beautiful imagination, distributing and scatter- 
 ing its witty sallies all around him ; attributing his own wit 
 to others ; always seeing and believing in the good and the 
 beautiful; abounding in this sense and making others 
 abound, unconsciously to themselves ; giving succour to the 
 unfortunate, building houses for poor families, and being in 
 his own home the good man he was in his village, — good 
 man and great man both ; a union without which neither 
 the one nor the other is complete ; for genius gives a wider 
 sphere to goodness, and goodness more of nature to genius. 
 
 If I had thought of it when I was at Ferney I would 
 have said to M. de Voltaire, " Come and walk with me in 
 the village of which you are the creator and the happiness. 
 Look at that peasant who has just lost his calf. He hopes 
 to find it because he has had a mass said to Saint Anthony 
 of Padua. Would you have the barbarity to take that hope 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 159 
 
 from him ? " " No," he would have answered in his thun- 
 dering voice, " I would sooner burn my books against reli- 
 gion." And he would have done so assuredly, if I had 
 proved to him that one of his peasants, chancing to read a 
 book of his, had yielded to despair about his rheumatism, 
 after throwing away, in consequence of what he read, a relic 
 which a Franciscan friar had given him to relieve it. If he 
 had been the leader of a sect, other than that of the Philoso- 
 phers (and there is no harm done in sending the souls of 
 a hundred or two of them to the devil), he would have 
 preached irreligion in his village, and that he never did. 
 
 [In 1777], unable to believe that M. de Voltaire would 
 commit the folly of going to Paris, or the pope the folly of 
 going to Vienna, I, most unfortunately, left both cities just 
 before the arrival of each. Too well, or too iU received, the 
 former went to Paris to die. The bustle, the bad air of that 
 city, the pitiable conduct of the Court (which he ought to 
 have expected), the detestable behaviour of the clergy, — all 
 this, together with the excitements of joy and anger in place 
 of the sweet and salutary life of his smiling valley, could 
 only result in terminating his days. 
 
 M. de Voltaire was no more conclusive in his opinions 
 than other people. In reading him, I think I have him 
 when (for instance), out of the apparent abandonment of his 
 heart, he talks with Uranie. Not at all ; he escapes me ; the 
 palinode is over ; and I see it was not in good faith. But 
 when is he in good faith on those points ? I am conviaced 
 that if he could have seen the foolish unbelievers of our 
 present day, he would never have permitted himself those 
 jests, which have done more harm than he suspected. He 
 might also have excused himself from laughing at the 
 ancient Jews, to whose history he is constantly harking 
 back, — a history which would certainly be ridiculous were it 
 
160 MEMOIK OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 not a sacred and extra-ordinary history ; and also if all 
 things were not possible to God. The only thing he says in 
 favour of the modem Jews, of whom he is no more tolerant 
 than he is of Christianity, and specially of Catholicism, is 
 (while preaching tolerance) that he would not burn them. 
 He declaims so much against Jesus Christ chiefly because he 
 was born among a nation he abhors. He is its Fr^ron ; and 
 that is the real sin of M. de Voltaire. If, at his death, his 
 vicar had had the wit to leave his room with a satisfied air, 
 and, by a pious lie, had said he was converted and had ful- 
 filled his Catholic duties, he would have converted back the 
 pretended free-thinkers whom M. de Voltaire had misled. 
 When he repeated twice over the name of Jesus Christ, it 
 was not to deny him, as people said, adding the words, " In 
 the name of God do not talk to me of that man." It should 
 not be concluded that when a dying man, no longer in his 
 senses, pushes away his vicar with his fleshless, feeble fingers 
 he wishes to end his life without religion. Not knowing 
 more than others about eternity, M. de Voltaire would never 
 have run that risk. He was not what is called a " free- 
 thinker," hke Alembert and Diderot ; he never upheld the 
 principles of atheism, or anything Mke it. Eousseau, who 
 changed his opinion two or three times, and attacked re- 
 ligion many more times, grievously and seriously, was far 
 more dangerous. 
 
 M. de Voltaire died as a saint might die. That is what 
 ought to have been told at Versailles. Mar&hal Brown and 
 Mar^chal Daun, his friends, who were both there, ought to 
 have had the courage to say it. But Louis XVI. with his 
 weak speech, the enmity of the clergy, the opposition of the 
 gazettes, and other pitiable things in connection with his 
 burial, have caused an ineffaceable scandal and done great 
 harm to religion. It is not enough to be religious, men 
 should also have common-sense. 
 
MEMOIR OP THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 161 
 
 If any one had said to M. de Voltaire : " Everything 
 depends on you ; what do you wish to put in the place of 
 God ? " " Nothing," he would have said in a voice of thun- 
 der. " Adore Him instead of the pope, and make the latter 
 stay in Eome." It should be remembered of him that he 
 has extinguished the spirit of party ; he has made Hugue- 
 nots, Catholics, and Jews cling together. He laughed at 
 them and made them laugh at themselves. Moreover, in 
 preaching a taste for the arts, and in extending it to litera- 
 ture, he has softened manners and customs, and removed 
 much that formerly disturbed governments and the tranquil- 
 lity that Europe now enjoys. 
 
 The foregoing paragraph, written some years ago, proves 
 that I am no wizard. Could I have imagined then that the 
 names of Voltaire and of Eousseau would be profanely used 
 to overthrow altars, thrones, palaces, castles, laws 1 Let no 
 one say that philosophy produced the monsters who de- 
 stroyed the peace of the world. The ambition of a few 
 wretches it was that, heaping crime on crime, have dragged 
 us back to barbarism. 
 
 A few years before this time there appeared upon the 
 horizon of Paris a phenomenon, which had nothing alarm- 
 ing about it. It was not a comet, for instead of a tail it had 
 a queue, rather ill-made, a chignon, a catagon that was often 
 falling apart. It was not an aurora borealis, for it lighted 
 the day as weU as the night. It was not an ignis fatuus, 
 for it was much too wise to lead or to be led astray. It was 
 not a planet, for it did not revolve around any one ; nor was 
 it a star, because, happily for the nations of Europe, it 
 was not fixed to its own spot. This phenomenon talks, but 
 not enough ; thinks, but far too much ; walks, but only to 
 sit down, crookedly, in a chair and cross its little legs, and 
 then uncross them to make a little bow to a man who has 
 
 VOL. I. — 11 
 
162 MEMOIE OP THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 been waiting half an hour. It holds its head on its left 
 shoulder and hegius to listen to what a second man is not 
 saying, and does not hear a word that a third man says. 
 Its name, I think, is Elzdar [Comte Louis-Philippe de S^gur]. 
 He has a touch of genius and looks like a sylph, for he is 
 almost transparent; he is a salamander when he writes, for 
 then he is aU in flames. He has very little human nature, 
 no desires, no passions, and, I fear, few pleasures, though he 
 suffers pain. His sensibility, for instance, procures him 
 something else than enjoyment. The depth of his reflec- 
 tions turns to sorrow rather than to joy. He neglects the 
 charms of the present to think about the troubles of the 
 future. He is sometimes too young, and sometimes too old. 
 Look at him, walking along in his overcoat with its small 
 collar, head down, body forward, with a big book under his 
 left arm and a little one in his right hand, in which is also a 
 little cane with a red knob, which he never puts upon the 
 groimd. He will plunge into the wood, or climb a moun- 
 tain. Nature hides nothing from him ; physics and astronomy 
 open their treasures to him, and mechanism her workshop. 
 
 Are you afraid of this phenomenon, though I warned you 
 in the beginning that it was not alarming ? Fear nothing ; 
 he does marvels without being marvellous. Do not be 
 uneasy about his humour, or his sombre meditations, for 
 this elderly young man can laugh like an idiot and never 
 stop himself ; or if he does, a mere nothing wiU start him 
 again. He is kind, simple, naif, indifferent about himself, 
 and has no silly pride of modesty, for he does not know his 
 own value. He puts forward his little paradox sometimes, 
 as if he meant to sustain it rigidly ; others deny it, he takes 
 no notice ; they laugh, he does not care ; they attack it, he 
 does not defend it. The accuracy of his mind is often 
 worsted by the exaltation of his souL His soul ! that 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 163 
 
 word would give me much to do if I tried to say all that I 
 have remarked about it. When it is in company with his 
 mind it serves him well ; hence extreme sensibility, fresh- 
 ness, choice of expressions, a tinge of sweet and tender mel- 
 ancholy with which his works and talk are impregnated. 
 When his soul goes alone it also does well. It is then he 
 writes his couplets and talks to Christine. 
 
 Elz^ar is white and pink ; sweetness and charm are ia his 
 face, and grace, because he has none at all ; he is always nat- 
 ural and piquant. The originality of his manners is like 
 that of his mind. He says things differently from other 
 people, and better ; he makes his own definitions, which 
 are very subtle, and he gives to each a distinguishing tone. 
 He pleases every one when he likes, and he might like it a 
 little more ; meantime it is certain that all who know him 
 h, fond will say, as I do, that Sdgur is a phenomenon. More 
 than twenty of his songs are masterpieces, and his plays, 
 though made for laughter only, are sparkles of pretty wit. 
 His reports as minister to Eussia and all his despatches are 
 superior in politics, diplomacy, and even in literature, and 
 should serve as history. He is the first Frenchman who has 
 understood Eussia. The Vicomte de S^gur is less correct, 
 more negligent, less witty ; there is, however, an agreeable 
 piquancy in his work. They both deserve their success in 
 society. 
 
 The Comte de S^gur was always amiable, even sword in 
 hand at two duels, in which I saw him show grace, pleasan- 
 try, coolness, and courage. He and I were coming out one 
 very rainy night, after supping with Mme. de Polignac in the 
 rue de Bourbon. No coach to be seen and no person there 
 to fetch one. " Let us pretend to fight," I said to him, " and 
 that wiU bring the watch ; they '11 arrest us, and we '11 make 
 them get a carriage to take us to the commissary." On 
 
164 MEMOIE OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 which we took sword in hand with a fearful scuffle and cries 
 of " Oh ! ah ! are you dead ? are you wounded ? " The watch 
 passed and repassed quite near us on the Pont-Eoyal, but, 
 apparently frightened, they did not arrest us, and we, half 
 dead with laughter and the fatigue of the battle, had to go 
 home on foot in the rain after all. 
 
 I am surprised that La Harpe ia his " Cours de Litt^rature " 
 does not speak of the stupidity of the French Academy in 
 compelling Montesquieu to retract the very book for which 
 they gave him his admission. After that, let him say no 
 more about his Academy, composed of grand seigneurs who 
 could neither read nor write nor spell, like Mar^chals Eiche- 
 lieu and Duras, Cardinal de Eohan, etc., and of certain mere 
 translators and compilers. How happens it that a Swiss 
 and a Savoyard are the two men who have fixed the French 
 language by writing it with the greatest purity, — Vaugelas, 
 and Jean-Jacques Eousseau ? I advise that in order to know 
 that language well and to admire its justness and precision 
 we should analyze and define each word that seems syony- 
 mous with another. For instance, those very two words: 
 I mean by " analyze " to trace up a word, or a thought, to 
 its source ; to go back to its etymology, see it imder all its 
 difi'erent aspects and relations, because analysis seems to me 
 for mental use what anatomy is for physical. By "defi- 
 nition" I mean the result of analysis, and the word or 
 thought fixed by that result. 
 
 The " Encyclopedia " was an impossible work, especially in 
 France, where, excepting literature, they know nothing. The 
 English, the Italians, even the Germans would have been 
 more capable of it, except in matters of taste. The military 
 part is pitiable ; without vanity I think I could have done 
 that pretty well myself; and the philosophers' heads were 
 much too poor to undertake a crusade against M. Luther 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 165 
 
 and kings. What I saw of d'Alembert I liked and admired, 
 without knowing him very well, and it makes his memory 
 dear to me. I don't know whether in England or Germany 
 he would have passed for as much of a geometrician as he did 
 in France, where they are too amiable for that science. But 
 he, Buffon, and La Harpe are the three last great authors. 
 D'Alembert was gay, without appearing to be so, and he 
 mimicked every one to perfection. In spite of the great 
 defects and slqs of Diderot, he would perhaps have been the 
 greatest writer of prose if Eousseau had not ecKpsed him. 
 He had fire and true enthusiasm, with a great gift of elo- 
 quence, or rather declamation, which made him an atheist. 
 It is a great pity that nothiag remains of his which wiU ever 
 be useful. 
 
 The Abb^ Eaynal (who in after years was the first to un- 
 frock himself, even before it became the fashion) wrote his 
 " Philosophical history of the commerce of European nations 
 with the Indies," without ever having been in England, or 
 even in Holland, the two chief commercial countries of 
 Europe. He might have got instruction had he done so, 
 especially as to the Indies; but the French never doubt 
 themselves. A certain M. de Sainte-Palaye thought, and so 
 did all France, that he had written a History of Chivalry ; 
 but in it he only told, what everybody knew, of his own 
 country ; though of course, with such a title, English, German, 
 Spanish, and other knights expected to find themselves in- 
 cluded. It is a general defect in the French nation to think 
 itself the only one in the world ; but this comes more, as 
 I think, from ignorance and levity than from arrogance. La- 
 place translated English plays, and Linguet Spanish ones, 
 without either of them knowing a word of those languages. 
 
 But what a heavy man was Eaynal ! — although he was a 
 Gascon, whose very accent is burlesque ! He always related 
 
166 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 lis anecdotes twice over, though all were well-known ; and 
 between the first and second narrations he would rap with 
 his fingers on a table and say : " That is capital ! I don't 
 know if other people feel the full force of it." I used to 
 breakfast with him in Paris, but there was more amusement 
 in dining with him at Spa, with the Emperor Joseph and 
 Prince Henry of Prussia, than at his dreary Paris breakfasts, 
 which bored me. When he saw that effect beginning he 
 would try to efface himself in order not to be thought the 
 cause of it. What he said of the King of Prussia, in con- 
 nection with the war which the emperor had just ended 
 with him, did not prevent the king from treating him well ; 
 "the old lion shaking his mane" did not cause him either 
 pain or terror. 
 
 It was Kaynal and Marmontel who made the critical and 
 humorous reputation of Pr^ron, through the latter's comments 
 upon them in his "Letters on the Writings of the Time." 
 My tutor, M. de la Porte, who was a great friend of Fr^ron 
 [father of the inventor of the jeunesse doree] because they 
 had been Jesuits together, found Marmontel, on one occasion, 
 sword in hand, about to attack Frdron on coming out from 
 Aristomanes, but the idlers about the Cafd de Procope easily 
 parted them. 
 
 I have always been sorry that the Abbd de la Porte never 
 continued his Journal, which I knew well. He was as good 
 on details as Pr^ron ; he had all his good qualities without 
 his ill-humour, mahce, and insincerity. 
 
 The bequest in M. de Voltaire's will of a velvet coat and 
 brocaded waistcoat to his secretary Vagniferes made me laugh 
 when the latter told me about it. The philosopher expected 
 to wear them on the occasion of receiving the emperor if the 
 latter, disobeying his mother, had come to see him ; which 
 indeed he really might have done. I could understand this 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 167 
 
 by the gold-brocaded coat, and waistcoat of the same with flaps 
 b, la Bourgogne, which he donned for me. However, he was 
 quite as undecided on this occasion as M. Jourdain ; and did 
 not feel sure that he might not appear to greater advantage 
 iQ a dressing-gown of some rich stuff. "Dress yourself 
 rather well," he said to Vagniferes ; " you had better put on 
 that suit of Hydaspes" (captain of the guards of Darius) 
 " which I had made for you to act in the tragedy." A true 
 philosopher, a geometrician, without beiag as full of his 
 subject as Archimedes was at the siege of Syracuse, would 
 never have run again and again to the street door to see if 
 Joseph II. were coming. " I think," he kept saying, " I think 
 I see him coming." But a poet, a lord of the manor, the 
 courtier, friend and correspondent of kings, did have the 
 weakness to set a value on that visit. 
 
 It was about this time that a thing happened which dis- 
 tressed me very much. M. de La Harpe relates it in a letter 
 to the Grand-duke Paul, caUing the person concerned a Capi- 
 taine Valton. He was really a Wallon captain, the Chevalier 
 de la Touche, captain of grenadiers in my father's regiment, 
 whom a piece of insubordiaation towards my major con- 
 demned to death. The excuse of a httle too much wine 
 would have saved him ; but he thought that his honour re- 
 quired him not to offer it. I loved him tenderly. A fault 
 something Hke the present had obliged him to leave France 
 and the Normandy regiment in which he was a captain. 
 Living constantly in my father's house he had asked for my 
 pardon a score of times when at ten or twelve years of age I 
 deserved to be punished. And now I could not ask for his ! 
 Maria Theresa (for I was in Vienna at the time, and not with 
 the regiment) said to me : " Mar^chal Daun, who esteems 
 your captain highly, is as sad as I am that we cannot get 
 him out of this ; he is condemned." I returned to the regi- 
 
168 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 ment ; and the next morning I heard in my tent the three 
 shots that ended the life of that brave and obstinate man. I 
 turned sick ; my state is not to be described. He had him- 
 self loaded the muskets of the men detailed for his execu- 
 tion, " because," he said, " I do not want to be missed. Fire 
 straight ; I have taught you to do that as well as I could ; 
 and tell my colonel that I regret nothing in life but leaving 
 him; and I want him to pardon the trouble I have often 
 caused him by my wilful temper." He would not let them 
 bandage his eyes. He had dressed himself and arranged 
 his hair as if for parade. Then, kneeling down he fell dead 
 instantly, as he had desired. 
 
 It is a wonder to me that preachers do not learn Massillon 
 and Bourdaloue by heart and preach them instead of their own 
 wretched sermons. We could then say, " Let us go and hear 
 Bourdaloue," just as we say, " Let us go and hear Comeille 
 at the Theatre Frangais." I knew a preacher, a little abb^ of 
 whom nobody thought much, who did this in the provinces. 
 He was admired, and everybody cried out " Miracle ! " His 
 last sermon in Lent was on Eestitution ; and after having 
 again delighted and amazed his hearers, he ended by saying 
 that he intended to set the example himself by restoring to 
 every man what he had taken from him. He then informed 
 his auditors of all that he had taken from other Christian 
 orators, who were apparently not much known in those parts. 
 
 I was dining one day at Saint-Germain when an abb^ 
 very much esteemed in society kept us waiting for dinner. 
 When the hostess said to him, " What have you been doing, 
 Abbd, to make you so late ? " " Ladies ! " he replied, " the 
 very best thing in the world, — turning T^l^maque into 
 verse." I knew a lady who committed the same absurdity 
 with that immortal letter of H^loise beginning, " Let us die, 
 sweet friend." 
 
VII. 
 
 1770-1773. 
 
 FREDERICK THE GREAT. 
 
 [This account of Frederick II. was originally given in a 
 letter to the King of Poland, Stanislas Poniatowski, begin- 
 niag as follows in the first paragraph below, but the prince 
 published it in vol. vi. of his Works without the inscription 
 to the king and with various additions to the text, which are 
 here given.] 
 
 To His Majesty the King of Poland : 
 
 You have ordered me, Sire, to give you an account of one 
 of the greatest men of this age. You admire him, although 
 his proximity has done you harm ; by placing yourself at 
 the distance of History all that belongs to that extraordinary 
 genius inspires you with a noble curiosity. I shall render 
 you an exact account of every word that I myself have 
 heard from the great Frederick. Nothing is without in- 
 terest in such a report, because everything will serve to paint 
 his character. The man of whom I speak and the one 
 whom I address wiU both give interest' to what I here relate. 
 I do not know. Sire, if any of the great phenomena of nature 
 will mourn the day when you will cease to reign, but it is 
 already a phenomenon in the world that a kiag who governs 
 a republic should have made himself obeyed and respected 
 for himself as well as by his rights. 
 
 It is not in speaking of one's self that the fatal egotism, 
 which is the general vice of our time, consists ; it is in re- 
 ferring everything to one's own self. Nevertheless, I dislike 
 to speak of myself. " I " is odious to me, as it is in others 
 
170 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 when I hear them use it. If I say it often in what follows, 
 it is that I am obliged to do so in relating what the King of 
 Prussia said to me. Another person might not relate aU 
 these various details ; but I think that the least little word 
 of a man like him should be recorded. 
 
 In 1770, by a singular chance, and in consequence of a 
 personal admiration which our emperor [Joseph II., who 
 had succeeded his father Francis I. as Emperor of Germany, 
 his mother, Maria Theresa, still being Empress of the Holy 
 Eoman Empire] had conceived for the King of Prussia, 
 these two great sovereigns were on such terms that they 
 paid each other visits. The emperor allowed me to take 
 part in one he was about to receive from the king at the 
 camp at Neustadt in Moravia. I cannot remember whether 
 I really had, or whether I assumed, an embarrassed air ; but 
 what I do remember very well is that the emperor, who per- 
 ceived it, said to the king, speaking of me and leading him 
 away : " He looks shy, which I never knew him to be before ; 
 he will be worth more presently." He said this with much 
 grace and gayety, and they left headquarters to go, I think, 
 to the theatre. The king, on the way, turned back to me to 
 ask if my letter to Jean-Jacques Eousseau, which had been 
 printed in the public papers, were really mine. I replied : 
 " Sire, I am not sufficiently famous to have my name stolen 
 by others." He saw what I meant. Horace Walpole had 
 taken the king's name in writing the celebrated letter to 
 Eousseau, which contributed more than anything to turn 
 the head of that eloquent and irrational man of genius. 
 
 As we left the theatre, the emperor said to the king : 
 " Here is Noverre, the famous composer of ballets ; he has, 
 I think, been to Berlin." Noverre made a fine dancing- 
 master's bow. " Ah ! I know him," said the king ; " we had 
 him in Berlin; he was very droU, mimicked everybody, 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNB. 171 
 
 and our danseuses nearly died of laughing." Noverre, little 
 pleased with this slighting manner of recalling him, made 
 another fine bow, and bided his time, hopiug that the king 
 would give him a chance for vengeance. " Your ballets are 
 good," said the king, " your danseuses have grace, but it is 
 stiff grace. I think you make them raise their shoulders 
 and arms too much ; for, M. Noverre, if you remember, our 
 leading danseuse of Berlin never does that." " That is why 
 she is there. Sire," replied Noverre. 
 
 I was invited every night to sup with the king ; and he 
 addressed his conversation only too often to me. In spite 
 of my attachment to the emperor, whose general I like to be, 
 but not his Argens, I kept a little backward and put my 
 stomach to work rather than my mind. When I was 
 absolutely questioned I had to answer and continue the 
 conversation ; into which the emperor put a great deal of 
 fire and was more at his ease than the king was with him. 
 They discussed one day what a man should most desire to 
 be, and asked my opinion. I said : " I would like to be a 
 pretty woman till I was thirty ; a commanding-general with 
 success and ability till sixty," and then, not knowing what 
 to say, but thinking I must add something, no matter what, 
 I said, " a cardinal till eighty." The king, who is fond of 
 laughing at the Sacred College, made merry over that. The 
 emperor let him have Eome and all its myrmidons on easy 
 terms. That supper was one of the gayest and pleasantest 
 I ever enjoyed. Both emperor and king were without 
 assumption or reserve, which did not happen every day ; 
 and the friendliness of two such superior men, a little sur- 
 prised to find each other together, was a very agreeable 
 thing, as can well be imagined. The king told me to go and 
 see him the first time that he or I had three or four hours 
 to ourselves. 
 
172 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 A storm, sucli as there was never the like of, a deluge be- 
 side which that of Deucalion was merely a summer shower, 
 covered the mountains with torrents and nearly drowned our 
 army, which was mancEuvriag. The next day, except for 
 that, was a day of rest. I went to the king at nine in the 
 morning and stayed with him tiU one o'clock alone. He 
 talked of our generals, and I let him say for himself the good 
 that I thought of Mar^chals Lacy and Loudon, but I told 
 him that, as for the others, he had better talk of the dead 
 than the living, for no one could judge properly, unless they 
 had done great deeds like the other two. He spoke of Mard- 
 chal Daun. I said I thought he might have been a great 
 general against the French, but that against him he had not 
 shown all he might be, because he always saw him, thunder- 
 bolt in hand, ready to pulverize his army. He seemed to 
 like that, and expressed much esteem for Mar^chal Daun ; 
 he also spoke highly of General Brentano. I asked the rea- 
 son of certain things I knew he had said about General Beck. 
 " "Well, I thought him a man of merit." — "I don't think so, 
 for he never did you any harm." — « He captured some of 
 my magazines." — " And let your generals escape." — "I 
 never beat him." — " He never came near enough for that, 
 and I have always believed that your Majesty only pre- 
 tended to think him of importance, so that confidence might 
 be put in him and strong corps given to him, to play into 
 your Majesty's hands." — " Do you know who taught me the 
 little I know ? Your old Mar^chal Traun ; ah ! there was a 
 man, indeed ! You spoke just now of the French ; are they 
 making aijy progress ? " — « They are capable of anything in 
 times of war. Sire, but in times of peace they are not satis- 
 fied with what they are ; they want to be what they are not." 
 — "What is that? Disciplined? They were disciplined in 
 the days of M. de Turenne." — « Oh ! that is not it; they 
 
^/T€Mi!^n.o/R' /CA^ey J%>%3r-^ 
 
MEMOIR OP THE PEINCE DE LIGNE. 173 
 
 were not (Msciplined in the days of VendSme, but they won 
 battles. The thing is, they are now your imitators and ours, 
 and that is not suited to them." — " That is what I think, and 
 what I have said to their trainers ; they want to sing before 
 they know music." — " Yes, that is very true ; but they ought 
 to be left in their natural tones ; for my part, I like rural 
 music. For example, they ought to make the most of their 
 valour, their volatility, and even their defects ; I think their 
 confusion might be made to spread to the enemy." — " Why, 
 yes, no doubt, if they were well supported." — "By the Swiss 
 and the Germans, Sire." — " They are a brave and amiable 
 nation ; it is impossible not to like them ; but, good God ! what 
 have they done with their men of letters ? what a difference 
 of tone among them ! Voltaire was excellent ; d'Alembert, 
 whom I esteem in some respects, is too forth-putting; he 
 wants to. make too much effect in society. Were these the 
 men of letters who gave such grace to the Court of Louis 
 XIV., and received it in return ? There was the patriarch 
 of kings, that one ! People said rather too much good of 
 him during his lifetime, but a great deal too much evil of 
 him after he was dead." — "A King of France, Sire, is al- 
 ways the patriarch of men of talent." — " They are a bad 
 lot ; it would take the devil and aU to govern them. Better 
 be the patriarch of the Greeks, like my sister, the Empress 
 of Eussia. That brings her in something, and wiU bring her 
 more. There 's a rehgion indeed, which includes so many 
 different countries and nations. As for our poor Lutherans, 
 there are so few of them it is not worth while to be their 
 patriarch." 
 
 " And yet. Sire, if the Calvinists were collected, and all the 
 little bastard sects, it would make a pretty good post." The 
 king appeared to take fire at that, and his eyes blazed up. It 
 did not last, however, when I added : " If the emperor were 
 
174 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCB DE LIGNE. 
 
 the patriarch of the Catholics that would not be a bad place 
 either." " Well done," he said, laughing. " Here 's Europe 
 divided up into three patriarchates. I was wrong to begin 
 this subject ; just see where it leads. I think our dreams 
 are not those of good men, as the regent used to say. If 
 Louis XIV. were living now he would not thank us." 
 
 All these patriarchal ideas, possible and impossible, made 
 him thoughtful for a moment and almost ill-humoured ; but 
 he presently resumed : — 
 
 " Louis XIV., having more judgment than mind, was al- 
 ways seeking the one more than the other. They were men 
 of genius whom he wanted and whom he found. You can't 
 say that Comeille, Bossuet, Eacine, and Cond^ were men of 
 talent." — "I have heard. Sire, that your Majesty said, ' If 
 any one wanted to make a fine dream — ' " — " Yes, that is 
 true, to be King of France." — " If Francois I. and Henri IV. 
 had come iato the world after your Majesty, they would have 
 said, ' to be the King of Prussia.' " — " Tell me, if you please, 
 whether there is no one in these days fit to quote." I 
 laughed, and the king asked why. I told him he made me 
 think of the " Eussian in Paris," those pretty verses of M. de 
 Voltaire ; on which we both quoted charming passages, 
 laughing heartily. 
 
 He said: "I have heard of the Prince de Conti; what 
 sort of a man is he ? " " He is a composition," I answered, 
 " of twenty or thirty. He is proud and affable, ambitious 
 and philosophical, grumbler and gourmand, lazy, noble, de- 
 bauched, the idol and example of good society ; liking evil 
 from lasciviousness of head only, but putting his self-love 
 into it ; generous, eloquent, very handsome, the most majestic 
 of men, with a manner and style that is all his own ; a 
 good friend, frank, amiable, well-informed, liking Montaigne 
 and Eabelais, and having something of their language ; re- 
 
MEMOIR or THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 175 
 
 sembling in some respects M. de VendSme and the great 
 Cond^ ; wishing to play a rdle, but without the steadiness of 
 mind to do so ; wishing to be feared, yet only being loved ; 
 believing that he leads parliament, and is another Due de 
 Beaufort for the people, yet little considered by one and httle 
 known by the other; fit for all, but capable of nothing. 
 This is so true," I added, " that his mother one day said of 
 him: ' My son has intellect, oh, yes, he has a great deal, and 
 it seems to cover a wide extent ; but he is like an obelisk ; the 
 higher he goes the smaller he gets, and he ends in a point 
 like a steeple.'" 
 
 The portrait amused the king. It was necessary to hold 
 his attention by some rather piquant detail, otherwise he 
 escaped you or did not give you time to speak. But even 
 the first words of an ordinary conversation he found means 
 to make interesting ; if it was only about the rain or the fine 
 weather, he put something lofty into it, and never did one 
 hear from him the slightest thing that was commonplace. 
 He ennobled all, and would bring examples from Greeks and 
 Eomans and modern generals to illustrate something that in 
 others might seem trivial. "Did you ever see a rain like 
 that of yesterday ? The good Catholics on your side said : 
 ' That is what it is to have a man without any religion 
 among us; what shall we do with that damned king, 
 Lutheran, if he is anything ? ' For I really do think I have 
 brought you ill-luck. Your soldiers have been saying: 
 ' Peace is made, and yet here 's that devil of a man annoy- 
 ing us still.' " — " If your Majesty is really the cause it is 
 very wrong, because it is only permitted to Jupiter, who has 
 good reasons for all he does." — "I am sure I beg your par- 
 don for having so often tormented you in those Seven Years. 
 I am sorry for humanity in general, but a fine war of 
 apprenticeship that was ! I made faults enough to teach 
 
176 MEMOIR OP THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 you all, you young men, to do tetter than I. Good God ! 
 how I love your grenadiers ! How they have defiled before 
 me ! If the god Mars should want to raise a guard for his 
 own person, I advise him to take those fellows without choos- 
 ing further. Do you know, I was much pleased with your 
 emperor at supper last night. Did you hear what he said 
 to me about the liberty of the press and the restraints upon 
 conscience? There's a good deal of difference between 
 him and his worthy ancestors." " I am convinced," I said, 
 " that he will show no bigotry in anything and that your 
 Majesty is to him a great book of instruction." — " Yester- 
 day he disapproved very much, but delicately, and without 
 saying so, of that ridiculous Vienna Censure, and his 
 mother's too great attachment to certain things which only 
 make hypocrites, but he did not name her. But ii propos of 
 this, she ought to hate you, that empress." — "Why, no, not at 
 all ; she scolds me sometimes for my misguided conduct, but 
 very maternally ; she pities me and thinks I shall return to 
 the fold, and not long ago she said : ' I don't know how you 
 manage it, but you are the intimate friend of Pfere Griff'et, 
 and the Bishop of Neustadt is always saying good of you to 
 me, — the Archbishop of Malines, too ; and the cardinal is 
 fond of you.' " 
 
 Why can T not remember the scores of luminous things 
 that flashed from him in this conversation, which lasted 
 until the trumpet at headquarters announced to us that 
 dinner was served ? The king went to the table, and it was 
 this day, I think, that, some one having asked why M. de 
 Loudon was late in coming, he said : " It is not his habit ; 
 he usually arrived before me : be so kind as to let him have 
 this place near me ; I prefer to have him at my side rather 
 than opposite." 
 
 Another day, the manoeuvres having ended early, there 
 
MEMOIR OF THE tRlNCE t)E LIGNE. 177 
 
 Was a concert at the emperor's quarters. In spite of the 
 king's love for music he came and sat down by me and 
 enchanted me with the magic of his conversation and the 
 gay and bold and briUiant flashes that characterized it. He 
 asked me to name to him the of&cers present, and to tell 
 him those who had served under Mardchal Traun ; " for," he 
 said, " as I told you before, he was my master, he corrected 
 all the blunders that I made." — " Your Majesty was very 
 ungrateful, and did not pay for your lessons ; you ought at 
 least to have let him beat you, and I do not remember that 
 that happened." — "He never beat me, because I never fought 
 him." — " That is how the greatest generals have often 
 made war; one has only to look at the two campaigns of 
 1674-75 of M. de Montecuculi and M. de Turenne to see 
 that." — " There is no difiference between the first of those 
 generals and Traun, but between the other and me, good 
 God ! it is great indeed." 
 
 I don't know how the conversation changed, but it pres- 
 ently became so free that seeing some one approach as if to 
 share it, the king warned him to take care, that there was 
 risk in talking to a man condemned to eternal flames by the 
 theologians. I thought the king set too much value on his 
 damnation, and boasted of it a trifle too much. Apart from 
 the insincerity of free-thinkers, who often fear the devil with 
 all their hearts, it is bad taste to want to show off their 
 opinions. But it was from the men of bad taste whom he 
 had had about him, like Jordans, d'Argens, Maupertuis, 
 la Beaumelle, la Mettrie, the Abb^ de Pradt, and several 
 other dull-witted scoffers in his Academy, that he had learned 
 to speak Ul of religion and to talk dogma, Spinozaism, Court 
 of Eome, etc. I did not answer when he talked in this way ; 
 and I seized a moment when he blew his nose to speak of 
 something else. After that he went on to ask me the names 
 vol.. I. — 12 
 
178 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 of those present. I pointed out to him a number of young 
 princes who had entered the service, several of whom gave 
 hopes of excellence. " Maybe," he said, " but I think it 
 is well to cross the races of empire. I like the children of 
 love ; look at Mar^chal de Saxe, and my own Anhalt, — 
 though I am very much afraid since that fall upon his head 
 that he will never be as good as he was before. I should 
 be sorry for him and myself too ; he is a man fuU of 
 talent." 
 
 I am glad to record this because I have often heard his 
 silly detractors, who accused him of want of feeling, say that 
 he was not touched by this accident to the man whom he 
 seemed to love best. Fortunate would he have been had 
 they said no worse of him. They supposed him jealous of 
 the talents of Schwerin and Keith, and to be glad to have 
 killed them. It is thus that common men endeavour to 
 pull down great ones in order to diminish the vast space 
 between them. 
 
 The king, out of courtesy, wore a white uniform, and so 
 did each of his suite, in order not to spread before our eyes 
 the blue we had seen so much of during the war. He 
 seemed to belong to our army and to be in the suite of the 
 emperor. There was, I think, a little personal feeling, some 
 distrust, — perhaps a slight beginning of bitterness in this, 
 which always happens, says Philippe de Commines, at the 
 meeting of sovereigns. The king took a great deal of snuff, 
 and as he brushed it from his coat as best he could, he said 
 to me : "I am not clean enough for you gentlemen ; I am 
 not worthy to wear your colours." The air with which he 
 said that made me think that he would soil his coat again 
 with gunpowder when occasion offered. 
 
 I forgot to mention a little opportunity which I had to 
 make the two monarchs feel pleasantly toward each other. 
 
MEMOIK OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 179 
 
 The king said to me : "I was much pleased to-day with the 
 dressing of your columns and the way in which they de- 
 ployed " — " And I, Sire, was pleased with the emperor's coup 
 d'ceil ; he was there himself and was not mistaken by a 
 foot on the ground or the distances." The emperor came 
 up at this moment and asked the king what I was saying. 
 " I am certain," replied the king, " that he will not dare to 
 repeat it to your Majesty, and I myself have hardly the 
 courage to do so. We were both of the same opinion about 
 the movement you made the hussars do this morning, which 
 protected the deployment; your Majesty placed them so 
 exactly at the right point that each division came into 
 line abreast." Later, the king spoiled this little madrigal 
 which I had thus procured; and his epigram of entrance 
 into Bohemia some years after was more in his line. 
 
 The king was sometimes too ceremonious. This annoyed 
 the emperor. For instance, I do not know whether it was 
 to play the part of a submissive elector, but when the 
 emperor put foot in his stirrup, the king took his horse by 
 the bridle ; when the emperor threw his leg over to mount 
 the saddle the king set foot in his stirrup, and so on. The 
 emperor had an air of great sincerity from the first in ren- 
 dering him attentions, like those of a young prince to an old 
 king, a young soldier to the greatest of generals. On one 
 confidential day they talked politics together. " Every one 
 can't have the same," said the king. "It all depends on 
 the situation, circumstances, and power of States. ATPTiat 
 suits me would not suit your Majesty. For instance, I 
 sometimes risk a political lie." " What is that ? " asked the 
 emperor, laughing. "Well, for example," said the king, 
 gayly, " I imagine a piece of news, which I know will be 
 seen to be false at the end of twenty-four hours. No matter ; 
 before the truth is known, my news has done its work." 
 
180 MEMOIE OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 Sometimes there was an appearance of real cordiality 
 between them. It was plaia that Frederick II. liked Joseph 
 II., but the preponderance of empire over monarch and the 
 nearness of Silesia to Bohemia arrested the feeling. Their 
 letters on the subject of Bavaria will be remembered, their 
 compliments, the explanation of their intentions made with 
 so much politeness, and how, from courtesy to courtesy, the 
 king marched into Bohemia. 
 
 Before leaving the camp, he made me promise to go to 
 Berlin. I hastened to do so after the little war which he 
 called his lawsuit, saying he had come as a sheriff to put in 
 an execution, came to an end [the war of the Bavarian Suc- 
 cession, lasting seven months, to put Charles Theodore, elec- 
 tor palatine, on his throne; opposed by Frederick without 
 success]. The result to the king is well-known : great cost 
 of men, horses, and money; a certaia appearance of good 
 faith and disinterestedness ; little honour in war, some hon- 
 esty in policy, and much bitterness towards us. After it 
 was ended the king began, without knowing why, to forbid 
 all Austrian of&cers from setting foot in his dominions 
 without an express permission, signed by his hand; in re- 
 turn, the same order from our Court relating to Prussian 
 officers ; hence awkwardness on both sides, without profit or 
 reason. I am naturally confident, and I believed, and still 
 believe, I needed no permission ; but a strong desire to get 
 a letter from the great F^deric (that was how he signed 
 himself), rather than the fear of not being well received, 
 made me write to him. My letter was glowing with enthu- 
 siasm and admiration and with the warmth of my senti- 
 ments for this extraordinary and mighty Being, and it 
 brought me three charming answers. He gave me in de- 
 tail what I had given him in bulk ; and what he could not 
 return to me in admiration, fori cannot remember having 
 
MEMOIR OP THE PKINCB DB LIGNE. 181 
 
 ever won a battle, he made up for in friendship. For fear 
 of missing me he wrote three letters from Potsdam, to 
 Vienna, Dresden, and Berlin. 
 
 While awaiting the hour to be presented to him with my 
 son Charles and M. de Lille, whom I had taken with me, I 
 saw the parade ; after which I was instantly surrounded and 
 escorted to the chateau by Austrian deserters, especially 
 from my regiment, who almost kissed me, and with the ut- 
 most freedom (which was fully allowed them) they begged 
 my pardon for having left me. 
 
 The hour of presentation came [this was in 1780 ; ten 
 years after the former interview]. The long received me in 
 a charming manner. The mihtary stiffness of headquarters 
 was changed into a gentle and kindly welcome. He said, 
 "I did not know you had so tall a son." — "And he is 
 married. Sire, within a year." — "May I venture to ask to 
 whom ? " (He often used this expression ; also, " if you will 
 permit me to have the honour of saying to you.") "To a 
 PoHsh lady, a Massalska." — " What ! a Massalska ? Do you 
 know what her grandmother did ? " " No, Sire," said Charles. 
 " She fired a cannon at the siege of Dantzic ; she fired her- 
 self, and ordered the firing when her side lost their heads 
 and wanted to surrender." " Women are unaccountable," I 
 said ; " strong and weak by turns, indiscreet and dissimulat- 
 ing, they are capable of everything." " No doubt of that," said 
 M. de Lille, annoyed at nothing having been said to him, 
 and speaking with a familiarity that gained him nothing. 
 "Just see — " he was beginning, but the king interrupted 
 him. I cited a few instances, like that of the wife of 
 Huchet at the siege of Amiens. The king made a tour to 
 Sparta and Eome; he liked such little excursions. Then, 
 after a moment's silence, in order to give pleasure to de 
 Lille, I said to the king that M. de Voltaire had died in his 
 
182 MEMOIR or THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 arms. That obliged the king to ask him some questions, to 
 which he replied at too great length, and went away, while 
 Charles and I remained to dinner. 
 
 It was then, during five hours of every day, that his 
 encyclopedical conversation completely charmed me. Fine 
 arts, war, medicine, literature, religion, philosophy, morals, 
 history, and legislation passed, one after another, in review. 
 The grand ages of Augustus and Louis XIV. ; the good com- 
 pany of the Eomans, Greeks, and Franks ; the chivalry of 
 Frangois I. ; the frankness and valour of Henri IV. ; the 
 renascence of Letters and their revolutions from the times of 
 Leo X.; anecdotes of men of learning of other days and 
 their objectionable points ; Voltaire's flightiness, Maupertuis' 
 susceptible temper, the agreeable qualities of Algarotti, the 
 wit of Coff^ and Jordans, the hypochondria of the Marquis 
 d'Argens, whom the king delighted in sending to bed for 
 twenty-four hours, by simply telling him he did not look 
 well, — in short, everything that was most amusing, varied, 
 and piquant came from his mouth ia the sweetest tone of 
 voice, rather low and as charming as the movement of his 
 lips, in which there was a graciousness quite inexpressible. 
 It was this that prevented one, I think, from perceiving that, 
 like the heroes of Homer, he was rather garrulous, though 
 sublime. He caused me to make reflections about loquacious 
 persons, whose voices, perhaps the mere noise of them, and 
 their gestures win them the reputation of garrulity. Certainly 
 it would be impossible to find a greater talker than the king, 
 but all men were charmed that he was so. Accustomed to 
 talk only with the Marquis de Lucchesini, or four or five 
 generals who knew no French, he now took his compensation 
 for his hours of work, of reading, meditation, and solitude 
 in his little garden, where, directly opposite to his door, was 
 the young and beautiful and easy Antinous. 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DB LIGNB. 183 
 
 " Still," I thought to myself, " I really must put in a 
 word." He had just named Virgil. " What a great poet," I 
 said, " hut what a bad gardener ! " " You need not tell me 
 that," said the king. " Have I not planted and sown and 
 toiled and dug, Georgics in hand ? ' But, monsieur,' says 
 my gardener, ' you are stupid, and your hook too ; that is not 
 the way to work.' Good God ! what a climate ! Would you 
 believe that God, or the sun, would refuse me everything ? 
 Look at my poor olive-trees, my oranges, my lemons ; they 
 are all dying of starvation." " Nothing but laurels appear 
 to live here. Sire," I said. The king gave me a charming 
 glance, and I added hastily, to turn off an insipidity by a 
 stupidity, " and then. Sire, there are too many pomegranates 
 — grenadiers — they kiU everything." The king laughed, 
 for there is nothing like nonsense to raise a laugh. 
 
 One day I turned a plate to see what porcelain it was. 
 " Where did you think it came from ? " he asked. " I 
 thought it was Dresden, Sire, but instead of the two swords 
 there is but one." — " That is a sceptre." — "I beg your 
 Majesty's pardon, but it is so like a sword that I easily 
 mistook the one for the other ; " which was obviously true 
 in more ways than one. A sceptre is the mark, as every 
 body knows, of the Berlin porcelain. But as the king some- 
 times chose to play the king and thought himself very 
 magnificent when he carried a cane and a snuffbox with 
 viUanous little diamonds, I don't know that my small 
 allegory pleased him much. 
 
 One morning he came to meet me as I went to him, and 
 said : " I tremble in giving you bad news. They have just 
 written me that Prince Charles de Lorraine is dying." He 
 looked at me to see what effect his words would have, and 
 observing the tears that filled my eyes, he changed the 
 conversation by gentle gradations and talked of war and 
 
184 MEMOIE OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 then of Mar^chal de Lacy. He asked me for news of him, 
 and said : " He is a man of the highest merit. Mercy of 
 yours in the older time and Puys^gur among the French 
 had some idea of marching and camping, and so had the 
 Greeks, as you may see in Hyginus's ' Art of Camping ; ' but 
 your marshal surpasses the ancients and the modems and all 
 the most famous men who had to do with those arts. 
 Therefore the whole time that he was your quartermaster- 
 general, if you will permit me to make the remark, I never 
 got the least advantage of you. Do you remember the two 
 campaigns of 1758 and 1759, during which you were 
 successful in every way ? ' Shall I never be rid of that 
 man ? ' I used to say to myself. Well, they had to reward 
 him ; so they made him master of ordnance and gave him 
 the command of a corps that was too strong to harry me 
 and too weak to resist me. And yet, for all that, he got 
 away from me, and over all possible obstacles in that able 
 campaign of 1760. Then another man took his place. ' Not 
 bad for me,' I said to myself ; ' some occasion may turn up.' 
 I looked about for it, and I got it at Torgau." He never 
 made a finer panegyric ; for he showed cause, in thus allow- 
 ing that it was M. de Lacy who cleared him out of Moravia, 
 Bohemia, Lusatia, and Saxony. I am certain that the king 
 did not know that I was attached to Lacy, as I am ; and 
 besides, there is no flattery when you tell facts. 
 
 The next day the king came to me as soon as he saw 
 me and said, with a most grieved air : " Since you must be 
 told of the death of one who loved you weU and was an 
 honour to humanity, it is better it should be by one who 
 feels as deeply about it as I do. Poor Prince Charles is 
 gone. Others, perhaps, may be fitted to replace him in 
 your heart, but few princes can take his place in beauty of 
 soul and virtue." In saying this his feelings overcame him. 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PBINCE DE LIGNE. 185 
 
 I said : " Your Majesty's regrets are a consolation ; and you 
 did not wait until his death, to say good of him. There are 
 some fine verses about him in your ' Art of War.' " I broke 
 down for a moment in spite of myself, but after that I 
 repeated them. 
 
 The Man of Letters seemed to be grateful to me for 
 knowing them by heart. "His passage of the Rhine was 
 a very fine thing," said the king, " but the poor prince was 
 forced to depend on so many persons ; whereas I have de- 
 pended on nothing but my own head — too much for my 
 own good, sometimes. But he was always ill served, and 
 little obeyed. I avoided the first and made sure of the 
 second. Your General Nadasdy seemed to me a great 
 general for cavalry." As I did not think so, I contented 
 myself with saying he was very brilhant, and could lead his 
 hussars to heU, he inspired them so. " What has become 
 of a brave colonel who fought Uke the devil at Eosbach ? 
 Ah ! stay, I think it was the Marquis de Voghera — yes, I 
 remember, that is his name, for I asked it after the battle." 
 — " He is general of cavalry." — " Pardi ! you must hava 
 wanted desperately to fight that day, to charge with your two 
 regiments of cuirassiers, and I think the hussars too, for the 
 battle was lost before it was begun." — " Apropos of M. de 
 Voghera, Sire, I don't know if your Majesty knew what he did 
 just before the charge. He is a fiery man, uneasy, always 
 in a hurry, with something of the old chivalry about him ; 
 finding that his regiment did not advance quickly enough, 
 he rushed forward, and getting close to the commander 
 of the Prussian cavalry he made him a bow as if on 
 parade, the other returned it, and then they attacked each 
 other like madmen." — "That was good style; I'd like to 
 know my man and thank him. When I think of those 
 devilish camps in Saxony it is a wonder I attacked them. 
 
186 MEMOIR OF THE PKINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 If M. de Lacy had still been quartermaster-general at 
 Torgau I should never have attempted to attack you ; but I 
 saw at once that the camp was ill placed." — " The bad repu- 
 tation of a camp often creates the desire to attack it," I said_ 
 "For example, beggiag your Majesty's pardon, I always 
 thought you would end, if the war lasted, iu attacking that 
 of Plauen." — " Oh no ! certainly not ; there was no way to 
 do it." — "Does not your Majesty think that with a good 
 battery on the Dolschen height which commanded us, a few 
 battalions, one behind another in the ravine, attacking us 
 before daylight, assaultiag, as it were, our camp between 
 Coschutz and Guttersee, where I noticed a score of times 
 that there was room for a front of three battalions — doesn't 
 your Majesty, I say, think you might have carried that 
 battery which was almost iuvincible, the boulevard, our 
 pis alter, and our shelter ? " — " How about your Windberg 
 battery, which would have raked my battalions in the ravine 
 you talk about ?"—" But, Sire, the night."— "Oh! that 
 would not have saved us ; that long ravine from Bourg and 
 Potschappel would have been a ditch for us. You see I am 
 not so brave as you think me." 
 
 The emperor was on his way to pay a visit to the Empress 
 of Eussia, which did not please the kiag ; and in order to 
 undo the good it might have done us, he sent off the prince 
 royal in haste, and very clumsily, to Petersburg. He was 
 afraid the Court of Eussia might escape him. I feared from 
 that his kindness to me would come to an end, but he 
 seemed to forget I was an Austrian. " Strange," I said to 
 myself; "not an epigram upon us, nor upon our master! 
 What a change!" 
 
 That scatter-witted Pinto said to his neighbour one day at 
 the dinner-table that the Emperor Joseph was a great travel- 
 ler, and that no monarch had ever been as far as he. " I beg 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 187 
 
 your pardon, monsieur," said the king ; " Charles V. went to 
 Africa, for he won the battle of Oran." Then turning to 
 me he said, without my beiag able to divine whether his 
 meaning was malicious or merely historical : " The emperor 
 is more fortunate than Charles XII. ; he entered Eussia hke 
 him at Mohilev, but I think he wiU get to Moscow." The 
 same Pinto said to the king one day when he remarked 
 that he was puzzled whom to send as minister into foreign 
 countries : " Why not send M. de Lucchesini ? — he is a man 
 of intelligence." " That is why I want to keep him," replied 
 the king ; " I would send you rather than him, or a bore hke 
 
 M. ; " and he appointed the latter on the spot, but I 
 
 forget the name. 
 
 M. de Lucchesini, who had a touch of Sallust, Tasso, 
 Tacitus, Horace, and Pliny in him, brought out the best of 
 the king's talk through the charm of his own conversation. 
 He knew ia which direction it was agreeable to have it 
 fall ; and also he knew how to hsten, which is not so easy 
 as people think, and which a fool never knows at all. He 
 was just as agreeable to others as he was to the king by 
 his attractive manners and graceful wit. Pinto, who had 
 nothing to lose iu that direction, allowed himself everything. 
 " Sire," he said, " ask that Austrian general to tell you what 
 he saw me do when I was in their service." "Willingly, 
 my dear Pinto," I said, " you let off the fireworks on the 
 occasion of my marriage." "Do me the honour," said the 
 king, " of telling me whether he did that well." — " No, Sire ; 
 and he frightened my friends and relations, who took the 
 failure for a bad portent. He had imagined and prepared 
 the joining of two flaming hearts, the very novel image of 
 a bridal couple. The shde by which they were to come to- 
 gether missed ; the heart of my wife started, but mine lagged 
 behind." — " There, you see, Pinto, you were not worth any 
 
188 MEMOIR OP THE PRINCE DE LIGNB. 
 
 more to them than you are to me." " Oh, Sire ! " I sa.id, 
 "since then your Majesty owes him a great deal for the 
 sabre cuts he has had on his head." " I have paid him too 
 much," said the king. " Pinto, did n't I send you yesterday a 
 pot of my good Prussian honey ? " " Yes," replied Pinto, " but 
 that was to only get it known ; if your Majesty could succeed 
 in making a traffic of it, you would be the richest king on 
 earth, for your kingdom is all honey, and nothing else." 
 
 " Did you know," said the king one day, " that I was once 
 ia your service ? I first took up arms for the house of Aus- 
 tria. My God ! how time passes ! " He had a way of putting 
 his hands together when he said " My God ! " which gave 
 him a most worthy look and a very gentle one. " Did you 
 know I saw the last rays of genius gleaming from Prince 
 Eugfene ? " — " Perhaps your Majesty lighted your own from 
 them." — " Ha ! my God ! who could equal Prince Eugfene ? " 
 — " He who is worth more, who has won a dozen battles." 
 He put on his modest air ; I have always said it is easy to 
 be modest when there is a foundation underneath. He made 
 believe not to understand me, and said that when the cabal 
 which, for forty years, existed against Prince Eugfene in his 
 own armies wanted to injure him, they profited by the 
 afternoon hours, when his mind, which worked clearly in 
 the mornings, was tired or relaxed by the fatigues of the 
 day ; it was thus that they induced him to undertake his 
 bad march to Mayence. 
 
 " Sire," I said, " you do not tell me anythiag about yourself. 
 I know all your Majesty has done, and even what you have 
 said ; I can relate your journeys to Strasburg and Holland, 
 and aU that passed on that boat. And cfc propos of that 
 campaign on the Ehine, one of our old generals, whom I 
 often set talking as one reads an old manuscript, related to 
 me how surprised he was one day to hear a young Prussian 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PBINCE DE LIGNE. 189 
 
 officer, whom he did not know, say to a general of the late 
 king, who was sending an order not to go out on forage: 
 'I, monsieur, order it done; the cavalry needs it; in a 
 word, I command it.' " " Oh ! you see me in too fine a 
 light," said the king. "Ask those gentlemen over there 
 ahout my tempers and caprices. They will tell you a 
 pretty story to my account. He must have been very 
 lovable, Prince Eugfene." — "And beloved too. Sire. The 
 discovery your Majesty made of his letters in the Palatinate 
 proves that he was very strong and rather handsome, and 
 so called Madame Chimone." — " What ! do you know all my 
 badnesses ? I ought never to have told what I found out ; 
 because a great man — " he said, smiling. " — has always," 
 I continued, " not only the upper hand of his enemies, but — " 
 " Yes," completed the king, " such as Caesar, Alexander, 
 VendQme, and Catinat" I spoke only as a connoisseur, he 
 as an amateur. 
 
 On this he began to talk of anecdotes found in very few 
 published works, and I told him how amused I had been 
 by certaiu books, true or false, written by Huguenot refugees, 
 which were not even known of in Prance, books in the style 
 of the "Amours of Pfere de La Chaise'' and others of that 
 kind. '* Where did you find all those fine things ? " asked 
 the king ; " they would amuse me much more in the evenings 
 than the conversation of a Doctor of the Sorbonne whom I 
 have here now, and whom I am trying to convert." " In a 
 library in Bohemia," I replied, "which helped to divert 
 my mind through two long wiaters." — "Two winters in 
 Bohemia ! what the devil were you doing there ? Was it 
 long ago ? " " No, Sire, only a year or two ago ; I retired 
 there to read at my ease." He smiled, and seemed to thank 
 me for not naming the little war of 1778, of which, it ap- 
 peared to me, he did not like to speak ; and seeing that this 
 
190 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 happened during the time that I was in winter quarters 
 he was glad of my reticence on the subject; as he was, 
 another day in Berlin, when showing me some of the im- 
 provements he had made to that city. But being an old 
 wizard whose insight was the keenest that ever was, he knew 
 perfectly well that I did not choose to teU him I saw changes 
 since the time I was there. I was careful not to remind 
 him that I was among those who captured the city in 1760 
 under the orders of M. de Lacy. 
 
 Apropos of that doctor of the Sorbonne, with whom he 
 argued every day, — " Help me to get a bishopric for him," 
 said he one morning. " I don't think," I replied, " that my 
 recommendation or that of your Majesty would do him 
 much good among us." "Oh! no," said the king; "I'U 
 write to the Empress of Eussia for the poor devil, who is 
 beginning to bore me. He fancies he is a Jansenist. My 
 God ! what fools the Jansenists of the present day are ; the 
 nursery of their genius ought never to have been destroyed. 
 That Port-Eoyal, exaggerated as it may have been, only 
 proves that nothing should ever be destroyed. And why 
 have they put an end to those guardians of the graces of 
 Eome and Athens, those excellent professors of the Human- 
 ities, and perhaps of humanity itself? — ! mean the ci-devant 
 Eeverends. [He referred to the suppression of the Jesuits 
 by Louis XV., in 1764] Education will suffer from it; but 
 as my brethren, the kings Cathohc, very Christian, very Faith- 
 ful and Apostolical, have driven them out, I, very Heretic, 
 have gathered in as many as I could of them, and perhaps 
 in time they will court me to get them back. I preserve 
 the race. I was saying to mine the other day : 'I could sell 
 a rector, like you, father, for three thousand crowns, and you, 
 reverend prior, for six hundred, and the rest in proportion; 
 when one is n't rich, one has to speculate.' " 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 191 
 
 For want of memory, and the opportunity to see often and 
 for a longer time the greatest man that ever existed, I am 
 obliged to stop here. There is not one word in what I have 
 written that is not his ; and all those who have seen him 
 wiU recognize his manner. What I want is to make him 
 known to those who never had the good fortune to see him. 
 His eyes, too hard in his portraits, but worn with toil in his 
 cabinet and the weariness of war, softened as he hstened to 
 or related some trait of elevation of soul or of feeling. Until 
 his death, in fact only shortly before it, in spite of certain 
 httle remarks which he knew I had allowed myself to make in 
 speaking or writing about him (assuredly attributed by him 
 to my duty, which was opposed to his interests), he deigned 
 to honour me with tokens of his remembrance, and he often 
 charged his ministers at Paris and Vienna to assure me of it. 
 
 I no longer believe in the earthquakes and the eclipses 
 said to have taken place at the death of Caesar, since none 
 occurred on the death of Frederick the Great. 
 
 Had fate placed him on the throne of France he would 
 have been chivalrous like Francois I., wily hke Louis XL, 
 just as Louis XII., a good administrator like Louis IX. (with- 
 out, however, starting off as a paladin), a good fellow like 
 Henri IV., and as magnificent as Louis XIV. He would 
 have made better verses than he did, as good perhaps as 
 those of Charles IX., but he would not have made the Saint- 
 Bartholomew. He would have followed his taste for letters 
 and music, and corrected his taste for the fine arts ; for it 
 must be owned he could better deploy his columns in war 
 than place them in his buildings. He would not have Mked 
 those pictures of his by Pater and Watteau, nor all that pink 
 and green and silver furniture ; and he would certainly have 
 forbidden his cook to use musk, cinnamon, ambergris, and 
 ginger. 
 
192 MEMOIR OP THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 Time, and the contents of his letters as prince royal reveal 
 to me, independently of what I myself remarked in him, that 
 the man who could not be the first and best of kings had 
 resolved to make himself the best of generals and soldiers. 
 When he came to his little Northern throne of sand he 
 thought he saw a way to give it a better base ; he offered 
 the support of his active genius and a good army to Maria 
 Theresa, to defend a part of her States. The offer was re- 
 jected with disdaia ! He took what he asked, and more too, 
 to revenge himself. Peace, and the Holy Trinity, of which, 
 as he supposed, the other sovereigns thought more than he 
 did, secured to him what he had taken. 
 
 But Prince Kaunitz wanted revenge for Frederick's ridi- 
 cule of his toilet ; Mme. de Pompadour, for his treating with 
 her through his ministers, and for certain remarks upon her 
 health ; the Empress Elizabeth of Eussia, for comments on 
 her behaviour ; the Comte de Briihl, for sneers at his ward- 
 robe ; the Empire, for sneers at the poverty of its means ; 
 Sweden, for sneers at its nullity, and its failure to produce 
 another Charles XII. So that, finally, all Europe put 
 700,000 men under arms against him, in 1757, to recover 
 Silesia, which he prevented. 
 
 After each victory he offered peace. In his letter to the 
 Marquis d'Argens after the battle of Liegnitz, in 1760, we 
 see the same sentiments felt by him as when he was prince 
 royal in 1738. Always victorious, after wearying Europe 
 and himself too with his triumphs, he ended by asking 
 nothing more than he had before the war. 
 
 He saw an empire rising daily around him and making 
 ready to swallow him up. He proposed to it to enlarge 
 itself, and at the same time to enlarge him, — with this differ- 
 ence, that his acquisition would so bind his States together 
 that, from being a secondary power, he would pass into the 
 
MEMOIR OP THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 193 
 
 first rank ; a scheme that rendered all three Courts equally 
 guilty of an immoral partition, and an impolitic one for the 
 two great empresses, one of whom, moreover, spent her days 
 before the altar. 
 
 But integrity came with opportunity. He was able at 
 last to give himself up to his natural leaniug to virtue, and 
 to spend, some years later, twenty-five millions of money 
 and twenty-five thousand men in preventing Austria from 
 seizing upon the whole of Bavaria. 
 
 That is the history of his three wars. They proposed to 
 him a fourth in 1785, about the freedom of the Scheldt; but 
 he only made jokes on M. de Vergennes and the Dutch re- 
 public, and busied himself the more in building villages and 
 giving seeds and tools to those who cleared the land. It was 
 not his fault if he was ill aided and ill understood on certain 
 points as to farms, taxes, tobacco, and legislation. And yet 
 all that was truly his sole study and care. He had friends, 
 and was gentle in private life. He gave away much, and 
 did it judiciously ; and in spite of his outlays, by means of 
 the strictest economy he left behind him hundreds of tons of 
 ducats. He answered every letter with his own hand, and 
 listened to all who came to him ; he never condemned any 
 one to death ; he adored the great eras and the great men of 
 France, — the language of that country being the only one 
 that he knew well, and he therefore considered its literature 
 and its genius above those of all the other nations. 
 
 He did wrong, no doubt, in allowing himself certain lively 
 flings at rehgion ; but he declared himself its supporter for 
 the sake of his own interests, and the close connection it had 
 with the principles of government. He did still greater 
 wrong in doubting his own soul ; but he put into practice 
 at his death what was theory only in his philosophers ; and 
 by endiag, as he did, with perfect indifference, he placed 
 
 VOL. I. — 13 
 
194 MEMOIR OF THE PEINCE DE LIGNB. 
 
 them on the same line of contempt as the priests and the 
 doctors. He often talked to me of his friends, the atheists 
 d'Argens, de Pradt, Toussaint, La Mettrie ; he despised them 
 all ; but he never tired of talking religion with Voltaire. 
 They wrote to each other on the subject in order that others 
 might admire their strong-mindedness, but they were not 
 dupes enough to believe all they said. While admiring, as 
 I do, both Voltaire and the King of Prussia, I must say that 
 their correspondence, both in prose and verse, was never 
 anything but letter-making. 
 
 If Frederick II. had had a little more miud [esjpriY] he 
 might have committed follies ; but his line of demarcation 
 was that of genius and good sense. He had impulse, and 
 then reflection. Sometimes the first had the upper hand, 
 and that is how it was he lost three battles. But it cannot 
 be said that he had the forceful and vivid mind of Caesar 
 and Cond^. His did not start so quick. In conversation 
 Joseph II. was quick at repartee, but he did not like it if 
 others were so too. Frederick the Great did like it, and 
 would put himself, though slowly, in tune with his company, 
 and then show, in his conversations, as he did in his cam- 
 paigns, an inexhaustible fund of useful information, leading 
 to profound results. He had more gayety in things than in 
 words ; the latter required a lightness that was not in him. 
 
 Frederick the Great's father was a man of the utmost bru- 
 tahty, as the following anecdote will prove ; and it will also 
 show what presence of mind can do. He was passing the 
 afternoon on a little island near BerUn, smoking and drinking 
 beer with his generals and ministers. The Austrian ambas- 
 sador, M. de Seckendorf, was there, seated between the king 
 and the prime minister. His Majesty was displeased at one 
 of his remarks, and not being as ready with his repartees as 
 he was with his fists, he gave M. de Seckendorf a blow. 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 195 
 
 Permit me, you wlio are reading these words, to ask you 
 what you would have done in the ambassador's place. Hav- 
 ing agreed, as you wiU with me, that you do not know, I will 
 finish the story. M. de Seckendorf gave the blow to the 
 prime minister, and said, "Pass it on." 
 
VIII. 
 
 1774-1778. 
 LIFE m PARIS: QUEEN MARIE ANTOINETTE. 
 
 Louis XV. has been ill used by public opinion. I bad 
 not seen him from the time I took him the news of the 
 battle of Maxen until 1774, a period of fourteen years, after 
 which I saw him daily at Mme. du Barry's imtil his death. 
 It is surprising that those who did exactly what he did 
 should have thought his deeds so evil. The vile courtiers 
 of Mme. de Pompadour, a little bourgeoise who eloped from 
 her husband, cried out upon the corruption of morals when 
 the king took another mistress, although the latter had a far 
 better heart than the former, and did not meddle in either 
 war or politics. 
 
 When Louis XV. was dying the courtiers of Mme. du 
 Barry abandoned her, as is customary. I, who had neg- 
 lected her until recently for five or six years, was now with 
 her constantly. I said to her famous brother-in-law, the 
 roue du Barry, " The farce is played out, and you can go." 
 " Why should I go ? " he said, in his droll provincial accent. 
 " If they affront me I '11 turn the kingdom into a republic.'' 
 That sounded at the time like the impossible boast of a 
 braggart, but the future realized it through men who were 
 more rascally but less able than he. Some time later the 
 young king heard that I had given a letter from Mme. du 
 Barry to the queen, asking her Majesty to smooth her 
 pecuniary affairs, which her unconcern and perfect disinter- 
 
r !^^im^>Mt'e/ce^ 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 197 
 
 estedness had allowed to be very bad at the death of the 
 late king. " That is a pretty embassy you have taken upon 
 yourself," Louis XVI. said to me. I replied that I took it 
 because I was quite certain no one but me would dare to 
 do so. On my way to Versailles I used to go round by 
 Luciennes. Mme. du Barry was always a most excellent 
 person, and as late as seven years ago very handsome to see, 
 and very good to know. 
 
 In 1774 chance brought the Comte d'Artois to a garrison 
 in the neighbourhood of a camp where I happened to be 
 inspecting troops. I rode over with thirty of my Austrian 
 officers, well turned-out. He saw us, called to me, and 
 beginning with an air of brother to the king he ended as 
 if he were my brother. We drank and laughed and played 
 cards. Free for the first time in his Hfe, he did not know 
 how to make enough of his liberty. This first gush of 
 gayety and the petulance of youth charmed me, and his 
 good heart, which I saw in everything, allured me. He 
 wanted me to go and see him at Versailles. I said no, I 
 would see him in Paris. He insisted, spoke to me of the 
 queen [Marie Antoinette], who not long after ordered me 
 to go to Court. The charms of her face and of her soul, 
 the one as white and beautiful as the other, and the attrac- 
 tion of that society made me henceforth spend five months 
 of every year in her suite, vrithout absenting myself for a 
 single day. 
 
 If I dared, I could make many portraits of this period, 
 but the fear of giving pain to the living of that Court deters 
 me. I may say that I have played on many a stage, or 
 at least I have sat in the box that was nearest to it. I 
 never Uked great parts, except in war ; at Court a few inti- 
 mates and the right entrees were aU I wanted. At twenty 
 years of age I was already laughing at the toil the actors 
 
198 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 gave themselves. Life is so short, and the audience so 
 ill composed that any such trouble is not worth while. 
 
 The paternal kindness of that good and worthy Emperor 
 Francis I., the maternal kindness of the great Maria Theresa, 
 the sometimes almost fraternal affection of our noble Joseph 
 II., the entire confidence of Mardchal de Lacy, the intimate 
 society of the adorable Queen of France, the friendship of 
 Catherine the Great, my access to her at aU. hours, the dis- 
 tinguished kindness of the Great Frederick — would make 
 my memoirs very interesting. But I dare only admire those 
 persons, adore them, mourn them ; their privacy is sacred to 
 me, and I refuse to let myself speak in detail of sis Courts 
 of which I have been enabled to judge, as well as of their 
 sovereigns, whose memories are so dear to me that I can only 
 bless them. I have seen those sovereigns calumniated, and 
 I have cursed their unjust and ungrateful slanderers. 
 
 The title " Private Life " always throws me into a rage ; 
 especially when I think of the unfortunate and adorable 
 Queen of France, and her friend (whom I dare to call my 
 friend), who was indeed perfection. Among the few and 
 trifling wrongs of heedlessness which the queen committed, 
 I one day blamed her for not stopping the hbels and songs 
 against her, which she showed me half-weeping, half-laugh- 
 ing. It was a damnable " Private life of the Due d'Orl^ans " 
 [Phihppe EgaMt^] which, by painting him as a monster 
 before he became so, made him one. 
 
 None but knaves could have said evil of Louis XVI., his 
 brothers, or the queen adored by all who really knew her ; 
 but fools believed them. The disaffected and foreigners read 
 those horrors ; and (as if I had had a presentiment) I said 
 to the Empress Catherine with some temper, in her carriage 
 during the famous journey in Taurica, one day when, with- 
 out exactly believing it, she quoted one of those tales: 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 199 
 
 " The porters of the sedan-chairs at Versailles wrote that ; it 
 is just as if one of the istvoschiks in Petersburg wrote a 
 history of your Majesty." The infamy of the three charges 
 laid to her account justified the prediction. 
 
 As for the queen, the radiance of her presence harmed 
 her. The jealousy of the women whom she crushed by the 
 beauty of her complexion and the carriage of her head, 
 ever seeking to harm her as a woman, harmed her also as 
 a queen. Frdd^gonde and Brunehaut, Catherine and Marie 
 de' Medici, Anne and Theresa of Austria never laughed ; 
 Marie Antoinette when she was fifteen laughed much; 
 therefore she was declared " satirical." 
 
 She defended herself against the intrigues of two parties, 
 each of whom wanted to give her a lover ; on which they 
 declared her " inimical to frenchmen ; " and all the more 
 because she was friendly with foreigners, from whom she 
 had neither traps nor importunity to fear. 
 
 An unfortunate dispute about a visit between her brother 
 the Elector of Cologne and the princes of the blood, of 
 which she was wholly ignorant, offended the etiquette of 
 the Court, which then called her "proud." 
 
 She dines with one friend, and sometimes goes to see 
 another friend, after supper, and they say she is " familiar." 
 That is not what the few persons who lived in her familiarity 
 would say. Her delicate, sure sense of the becoming awed 
 them as much as her majesty. It was as impossible to for- 
 get it as it was to forget one's self. 
 
 She is sensible of the friendship of certain persons who 
 are the most devoted to her; then she is declared to be 
 " amorous " of them. Sometimes she requires too much for 
 their families ; then she is " unreasonable." 
 
 She gives little fgtes, and works herself at her Trianon : 
 that is called " bourgeoise." She buys Saint-Cloud for the 
 
200 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 health of her children and to take them from the malaria of 
 Versailles : they pronounce her " extravagant." Her pro- 
 menades in the evening on the terrace, or on horseback in 
 the Bois de Boulogne, or sometimes on foot round the music 
 in the Orangery "seem suspicious." Her most innocent 
 pleasures are thought criminal ; her general loving-kiudness 
 is " coquettish." She fears to win at cards, at which she is 
 compelled to play, and they say she " wastes the money of 
 the State." 
 
 She laughed and sang and danced until she was twenty- 
 five years old : they declared her " frivolous." The affairs 
 of the kingdom became embroiled, the spirit of party arose 
 and divided society ; she would take no side, and they 
 called her "ungrateful." 
 
 She no longer amused herself; she foresaw misfortunes: 
 they declared her " iatriguing." She dropped certain little 
 requests or recommendations she had made to the king or 
 the ministers as soon as she feared they were troublesome, 
 and then she was " fickle." 
 
 With so many crimes to her charge, and all so well-proved, 
 did she not deserve her misfortunes ? But I see I have 
 forgotten the greatest. The queen, who was almost a 
 prisoner of State in her chateau of Versailles, took the liberty 
 sometimes to go on foot, followed by a servant, through one 
 of the galleries, to the apartments of Mme. de Lamballe or 
 Mme. de Polignac. How shocking a scandal! The late 
 queen was always carried in a sedan-chair to see her cousin, 
 Mme. de Talmont, where she found a rather bad company 
 of Pohsh relations, who claimed to be Lecziaskis. 
 
 The queen, beautiful as the day, and almost always in 
 her own hair, — except on occasions of ceremony, when her 
 toilet, about which she never cared, was regulated for her, — 
 was naturally talked about ; for everybody wanted to please 
 
MEMOIK OF THE PEINCE DE LIGNE. 201 
 
 her. The late Leczinska, old before her time and rather 
 ugly, in a large cap called, I think, " butterfly," would some- 
 times command certain questionable plays at the theatre; 
 but no one found fault with her for that. Devout ladies 
 like scandals. When, in our time, they gave us a play of 
 that sort we used to call it the queen's repertory, and Marie 
 Antoinette would scold us, laughing, and say we might at least 
 make known it was the queen before her. No one ever dared 
 to risk too free a speech in her presence, nor too gay a tale, 
 nor a coarse insinuation. She had taste and judgment ; and 
 as for the three Graces, she united them all in herself alone. 
 
 Oh ! what reason I had, when she said to me one day that 
 they deprived her of all her little pleasures, to call the 
 French her charming, vile subjects. But those who have 
 acquired such glory imder the banners of their Emperor 
 Napoleon, they, at least, wlU pity the unhappy princess 
 whom they would have served so well, being themselves 
 guiltless of the ingratitude of those to whom she did, or 
 tried to do, good. 
 
 Who could see her, day after day, without adoring her ? 
 I did not feel it fully until she said to me : " My mother 
 thinks it wrong that you should be so long at Versailles. 
 Go and spend a little time with your command, and write 
 letters to Vienna to let them know you are there, and then 
 come back here." That kindness, that delicacy, but more 
 than all the thought that I must spend two weeks away 
 from her, brought the tears to my eyes, which her pretty 
 heedlessness of those early days, keeping her a hundred 
 leagues away from gallantry, prevented her from seeing. 
 As I never have believed in passions that are not reciprocal, 
 two weeks cured me of what I here avow to myself for the 
 first time, and would never avow to others in my lifetime 
 for fear of being laughed at. 
 
202 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNB. 
 
 But consider how this sentiment, which gave place to 
 the warmest friendship, would have detected a passion in 
 that charming queen, had she felt one for any man ; and 
 with what horror I saw her given in Paris, and thence, 
 thanks to their vile libels, all over Europe, to the Due de 
 Coigny, to M. le Comte d'Artois, M. de Lamberti, M. de 
 Fersen, Mr. Conway, Lord Stratheven, and other Englishmen 
 as silly as himself, and two or three stupid Germans. Did 
 I ever see aught in her society that did not bear the stamp 
 of grace, kindness, and good taste ? She scented an intriguer 
 at a league's distance ; she detested pretensions of all kinds. 
 It was for this reason that the whole family of Polignac 
 and their friends, such as Valentin Esterhazy, Baron 
 Bezenval, and Vaudreuil, also S^gur and I, were so agree- 
 able to her. She often laughed with me at the struggle for 
 favour among the courtiers, and even wept over some who 
 were disappoiated. The death of Louis XV., at which I was 
 present, is accurately described by the Baron de Bezenval in 
 his Memoirs; it was then that the struggle began, and 
 standing well with both parties, I was a witness of all that 
 took place. The baron thinks that the queen paid great 
 attention to what was said to her for the nomination of this 
 minister or that. She might have been interested in any of 
 them when they were dismissed ; but they never were dis- 
 missed through her ; she has often told me that the fear of 
 depriving the king of a man who might perhaps serve him 
 in some way that she was not in a position to judge of, kept 
 her from ever interfering. 
 
 The queen was too light-hearted and careless about the 
 libels against her, and I often blamed her; but she never 
 neglected the dinners in public, the tiresome, formal receptions 
 of Sundays and Wednesdays, the Tuesdays of the ambassa- 
 dors and foreigners, the presentations, which were called 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 203 
 
 les rSvSrences, the morning Courts (called the toilet of the 
 queen), which took place before the procession through the 
 gallery to daily mass, nor yet the Thursdays with the great 
 and wearisome nobles and prudes in grand apparel ; she her- 
 self appearing always with decorum and magnificence at the 
 festivals, and with dignity and elegance at her carnival balls 
 and at her suppers every night with the family in Monsieur's 
 apartments. 
 
 In the early days of the friendship between the queen and 
 the Comtesse Jules, I was playing with them, one against the 
 two at billiards, when they began to dispute and wrestle to 
 know which of the two was the stronger. The queen in- 
 sisted that it was she. " Because you play the queen," said 
 her friend. "Quarrel about it," I said; "quarrel." "Well, 
 if we do quarrel," said the queen to the countess, "what 
 would you do ? " " Oh ! " said the other, " I should weep — 
 weep — weep ; but I should console myself, because you are 
 a queen." Her conduct proved this in later and more serious 
 years. She detested the Court, and only remained there from 
 attachment and gratitude. There never were any people 
 more virtuous or more disinterested than the Jules [de 
 Polignac]. The Comtesse Diane was the person who put 
 the most piquancy into that Court hfe. 'T was a pity there 
 was not more of it ; but fear of making talk and giving rise 
 to gossip produced too much monotony. 
 
 At Fontainebleau a storm arose suddenly one day about the 
 queen's intimacy with Mme. de Polignac. The Chevalier de 
 Luxembourg produced it to serve his project of driving away 
 the countess, whose good little head and excellent heart he 
 feared, wanting himself to govern the queen. Mme. de 
 Polignac went to her and said : " We do not yet love each 
 other enough to be unhappy if we part ; but I see it coming ; 
 soon I shall not be able to leave you. Forestall that time. 
 
204 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 Send me from Fontainebleau ; I am not made for the Court ; 
 everybody here knows too much for me." Her horses were 
 akeady harnessed to go. The queen embraced her, took both 
 her hands, conjured her, entreated her, and flung herself upon 
 her neck. The door was partly open; the Comte d'Artois 
 saw the little scene as he entered. He laughed and went 
 away saying, " Don't disturb yourselves," and told every one 
 how he had found the two friends. 
 
 The king, in whom I hoped at times for something of 
 merit, whom I protected if I may say so, endeavouring often 
 to lift his soul to some interesting conversation instead of his 
 foolish talk or his hunting stories, was very fond of rough 
 play. His attacks usually fell on Conflans and the Coignys, 
 those friends of the Jules (by " the Jules " I mean the Poli- 
 gnacs, whom I call so in spite of their duchy, for which they 
 did not care). The queen succeeded in correctiag him of 
 this. It was at his couchers that his Majesty chiefly pleased 
 himself iu tormenting us. He had, however, a sort of tact 
 in the midst of his vulgar play. One day, when he threat-' 
 ened us with his cordon bleu, trying to throw it at our noses 
 in such a way as to hook those who wore ear-rings, as I did, 
 the Due de Laval went away. The king called after him : 
 " Don't be afraid, monsieur ; it does n't concern you." An- 
 other day he almost strangled me with his rough gayety ; I 
 was angry and said : " The king has touched me ; may God 
 cure me !" This only lasted a year or two. Often in public 
 he showed consideration for those who deserved it. I have 
 known him once or twice to rebuke persons roughly for 
 taking precedence of me. 
 
 Cr^qui, a great censurer, said to me one day : " Do you 
 want to know what those three brothers are ? — a fat locksmith, 
 the wit of a provincial caf^, and a boulevard strutter." The 
 last two descriptions were caricatures of Monsieur, who had 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 205 
 
 mucli memory, much information, and was famous and quick 
 at quotations, and of the Comte d'Artois, who made the most 
 of his figure certainly, and played the pretty French prince 
 sometimes ; but it became him, for he had as much grace as 
 he had kindness, and he was very trustworthy in his relations 
 to others. 
 
 I had the pleasure of being obstinate occasionally with 
 sovereigns, who are often despots in merry-making. M. le 
 Comte d'Artois wanted me to hunt the wild-boar with him. 
 " To-morrow, at seven o'clock." — " No, monseigneur ; in the 
 first place, it is too early, and then the queen wishes me to 
 ride on horseback with her as far as the Cross of Toulouse." 
 — " I don't wish it." — " It will be done, for all that."— " You 
 will come with me." — " No, monseigneur." — "I give you my 
 word that you shaU." — " And I mine that I shall not." 
 
 The next momiag at six o'clock, great racket at my door ; 
 the young prince attacked, and I defended. He called our 
 common friends, and I barricaded myself iq. He burst the 
 door, dragged me out of bed, shouting victory, put on my 
 clothes himself, and forced me along almost lifting me on 
 the horse he had in waiting for me. Just as he was mount- 
 ing his, after putting my foot in the stirrup, I escaped. He 
 flung himself off and pursued me. I hid, and he passed me. 
 I did not know where I was going, but I rushed through the 
 king's kitchens; twenty scullions and as many saucepans 
 gave chase, taking me perhaps for a poisoner of his Majesty. 
 I ran through a crowd of porters, who took me for an assas- 
 sin, and were after me with their long chair-poles. 
 
 The young prince was off the scent and I had time to 
 look about me. I went up to the theatre and hid behind 
 a lot of scenes that were piled on the ground. I was be- 
 trayed by some workmen, who went down, and up came the 
 prince and discovered my feet and tried to pull me out by 
 
206 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 them. I got thein free and sprang the other way, but in try- 
 ing to clear the scenes I met with a devil of a nail, which 
 tore my whole right cheek and covered me with blood. 
 The prince was in great distress, and consoled me and 
 kissed me and went off to his hunt and his wild-boars 
 alone. I put plenty of salt in my wound and bathed it 
 with brandy, and took my handkerchief; the queen was 
 waiting for me, and I mounted my horse and rode off with 
 her. That was how, though I suffered much, for the cold 
 was severe, I kept my word of honour to the priace. 
 
 It was during such rides as those, all alone with the 
 queen, though followed by the royal cortege, that she told 
 me many interesting anecdotes which concerned her, and 
 about the many traps that were laid to give her lovers. 
 The Duchesse de Duras, when it was her week for attend- 
 ance, went with us, but we left her vnth the equerries, 
 and this was one of the queen's most heedless acts and 
 greatest crimes ; for she never did anything worse than rid 
 herself of bores, both male and female ; but such are always 
 implacable. 
 
 AU these rides in the Bois de Boulogne and to Verriferes, 
 not to speak of the hunts, were too charming not to be 
 envied. In the same way they spoilt our pleasant and in- 
 nocent nights on the terrace of Versailles, which reminded 
 me of a ball at the Opera. We listened to the conversa- 
 tions ; we mystified some, and were hoaxed ourselves ; I gave 
 my arm to the queen and her gayety was delightful. Some- 
 times we had music in the bosquets of the Orangery, where, 
 in a niche and very high up, is a bust of Louis XIV. The 
 Comte d'Artois used to say to him sometimes, " Good even- 
 ing, grandpapa!" One night I arranged with the queen 
 to put myself behind the bust and answer him ; but a fear 
 that they would not leave the ladder to enable me to get 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 207 
 
 down made me abandon that project. But sometimes there 
 was in all this more Court malice than kindliness. The 
 Duo de Guignes had much of the former ; he gave his arm 
 sometimes to Madame, and to Mme. la Comtesse d'Artois. 
 Many reasons and some malignity made us drop this pas- 
 time, for apparently it is written above that you must not 
 amuse yourself at a Court. 
 
 After that we had balls at the Saint-Martin in the theatre 
 at Versailles, where none but the royal family and the 
 troupe of Mile, de Montansier were present. The company 
 was found to be too good and too bad, though we had with 
 us all the households of the kiag and princes. A mask 
 addressed verses to the queen, and gossip was made out of 
 nothing. So there was another enjoyment given up. 
 
 I wanted myself to have a little prologue of Beaumarchais 
 acted in presence of the queen before the performance of 
 the " Noce de Figaro," for it would have amused her very 
 much. I had had it read before the gentlemen of the 
 Bedchamber, but the comedians opposed its being acted. 
 The parts were given to those who were to act in the 
 play, but they had to appear in their every-day clothes and 
 under their own names, and talk together about the beauties 
 and defects of the piece, and — I must own — laugh a 
 little at the public. It was full, as might be supposed, of 
 personalities, that were very ingenious. 
 
 The queen was charming to hoax, and there used to be 
 much pleasure in laying traps to embarrass her. If we 
 interpreted any of her remarks wrongly or maliciously she 
 would be angry, and then laugh and be more amiable than 
 ever. The grace she put into repairing her little inad- 
 vertences, which often occurred through a sort of ingen- 
 uousness, became her well; it pictured the goodness and 
 sensibility of her beautiful soul and added to the charm 
 
208 MEMOIR OP THE PRINCE DE LIGNB. 
 
 of her face, on which one could see, developing with blushes, 
 her pretty regrets and excuses, and sometimes her wish to 
 benefit. How many times have I not watched these emo- 
 ifcions succeeding one another, when, to amuse myself, I had 
 laid traps for her. Would that no others had ever been 
 laid to her injury ! And yet there was not as much gained 
 from the latter as the world supposed. The unfortunate 
 princess proved, again and again, on her way to death, her 
 too great dehcacy in never venturing to take upon herself 
 to oppose either the king or his ministers. The only serious 
 affair in which I saw her take part was the prevention, as 
 a Frenchwoman and also an Austrian, of a war which, with- 
 out her, would have broken out upon the Scheldt. The 
 ten millions which she induced the king to lend to the 
 Dutch Eepublic to pay the costs and appease her brother 
 the emperor, gave rise to the most stupid of calumnies, 
 namely: that she sent him money from the treasury. We 
 had no need of money ; the house of Austria was better off 
 than the house of Bourbon. 
 
 The blame cast upon her luxury was just as ill-founded. 
 There was never a lady-in-waiting, a king's mistress, or a 
 minister's wife, who did not have more than she. She 
 thought so little of her toilet that for a long time she let 
 her hair be dressed extremely ill by a man named Larceneur, 
 who was among those who went to fetch her from Vienna, 
 because she feared to give him pain by dismissing him. It 
 is true that, as soon as she was out of his hands, she would 
 put her own hands to her hair and arrange it to suit her 
 face. As for the slander about her gambling, I never saw 
 her lose more than two thousand louis, and that was in 
 games of etiquette, where she was always afraid of winning 
 from those who were obhged to take part in them. I 
 remember that one day I went into the antechamber and 
 
Memoir of the prince de lignE. 209 
 
 begged from her footmen twenty-five louis, which she wanted 
 to give to a woman in need. 
 
 Her so-called gallantry was never anything but a deep, 
 and perhaps distinguishing friendship for one or two persons, 
 and the general coquetry of a woman and a queen who seeks 
 to please everybody. Even in those earliest days, when her 
 youth and inexperience might have encouraged some to be 
 too much at their ease with her, there was not one of us who 
 had the happiness of daily intercourse with her who would 
 have dared to abuse it by even the most trifling impropriety ; 
 she made herself the queen, without being aware of it, and 
 we adored her, but did not dream of loving her. Her father, 
 Francis I., received at his table the principal officers of the 
 crown, and allowed them the utmost hberty. Maria Theresa 
 admitted to her intimacy most of the Court ladies, and even 
 stayed with some during the summer in their country- 
 houses. She might there be seen walking up and down and 
 knitting in the gardens, or reading in a grotto, without a 
 single lady-of-honour in attendance. It was thus that Marie 
 Antoinette, from her very childhood, had habits of ianocent 
 freedom and familiarity which, when she brought them to 
 France, were judged severely. 
 
 In the matter of her finances, I remember that one day 
 she amused herself very much when I laughed at her strong- 
 box, in which I knew there was not a siugle louis, being 
 taken to Fontainebleau at full gaUop, surrounded by guards, 
 according to a ridiculous Court custom, Hke numerous 
 others, — such, for instance, as paying sixty thousand francs 
 a year for twine to tie up parcels. The. queen laughed her- 
 self at abuses she dared not reform ; and especially about 
 her chicken which cost a hundred louis a year. I forget 
 whether it was the late queen, or Marie Th^rfese, or Anne, 
 who asked for a chicken after dinner, for either herself or 
 
 VOL. I. — 14 
 
210 MEMOIR OK THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 her dogs. There was none to be had ; and every year since 
 then provision had been made at the same hour, which 
 became in the end a regular Court charge and perquisite. 
 
 Will it be beUeved, A propos of this, that Louis XV., 
 wounded on the Epiphany of 1767, was obliged to go with- 
 out his broth because of a dispute between the kitchen 
 department and the one most contrary to it, namely, that of 
 the apothecary ? The latter declared that the former had 
 nothing to do with the kiog's victuals except when his 
 Majesty was in perfect health. 
 
 After a while the queen, being no longer so youn^, thought 
 that she might enjoy the Opera-balls as quietly and safely as 
 the most ordinary woman of her kingdom. She was not 
 more fortunate in this than in other matters. In fact I 
 could prove that, beginning with the death of five or six 
 hundred persons on the day of her marriage with the best, 
 but not the most tempting man in the kingdom, I have 
 never known her enjoy a perfectly happy day. The Opera- 
 balls were the signal for a fresh persecution. The queen, not 
 to be recognized, as she was certain of being by us, and even 
 by Frenchmen who knew her but slightly, spoke only to 
 puzzle foreigners. Hence a thousand stories and a thousand 
 lovers, English, Eussians, Swedes, and Poles. I never liked 
 that she should go to those balls, partly for this very reason, 
 and partly because she was very tiresome the next day, hav- 
 ing so many things to tell about the masks, and what she 
 had said, and what they had said to her, tiU it was quite 
 intolerable. If we had been willing to do the same it would 
 have been more piquant than her pretended adventures. 
 
 I should not write all this if I were to be read at present. 
 But a hundred years later these little things, which now 
 seem nothing, wiU give pleasure. I judge by that which I 
 have received from the " Souvenirs of Madame de Caylus," 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 211 
 
 the " Memoirs of the Mother of the Eegent," those of Saint- 
 Simon,^ and other writers of anecdotes of the Court of 
 France of that period. There are hundreds of other anec- 
 dotes that I have now forgotten that are worth perhaps 
 more than these. 
 
 After a charming trip to Spa and Eocroy, which I made 
 with M. le Comte d'Artois, he became very ill at BelcBil, 
 where I probably saved his life by deciding to have him 
 bled. People thought much good of me because I had pre- 
 pared fUes in his honour, which cost me 50,000 or 60,000 
 francs, and said nothing to him about them as he could not 
 enjoy them. There was to have been a military display in 
 the camp of a splendid company of my regiment, which I 
 had ordered to EelcBil as his guard, with music, songs, and 
 scenes of all kinds in different parts of the garden. Noth- 
 ing, however, took place except the illumination of my tem- 
 ples, islands, bosquets, corbeils, and the trees of the park, in 
 the style of the Champs-filys^es at the Opera, with plenty to 
 eat and drink for several thousands of spectators. All the 
 rest could not take place. I myself could not enjoy that 
 beautiful night scene, which seemed like a silvery day, for 
 not a single lamp was visible. I did not leave the prince, 
 and as soon as he was able to be put into a carriage I took 
 him from Beloeil to Versailles in sixteen hours. 
 
 As fUes of convalescence are usually as tiresome as the 
 illness itself, the Comtesse Diane determined to give one 
 to provoke him. The queen, who was partly in the secret, 
 brought the Comte d'Artois with her. He trembled when 
 he arrived. PoUgnac and Esterhazy, masked as Loves, 
 darted upon him, and held him almost throttled in his 
 
 ^ The prince must hare seen Saint-Simon's Memoirs in manuscript, 
 as Mme. du Deffand saw them, for they were not published, unless in frag- 
 ment*, during his lifetime. — Te. 
 
212 MEMOIR OF THE PEINCE DE LIGNE, 
 
 chair, beneath his own portrait, diabolically painted, under 
 which was the legend, " Vive Monseigneur, Comte Artois." 
 The Due de Guiche, as Genius, held his head. The Due 
 de Coigny preceded me, singing : " Via le Plaisir ! v'la le 
 Plaisir!" I had a coat and two huge wings exactly like 
 those of the cherubim in the parish church. The queen, 
 Mmes. de Polignac, de Guiche, and de Polastron were 
 dressed as shepherdesses ; de Lille as a shepherd, with a 
 sheep. We sang couplets as silly as the prince upon his 
 throne, where he behaved like a maniac. Miue were full 
 of insipid flattery about his face and other ponits, made 
 expressly to infuriate him. I never saw anything in better 
 taste than this piece of bad taste, which outdid all other 
 convalescent f gtes ; nothing could be gayer than the homage 
 of respect and love we paid to the prince, who, by his 
 grimaces, was sending us to the devil, not knowing at first 
 whether we were in fim or in earnest. 
 
 Apropos of that trip to Eocroy : suddenly, between there 
 and Spa, we met at daylight some fifty armed peasants. I 
 thought they were deserters. The Comte dArtois had no 
 arms, nor I either. Just as we were regretting that mis- 
 chance, the vivats reassured us. They turned out to be a 
 band of my faithful subjects, with bad faces but good hearts, 
 who were awaiting me on the frontier of my little sover- 
 eignty, which I did not know lay on our way. They led me 
 up a steep place, where the wheels of the carriage had to 
 be blocked while I received the homage of clergy and 
 magistrates, after which we continued our way. 
 
 The Chevalier de Luxembourg had given me a taste for 
 sorcery. I made myself a sorcerer's apprentice for over a 
 year; but in spite of my desire to behold something 
 marvellous, and all they did to show it to me, I left the 
 business without succeeding. In vain I passed whole nights 
 
MEMOIK OF THE PEINCE DE LIGNE. 213 
 
 at the house of an old Comtesse de Silly in the faubourg 
 Saint-Marceau, where she saw spirits, or said she did, in my 
 presence ; in vain a certain Chavigny worked over me ; and 
 a man named Beauregard, on the night between Holy 
 Thursday and Good Friday, performed the most horrible 
 conjurations and tricks around me and the Dues d'Orl^ans 
 and Fitz-James. The latter in signing his name upset the 
 inkstand over our compact with the devil, who, apparently 
 furious at this lack of attention, refused to appear. An 
 Abb^ Beudet, who gave me dancing lessons, said one day : 
 "I cannot come to-morrow; no, it is impossible" (counting 
 on his fingers) ; " but the day after I will come ; we have 
 an assemblage of spirits in Philadelphia, and I must have 
 time to get there and back." 
 
 I cannot conceive how, with the face, clothes, accent, and 
 queue of a quack-doctor, Cagliostro ever made dupes. He 
 was mine. I took a false patient to him. He gave him 
 his worthless yellow liquid, and after telling me how it had 
 cured the whole harem of the Emperor of Morocco, he 
 said that when he was not sure of his remedy in some 
 desperate case he raised his eyes to heaven (which he then 
 did) and said, " Great God, so blasphemed by Eousseau and 
 Voltaire, you have a servant in the Comte de Cagliostro; 
 do not abandon the Comte de Cagliostro!" And God did 
 not abandon him, for he had a hundred persons in his ante- 
 chamber that day. This was at Strasburg. 
 
 Mesmer acknowledged to me himself that if he could 
 succeed in directing the effects of magnetism he should be 
 an able man; but until that, and also the steering of bal- 
 loons were discovered they would always be two useless, and 
 sometimes dangerous things. But the world has ever risen 
 up and will continue to rise up against useful novelties, 
 instead of testing them and proving them. If a sovereign 
 
214 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 would once say, " I will it," these things would be examiaed 
 to their depths. As it is, the councils, the little committees, 
 the examining commissioners, with that air of superi- 
 ority that comes from ignorance, pronounce them all mere 
 nothings. How long did it take for inoculation and light- 
 ning-rods to get a hearing ? They refused telegraphs. They 
 opposed thermo-lamps, — in which there may, perhaps, be 
 certain improvements to discover. In our coal-fields in 
 Belgium we have numbers of Swiss peasants in whose 
 hands I have frequently seen the hazel-wand turn.- As it 
 marks the position of the vein but does not show whether 
 it is considerable enough to justify the outlay on machinery 
 to work it, that experiment once cost me fifty thousand 
 florins uselessly. 
 
 In the matter of balloons, the most celebrated experience 
 of that kind is one that made me tremble. My son Charles, 
 who proves only too well his love for danger, was one of the 
 eight who went up in the celebrated Montgolfier machine 
 at Lyons. When I lost him from sight in the clouds, where 
 the Ehone and the Sa5ne looked to him like little white 
 threads, I was in a terrible state. Happily, I saw them 
 descend, without injury, though the shock was violent, about 
 a league from the town ; after which I enjoyed the applause 
 given to him that evening at the theatre, where we went. 
 
 I have always regretted that I paid too little attention to 
 the predictions of the great Etteilla. When that sorcerer 
 arrived in Paris, I took the Due d'Orl^ans to see him, on 
 the fourth floor of a house in the rue Fromenteau. He 
 knew neither of us. He talked to the duke of thrones, revo- 
 lutions, Versailles, the royal family, and many surprising 
 matters, to which my want of confidence prevented me from 
 attaching value. I only remember those things confusedly, 
 but I am persuaded that they turned the duke's head. 
 
WyOi^^/c/iy 
 
MEMOIR 01" THE PRINCE DE LIGHE. 215 
 
 Fatal result of my imprudence, if that were so ! EtteiUa 
 was not a mere vulgar fortune-teUer, nor the deluder of 
 credulous women; on the contrary, the most intelligent 
 persons consulted him. He depicted before the eyes of 
 Mme. de M^rode a state bed on which lay the body of her 
 husband, who was then in perfect health, in a room and sur- 
 rounded by persons unknown to EtteiUa ; all of which came 
 true in a fortnight. He announced to me that I should die 
 seven days after hearing a great noise. I am stUl expecting 
 it ; but as I have, in the meantime, heard the noise of two 
 sieges and the explosion of two magazines, I think that he 
 must have been mistaken. 
 
 The society of the Due d'Orleans was, until a year before 
 the Eevolution, composed of all that was best among men. 
 Quantum mutatus ab illo ! Damnable spirit of vengeance, 
 incalculable in results if yielded to ! Who could be purer 
 in this world than the Chevalier de Durfort ? yet he, MM. 
 de Pons, Thiars, Coigny, Sdgur, father and son, Lauzim, 
 Chabot, Fitz-James, with several others and myself, loved 
 the Due d'Orleans. Had there been any appearance of his 
 becoming a monster, should we not have seen it ? We 
 saw him risk his life to save that of a servant; we saw 
 him renounce shooting and weep because his huntsman, 
 rising suddenly from a ditch, received a few shot in the 
 neck from his gun. Miserly he may have been in little 
 things, but he was generous in great ones. His orgies were 
 fables. He was always of correct behaviour himself, even 
 in the midst of bad company ; polite, with a certain haughti- 
 ness towards men, attentive and almost respectful to women ; 
 gay himself, with good taste in his jokes ; he had more wit 
 than conversation. Under other circumstances he would 
 have resembled the regent [his great-grandfather] ; he had 
 the same class of mind. He was well-formed, well-made, 
 
216 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 with handsome eyes. It must have been his infamous rev- 
 olutionary intrigues that made his visage red and bloated 
 and hideous, for what passes in the soul is painted out- 
 wardly. When one has been his friend (a word of which 
 he knew the value) one must weep before detesting him, 
 and forget the pleasant man in order to loathe the wretch 
 who voted the death of his king. 
 
IX. 
 
 1778-1780. 
 
 THE BAVARIAN WAR: A TRIP TO SPA. 
 
 [This political war, called by Frederick the Great his little 
 lawsuit, was caused by Austria endeavouring to make good 
 her pretensions to part of Bavaria while upholding Charles- 
 Theodore, elector palatiae, the rightful claimant of the 
 throne.] 
 
 January 1, 1778, the Emperor Joseph marched his troops 
 into Bavaria. This alarmed all foreign courts, and still more 
 his own, which foresaw that, little ready as we were for war, 
 without a fortress or the necessary levies to complete the 
 army, we should be long in getting to work. From the 
 Black Sea to the Ocean, from the Adriatic and the Lake of 
 Como to the Rhine, all the troops of Austria were put in 
 motion. Those in Bohemia were collected around Prague 
 on the 10th of April, but they were far from considerable. 
 The king of Prussia on the same day made his headquarters 
 at Frankensteia, around which place his troops assembled at 
 the same time as ours around Prague. 
 
 The emperor arrived at Prague. Many couriers went and 
 came between there and Vienna and BerUn. Both sides wrote 
 irritating letters, and embittered each other. The king of 
 Prussia, it is true, answered one letter, in which he was told 
 that we should be very glad to take lessons of so great a 
 captain, by saying that if he thought himself capable of being 
 that he should remember the sad fate of Mithridates. 
 
 However, he published a few manifestoes, and mounted 
 
218 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE BE LIGNB. 
 
 his horse. They gave me the command of the left wing of 
 the army. I commanded in Prague till the 1st of May, 
 and when they divided the army in two I received the com- 
 mand of all the grenadiers of the half that was under the 
 orders of Mardchal Loudon. The emperor put himself at 
 the head of the other half, and took up a fine position 
 behind the Elbe, which secured the Bavarian monarchy and 
 did great honour to Mar^chal Lacy. The confidence of the 
 emperor in him, and the quickness with which he seized 
 upon all the advantages of that perfect trust do him also 
 great honour. 
 
 My brother-in-law Lichtenstein had a corps at Leitmeritz. 
 Prince Henry having brought his whole army and camped on 
 the left bank of the Elbe, Lichtenstein expected to be at- 
 tacked, and M. de Loudon sent me to support him. The 
 march was long, and enabled me to make acquaintance with 
 the brave fellows I had under my orders. I don't know but 
 what I contributed a little to excite them, but their own 
 spirit was so good that if I had been given an enterprise, no 
 matter how dangerous, to carry out with them, that day 
 would have been the finest of my life. I rested them at 
 Ploschkowitz, a little short of Leitmeritz, and sent word to 
 Lichtenstein that if he wanted me I was close by him. He 
 did not expect me to come at that pace. But the next day 
 M. de Loudon made me march as fast as I could to Pleiswedel, 
 whence, he said, he had news that the enemy was advancing. 
 
 It is hard to feel you are doing a useless thing. I was 
 very certain it was a false alarm, and that M. de Loudon was 
 too hasty in marching his whole army. The night was dark, 
 the weather dreadful, the defiles so dangerous that the men 
 dropped in the ranks with twisted ankles, and when we ar- 
 rived it proved to be a flock of sheep that report had turned 
 into the enemy's column. 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 219 
 
 I increased my share of the discomfort of this miserable 
 march by going myself to mark out the camp. The violence 
 of the wind and rain continuiag, I got my corps into Pleis- 
 wedel pell-meU as it arrived. The poor fellows slept stand- 
 ing, there being no space under shelter to lie down; and 
 within an hour orders came to return to Leitmeritz. In vain 
 I represented to M. de Loudon, who came past himself just 
 at that time, that my men were too tired to march at once, 
 and also that my brother-in-law was not pressed (for I had 
 made a little reconnoissance of his position). I had to re- 
 turn, full of respect and admiration for the good stuff of my 
 men, — who would actually have been gay had they had the 
 strength, — to my first camp, where I had preserved my straw, 
 so sure was I that the enemy was not before us, though I 
 never thought of the sheep. In my opiaion that scout ought 
 to have been punished. 
 
 Lichtensteia showed me his arrangements, which were all 
 the stronger because the devil himself could not have made 
 him let go of any one of his defensive points. I defy an army 
 to have a braver and more determined commander ; and with 
 it all, he was active, confident, and able to inspire his own 
 qualities into his troops. I think he was rather too much in 
 love vnth. his tMe de pont ; which was made, I admit, with 
 the utmost care, but the taking of which might have been 
 easier than he thought, because of a ravine in which the 
 enemy could have hidden and rushed to the attack. But 
 perhaps more agUe troops than the Prussians were needed for 
 that sort of thing. ' T was work for my Wallons and the 
 Hungarians, who succeed in that line better than troops 
 of all the other nations. 
 
 We were persecuted by the elements at the opening of this 
 campaign, and had to endure one storm the Hke of which was 
 never before seen. Many of the men came near being 
 
220 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 drowned in camp, which in ten minutes was a deep lake. 
 The baggage, the bread, and all the munitions were spoilt, for 
 there was not a moment in which to save them. The affair 
 happened at three o'clock in the morning; I rushed to the 
 camp to share the trouble and do the best I could for the 
 men, whom I cantoned in the neighbouring villages ; but they 
 went without bread for a day, which was very annoying. To 
 console me, I was told that the emperor's army went with- 
 out it for five. The marshal wanted to hang some two or 
 three persons who he thought were the cause of the trouble. 
 Nobody was hung, but it cost me two or three hundred 
 ducats to feed my men, for I bought up all the loaves of 
 bread and the kochjes from the surrounding and even the 
 distant villages, and I gave out brandy and beer till I could 
 get the loaves brought in. 
 
 But Destioy does sometimes send us evil for our good. In 
 order to dry the cartridges we were obliged to undo them, 
 and I then discovered what was either a rascality or a very 
 dangerous piece of negligence. There was not in any of 
 them as much as half the necessary powder. I reported this 
 to the marshal, who was for hanging somebody else. But 
 where could we -find him? The matter was put right; and 
 that tempest did us great service, and taught us a good lesson 
 at the beginning of a war. 
 
 July 29 I received orders to start in all haste for Micken- 
 han. It was a rough march, but I reached there at eleven 
 o'clock, and at five o'clock orders came from M. de Loudon, 
 who is always in a hurry, as I have often had occasion to know, 
 to march on quickly to Nimes, without the slightest informa- 
 tion or caution accompanying the order, which was brought 
 by a simple cavalry-man. God knows the sort of camping- 
 place I had for that night. I was frightened when I saw it 
 in the dawn. My staff-officers were sent about everywhere 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 221 
 
 for information, my son Charles among them, although I was 
 afraid he might be captured. I found myself on the bank of 
 the Poltzen, a little river until then unknown on military 
 maps, and I burned three bridges to protect myself. 
 
 An officer, whom I have never met since, rode up to me 
 with a pursued air and said aloud that I should be attacked 
 in a few miuutes, for the enemy were mounting a height 
 which commanded my position. What a foolish, bad, and 
 dangerous thing to tell me this in a loud voice in front of my 
 corps, part of whom heard it and would surely communicate 
 it to the rest ! He might have perceived that we were caught 
 ia a trap. " How fortunate ! " I cried ; " just what I wanted ! 
 We will head them off, or receive them well ; " and I ordered, 
 " Forward, march ! " to one division. 
 
 I had no choice. I brought my artillery to the front, in- 
 tending to rush on with my Hxmgarians, sabre in hand, and 
 capture the gims the Prussians had no doubt established on 
 that height, and so put a bold face on the matter to prevent 
 the enemy from discoveriag what a bad position I held. I 
 put pickets in the two woods to my left, a battalion in the 
 open space, and sent patrols along my right, who had not 
 much to fear there. My grenadiers, on the first appearance 
 that there was any work to be done, swore to me that I 
 could safely count upon them, in a way that made me be- 
 lieve it ; their good-wiU and their friendship for me has often 
 touched my heart. Then I went myself to reconnoitre the 
 approaching enemy. There proved to be no infantry at all ; 
 nothing more than a squadron of red hussars drawn up be- 
 fore Bartzdorf. What proves that I am not rash and dis- 
 posed to risk things and expose my men, as some people 
 have said of me, is that I did not dare to attack them, feeling 
 sure they were weU supported, and fearing they were placed 
 there expressly to draw me on and then surround me. But 
 
222 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 it seemed hard to pass by them, at the beginning of a war, 
 with a fairly considerable force ; when one has never before 
 served as a commanding-general, one does want to do some- 
 thing distinguished. Every time I saw my generals or their 
 adjutants coming after me to talk to me of the orders to 
 march I galloped the other way to gain time, hoping at least 
 to get my cannon on them before I should have to go. But 
 in vain did I try to cheat friends and enemies ; the day was 
 failing, and the distance to Nimes was still great. 
 
 On the road orders met me to go on to Hirschberg, and 
 the moment I arrived there I received other orders to stay 
 at Nimes, M. de Loudon informing me that he meant to 
 attack the next day. I replied that I was glad of it, and 
 would be back in three hours, if he desired it. He returned 
 word to stay where I was ; that he had changed his plans, 
 and would join me at Hirschberg before daylight. He 
 wanted news of General Devins. 
 
 M. de Loudon, whose activity is equalled only by his 
 courage, arrived the next day, August 2, in frightful weather, 
 at three in the morning. His temper matched the weather. 
 . . . There was talk of evacuating Prague, and going to 
 Kolin. . . . M. de Loudon was furious, and wanted to quit 
 the command. I represented to him that we were lost if he 
 did so, " for," I said to him, " your reputation is our security." 
 In the old war bugbears were not made out of everything, as 
 they seemed to be in this. 
 
 The emperor arrived at our camp, not choosing to stay 
 with his own army and be harassed by the negotiations for 
 peace that were going on between the empress and King of 
 Prussia, at the rear of the latter's army. He seemed to 
 desire that something should be done. The marshal, who 
 was in despair at all the conflicting orders he received, and 
 the little satisfaction given to him in general, promised to do 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 223 
 
 all that was wished provided he received positive orders, 
 especially orders to fight, which was what he wanted ; but 
 he declared that he required a plan that was not so vague 
 as that which was heing made and unmade at every 
 moment. 
 
 My Wallons arrived one day while the emperor was with 
 us. He was much pleased with them, and told me that in 
 all his armies there were no troops, except the Lycanians, 
 who were so well trained as my regiment; and he added 
 that it was so handsome, gay, and agile that he had never 
 seen anything finer, — it was a true guard-battahon. I was 
 busy the day the regiment arrived, with a reconnoissance, and 
 could not go to see it till the day after. I shall never forget 
 how I was received, — the clapping of hands, the vivats, the 
 shouts that were heard a league off, the touching things they 
 said, their jovial greeting as they surrounded me and ran 
 after me ; it is indescribable ; it filled me for all my life 
 with gratitude. 
 
 His Imperial Majesty was also touched by the reception 
 (half curiosity, half enthusiasm) which my Wallons gave to 
 him. They had never before seen him. His face, his at- 
 taching manner, his friendship for soldiers, his way of talk- 
 ing with them won their hearts ; a little more and they 
 would have followed him all the way to headquarters. In 
 fact, there was difficulty in stopping the French-speaking 
 ones, who have much of the character of that nation ; those 
 who speak German, coming from Limbourg and Luxem- 
 bourg, resemble the Germans, while those who speak Flem- 
 ish are Kke the Dutch. The latter, when they first join, 
 are less good than the other two; but they soon get the 
 esprit de corps; at the end of three months they are one 
 and aU gay, sensible, brave Wallons, soldiers to the core. 
 
 Here is a song that I made for them, to the air of " The 
 
224 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 Grenadiers' March;" I taught them to march to it in the 
 last war. No one would believe of what use such songs 
 can be on the day of an action; they are really enough 
 sometimes .to win a battle. As for the verses, I know they 
 are not the Hymns of the Ancients, but then, we have 
 neither Greeks nor Eomans in these days. My soldiers 
 are gayer, jolher, and quite as brave, but they do not under- 
 stand fine poetry as well. 
 
 Follow me, Grenadiers ! 
 Crowned with laurel I 
 Lay low 
 And overthrow 
 Our proud and haughty foe ; 
 Well the Walloons they know, 
 Deadly in quarrel. 
 
 Honour's voice calls to us ! 
 Charge now or never I 
 See, they fly ! 
 Fast they fly ! 
 Seize their flags ! is the cry ; 
 Ours now the victory ; 
 Onward forever ! 
 
 And when the day is won, 
 
 Bards, sing the story I 
 Hail the great Emperor I 
 Hail this one victory more ! 
 Honour his mighty ng,me I 
 Honour our Walloon fame, 
 
 Leading to glory I 
 
 M. de Loudon, finding that I never gave him the alarm, 
 would sometimes give it to me. He would send me word 
 that I should be attacked the next day, and I would send 
 back word that I should not be attacked. But I was none 
 the less alert, and was always on horseback two hours before 
 day, and sometimes all night if a musket went off. On the 
 
MEMOIR OP THE PRINCE DB HGNE. 225 
 
 heights above our position was the convent of PSsig, where 
 there were but forty-two men, who spent their time during 
 the day in watching what was going on in our camps. This 
 perpetual annoyance of being gazed at through a spy-glass 
 irritated M. de Loudon, and he spoke to me about it several 
 times. I told him I would like to attack the heights ; but 
 it would be hard to hold the place, as it was nearer to 
 Prince Henry than to him. He said it could be done, and 
 I had better try to take them if I could. 
 
 I was glad of the permission, never doubting that M. de 
 Moltendorf and M. de Belling would support me. But the 
 Prussian hussars, who were lurking very close to me in the 
 woods, captured all the aides-de-camp whom I sent to those 
 generals, and to the commanders of my small detached 
 corps. Consequently, no one came. The attack on the con- 
 vent failed ; the garrison was warned. My brave Lycanians 
 began the attack before dayhght, just as I was forming be- 
 low on the plain. Fifty were detailed for the assault ; all 
 of them wanted to be chosen, but we had only five ladders, 
 and had I sent for more the news would have spread about 
 the country. The besiegers were received with a hail of 
 stones ; Colonel d'Aspremont could not hold them in ; their 
 worthy and respectable first-lieutenant, Wolf, was first to 
 mount the wall and was shot through the arm. Suddenly 
 a cry was raised that the door was burst in and all rushed 
 to it. A sergeant and five men were killed on the spot, and 
 twenty-five men were wounded. 
 
 Nothing has ever given me such pain as to see those 
 handsome, excellent Lycanians stretched side by side, and 
 saying to me and to their lieutenant such touching things. 
 At other times when I have caused the death of men (which 
 I might sometimes have avoided) I was with them, shariug 
 their dangers, so that the sight of their wounds did not 
 
 VOL. I. — 15 
 
226 MEMOIR OF THE IPRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 have the same effect upon me. But these poor fellows I 
 had sent to their work. Not being able to be everywhere, 
 and knowing, moreover, that it was more important to be 
 where I was and do what I was doing, I began to perceive 
 how hard it was to be a general officer, because he is obliged 
 to expose others to be killed while he himself is not. 
 
 A fool of a chaplain of one of my regiments was always 
 preaching to the men of Transubstantiation, Transfiguration, 
 and the Uke. " Pather," I said to him, " that is not what 
 you ought to tell those brave fellows, who can't understand 
 such things any more than you do. Talk to them in a 
 language that will help them to happiness. Eaise their 
 souls, instead of depressing them. Give them true ideas, 
 instead of muddling their minds. I will write you a 
 sermon. Learn it by heart, and preach it to them next 
 Sunday." 
 
 Nothing interesting happened with me until September 9, 
 when M. de Loudon came to my camp, and with that 
 precious gift of the coup d'oeil which he has, especially 
 under fire, when one would really. think the balls electrified 
 him, he put (without, as I believe, having thought of it 
 till that moment) my whole corps on the march toward 
 Gezoway. As I was used to him by this time, I did not 
 always obey him implicitly, and where he told me to put a 
 battalion I put a division, because I fully beheved he would 
 want more men and more cannon farther on. 
 
 We had scarcely reached Gezoway before the musketry 
 began, and he let me see an abridgment of the conqueror of 
 Tranckf ort. With his staff officers and mine, twenty hussars, 
 and twenty riflemen, we drove off all the Prussian hussars 
 and drove in all the outposts that we came to. The marshal, 
 thinking apparently that it was too small a skirmish for him 
 to be engaged in, never rested till he had drawn upon us a vol- 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DB LIGNB. 227 
 
 ley from the infantry behind tlie abattis. That was the first 
 time and the last time that he smiled throughout the whole 
 campaign. My Charles is so brave it is a joy to see him. I 
 held his little hand as we galloped along, saying to him: 
 " It would be a pleasure, — wouldn't it, my boy? — if you and 
 I were wounded by the same ball." After that he carried the 
 marshal's order to an officer, who was shot as he received it. 
 Charles was in all the enchantment of firing his pistol for the 
 first time, and that of being fired upon [he was just niae 
 years old]. 
 
 On the 20th the Prince of Mecklenbourg was sent to me, 
 at three o'clock in the afternoon, with the emperor's Hght- 
 horse cavalry and orders from the marshal to march at 
 once, watch the march of the enemy, and make all the 
 prisoners I could. In order to do that, inasmuch as it is for- 
 est all the way from Mmes to Htinerwasser, I was necessarily 
 obliged to go beyond those places. . . . M. de Loudon thought 
 me lost, cut off, or deserted. I reported to him that in my 
 position, which the enemy thought stronger than it was, I 
 expected to drive them from Neuschloss or even to cap- 
 ture them. I never doubted that M. de Loudon would be 
 enchanted to hear of me there, and would let me continue to 
 be the advanced guard of the army, which would follow me 
 at once into Lusatia. Instead of that, M. de Loudon sent 
 me an order to return. I did so with my own regiment and 
 Deux-Ponts'. My Croats were sent to M. de Eiese ; and my 
 corps, which might have done such service at that moment, 
 was dispersed among the different commands, because an 
 order had come to march to Prague, in spite of aU that I 
 could say to assure them that the enemy gave no sign of 
 moving in that direction. 
 
 When I saw the marshal, he asked me immediately who 
 had given me the order to attack and follow the enemy and 
 
228 MEMOIR OP THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 make prisoners. I told him it was the Prince of Mecklen" 
 bourg. He replied: "He is a prince, he is a general, but 
 I 'H teU him before you that he lied." I asked why he had 
 sent him to me with a strong reinfSrcement if he intended 
 me to do nothing ; and I told him that if he had guarded my 
 rear, I would at least have taken all the enemy's cannon and 
 baggage, which was much retarded owing to the heavy rains 
 of the last week. 
 
 Mar^chal de Loudon, who is a god in offensive warfare, 
 is a man, and even an ill-tempered man, on the defensive ; 
 he distrusts both friends and foes alike. He had promised 
 Maria Theresa not to give battle, and was afraid of being 
 forced into it if he allowed me to do as I wished. I had 
 good reason to wish it, for Prince Henry afterwards did me 
 the honour to tell me that, knowing me, he expected to lose 
 his rear-guard, disposed as it was, near the defile of Lockow. 
 The prince had no reason to blame himself for the risk he 
 ran; it was the king, his brother, who exposed him to it. 
 M. de Loudon was sorry afterwards for having vexed me, and 
 thanked me for my activity and readiness, but said they were 
 just as useless as his own, "in this dog of a political war'' 
 [ chienne de guerre politique]. Those were his words. He 
 added that he would keep no more corps in the advance; 
 but that if the emperor ever let him fight he would give me 
 the hardest work there was to do. 
 
 The first moment when I received M. de Loudon's letter 
 recalling me was perhaps the saddest of all my life. My 
 brain, excited by its visions of pursuit, capture, advantage, 
 and success, had hard work to recover itself. I think 
 there is nothing so sad in the world as to be called back 
 from the command of an advanced guard to a command in 
 the line ; but this was just what had happened to me. I 
 hardly knew the names of the regiments I now had under 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 229 
 
 me. There were none of my old men except my battalions 
 of grenadiers, whom I was charmed to see again. 
 
 During the advance I had not been willing to balk my 
 Charles' ardour, and I let him go on one occasion with the 
 first troop of light-horse, who, from too much eagerness and 
 too little order, were obhged to retreat with a loss of sixty 
 men killed, wounded, and taken prisoners. Charles called 
 out to " make front, and keep together ! " but they were 
 forced to retire at a gallop through a boggy country. Charles 
 showed great valour and coolness in the midst of danger. 
 
 I went into winter quarters at Nischberg much out of 
 temper, and so were others : Maria Theresa, because enough 
 had not been done in the war on which to make peace ; the 
 emperor, because the empress and King of Prussia were try- 
 ing to make it without his knowledge ; Mar^chal Lacy, be- 
 cause they had upset all his good plans, which, if followed, 
 would have given us the upper hand ; Mar^chal Loudon, for 
 having been kept as it were a mere observer ; the King of 
 Prussia, for having wasted twenty-five miUions of crowns and 
 twenty-five thousand men without having done what he 
 wanted ; and Prince Henry, for being so continually thwarted 
 by his brother. 
 
 All the armies were exercised through the winter, and they 
 even began a sort of campaign in 1779. Marches were made 
 on both sides, and a species of enterprise was undertaken in 
 Moravia. Frederick paid dear for the title of a just and dis- 
 interested man ; Maria Theresa bought, with much disquietude . 
 of soul and mind, a few small bailiwicks in Bavaria, and the 
 elector was amply compensated by the Order of the Golden 
 Fleece. [The war closed with the treaty of Teschen, which 
 recognized the succession of Charles Theodore, elector pala- 
 tine, to the throne of Bavaria, and the Palatinate of the 
 Ehine was united with that kingdom.] 
 
230 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 I went, to recover from a slight wound, to tlie baths of 
 Aix-la-Chapelle and Spa, where all the world of all the coun- 
 tries of Europe congregate, sent by the ignorance of doctors, 
 who find it much easier to say, " Cure yourself " than to 
 say, "I will cure you." I was intending also to cultivate 
 the lighter and more frivolous tastes of society, social ia- 
 timacies, gardening, literature, etc. I wanted to let my eyes, 
 my desires, my actions, rather than my heart, rove as it were. 
 
 I arrived at Spa and entered a great hall, where I saw one- 
 armed persons getting new arms, lame people makiug fine 
 legs, people with names, titles and faces that were all ridicu- 
 lous; I saw amphibious animals of Church and the world, 
 careering or strutting around ; a liae of English, hypochon- 
 driacal milords, walking mournfully about; Parisian prosti- 
 tutes entering with peals of laughter, to have it thought they 
 were amiable and at their ease, and hoping to become so by 
 that device ; I saw young men of all countries making believe 
 to be English, talking with closed teeth and dressed hke 
 grooms, their hair cut round, black and greasy, and two Jew 
 whiskers ioclosing dirty ears ; I saw French bishops with 
 their nieces ; an accoucheur with the Order of Saint-Michel ; 
 a dentist with that of the Golden Spur ; dancing-masters and 
 singing-masters, all in Eussian uniform ; Italians in that of 
 colonels in the Polish service; Dutchmen searching the 
 gazettes for rates of exchange; I saw thirty self-styled 
 Knights of Malta ; cordons of all colours, worn to left and 
 right and in the buttonhole ; stars of aU shapes and sizes, 
 worn also on both sides; fifty Chevaliers of Saint-Louis; 
 old duchesses coming in from their walk with great sticks 
 h la VendSme and three layers of white and rouge over 
 their wrinkles ; a few countesses playing double stakes ; 
 cruel, suspicious faces in the midst of a mountaia of 
 ducats, engulfing, as it were, those that were laid, trem- 
 
MEMOIR OP THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 231 
 
 bling, on tlie great green table ; one or two electors dressed 
 as huntsmen, with hunting-knives and sHm gold cords; 
 a few priaces incognito, who would have made no stir 
 at all under their own names; certain old generals and 
 officers retired for wounds they never had ; certain Eussian 
 princesses with their physicians ; also princesses. Palatine 
 and Castnian, with their chaplains ; Americans ; burgomas- 
 ters from neighbouring States ; outlaws from aU the prisons 
 of Europe ; charlatans of every species ; adventurers of every 
 kind ; abbfe of all lands ; a few poor Irish priests, tutors to 
 the sons of Lifege; English archbishops with their wives; 
 a score of patients dancing like lost souls for their health ; 
 forty lovers who were, or made believe to be, ardent and 
 agitated; sixty waltzing ladies with more or less beauty, 
 innocence, cleverness, coquetry, modesty, and voluptuousness. 
 
 All this was called a dejeuner dansant. The bustle, the hum 
 of conversation, the dizzying monotony of the waltz, the 
 passing and repassing of aimless idlers, the cursing of the 
 gamblers, the sobs of the gambling women, and an utter weari- 
 ness of this magic-lantern scene drove me from the room. 
 The next instant I am knocked down on a wretched pave- 
 ment by an English race. I pick myself up and barely avoid 
 being thrown again by a score of little scamps, lordUngs 
 great and smaU, who gaUop by on little horses which they 
 call " ponies." 
 
 I sit down. I notice several drinkers of water counting 
 religiously their glasses and their steps, and congratulating each 
 other, though rather dismally, on the progress of their stomachs. 
 I listen. "Do the waters pass you, madame?" inquires an 
 old president. — "Yes, monsieur, since yesterday." "Does 
 your Excellency begin to digest ? " asks another of the min- 
 ister of an ecclesiastical Court. " I have the honour to inform 
 your Excellency," replies the minister, " that I perspire in the 
 
232 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 evening from eight to ten o'clock, and from ten to midnight 
 I Bweat thoroughly ; in fact, if I had not so much to do 
 for Monseigneur, I should now have completed my cure.'' 
 " Your cure ! " exclaims a Frenchman, wishing to say the 
 civil thing, hut mistaking the word ; " I thought you at least 
 a vicar-general." " Goddam your G^ronstferes and Pouhons," 
 remarked a lord. " Poumons ! " cried a deaf man ; " lungs 
 are not treated here." " I did not say they were," replied the 
 honourable member. " I have left the bills of my country 
 that I may hear no more about our infernal and mercantile 
 policy ; instead of these waters, I drink punch like the devil. 
 Why don't you at least drink claret as I do ? We were 
 ten or a dozen Englishmen very drunk last night, but we 
 are all well to-day." 
 
 If I had come to Spa from curiosity, T should already 
 have had enough of it, for in half an hour I had seen and 
 heard all Europe and part of America. There is no better 
 observatory than a watering-place. But as observations wUl 
 not cure sabre-cuts, I cut short my visit, and, to rest my 
 eyes and ears, I took my way to the mountains. 
 
X. 
 
 1780-1786. 
 LIFE AT BELCEIL. 
 
 The life that I led at my dear Beloeil, though wars, travels, 
 and other pleasures prevented my hemg there as much as I 
 wished, was very happy. I used to go, half-dressed, and read 
 on Flora's isle, where, with my httle skiff drawn up on shore, 
 I was safe from importunate visitors ; or else I went to watch 
 my workmen. After that, I returned to bathe in the pretty 
 bath beside my chamber, and then to bed again to sleep, or 
 else, more frequently, to write till half-past three o'clock, 
 when a dozen of the ofi&cers of my regiment came to dinner. 
 
 How happy one is in being alone ! But where shall we 
 go for that ? We can't inhabit a forest. Though it happens, 
 at times, that I love silence for myself, I like noise for others. 
 It seems to me as though I were supercilious when I do not 
 share their amusements, and when I make myself pleasures 
 that are for myself only. I think this sometimes in winter 
 when I hear the carriages in the street and know that the 
 whole world is hurrying after that which I have procured 
 for myself tranquilly by my fireside. I am going to say 
 something that wiU seem very childish. But I am sure of 
 it. It is this : sing in the morning to be gay all day. We 
 get a habit of being dull if we let ourselves go on saying 
 nothing, walking about our rooms, and fancying we are un- 
 happy or in. Make a habit of being gay. If you are not so 
 naturally, at least you can drive away melancholy. Shake 
 
234 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 yourself.. Sing some lively air ; rouse your organs vehe- 
 mently with a ringing song. Wind up your fibres as you do 
 an instrument ; your mind will soon give out a pleasant 
 sound. 
 
 I remember giving a fUe to the Priacesse de BouiUon 
 (whom I fancied I loved, but only admired), on the canal 
 between Brussels and Antwerp. It was one of the most 
 beautiful /?te I ever saw. The water seemed molten fire, 
 so many illuminated barges were there for my party, my 
 servants, the musicians, and the curious spectators who 
 came by thousands, with my yacht in the middle of all. 
 More than ten thousand persons accompanied us along the 
 banks to Marli, where I gave a terrestrial fUe, and thence 
 on our return to Brussels. The same year all classes, 
 from what are called in Brussels " capons " [porters] up to 
 H. E. H. the Comte d'Artois, were received and treated with 
 balls, illuminations, refreshments, and a gogaille, or gogaie (I 
 don't know how that is pronounced, still less how it is spelt), 
 a grand merry-making on the occasion of the inauguration of 
 the statue of our good prince, Charles de Lorraine. I had an 
 ox roasted whole, with chickens, etc., inside of him, — in 
 short, all that could make the good populace love me, be- 
 fore the bad populace made the Eevolution. While the 
 people were worth the trouble of pleasing I used to take 
 pains to make them love me ; among other means, by balls 
 in my gardens. 
 
 I was always amused myself in amusing the public. Once 
 I gave the Tower of Babel in masquerade. Was that pro- 
 fane, and how came it to be forgiven me ? The scene was 
 exactly as it is described in the Bible ; the number and 
 variety of the clothing of the workmen cost me immensely. 
 The first coup d'ce,il enchanted the two thousand spectators, 
 — for the affair took place in the large theatre of Brussels. 
 
MEMOIE OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 235 
 
 The music, expressing first the confusion of tongues, and 
 then the confusion of our dance which began as soon as we 
 descended from the tower, had a charming effect. I loved, I 
 was loved, and I knew it ; without which neither fUes nor 
 merriment. At another time I had a masquerade of Spanish 
 gueriEas, whose costume, music, and dances, as they depicted 
 scenes of war and hunting on the mountain, were marked 
 with good taste, gayety, and even glory. I chose the airs 
 and made all the programmes myself. 
 
 What a delightful existence was mine ! In twenty-four 
 hours I could be in Paris, London, the Hague, Spa. I went 
 to Paris once merely to spend one hour at Yersailles on the 
 occasion of the queen's last (I think it was her last) confine- 
 ment. I saw her on the fourth day. Another time I drove 
 a whole party that was staying with me from Beloeil to the 
 Opera, in my coach. I often laughed to myself in thinking 
 that within the same twenty-four hours I was in the society 
 of the Queen of France and that of Mme. Gauthier, a Beloeil 
 peasant-woman, most faithful to the WaUon accent. 
 ""it suited me, for my pleasure and the good of the Low 
 Countries, to belong to all the Brotherhoods. I succeeded 
 famously at the suppers of those two or three hundred wor- 
 thy bourgeois, stout drinkers, choice feeders, and honest folk 
 in those days. Some of them shot with bows and arrows, 
 some with muskets, and that of Saint-Anthony of Ghent 
 with cannon. " God preserve me," I said to myself, " from 
 winning the prize; it would cost like the devil." Accord- 
 ingly, I aimed that cannon at least two feet to left of the 
 white, and there was the ball in the middle of it ! I was 
 applauded, in spite of myself, and carried on the shoulders of 
 my dear fellow- marksmen, who flung their hats in the air 
 and rasped my ears with their vivats ! — Flemish, and there- 
 fore not harmonious. I expressed surprise that I had shot 
 
236 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 SO well, and was told that a corps of artillery had given the 
 cannon to our Brotherhood because it was spoilt and had 
 the defect of carrying two feet to right of the mark. Victor 
 against my will, I was none the less pleased, in spite of all 
 the suppers I had to give and the toasts to drink. They 
 presented me with the ribbon and medal of our Order, bear- 
 ing two cannon in saltire ; and there never was more good, 
 hearty gayety than prevailed for the next week iu the town 
 of Ghent — it was almost graceful 
 
 There was not a single town that did not give me marks 
 of attachment. Beside my Brotherhood of Mercy at Ath, 
 where I wore a monk's dress, like the black penitents of 
 Henri III, I belonged to those of Saint Dorothea, queen or 
 goddess of flowers, at Brussels, Saint Sebastian at Ghent, and 
 another, but I forget its name, at Antwerp. Namur gave 
 me, equipped at its own cost in my uniform of pink, yellow, 
 and silver, a company of chasseurs, who, together with all 
 the peasantry on my estates, remained royalists during the 
 Eevolution, as did Luxembourg, which had taken the oath 
 under me. 
 
 But from all these amusements how happy I was to return 
 to my Flora's island, that isle of verdure and of flowers, 
 where grace aboimds, with my books for company. I have 
 often noticed that there are times more favourable than 
 others for classes of reading ; we ought to fit our reading in 
 quantity and quality to the situations in which we find our- 
 selves. In the agitating times of great adventures, in war, 
 at Court, in love, we want works that touch the mind but 
 lightly, — memoirs, and a mixture of philosophy, literature, 
 and poesy. The history of battles, the intrigues of policy or 
 of gallantry are better to contemplate ; in our inaction we 
 can judge of the activity of others ; this rests, refreshes, 
 calms both body, and mind. 
 
MEMOIR OP THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 237 
 
 I own that my dislike for novels, which when they do 
 not bore me fade at once out of my memory, often prevents 
 me from attempting to read them. Some of Scarron's have 
 made me laugh, but the comic novel has never given me 
 any pleasure. I own, moreover, that the Arabian fairy 
 tales with their thousands of days and nights tire me with 
 weariness of the names, customs, and riot of imagiuation. 
 But long live the writer of the Life of Chevalier de Gram- 
 mont, and long live de Grammont himself ; 't is Apelles and 
 Alexander over again; I don't know which is the more 
 famous of the two. For all this, however, I did risk read- 
 ing " Cecilia " and I was enchanted. The talent shown ia 
 the details, portraits, and scenes pleased me all the more 
 because I happened this very year to meet with a number 
 of the originals, painted unconsciously ; so trained is the 
 English eye in that faculty. 
 
 By way of criticising the books of the present day, people 
 are in the habit of saying: "You wiU not find that in 
 Eacine, or Mohfere, or Fl^chier, or Boileau." I have some- 
 times justified our poor moderns at the expense of those 
 saints of literature, whom I, more than any one, revere, 
 though they do sometimes use superfluous words, and give 
 us figures and expressions that are not accurate. But in 
 their day people were, happily, less hypercritical ; they did 
 not always have at their tongue's end that siUy phrase, 
 " What bad taste ! " There is no such thing where genius 
 is. Also there are subjects which are far above that con- 
 demned bad taste. The least good things in Molifere, those 
 that they call his farces, are sublime in their own way from 
 their simplicity and their truth; the most insignificant of 
 some of his plays, even those that were written to com- 
 mand, are masterpieces. The grave Louis laughed as 
 heartily as the sweepers in the Gallery of Versailles. We 
 
238 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 admire, we adore the " Misanthrope ; " and so we should ; I 
 cannot conceive of a criticism upon it, except one, which 
 has never been made. No one has yet thought of consid- 
 ering the title false. No man can be a misanthrope who 
 lives as he did in the great world; he liked it if only to 
 gird against it, and to have the privilege of grumbling 
 against his mistress, his friend, customs. Court, and the law. 
 A man like Alceste could never have endured solitude. 
 Call him a boor, an over-sincere man, an honest man 
 hyperboKzed, but not a misanthrope. Jean- Jacques, who 
 was the latter and was not in the least the former, was 
 unable to perceive the real meaning of Mohfere in Alceste. 
 A man like him, without happiness, without gayety, with- 
 out knowledge of men, cannot conceive that we should 
 laugh at one whom we admire. But the crotchets of a 
 great man, even the oddities of his clothes, his tic, his 
 haste, his slowness, the gold lace d, la Bourgogne on M. de 
 Voltaire's waistcoat, the timid shyness of M. de Loudon 
 (the bravest man in the world) have often made me laugh, 
 but I am not mocking at them for all that. On the con- 
 trary, I am feeling their good qualities the more. Loving 
 the noble character of Alceste, enchanted with the original 
 turn he gives to everything he says, I should certainly have 
 followed him about in Paris to witness his outbursts, and 
 relate them afterwards, much as I loved him. 
 
 I do not take C^limfene to be a coquette of good society. 
 Always alone, a backbiter, surrounded by men, to whom 
 she makes all the advances without choice or discernment, 
 she is an excellent figure for the stage, where types must 
 be more marked, and in a way that would be offensive in 
 society. Men would have pointed the finger at her there ; 
 they would have sought to win her and leave her within 
 twenty-four hours. That is precisely the nature that Molifere 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DB LIGNE. 239 
 
 gives her, and with it he gets more effect for his purpose 
 than he could have done from a woman of good society. 
 
 I have heard persons say that the "Bourgeois Gentil- 
 homme " and " Georges Dandin " were not masterpieces, 
 because they were written under contract and for the 
 people. Well, I am one of the people too, and so are all 
 persons of good taste who delight in true pictures of nature 
 of all kinds. Those delightful trifles, the grains of salt 
 in the egg, the pacings about of that imaginary sick man, the 
 proverbs that turn up, — " There are faggots and faggots ; " 
 " What the devil was he doing in that galley ? " " We have 
 changed all that," — and a hundred other sayings, so good 
 because so simple, have alone become immortal. 
 
 I know it is the fashion to blame MoMfere for his denoue- 
 ments, but I shall jiistify even those of the "Avare," the 
 "]fccole des Femmes," and the "Misanthrope" by asking 
 those who do so to imagine others less defective. But as 
 for that of " Tartuffe," I consider it the finest and the most 
 probable that I know upon the stage. Molifere was a good 
 man, simple because colossal, who studied each condition 
 and its effects, and drew out of those effects their conse- 
 quent results as a painter and a philosopher. It might be 
 that a sovereign or an enlightened minister could decree 
 a college that in fifty years would make us a race of splendid 
 writers, but Moli^re and La Fontaiae can never be created. 
 
 Mohfere, Destouches, Boissi, Boileau, Eeynaud understood 
 perfectly the art of sayiag evil of others. We recognize the 
 originals of their portraits everywhere. But the talent is 
 lost. Manners and customs have changed. There are no 
 authors now to take the place of those I have just named. 
 Eeynaud follows on the heels of Molifere ; but he amuses 
 without correcting. Moliere is a morahst; Eeynaud only 
 a satirist. 
 
240 MEMOIR OV THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 We overlook the desultoriness of Montaigne because every- 
 thing becomes him. His soul is a chatterer, not his mind, 
 which is, however, the servant of the other. That is how it 
 is he flits about in so charming a manner. An idea sweeps 
 him oif, but it leads to another. He says to us : " Apropos 
 of that, I '11 tell you — " He never suspected his depth, nor 
 the subtlety of his observations. I feel to him as Cond6 did to 
 Turenne. " What would I not give," said the great Condd, 
 " for half an hour's talk with him ! " Montaigne was, except 
 for pride, the whole galaxy of Athens in himself. We see 
 in everything he says the good man, the good heart, the 
 sound head. He divined the world. He saw the past, the 
 present, and the future, without ever believing himself a 
 great wizard. 
 
 I have tried to laugh, because I have been promised that I 
 should do so, over the " Lettres Provinciales." Then I tried 
 to admire them, and that I could not do either. As for 
 Pascal's " Pensfes," I have not been able to understand many 
 of them. I am the only man who dares to say this ; but not 
 perhaps the only one in that condition. Let us be sincere: 
 though I truly respect Port-Eoyal des Champs, and agree with 
 the great Frederick it should never have been destroyed. 
 
 It has been said that Voltaire was against that immortal, 
 wise, sweet, and most profound work " Tfl^maque," because 
 he wrote two jesting couplets upon it. All that he says of 
 Tolerance ought to silence the saints of to-day, if they under- 
 stand it. What a man would F^nelon have been had fate 
 allowed him to be prime minister ! and what a reign that of 
 the Due de Bourgogne, had he possessed but half the regent's 
 intellect! The peace of Europe and that of consciences 
 would have been secured ; virtue would have gone hand in 
 hand with happiness ; religion would have had grace, the 
 State sound finances, the laws more clearness and less se- 
 
MEMOIR Ot THE PRINCE DE LIGSTB. Hi 
 
 verity, tlie Court real enjoyments, and society a better tone. 
 I know but one man under Louis XVI. who was fitted to 
 make the kingdom go in that way : M. de Sully Mauxepas, 
 generalissimo of the armies, as well as minister of war. His 
 rank, his example, his economy, his sternness, his appren- 
 ticeship in camp would have made him king almost in spite 
 of himself. I have known in my day but two ministers 
 who could be truly said to have intellect : M. de Maurepas 
 and M. de Cobenzl, father of the ambassador. Both had 
 grand views, though the former was too careless to realize 
 them. 
 
 My excellent friend Laplace was fond of making epitaphs 
 on me, and made at least a score of them ; here is one : 
 Ci git Nenni, mais qui gira. [Here hes Nothing, but he 
 gyrates still.] In return, I made verses on him beginning : 
 " Pierre et Picard, le pesant Laplace," with four or five p's. in 
 every line; that one refers to his constantly saying, "My 
 name is Pierre, and I come from Picardy." La Harpe in his 
 " Cours de Litt^rature " gives him the credit of knowing Eng- 
 lish. He may have understood it once upon a time with 
 the help of a dictionary, but he could not speak a single word 
 of it. He was an excellent man, without taste, and without 
 other knowledge than that of a compiler, a ransacker, and 
 sometimes an unearther of precious things. His tragedy of 
 " Jane Gray " is better than his two others, though they have 
 merit. All that, of course, constitutes an author, a man of 
 letters, but not a man of genius, nor the first of versifiers, nor 
 even a good prose-writer. He had the laugh of a discon- 
 tented pig, and was fond of telling anecdotes without any 
 point ; he tells some of me in his Works, which have not even 
 common-sense. [Laplace did not publish his "M^canique 
 Celeste" till 1799 ; the prince appears to judge him solely on 
 his literary merits, and as if he knew of no others.] 
 
 VOL. 1. — 16 
 
242 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 Marmontel was a man I never liked; I thought him 
 coarse, disdainful, and presuming; but he had eloquence 
 and the tragic instinct. His style, without being harmoni- 
 ous, is not incorrect ; though it is that of an artisan rather 
 than an artist. Happily no one ever believes or follows his 
 poetism, his judgments, his examples, or literary paradoxes.' 
 He has been too much praised and too much criticised for 
 his " Moral Tales." The Chevalier d'Eon, then censor, ex- 
 demoiselle, and ex-captain of dragoons, had the malice to give 
 his sanction in these words : " I have read, by order of Mon- 
 seigneur the chancellor, the ' Moral Tales ' of M. de Marmon- 
 tel, and I have found nothing, by dint of forgetting, which 
 forbids their publication." 
 
 How little justice or knowledge has been shown about 
 Ossian ! His heroes are purer and braver than those of 
 Homer. Barbarians are like that, and they sing just in this 
 way the actions of their leader. Many a time, without un- 
 derstanding them, unless by chance a word here and there, 
 I have admired my Croats, glorifying in the Illyrian lan- 
 guage their King Kralowitz Marco. What a fine represen- 
 tation they used to give of waking the sleeping enemy and 
 daring him to the combat. Frederick the Great would have 
 liked us to warn his hussars in that way on the morning of 
 the battle of Hochkirch. 
 
 But always I return, in these sylvan shades where the 
 pigeons coo and the woods resound with voices not of man 
 but of Nature, to the simple and sublime La Fontaine. Ex- 
 cept for some half a dozen quite insignificant fables, in which 
 he loses himself among arguments about atoms and souls 
 and so forth, and a few that are merely epistles, what a code 
 of policy and morals he gives us ! The morality is the policy 
 of each of us ; the policy is the morality of the State, in- 
 structive to sovereigns and ministers. The one serves for 
 
_^^ C^CitlyliXyt^U 
 
MEMOIE OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 243 
 
 self-government, the other for the government of all. 
 The latter is more profoimd in La Fontaine than in Montes- 
 quieu, the former more profound than in Epictetus, that 
 manual of aU philosophy, and even in Montaigne — which is 
 saying much. 
 
 You, and I, and all men, what are we ? Kings of Nature ? 
 Eead the " MarseOlais and the Lion," laugh or meditate with 
 Voltaire, and away with such pride ! Are you gay (for 
 that is what you had best be) ? the monkey is gayer. Are you 
 provident ? the ant is more so. Are you a legislator ? look 
 at the laws of the bees and be confounded. Are you a mason, 
 architect, carpenter, joiner, roofer ? go and watch the beavers. 
 Are you a manufacturer or a milliner ? see the coquettish 
 manner in which the little fishes are adorned in speckles of 
 silver and crimson and gold, and striped stuffs. Are you a 
 painter ? try to match the colours of the butterfly, the trans- 
 parency and magnificence of shells. Are you brave ? yes, 
 but the Hon is more so. Are you vigorous ? the ass, what 
 say you to him ? and think of his sturdy sense, his sobriety, 
 his humour, a trifle heavy perhaps, but excellent. Are you 
 strong ? there 's the elephant, the camel. Are you clean ? 
 the rabbit was that before you. Do you swim ? go and look 
 at the pigs. Can you jump ? no, not like a kid. Are you 
 agile ? see those chamois clinging to a rock that Virgil tells 
 of. Do you run ? the stag will outspeed you. Are you 
 brawny ? the wild boar is brawnier. Are you bold in your 
 own defence ? look at the bear and all his resources. Are 
 you clever ? the fox is cleverer, and his countenance shows 
 it. Are you faithful ? never so completely as that vigilant 
 dog ; and examine those storks standing sentinel. Tactician 
 are you ? see the cuneus of the ancients in that flight of wild 
 geese. Traveller ? do you choose your seasons with the wis- 
 dom of the birds of passage ? Brilliant ? no, never as the glow- 
 
244 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 worm. Coaxing? caressing? melodious? amusing? what a 
 difference between you and the smallest little denizen of that 
 coppice ! Is your memory good ? as good as that of the ca- 
 nary ? Shrewd, are you ? the squirrel is heyond you there. 
 Graceful ? that is the kitten's peculiar distinction ; all its 
 movements are that. Obedient ? useful ? was ever a man 
 like the horse or the ox ? Clearsighted ? as far as a lynx ? 
 Free ? why, aU the animals are that — is man ? Do animals 
 have doctors, lawyers, masters, mistresses ? do they murder ? 
 do they slander ? They don't laugh, it is true, but neither 
 do they weep. They pay court to no one. If they are 
 scolded, they bite ; they are not humiliated. Perhaps there 
 are not many among them who are very amiable, but there 
 is not one that is ever bored, and none are damned. 
 
 I was feeling bored one day, and boring others, so I thought 
 I would go out and be bored all alone. I have a very fine 
 forest. I went there towards evening, thinking to shoot a 
 rabbit. 'T was the hour when all the wild animals are about. 
 Quantities of young rabbits went by me and disappeared, 
 scratching their noses and making great leaps and twirls, but 
 always so fast I had no time to sight my gun. An elderly 
 rabbit, with a gray coat, and a sedate manner, suddenly ap- 
 peared at the edge of his burrow. Having made his toilet 
 quite at his ease (" clean as a rabbit '' comes from that), he 
 noticed that I held him at the end of my gun. " Fire ! " he 
 said ; " what are you waiting for ? " ' Oh ! — I confess I was 
 seized with astonishment. I had never (except in war) fired 
 upon animals that spoke. " I shall not do so," I said ; " you 
 are a witch, and I should die of it." " I ? not at aU," he re- 
 plied, "I am La Fontaine's old rabbit." Oh! that time I 
 came down my full length ; I knelt at his little feet ; I asked 
 his pardon ; I reproached him for the risk he had run. "But," 
 I said, " why do you want to die ? what makes you so tired 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DB LIGNE. 245 
 
 of living ? " — " All that I see." — " Bless me ! but you have 
 the same twigs and the same thyme, have n't you ? " — " Yes, 
 but the folks are not the same ; if you only knew the kind 1 
 have to pass my life with, — little finical rabbits, who want 
 to live on roses instead of our good old cabbages, geometrical 
 rabbits, political, philosophical, and I don't know what all ; 
 some talk only German, others only French, a new sort of 
 French that I can't understand. If I come out of my hole 
 and go to see a neighbour, it is just the same ; I don't un- 
 derstand anybody. The animals of to-day have too much 
 miud. But, to tell you the truth, by dint of having so much 
 they have got so little that our old ass had more than these 
 young scamps." 
 
 I begged him not to be so cross, and I told him I would 
 always take care of him, and his comrades if there were any 
 like him. He promised in return to tell me all that he had 
 said to La Fontaine, and to take me to see the latter's old 
 friends ; and so he did. The frog, who was not quite dead, 
 though he said he was, behaved with the utmost modesty, 
 compared with the conduct of those which we see about us 
 every day ; the toads and the cranes were singing like night- 
 ingales ; the wolves were nicer than my sheep. " Good bye, 
 little rabbit," I said, " I '11 come back to my woods and my 
 fields and my orchards, and I '11 raise a statue to La Fontaine 
 and spend my life with the animals of that good man.'' 
 
 We need twin hearts, if I may so express it, to perfectly 
 agree. But where are they ? I have never known but one 
 united family, and that is mine. All the individual members 
 suffer equally at the absence of one ; that is because the six 
 united form but one. I do not mean exactly the Family 
 bond; it is something more inexplicable. If sympathy acts 
 as I believe it does, may we not find ia the analysis of blood 
 magnetic particles ? If we could put away from us our 
 
246 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 proud, undisciplined self-love, if the circulation of our blood 
 did not in some way stir the hypochondriacal particles within 
 us, we should he more capable of friendship. I will even 
 grant to ourselves the honour of being capable of great 
 sacrifices, great privations. 
 
 I thiak I have said somewhere already, that we ought to 
 be the father of our friends to be sure of them. We should 
 marry young enough to have grown children, with whom we 
 can be comrades from the time they are twenty. But the 
 fatal scythe must make no mistake. I lost a son named 
 Albert between four and five years of age. The nurses did 
 so much for his figure they deformed him, and the doctors 
 did so much for his health they killed him with experiments. 
 I lost another son named Prangois, who would have been as 
 pretty as my Louis is now, but the doctors were as mistaken 
 about him as they were about Albert. My son Charles is 
 just about to marry a pretty little Polish girl, a Massalska, 
 whose family pay her dot in paper, that is in claims against 
 the Court of Eussia. 
 
 I said the other day, " If I were king " — my three 
 daughters, who are far too well brought-up to know the rest 
 of the quotation, said : "Then you would do a great many 
 foolish things." " Not at aU," I replied. " I am your father 
 only through metempsychosis ; I, such as you see me, have 
 been a king. Here is the anagram of my two names, and the 
 history of my reign : " — 
 
 THE EEIGN OF THE GREAT SELEAHCENGIL. 
 
 He ascended the throne at the age of eighteen. Wishing 
 to make War then, in order to make none later, and also to 
 see if he had Courage and could justly respect himself, he 
 declared hostilities against a neighbour, who had captured a 
 Province from his father ; he won three Battles, seized the 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 247 
 
 enemy's States, made him prisoner, and then returned him 
 everything on condition that he would defend him against 
 the other neighbours if they wanted to quarrel with him. 
 
 " I shall not need an Army now," said this great Prince. 
 " My Soldiers shall be labourers and artisans. I will keep 
 about my person a guard of ten thousand well-equipped, 
 handsome men, whom my subjects shall relieve yearly, that 
 none may lose the military spirit. I shall employ them in 
 ballets, tragedies, masquerades at Court, excursions upon the 
 water, and battues of foxes, hares, rabbits, pheasants, and 
 partridges." 
 
 Thus spake SekahcengU. Here is what he did for the 
 manners, morals, and customs of his Kingdom. He ordained 
 that the young people of both sexes should have the greatest 
 liberty to know each other, and by that means escape 
 deception in marriage. 
 
 Nevertheless (as the ardour of passion may conquer rea- 
 son), should the first blindfolding of illusion be torn away 
 he permitted all persons to be married three times, — it not 
 being likely they would deceive themselves oftener than 
 that ; permission being also given to return to first or second, 
 provided all parties were agreed. The children wiU thus be 
 handsome and amiable, because they are children of love. No 
 quarrels in the households. AH, even the valets (having 
 no Hi-tempered masters), are happy and good. 
 
 The sons whose faces give least promise become Vicars, 
 Doctors, Judges. 
 
 There are no Lawyers, therefore no lawsuits. The Books 
 of the three professions are interdicted. The Vicars preach 
 and paraphrase the Gospel. The Doctors gather simples, and 
 write down the facts of each malady in order to draw useful 
 conclusions. The Judge, who is only an umpire, reconciles 
 aU who seem likely to quarrel. 
 
248 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 Selrahcengil has but three great Officers at Court : Grand 
 Vicar, Grand Doctor, Grand Judge. They travel incessantly 
 through his Dominions, to watch that no trouble comes in 
 the consciences, the health, or the busiaess of his subjects. 
 Once a week he shuts himself up alone with each of them to 
 receive their reports. This is all the work he does. 
 
 The Prince has neither cabinet, nor council, nor secretary. 
 Here is how he manages the Finances. In order that those 
 employed in receiving the revenues of the State shall not eat 
 up the greater part of them, he has ordained that in each 
 Parish a great iron coffer shall be kept, in which every man 
 shall deposit his poll-tax. Each subject is taxed one ducat 
 per head a year ; but the richer pay for the poorer. He who 
 earns but fifty florins pays twenty-five kreutzers only. This 
 partition of assessment burdens none. Those who have 
 less pay nothing, but, by that very means, they earn enough 
 to obtain a revenue that comes under taxation. The 
 Keceiver-general goes round with a mule, takes the money 
 from the iron coffers, and conveys it to the coffers of His 
 Majesty. 
 
 The manufactures of the Kingdom are for the needs and 
 luxuries of its people. Nothing is received from abroad. 
 No money enters the kingdom, but also none goes out of it. 
 
 Foreigners are not welcomed. They must be very great 
 Personages, or persons distinguished for much Merit ; more 
 is required than a mere certificate of good conduct ; a great 
 Eeputation is necessary. 
 
 His Majesty sends no ministers to foreign courts ; and re- 
 ceives none. He reads the Gazettes from time to time, to 
 see if any great Conqueror has appeared; and he and his 
 Court often laugh at the graces and disgraces of other 
 Courts. 
 
 His Majesty issues no orders, that he may not be deceived 
 
MEMOIE OF THE PEINCE DE LIGNB. 249 
 
 or disobeyed ; but be lets it be known what he wishes. For 
 instance, he has expressed himself on the pleasure it would 
 give him if all his great Nobles and Gentlemen would live on 
 their estates for four or five months in the year, in order to 
 spend a part of their revenues upon them ; and also to make 
 sure that the Vicar, the Doctor, and the Judge were doing 
 their duty. 
 
 AU persons can present to His Majesty petitions, and even 
 complaints, provided they sign their names to them. He 
 guarantees secrecy, and to make it impenetrable, each person 
 is directed to put his statement into the great Mouth of Truth 
 which is under the peristyle of the splendid colonnade of his 
 magnificent palace. His Majesty takes these statements out 
 himself at night just before he goes to bed, and reads them all 
 before he rises in the morning. 
 
 The worthy poor are assisted ; there are no others. Each 
 seigneur sees to this by works of improvement in each vil- 
 lage, which give employment to all, and by establishing 
 Homes for those who are not in a condition to do any work. 
 
 His Majesty has twenty-five millions of subjects ; conse- 
 quently twenty-five millions of ducats ; without having other 
 costs than the salaries of the Vicars, the Doctors, the Judges, 
 the Eeceiver-general, and the keep of the latter's mule. He 
 would have some difi&culty in spending his revenue, were it 
 not for his taste for Art and Pleasure. 
 
 He loves Architecture and Gardens ; his whole Kingdom 
 has become a garden, through the canals he has bmlt to fer- 
 tilize it, bordered with four rows of beech, linden, and chest- 
 nut trees. These canals flow through meadows abounding 
 with cattle, and horses galloping free from field to field. This 
 tranquil scene is very picturesque, and forms a Vista from 
 the gardens of the Nobles, whose chateaus stand on beautiful 
 lawns, neither too much nor too little diversified. These 
 
250 MEMOIR OF THE PEINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 • 
 
 residences are all of one storey, for the Prince has forbidden 
 staircases throughout his Dominions. There is no uniformity 
 in these chSteaus, but much elegance. 
 
 Each Peasant has his little enclosure within a quickset 
 hedge, of garden, field, and vineyard. The houses of the 
 village are separate, to prevent conflagration, and painted 
 white ; the street, or road, is planted with fruit-trees, and a 
 rivulet runs through, or round, each village. 
 
 There are no ruins, real or fictitious, anywhere, nor bridges, 
 except where necessary. The Church in each village stands, 
 smihng, on high ground, and is of Greek design ; the music 
 in all of them is fine. 
 
 There are scarcely any laws, for there are no crimes; every 
 one is at his ease, liking pleasure and easy duty. There is, 
 however, a lex talionis, in case, by chance, a criminal should 
 appear. 
 
 The Sovereign takes care of the roads and the Public 
 Works ; but a great deal remains in his iron coffer, because 
 he has neither Generals, nor Soldiers, nor Ministers, nor 
 Presidents, nor Financiers to pay. 
 
 Now that is the state of the Kingdom of the Great Selrah- 
 cengil. 
 
 As for his Court, His Majesty comes out of his private 
 apartments at three o'clock and is sure to find a large assem- 
 blage in his vast salons. There are no Court days, nor ap- 
 partements, nor State balls, nor fStes ; but every day there is 
 something agreeable, which the company can choose for 
 themselves. The Prince appears, or does not appear, as he 
 pleases. No one rises more than once a day to receive him ; 
 and besides, he is the first of his class who hkes to sit down. 
 To prevent a circle being formed, or a formal line anywhere, 
 the sofas and chairs have rollers, on which they are pushed 
 about. 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNB. 251 
 
 As for the Officers of the Guard, all young fellows and the 
 handsomest men in the Empire, they are always about the 
 salons, waltzing, or planning pleasure-parties in the glorious 
 Gardens, where tables and balls and music and suppers can 
 be transported if they like. 
 
 A part of those Gardens are kept for the public, and that 
 part contains everything that can possibly amuse it : games, 
 singers, concert-halls, and guinguettes. There are smaller 
 gardens also, intended for Societies, who obtain the key and 
 spend the day there. Besides a lake of considerable extent, 
 there is a river, with barges and gondolas and music, for 
 those who are fond of navigation and moonlight. 
 
 All these people growing old together have not perceived 
 it ; they do not see one another's wrinkles ; they think them- 
 selves always young, even while they change their tastes. 
 There are pleasures for all ages ; tranquillity in a salon or 
 a bosquet, side by side with the noisier joys of youth. No 
 one is unkind, aU are happy, and the reign of this Great 
 Prince has lasted sixty-eight years. 
 
 Any person conscious of Eloquence, or gifted with a talent 
 for Poesy, that nurse of Urbanity, can mount a species of pul- 
 pit and speak, or read aloud whatever may contribute to 
 Happiness, MoraKty, and the extension of the Pine Arts or 
 Literature — on condition that he bores nobody. A gentle 
 mockery is usually sufficient to stop him. 
 
 Among so many other pleasures there is a tennis-court, a 
 splendid Library, several reading-rooms, always a good break- 
 fast for every one, and a Picture-Gallery, in which are fine 
 copies of famous paintings, that could not otherwise be had ; 
 also choice models in relief of noted public buildings. 
 
 In short, up to the death of this good Prince, who was 
 buried at the age of eighty, in a species of Elysian Fields he 
 had prepared for all his subjects, — there never were any 
 
252 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 people so happy as his, and never any Sovereign who, while 
 amusing and ruling them well, had a reign more fortunate. 
 
 [A portrait.] I know very well that in naming H^loise, 
 whose portrait I am about to paint, I seem to undervalue two 
 others, who are superior to her in one respect, which she has 
 not the happiness to understand. Their names are Louise, 
 and they both have the wisdom to love me a little, — a wis- 
 dom which she will never learn. 
 
 H^loise will never have a master ; she does more, and does 
 it better than any man who might try to be so. She has 
 pretty talents, little inductions, theories, and, unfortunately, 
 enough reason to be master of every one, mistress of herself, 
 and the mistress of none. It is for time to decide whether 
 or not she is in the wrong for never being wrong. I would 
 rather have to do with a good, mystical Catholic who, having 
 wept through the holy sacrifice of the mass, would be capa- 
 ble of a passion, and after succumbing to it, would seek for 
 pardon from the priest and the altar. This third Nouvelle 
 H^loise is of a dry and stern religion, mingled with some 
 moral preservative, that rests upon duty which is pushed to 
 extremes; and unless a person of that religion has a soul 
 that is keenly ahve, and keeps everything on its feet, that 
 person is likely to remain within the limits of the principles 
 of administration and the circle of conventional virtues. 
 
 H^loise has a face that was made for feeling. She is too 
 perfect not to have received that good gift from Nature added 
 to aU the rest. But she spends all her gifts in retail (in 
 order not to spend them in bulk), in the small change of 
 friendship, in attentions, in gratitude. Her strength of mind 
 does battle against her heart, and if she finds an inclination 
 to struggle against it, it carries the day. 
 
 Never did I see a more perfect figure. It has that well- 
 
MEMOIR OP THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 253 
 
 proportioned shape susceptible of all the graces, and its ease 
 has passed into her manners. All that she says and does is 
 natural. Art could not serve her as nature does ; yet it is 
 nature embellished by taste. Extreme gentleness pervading 
 her whole being allures, touches, subjugates, without our 
 being aware of it, by the least alarming and yet the most 
 rapid approaches. Everything about her contributes to this : 
 the tones of her voice, her little attentions to right and left, 
 her way of listening, her fascinating glance, which is taken 
 as a favour, though, in truth, she cannot help using the 
 sweetest eyes in the world. All this attracts both men 
 and women ; the first do not perceive the ascendency she is 
 about to acquire over them, and the second do not perceive 
 her superiority over themselves. 
 
 She is always busy, without having anythiag to do. She 
 has to talk to others in order to keep them pleased with her, 
 and yet, with that general desire of pleasing, she has not 
 the slightest coquetry. She changes her place ; she begins a 
 score of things at once ; she is very eager, though she does 
 not seem so because her ways are all gentle, and her move- 
 ments never hasty. 
 
 H^loise is twenty years old to those of her own age, and 
 fifty to those who are fifty. She adapts herself to aU with 
 amiable good-nature. Her tact in society is very sure ; she 
 speaks well, observes everything, is never duped ; her tone is 
 excellent, always graceful and in good taste. She is fresh, 
 with the prettiest blond hair I have ever seen. She is rav- 
 ishing on horseback, and dances well ; I guessed from her 
 countenance her delicate style of drawing and her dainty 
 handwriting. She has delicacy and refinement in her mind 
 as in her countenance. 
 
 H^loise has her little deceitfulnesses like any other. It is 
 not possible she is wholly sincere when she says so much 
 
254 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 good of other women. " Madame so and so does not seem to 
 me very amiable," some one says to her. " That is hecause 
 
 you do not know her," she answers. " Madame de is 
 
 very ugly." " Without being disagreeable," she adds ; " and 
 then she has so much wit." — " You must admit that that 
 other woman has very little, and no charm at all." — " She 
 has the finest features I ever saw ; she has beauty." — " That 
 one over there is very stiff in figure." — " Heavens ! not at 
 all ; you might say that of me ; I wish I were made like her." 
 People look at each other, and look at her, and laugh ; but it 
 does not disconcert her. 
 
 H^loise has the good sense to like French literature and 
 English gardens. Another quality that she has, happily for 
 me, is a love for the country and a delight in adorning it 
 with her delicate taste. As soon as I noticed that I said she 
 had a fine soul, — and I was not long in discovering how 
 compassionate and generous she is, and what strength of 
 mind she can show on occasion. She is equable, without 
 moods, without caprices, and as amiable in the evening as 
 she was in the morning. But, after all, how was it ? We 
 have been enchanted with her all day ; yet, if we recapitulate 
 at night what has happened we are not content with her, 
 nor with ourselves. She has declined an interesting conver- 
 sation by substituting some insignificant topic for what 
 might have been a revelation of her heart. We had a thou- 
 sand things to say to her ; she managed to evade them all, 
 and we scarcely know how she did it. She escapes us at 
 every moment, especially that in which we expect it least. 
 
 I have spoken of her grace, which is not that of any 
 other woman ; she resembles herself alone. Impossible to 
 say to what country or what epoch she belongs. French 
 grace is so well known, so easily foreseen, so little varied, that 
 all the women of that country are like one another; they 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNB. 255 
 
 come from a convent, they have the same hair-dresser, same 
 milliner, same dancing-master. Polish women have some- 
 times too much laissez-aller, English women too little ; and 
 the graces of other countries ohhge us to quarrel with them. 
 But naturalness, appropriateness, and charm are always in 
 the demeanour, the motions, the face, the conversation of 
 H^loise. 
 
 I spoke of her gentleness : it is far indeed from insipidity ; 
 her manner of expressing herself is piquant, clever, gay, 
 amusing, and never commonplace. But when she has said 
 something worthy of remark and said it well, she drops her 
 voice, as if asking pardon for it. When her beautiful eyes 
 do not serve her purpose in looking at a thing or person 
 she half closes them, and then from beautiful they become 
 pretty and very amusing to watch ; but let another woman 
 do the same thing and she makes a frightful face. Great 
 and striking beauties must not come and sit beside her, for 
 her beauty is only touching. Their portraits should be 
 painted for a great salon, or gallery, but the portrait of 
 H^loise we put in our cabinet, where there shall be none 
 but our Albanos, Correggios, Titians, and Eaffaelles. 
 
 " Why do you love her so much ? " may be said to me. — 
 " I don't know why." — " What do you hope ? " — " Nothing ; 
 but I feel that I shall be tenderly attached to her all my 
 life." How much it costs me to say that, when I think 
 that I may pass my life without again seeing that most 
 perfect and distinguished being, who unites all charms to 
 my eyes. 
 
XI. 
 
 1767-1T94. 
 BELCEIL. 
 
 A Coup-d'ceil on Belceil. In the first place, it is not 
 known exactly what that means. Beloeil is an old name, 
 an old village, called so by my forefathers ; and as this 
 writing of mine is a sort of work which resembles nothing 
 in particular, and I am doing it solely for the sake of 
 Belceil, which I love more and more daily, that title wiU 
 do as well as another. I write as it happens; sometimes 
 a description of my gardens and my country-house, some- 
 times remarks, with reasons given, on the gardens of other 
 nations ; occasionally all is practical, at other times romantic, 
 even rural ; but in early days I liked the pastoral better in 
 books than in love. There is some imagination in it ; I let 
 myself be carried away by my subject; fable bears me 
 along, the gardener forgets himself. Possibly there is some 
 philosophy and reason ; but also things without common- 
 sense. In short, this that I write is just what Martial says 
 of himself : bona et mala. 
 
 Would that I could rouse the whole universe to my taste 
 for gardens ! It seems to me that it is impossible for a 
 bad man to have it. He is not susceptible of it. However 
 much, for the same reason, I esteem the solitary herbalist, 
 the airy, skipping capturer of butterflies, the scrutinizing 
 investigator of shells, the gloomy lover of minerals, the 
 glacial geometrician, the three daft spirits of music, painting. 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNB. 257 
 
 and poesy, the musing author, the absent-minded thinker, 
 the cautious chemist, there are no virtues that I do not 
 attribute to him who loves to talk of and to make gardens. 
 Absorbed by this passion, which is the only one that aug- 
 ments with age, men lose daily all those other passions that 
 shake the calmness of the soul and disturb social order. 
 When a man has crossed the drawbridge of a city (that 
 refuge of both moral and physical corruption), to go and 
 work or delight ia his country-place, his heart feels the 
 same sensation that his lungs derive from the breeze that 
 refreshes them, and it smiles at nature. 
 
 Fathers of families ! inspire gardenmaiiia m your children. 
 They will become the better for it. Let the other arts 
 be cultivated to embellish the one I preach. When our 
 thoughts are full of shading a dell, or clearing the course of 
 a brook, we have too much to do to be dangerous citizens, 
 scheming generals, caballing courtiers. How could we write 
 against the laws, upset our superiors, or plot against the 
 Court while our heads are full of our groves of Judas-trees, 
 our banks of flowers, our labyrinths of platanes to lay out ? 
 Scarcely have we time to profit by the smiles of a woman 
 ere we leave her in haste to expiate ia the meadows the . 
 most charming of sins. 
 
 It is to my father that the glory of my Belceil is due; 
 he wins thereby as much honour as if he had made an epic 
 poem. All that is grand, dignified, noble, majestic belongs 
 to him. After the great ideas there was nothing left for 
 me to produce but those that are pleasing and interesting. 
 After all, grandeur and greatness grow wearisome, usually. 
 I prefer a song of Anacreon to the Iliad ; the Chevalier de 
 Boufflers to a cyclopedia. I console myself easily for not 
 knowing how to make an .^Eneid; a little couplet or a 
 little coppice pleases me better. 
 
 VOL. I. — 17 
 
258 MEMOIE OP THE PKINCB DE LIGNE. 
 
 A sojourn in the country is never more agreeable than 
 when we see the woods, the meadows, the streams taking 
 new aspects beneath our hand. Satisfied with the harmony 
 of the grand proportions that I found in my garden I have 
 been careful not to break it; I have sought to earn my merit 
 in a different way. I began by making a second courtyard 
 and puUing down a portion of the main building that did 
 not please me ; I narrowed the moat, filled in part of a pond, 
 and by new plantations and vistas through the old ones with 
 diversities of tone, I began a new approach which hundreds 
 of workmen carried out in a manner that proved I was 
 right. 
 
 Everywhere there are pieces of water ; one is surrounded 
 by a marble balustrade ; another with slender bars of iron, 
 partly gilded. Hedges of the yoke-elm, fresh and stately, 
 but not monotonous or closely trimmed, I have left as 
 frames, with which to inclose, in some, secluded gardens, 
 Itahan arbours, bosquets, magic bowers ; in others of grander 
 and nobler proportions, a charming cloister around a piece 
 of water, salons of turf, corbeils of flowers, a little forest of 
 roses in quincunx. On all sides flow the loveliest streams 
 in the world, pure, limpid, sparkling, each communicating 
 with the rest. All my paths are green and lead into the 
 forest beyond my garden. I have dared to venture upon 
 turf on all sides; my sheep are my gardeners; they make 
 me a lawn, or rather, I should say, a green velvet carpet. 
 Two hundred acres are the extent of this French garden 
 territory. A piece of water, of twenty acres, divides it into 
 two equal portions, which are flanked by canals, their arms 
 disguised as rivers being visible in the forest and the sur- 
 rounding enclosures, which contain preserves of stags, wild- 
 boar, and deer, the overplus of which are turned out into 
 my woods, that are fifteen miles long and six miles wide. 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DB LIGNE. 259 
 
 It is at the end of the large central piece of water, after 
 crossing the drawbridge over one of the encircling canals, 
 that many roads diverge from one point into the forest ; the 
 one in the centre being one hundred and twenty feet wide. 
 I need not speak of the glades, the openings, the broad 
 spaces, the groups of noble oaks and beeches to be met with 
 here and there, and all designed to give a view of stag and 
 hounds. 
 
 I return to my garden. In the varied designs of the two 
 parts of it which the great lake separates, there are, as I 
 have said, many bosquets. They are all unlike one another, 
 and each has its own destination. One is dedicated to those 
 I love best ; another to my soldiers ; another to my peas- 
 ants ; a fourth to my workmen, and so on. All are des- 
 ignated by attributes and dififerent styles of decoration and 
 inscription. Others, of another nature, are still to be com- 
 pleted ; these are : the bosquet of the soul's peace ; that of 
 sensuous delight ; that of idleness ; that of coquetry, in- 
 difference, jealousy. All of which will be treated mythically 
 as they should be ; but the latter, unhappUy, may be too 
 often occupied. There will be a little promenade, very 
 shady, where those who issue from these bosquets can meet 
 together. The melancholy dreamers will be full of their 
 own little griefs, — which often give them pleasure and to 
 which they yield without resistance, — for who has not 
 known vexations, obstacles, parents, bores, misunderstand- 
 ings, and envy ? The happy dreamers, they will think of 
 being peace-makers, of hope, of joy — ah ! what know I ? — 
 of change, perhaps. One bosquet is to Virgil, one to Ovid, 
 another to Horace, another to my friends. May that last 
 be sometimes frequented ! but alas, I dare not make it too 
 large. There is also to be a house to Socrates. 
 
 Beyond the plantations to the east are twenty acres of 
 
260 MEMOIR OP THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 vegetables, herbs, and fruit-trees, surrounded by a wall cov- 
 ered with the finest espaliers. Here are four basins with 
 jets of water. In the centre is the temple of Pomona, where 
 we go to eat fruit. The hot-houses, a garden of melons, 
 another of figs deserve, they tell me, a great deal of praise. 
 All that is done. This is what I am about to do the coming 
 year: In the greenhouse building, the structure of which 
 is very charming, five little pavilions are to be raised to 
 break the uniformity, which is seven hundred feet long, 
 and under each will be a marble basin and a fountain to 
 refresh the eye; and here will grow the earliest and most 
 prolific fruits. 
 
 A winter room at the end of this building has an ante- 
 chamber and a cabinet of glass, which serve as an asylum 
 for the choicest flowers until the sun and the springtide 
 come to fetch them out and present them to all nature. 
 Standing at right angles to this little building is the 
 gardener's house, treated in the Dutch manner (for he comes 
 from Holland). I shall make him a garden, to amuse him, 
 in the style of his own country, with grotesque china images, 
 gilt men, glass fountains, which will serve to show him 
 what bad taste is. It wiU be a sort of object lesson, and 
 the burlesque of it rather funny. The rest of this part of 
 the garden beyond the greenhouse is a nursery ; it will be 
 covered with a fine wire netting, and contain a great quan- 
 tity of birds, which I shall not make unhappy. They shall 
 have their own house opposite to that of the gardener, and 
 a comfortable winter salon, where these deceived little musi- 
 cians shall sing their loves to the goddess of the spring and 
 to the spring itself: Flora's music! and to her shall be 
 raised and consecrated an altar in the centre of the little 
 garden in the nursery-ground, where the rarest flowers are 
 raised and kept until they are needed for the corbeUs, the 
 
MEMOIR 0¥ THE PEINCE DE LIGNE. 261 
 
 English beds, the sacred wood, the garden of the Hesperides, 
 and my islands. Near-by is a triumphal arch where the 
 garden ends by the eastern canal. Beneath it there shall 
 be a little port for two gondolas, four seats, a bower, and 
 circumjacent water with every means for splashing gloomy 
 persons tempted to yield themselves to grave reflections. 
 
 Already I am beginning to have a navy. I sail on my 
 great lake, which communicates with all the canals, the 
 pieces of water, and the river. My galleys are decked 
 with pennants and manned by youthful mariners, dressed 
 in my livery. As it would be too finical, too regular, or 
 irregular, to have an island in my lake, I have a fancy to 
 build a frigate there, a frigate of thirty guns. No one would 
 be able to understand how she got there. She will look as 
 if at anchor ; but she wUl really be fastened to the bottom 
 of the lake. We shall go out there in little boats (of which 
 I have a number) and sup on the fine summer evenings; 
 indeed, as it is, our sails on the lake with music and fair 
 moonlight are most agreeable. 
 
 Now comes the part on which I have been last engaged ; 
 it is just finished and is, to my thinkiag, the most interest- 
 ing of all, because it is more or less rural (occupying more 
 than forty acres), lies nearest to my apartments, and is 
 wholly my own creation. Behind the walls of the green- 
 house and the vegetable garden I have built, towards the 
 east, a Tartar vUlage. I say Tartar because the huts for 
 the shepherds and the sheep are outlandish in style, with 
 projections of tree-trunks that form a veranda. There is 
 also a dairy in the form of a mosque, its minarets serving 
 as pigeon-houses. These minarets, as every one knows, are 
 species of columns or spires from which the criers of the 
 Mussulmans caU to prayer. 
 
 The twenty-four acres of greensward on which my village 
 
262 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 is built are level, except where they slope insensibly to the 
 brink of the river that waters them. My inhabitants go 
 during the daytime to live in the woods and fields; they 
 depart and return to the sound of their own music. In 
 number they are between seven and eight hundred in- 
 dividuals, — partly sheep, with other animals of aU sorts ; 
 for instance, I am now expecting the fattest cows of Swit- 
 zerland, who will present at night what Cybele had in 
 abundance to the shepherds and their mistresses or their 
 wives. I am having the latter taught to sing and to play 
 on various rustic instruments ; their voices are rustic too, 
 and I wish to encourage clear, gay tones. It is to rest 
 those voices, strained by the village songs, that I mean to 
 have bagpipes, horns, hautboys, and great flutes, like the 
 Tyrolese. These shepherds and milkmaids are to wear a 
 uniform worthy of the beauty and the simplicity of nature, 
 of which they are now the high-priests. The buUs have a 
 threatening air; but the children of my Tartar farm play 
 happily together on the banks of the river. 
 
 There are vistas through the plantations eastward, and 
 openings in the espaliered walls, so that I see from my 
 Trench garden beyond the village to the plain, which 
 makes my Tartar park seem larger than it is. Now, as I 
 want ever to see life,. I must fill the void left by my flocks 
 when they roam all day ; and this is how I shall do it : I 
 love animals as much as I hate fools ; I shaU fill my plain 
 with fallow-deer, Barbary sheep, gazelles, foreign animals 
 of all kinds, even wild ones that have been tamed among 
 us, sheep vrith pendent fleeces, horses such as I have seen 
 in the north of Europe with their white manes sweeping 
 the groimd. One species, discredited by most of us very 
 unadvisedly, shall be of this colony. Its name is not in 
 vogue, and seems ignoble. I speak of the ass. I love his 
 
MEMOIR OP THE PRmCE DE LIGNE. 263 
 
 style of mind, his maliciousness, his reasoning, his obstinacy 
 I shall have several, if I can find any suf&ciently philoso- 
 phical to live with me without ambition, and if, sacrificing 
 honours and favour, they are content to repose on my turf 
 — instead of being seated ia an arm-chair before a desk. 
 All this wiU be accomphshed in two years. 
 
 At one end of the village and Tartar farm rises by 
 imperceptible degrees a hill, very natural, very real, com- 
 manding my gardens of all nations, upon which wiU stand 
 the column of Marathon. But instead of the names of the 
 ten thousand Greeks it will bear upon it those of Hannibal, 
 Alexander, Epaminondas, Xenophon, Caesar, Scipio, Maurice, 
 Frederick-Henry of Nassau, the great devil Lamoral de 
 Ligne, Farnese, Cond^, Turenne, Luxembourg, Catinat, 
 Gustavus Adolphus, Charles XII., MontecueuU, Louis of 
 Baden, Eugfene, Lacy, Frederick the Great, Loudon. 
 
 It is here, at this point, that begins the tableau of human 
 life, which has been finished for some years. Come ye, 
 and walk here, proud philosophers who know everything — 
 except yourselves. I despise your ostentatious march; 
 mine is meeker, truer, and will briag me to the end more 
 pleasantly. Come, ye grasping, ye ambitious beings, fool- 
 ish preceptors of the human race, stern moralists to others, 
 presumptuous men of letters, and sham legislators, courtiers, 
 and men of fashion, come into my groves. 
 
 First, here is an arbour, it is that of childhood ; a little 
 barrier parts it from adolescence, where begins a pathway, 
 bordered with roses and lilies, carpeted with moss,, charm- 
 ing in its freshness, that leads to steps on which to kneel 
 around the statue of Love ia white marble. Here is the 
 altar, the sacrifice, the oblation, aU at the same time, and 
 whenever you will. A little road, bordered with grape- 
 vines, brings us to old Silenus, crowned with tendrils, and 
 
264 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 holding a cup which he gayly offers. Here we may linger, 
 I think, a moment without leadiag to consequences. Thence 
 the same path, rejoining that of Love, leads to a dusky 
 thicket; in this are the Laughs and the Games, also in 
 white marble. One there is in black marble and more 
 serious ; that one points to the only road that pierces 
 deeper into the thicket, and leads to a ruin placed ia 
 a semicircle. It is of twelve marble columns in three 
 storeys, and gives the idea of those baths of antiquity. 
 
 Other Games, more pleasing, point the way to the cabinet 
 of Philosophy. This is a verdant salon, with a rivulet that 
 winds its way through the flowery mead, o'er golden sands 
 and silvery pebbles. Across it are one or two tiny marble 
 bridges which come into use in times of siege. Here stands 
 the statue of M. de Voltaire ia a bower of winter roses. 
 Yes, 't is here, 't is to you, divine Voltaire, that I made this 
 offering. Though you love no sheep that are not of your 
 fold, mine come and browse upon the flowers I have planted 
 at your feet. My vassals and I bless him who gave in- 
 telligence to some and bread to others. 'T is to the author 
 of the Epistles from the Lake of Geneva and on Agriculture, 
 to the apostle of tolerance and beneficence, to the lord of 
 the . village, the maker of Ferney, that I here sacrifice. If 
 it were to the author of the Henriade and other master- 
 pieces of all kinds, my wealth would not suffice to raise the 
 temple, which should be of gold and azure. 
 
 Farther on, at the end of an alley that has no regularity, 
 the good La Fontaine listens, attentive, to the various animals 
 of my numerous family, and catches their zoo-wits in the act. 
 I invoke his own to brighten mine ; I say to liim : " Make me 
 talk like thy menagerie, thy pigeon-cote, thine aviary. Con- 
 sole me, inspire me, protect me, subUme and simple "La 
 Fontaine." 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 265 
 
 Moliere, in a corner, is laughing at all and making me 
 laugh. I think of that great saying : " You are a jeweller, 
 M. Josse ? " It was that which won him the small distinction 
 of my placing him here. 
 
 But before entering this dweUing of the three greatest of 
 all philosophers, we passed, on the left, the statue of one who 
 was none at all — the unhappy, the eloquent, the stupendous 
 Jean-Jacques. He is in bronze, because of the blackness of 
 his spirit; there are thorns and some stones on the path 
 that leads to him through yonder rather wild piece of woods. 
 It is because of his paradoxes and his ill-temper that I have 
 put him there for punishment, outside the door of the salon 
 of philosophy. 
 
 From this salon of philosophy we go by flowery paths to 
 the chamber of Death environed with cypress, myrtle, and 
 laurel In it is a sepulchre of white marble, for which, before 
 constructing it, I took my measure, that I might lie at ease 
 in case, perchance, I end my days at Beloeil. For, being as 
 lazy after death as I have been in life, I shall wish to be left 
 wheresoever I close my eyes to the light. Meantime this 
 last retreat is a long parallelogram filled, summer and winter, 
 with roses, heartsease, and immortelles. 
 
 Eeturning to the ruined Temple, the thicket on the left 
 (that on the right leads to the garden of the philosophers) 
 encloses the mausoleum of Adonis, standing amid an island 
 of anemone, the choice of which conveys the idea that they 
 are still stained with his blood. From there we pass to 
 another scene, the Temple of Gnossia [Ariadne] in white 
 marble, near to the river Cephisus, which, as we know, com- 
 pels the nymph to bestow the kiss that she has promised. 
 Then another space, close by, yet whoUy separated, contains 
 the Temple of Morpheus, surrounded by poppies. This is a 
 covered salon, painted within as if open to the sky. In the 
 
266 MEMOIE OF THE PRINCE DE LIGKE. 
 
 centre is a fine statue of tlie god of the lazy, or rather of 
 pleasure-seekers tired by pleasure. Vast divans are all 
 around it, where scores of weary beings can lose the last 
 remnants of their vigour in sluggish idleness. 
 
 I have a qualm about the Temple of Gnossia. It stands 
 in so small a space, to which its eight columns are duly pro- 
 portioned, that I fear 't is more the bathroom of the goddess 
 than her temple. Had I a greater space to devote to the 
 goddess of Tenderness, I would outdo Cyprus, Cythera, Paphos, 
 and Amathus; Paros and Carrara should exhaust their 
 treasures in her service. Euined in peristyles and bas-reliefs, 
 I should be so denuded as to be unable to leave this temple, 
 where, as everybody knows, the worship of the goddess 
 must be carried on naked. Cupid would be angry ; he likes 
 no rival worship to that of his mother. "Little god," I 
 should say to him, " there 's a worship for you that is better 
 than this ; it is in my heart. ' T is a temple less costly, but 
 more divine." 
 
 An upper canal, which surrounds my riding-school, is fed, 
 near two great trees as old as the country, by a little cascade, 
 issuing from a spring, which rises also in the first of the three 
 courtyards and supplies the water of the whole chateau, the 
 bathrooms, kitchens, and stable. Stone balustrades with iron 
 railiQgs separate these courtyards, around which rise the 
 main buildings of the chateau, which has forty-six complete 
 suites of rooms, twelve of which are rather magnificent, and 
 are made extremely gay and convenient by twelve salons in 
 the four towers of the chateau. 
 
 I had under my eyes from the windows of the three 
 chief salons, the stiffest, coldest part of the grounds, — a 
 patch of water without effects, a patch of flowers with- 
 out grass, hedges like the frame of a mirror defining 
 the limits of the whole garden. This is what I did: 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 267 
 
 Just before starting for the war in Bavaria, I made with my 
 own hands a plan in relief, out of clay and little branches, 
 on a table that was twenty-five feet in length. After beiag 
 away three years without seeing Beloeil, I came back to find 
 this melancholy part of my garden (that to the west) met- 
 amorphosed into the loveliest of meadows, with banks of 
 flowers here and there, and a river, flowing through a smiling 
 valley. I had given the lay of the land by my eye, not 
 by my legs ; for I am not fond of fatiguing myself, or, to tell 
 the truth, of fatiguing others. 
 
 But in order to get this very considerable flow of water, I 
 was obliged, necessarily, to narrow the ground ; and in this I 
 succeeded perfectly, by making a gentle ravine which, before 
 the water falls to the level of the river below, is rich with a 
 wealth of the rarest shrubs and, on one side, with a forest of 
 orange-trees, buried in their tubs. Above the fall of water I 
 have built a temple to I don't know what god, — dedicate it 
 to whom you wiU, — a superb ruin, all in marble, the columns 
 of which, though well-preserved, instead of presentiag the 
 repellent aspect of most of the ruins that I know, fill the 
 mind with rich ideas. In the apse are four pilasters of 
 Genoese marble carved in arabesques ; the seats are pieces 
 of marble, which I suppose to have fallen from some pedi- 
 ment. This hall, rather vast and paved with marble, is 
 crossed by a small canal or conduit, which carries the water 
 of the river above, between the columns of the portico and 
 down three falls of twenty feet, with great rapidity, into the 
 river below. 
 
 There is scarcely a morsel of these marbles that I have 
 not changed from year to year a dozen times to be sure that 
 each shall have its due effect, and people, say I have suc- 
 ceeded. Following the river, which ia flowing onward makes 
 an isle of roses, we find on the left bank an obelisk, dedicated 
 
268 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 by friendship to Valour. It is not my blame if Charles- is 
 the object of it ; it is not my deed if Charles has distinguished 
 himself in war ; it is not my fault if I gave life to a being so 
 perfect; the father is nought; the man exists; the hero is 
 celebrated. Accuse me not, therefore, of partiality. Of 
 pride, if you wiU ; I can conceive that that may be.^ 
 
 This obelisk, also in marble, which we approach through 
 a sacred wood by a marble path across a beautiful lawn, is 
 forty feet high. On one side, in letters of gold, are the 
 words: To my dear Charles, for Subacz and Ismail. On 
 the second side: Nee te, juvenis memorande, silebo (from 
 Virgil). On the third: Sein Buhnu macht meinen Stolz, 
 seirie Freundseliaft mein GliicJc. 
 
 I have carried this lawn very nearly across the moat of 
 the chateau close up to the towers on two peninsulas ; also 
 on an island of swans, another of ducks, a third of geese, 
 which latter have a little throne of four tiny columns of 
 marble on a grassy mound. There is also a floating island, 
 a Chinese island, and stUl another island, on which there is a 
 very singular buUding, the lower floor of which belongs to 
 bees; the next is an aviary; the third a pigeon-cote; the 
 fourth is the home of storks. I thus break up a mass of 
 water which was too considerable, and I bring my natural 
 garden, my meadow, as I call it modestly, beneath the very 
 windows of my three grand salons. 
 
 The spirit of detraction is, as I have said elsewhere, the 
 sign manual of mediocrity. Many of these details wiU be 
 thought too petty. To play at genius we must call things 
 trivial. It is this point of view alone that applies that term 
 to garden works, which, if done appropriately, will point to 
 
 1 Great God ! how have I heen punished for it ! I have no strength to 
 change what I have written above. It will be seen elsewhere what I have 
 added. 
 
V 
 
 V 
 
 V 
 
 ^ 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 269 
 
 objects most interesting to the soul. Must we he poor and 
 insignificant to have the pleasure of being natural? It is 
 allowable in me, more perhaps than in any other man, to 
 say : " I do not decide between the rrench and English gar- 
 den, between Kent and Le Notre." And to prove that my 
 mind is of neither side (though my heart is for that of the 
 irregular) I will admit that visitors to Belceil are struck with 
 the French manner and do not willingly turn from admiring 
 the superb developments of my father's work to come and 
 dream in mine. The reason is, one cannot force* men to 
 think, and the greater number prefer to look than to feel. 
 
 What I have written, and it is written without wishing 
 or being able to lessen the merit of my French gardens, will, 
 I trust, win a merit for miue with all true worshippers of 
 the god of taste — be they amused or instructed, interested, 
 made to think, or ravished. May Belceil give back to pos- 
 terity the happiness and the sweetness I have enjoyed here ! 
 Let those who are not like me amend their ways, or die with 
 envy that there is one man upon this earth who is perfectly 
 happy ; and let those who do resemble me share, when I am 
 no longer here, the felicity of the maker and possessor of 
 these tranquil gardens. 
 
 You who do not own a garden, ready-made, and who desire 
 to make one in treacherous climes, meditate, calculate effects, 
 exaggerate nothing ; if you cannot have genius and taste, be 
 logical — if you can be no better. But what observations to 
 make ! what essays ! I know well you cannot wipe out 
 bosquets as you can a tree ill-placed on your paper design ; 
 but, nevertheless, stand off, turn about, look on all sides at 
 your effects, in order to change your plantations. Correct 
 nature, instead of employing art to make nature. There are 
 few brooks, for instance, that flow as we want them : you 
 must give them an easier course ; inclose them with some 
 
270 MEMOIE OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 particular scene and fringe their borders suitably. Barriers 
 are annoying to meet with and never good to see, except from 
 a height that dwarfs them ; vineyards have a most disagree- 
 able effect for eight months of the year, fields for six, flowers 
 for ten, if not renewed. 
 
 The sheen of flowers, the tones of a varied verdure and of 
 fruits may give to one garden great superiority over others ; 
 but, after much experience, I find that we ought to make 
 masses; if not, there is too much twinkling of colour; let 
 there be masses of roses, of pinks, or tulips ; and let them be 
 renewed, by buried pots if necessary. But never any stands 
 of flowers in gradation, as if for the ftte of a parish saint or 
 a chapel of the Virgin. And so with shrubs ; a score to- 
 gether, all gray in tone, or purple, or rose, or white, or 
 yellow, or flesh-coloured like the magnolia. I know that 
 all this must be subordinate to the rays of the sun and the 
 hours of the day ; but it is a necessary work ; be not dis- 
 couraged ; it is for the sun to protect that which we do only 
 for him to put the final touches. 
 
 Drive all trades from gardens ; no frame-work, no trellises, 
 no painting, no hoops to the beds ; let the branches twine 
 together at their own sweet will. Occupy yourselves in 
 your garden. Bring with you and amuse the charming sex ; 
 let the paths be well beaten that they may not wet their 
 pretty feet. Through winding arbours, narrow and fragrant 
 with roses, jasmine, violets, and honeysuckle, lead them to 
 the baths, or to their sofas ; give them their embroidery- 
 frames, their knitting, their netting, but, above all, their 
 writing-desks, in which the sand, or something else, is always 
 missing — though secrets, ignored by husbands and lovers, 
 are always there. Besting on their knees, those desks will 
 serve them to tell sweet lies with crow-quills. 
 
 I detest rough sketches of great things ; if they be touched 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 271 
 
 at all they must not be failures. No ruins of Palmyra in 
 the style of those of General Conway ; their whiteness, their 
 polished columns set a bad example ; crumbling arches too 
 well kept become ridiculous. Euins should convey the idea 
 of places of dignity passed away with the celebrated persons 
 who inhabited them. But when one sees the Greehery of 
 certain Englishmen, and the Gothic of Mr. Walpole, one is 
 tempted to believe that the dehrium of a bad dream con- 
 trived the work. I much prefer his " Castle of Otranto " to 
 that on the Thames, which is quite as distraught, and not 
 nearly so gay. 
 
 Temples ought either to inspire sensuous pleasure or to 
 recall that secret awe that was felt on enteriug them in days 
 of old ; but what can we feel on beholding templomania, 
 such as my Lord Temple was led into by his name ? 
 
 I should think much of the place of a Lord Botetourt, near 
 Bristol, but it has no water save that which comes down from 
 heaven. In vain has he built certaia Chinese bridges over 
 hollows, making believe that water flows beneath. No one 
 is long the dupe of that ; and what I saw at my Lord Mans- 
 field's from the windows of his house is only one instance of 
 an unfortunate lack in many of the finest gardens in Eng- 
 land. The celebrated Mile. Sophie Arnould, when some one 
 was trying to make her admire an English garden, remarked, 
 pointing to a trickling ditch over which a bridge had been 
 thrown, " It is as like a river as two drops of water." 
 
 The English might diminish this difficulty if it were not 
 for a mania with them to get away from the Thames ; they 
 have not known how to profit by that advantage. The Duke 
 of Marlborough has supplied the want by turning a river 
 through his park, where it becomes both broad and rapid, 
 and flows with a roar. I cannot forgive my Lord Pembroke 
 for letting his run sluggishly, like a canaL They love grot- 
 
272 MEMOIB OF THE PEINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 tos in England, it seems to me ; that of my Lord Tilney has 
 cost him much more than the pleasure it gives ; and I only 
 like that at Twickenham because I pictured to myself Pope 
 sitting there, engaged upon Man. He worked almost as 
 well in gardens ; for his, though small, is very pleasing. It 
 now belongs to Mrs. Stanhope. 
 
 I never like semi-foreign things. The Duke of Devon- 
 shire has brought back from his travels beauties that do not 
 go well with his landscape; the little French and Italian 
 that he has at Chiswick did not please me at all. But what 
 can be more beautiful than King's- Western, and the view 
 from the river Mersey and the whole of Wales ? Is any- 
 thing more superb than Windsor ? What a forest ! what 
 majesty! In other days the ancient oaks of the forest of 
 Dodona gave forth oracles. I was tempted to inquire of 
 these. They inspired the awe with which our souls are pen- 
 etrated by the approach of divinity. 
 
 Blenheim and Kew are all that are best for flower-beds 
 and rarest shrubs. Wilton next, for the sake of its bridge, 
 its mill, and its busts, though the latter, which are too 
 numerous, are in the house, and I would rather see them in 
 the gardens. Lastly, the lodges of the Duke of Cumberland. 
 These are what gave me the greatest pleasure in England. 
 I do not speak here of the architecture of the country. The 
 heaviness of Sir John Vanburgh is well known, as well as 
 his epitaph, which is an excellent joke. Inigo Jones, noble 
 and simple in his work, is the last who has done honour to 
 England in this style. He has imitated the antique rather 
 too closely in his narrow doors and wiudows. Greenwich 
 would have done him more credit, it seems to me, if he 
 had joined the two wings in the wood, at the lower end, 
 by a superb temple and mausoleum, filled with urns, to 
 receive the ashes of the brave sailors who make the hon- 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRiNdB DE LIGNE. ^73 
 
 our and wealth of the kingdom, and are the admiration of 
 foreigners. 
 
 I have said nothing of Sion House, formerly a Catholic 
 convent, then the residence of Cardinal Wolsey, now the 
 property of the Duchess of Northumberland. It stands on 
 the bank of the Thames, with a splendid view of Eichmond 
 and the little house of my Lady Harrington. 
 
 Those who can call to mind the sublime and stupendous 
 scenes of Shakespeare, and the grotesque ones of the author 
 of " Hudibras," will have a sense of them here in these gar- 
 dens of England, as well as in her morals, medicine, and phi- 
 losophy. We owe to the English great obligations. Even 
 their defects are of benefit to others. I defy any one to 
 work really well with Nature who has not been in England, 
 if only to learn neatness. For instance : go into the finest 
 palace precincts of France or the residences of the Empire ; 
 I think more of the small country -place of a London shop- 
 keeper, where the furniture is kept like a snuff-box, the turf 
 like a billiard-table, and the shrubs cared for like the hair 
 of a pretty woman. It is neatness that I commend the most. 
 Without it a man should quit the meadows, which he is not 
 worthy to inhabit, and contribute to increase the filth of 
 great cities, where his soul will acquire the same and lose its 
 purity. 
 
 The taste for gardens has departed from Italy ; behold 
 what they are doing there ! No more turf ; no longer a 
 Sabine valley, as in the days of Horace ; the charming Tibur 
 is no more ! What has become of that spot which he paints 
 so well as a natural garden ? — 
 
 QuJi pinus ingens, albaque populus 
 Umbram hospitalem oonsociare amant 
 
 Ramis, et obliquo laborat 
 Lymph a fugax trepidare rivo. 
 VOL. I. — 18 
 
274 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNB. 
 
 Perhaps it was this ode that gave to the English the idea of 
 their gardens, for they all have Horace in their heads as well 
 as Homer and Virgil. 
 
 It seems as though the Italian climate must have 
 changed; at any rate, the love of gardens has passed from 
 the south of Europe to the north. On arrival, it had an 
 audience with the Empress of Eussia. They understood 
 each other on the spot. It became her Bostangy-Pacha ; or 
 rather, the conqueress of the Turks is herself the gardener- 
 ess of Czarsko-zelo. The legislatrix of the greatest of em- 
 pires sows her own lawns. Czarsko-zelo, which contains 
 what the empress calls her fancies, presents on all sides the 
 most charming pictures. These fancies, so-called, are water 
 and optical effects, well imagined and well varied, such as 
 a bridge of Siberian marble of an architecture in the style of 
 Palladio, baths, a Turkish pavilion, groups of islands, iron 
 gates, a ruin, monuments to the victories of Eomanoff and 
 Orloff, a superb rostral column in the middle of the lake to 
 commemorate Czesma; on the bank a charming building; 
 agreeable contours everywhere, quantities of flowers and 
 exotic shrubs, lawns as well kept and as fine as those of 
 England, temples, colonnades, and, above all, the grand 
 staircase of Hercules on the garden side, — all of which 
 makes this garden one of the most interesting in the world. 
 It is here that the great princess, letting fall for a moment 
 the reins of government, takes up a pencil, a rake, a pruning- 
 hook ; which implements, however, she does not handle as 
 she would a sword if destiny had not made her, for the 
 honour of her sex, a woman. 
 
 Peterhoff is two leagues distant from Czarsko-zelo. It is 
 the most imperial dwelling of all the summer residences of 
 the Court, consequently the least gay. The petty Dutch 
 style in which Peter the Great began it is visible ; also the 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 275 
 
 enlargement of his ideas from what he had seen during his 
 travels. It was in the first manner that he built himself 
 on the seacoast a house that he called Monplaisir, where, in 
 arbours ill-designed, iU-planted, there are traps, clocks, harpsi- 
 chords, chimes, organs, musicians, ducks, hounds, deer, all 
 set in motion by water-wheels. 
 
 In the advice that I distribute, without being asked for 
 it (for the worst little author, or maker of gardens thinks 
 that he at least has no need of any), I always say : " It is 
 by doing, reflecting, walking about, and noting down that 
 you will see what persons with fitful notions cannot see. 
 Let your eyes never weary of wandering over the beauties 
 of Nature, and you wiU learn from her how to combine 
 them." I have looked long at the open fields, and I have 
 learned that the red of the poppies, the blue of the corn- 
 flowers, the yellow of the turnips make the best of palettes ; 
 unite them with the tender green of the flax, the honey- 
 grass, the mottled buckwheat, the pale yeUow of the wheat, 
 the vivid green of the barley, and many other species that 
 I do not yet know, and you will have an enchanting effect. 
 To me, who do not like walls, and to whom the hedges and 
 the canals suf&ce, this picture which lies in the distance 
 beyond the gardens and plantations is a joy the more in my 
 country home. 
 
 Let us do good, good to others ; let us make others live ; 
 let us increase, for example, the populations of the air, 
 the earth, the waters. As it was said of old, " Let there be 
 light," and there was light, so I would fain that men should 
 say, " Let there be birds, fishes, above all, swans." I seek a 
 Jupiter, but I see no Leda ; perhaps some god might still 
 renew the jest — but, ah! there is no gallantry in heaven 
 now. However, the margin of my fountains resounds with 
 the cries of increase among my creatures ; the waters bubble 
 
276 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNB. 
 
 with the leap of carps, the ducks are making nests, even the 
 geese are fcusy; the pigeons, hunted in other places, are 
 flocking to the cotes. Methinks I am increasing the wealth 
 of Nature by thus increasing the number of her children. 
 Many peacocks, above all, are here ; though I detest the 
 proud. Let us meet comrades everywhere, no matter of what 
 species they may be. Hey ! good God ! there are many on 
 four feet that might serve as an example to those on two. 
 The more we see and the more, unfortunately, we know of 
 men, the more unconsciously we detach ourselves from them 
 (keeping in our hearts indulgence for all, but devotion to 
 few), and the more we attach ourselves to animals. Besides 
 the many favourites that I have, such as a certain doe, 
 which follows me when I ride on horseback, or swims beside 
 my boat on the lake, I have an innumerable quantity of 
 other creatures which come to me when I call them, in 
 Turkish fashion, by clapping my hands, — two hundred geese, 
 for instance, swans, ducks, birds; all of which are con- 
 tentedly propagating in the castle moat. 
 
 I think much of statues; but those of marble are soon 
 stained, those of stone become split, those of plaster make a 
 wretched appearance. We should be mediocre in nothing, 
 but especially not in such things. Unless you can put in 
 a garden of a hundred acres one hundred thousand crowns' 
 worth of statues, it is better to say you do not like them. 
 That is what I say myself, but I fib. They ennoble and give 
 life. It is well, too, to place a few busts in retired places, 
 without pretension ; still, they must seem to be a fancy or 
 an act of friendship; if of love, so much the better. A 
 statue dear to one's heart is better than the chariots of the 
 Sun, or the horses of Victory; but remember, it must be 
 placed only in a temple of mystery, filled with the spirit of 
 the beauty we adore. Invoke that spirit in your gardens ; 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PEINCE DE LIGNE 277 
 
 after satisfying your heart it will inspire you with taste; 
 for we must love and be loved in order to create the beauti- 
 ful. All the works of Love are perfect. Poems and gar- 
 dens that breathe it cannot fail to charm. But is it to frighten 
 children that white colossal figures are placed symmetrically, 
 ranged like a regiment ? Eather let each divinity stand 
 reheved against dark masses of trees ; and in place of those 
 Eoman emperors and Greek philosophers (with whose heads 
 I long to play at ball) let us place in branchy bowers a 
 Venus amid myrtle, a Mars iaclosed in laurels and pome- 
 granates, and even a Vulcan protecting a forge if we are 
 fortunate enough to be able to combine the agreeable with 
 the useful. 
 
 Let us ennoble all necessary work. Let the ditches for 
 drainage recall the aqueducts of the masters of three-fourths 
 of the then known world. Do not, however, push your 
 draining too far ; there are many trees which, if you leave 
 them thirsty, will punish you. If you clear your brooks 
 and rivulets it is good to see them flowing through the grass 
 which should slope to their brinks by a verdant glacis, 
 gentle and imperceptible ; never a revetment of stone, above 
 all, not of brick, always grass. I preach grass ; and on the 
 grass I shall preach love. No compasses, either ; none were 
 used for the lines of the Graces, and the cestus of Venus 
 was never symmetrically put on. 
 
 But return we now to the sweet and tender thoughts 
 inspired by the love of gardens. It is in rural life that 
 you will best find means to practise human kindness. You 
 will see what it is near by. You will learn to comfort th6 
 needs of humanity, to unite them with your tastes; the 
 one will help the other, and heaven will bless the work. 
 Do not hurry what you do; take time; choose the season 
 that follows harvest. The great heats have passed; the 
 
278 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 fields are deserted; no longer is the pretty picture seen of 
 the rustic lover courting the wayward maid by doing half 
 her work. It is now, when the labourers of the fields have 
 nothing more to do, that you should dig and sow and plant. 
 Eenew your flowers ; graft them, protect them ; consider 
 and consult the seasons and the climate. Banish from 
 your garden the mournful image of the effects of poverty ; 
 let your inspectors concern themselves about the health of 
 your workmen ; restrain their zeal in the heat of the day, 
 compel them to rest in the shade of the trees, and give 
 them milk and bread. Their bodies blistered by the burn- 
 ing sun are painful to see. Exhausted with heat and 
 fatigue, these poor unfortunates trouble the peace of those 
 who make them toil by the knowledge of all that their 
 poverty forces them to suffer. In the springtime and 
 autumn we are consoled for the labour they bestow; we 
 do not fear for their health because, the day's work done, 
 they refresh themselves in the river, whither they coax the 
 village girls who have brought them their frugal suppers 
 and helped them, perhaps, to fiU their baskets. The sex, 
 though feeble in comparison with ours, is excellent for use 
 in gardens. The gardening implements suit well those arms 
 that the tanning of the sun has only mellowed. All that 
 is not too hard to do may well be trusted to the village 
 maidens, who, singing at their work, can earn enough to 
 help a mother, — a scolding mother perhaps, but who at 
 heart is a tender parent to her family. 
 
 Eemember too the children; if they are seven years old 
 they can gather up each morning the leaves that fall at 
 night, or puU the weeds the dainty sheep refuse upon the 
 lawns. The luxury of neatness, which I have so com- 
 mended, will employ a score of little ones ; and five or six 
 hundred ducats a yeaj thus spent will ensure to you the 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNB. 279 
 
 beauty and neatness of your garden, and he a proper tribute 
 paid by wealth to poverty. Employ all ages ; but witbout 
 fatiguing the old soldiers, whom woimds and age have 
 banished to their cottages. They can do something ; they 
 can keep the little ones from playing, the girls from chat- 
 tering, the labourers from lingering too long about their 
 dinners ; they could even wheel a barrow with slow steps, 
 and fill the ruts that deface the roads beyond the park. 
 On Sundays they can watch the visitors and see they do 
 not gather flowers or break the shrubs, and that their lively 
 lads do not disturb the brooding mothers on their nests. 
 
 It ought to enter into the policy of a wise government 
 to protect the art of gardens and those who cultivate them, 
 and to induce the seigneurs of a village to hve upon their 
 property, at least for six months of the year. But no, the 
 government sends them to their regiments, never to their 
 estates, where they might be far more useful They could, 
 for example, redress wrongs, reconcile the vicar and the 
 baillie who have quarrelled about the former's niece; they 
 could check the zeal of the young practitioner who is ex- 
 perimenting on the luckless villagers, preparatory to be = 
 coming a city physician ; they could say to the apothecary 
 (receiver of the refuse of city chemists): "Do not give 
 those dangerous mixtures of American barks and juices; 
 come into my garden and gather for yourself the indigenous 
 and wholesome herbs." Above aU, they could entreat the 
 vicar to read fewer books on theology and more of the 
 Gospel; to explain and paraphrase it, not interpreting it 
 according to his own notions, but (finding there a mystery 
 too great for him to solve) preaching from its pages obedience 
 to the sovereign, to fathers and mothers, the seigneur, the 
 parson, the accomplishment of duty, and concord with all. 
 
 Through physical advance into mental calmness and 
 
280 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNB. 
 
 from that to physical calmness, I advise others, from my 
 own experience, to love gardens to the point of dreaming 
 of them. May heaven preserve you from thinking as you 
 go to rest of women, war, the Court, of evil-doers, fools, or 
 fortune ; but if some plan of a bower, an orchard, a brook 
 goes to bed with you, you will surely have an excellent 
 nio-ht. Your ideas will be luUed by the undulating water, 
 by the waving gold of Ceres, by flowers, softly trembling 
 to the breath of a gentle zephyr. Happy I — who have so 
 often written that men should make a code, and even a 
 regime of happiness — happy I, if I have now held out 
 a branch to be seized by some about to drown ia the ocean 
 of the great world. Happy indeed is it to guard from 
 storms, to offer a hospitable shade to those who are fiung 
 into the valley of tears, to teach them to plant with flowers 
 the little distance which separates, as I have shown in my 
 garden of allegory, the cradle of infancy from the sanctuary 
 of death. 
 
 Yes, happy, if I have succeeded ; if, in embellishing 
 Nature, or, rather, in bringing her closer — let me say better 
 still — in making her felt, I have imparted a taste for her. 
 From our gardens she wUl lead us elsewhere; our spirits 
 will have recourse to her power in all things ; our purer 
 hearts wiU be the temple, the most precious temple we can 
 dedicate to her. Our souls will glow with her beauties ; 
 truth will return to live among us, justice will quit the 
 skies; and, happier a thousand-fold than on Olympus, the 
 gods wiU pray mankind to let them live on earth. 
 
 What I have written above (of which two editions are 
 exhausted) has lost and at the same time gained in merit. 
 I do not know if the gardens that I saw twenty years ago 
 in England, eight years ago in France, seven years ago in 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 281 
 
 the Nortli are stiU what they were ; neither do I know if 
 my own gardens are such as I left them a year ago. I 
 described them as they were before our armies abandoned 
 my estates, my government, my regiment [in 1794 to the 
 armies of the French Eepublic]. I wrote in happy days; 
 when the earth was not soiled with crime ; when our blood 
 and our tears did not flow. Then I wrote names that I 
 have no longer the strength to utter. All things have taken 
 another aspect. But that does not change the intention of 
 my work, which was simply to give counsel and example to 
 others. These are not the tales of a traveller, they are only 
 the precepts of a gardener. 
 
 Sit mece sedes utinam senectce. 
 Sit modus lasso maris, et viarum 
 Militimque ! 
 
 HoK. Odes, Booh II., Ode to Sepiimius. 
 
XII. 
 
 1780-1786. 
 
 PARIS, BELCEIC, AND TRAVELS. 
 
 I HAVE just given myself the trouble of counting in the 
 journal of my secretary, M. Leygeb, the number of journeys 
 I made up to this period of my hfe. I find thirty-four from 
 Brussels to Vienna, always passing through Paris ; twelve 
 from the Army to Vienna during three wars ; and eighteen 
 from Beloeil to Paris up to the year 1786, after which the 
 Turkish war and the Eevolutions fixed me in Vienna for 
 the next thirteen years. I have travelled twice through 
 Eussia, Poland, and Italy, once in Moravia, England, the 
 Crimea, and through Provence. I will wager that I have 
 spent three years of my life in carriages, and more than 
 150,000 florins in post-horses alone. As much more in 
 cards, I fancy. My campaigns cost me more than 500,000 
 florins, and I gave over 200,000 to my regiment and other 
 troops that I had under my command. I must have spent 
 500,000 more in gardens and buildings at Beloeil, which is 
 not so very much ; and the same for fStes, reviews, camps 
 for drill and exercise, public entries, inaugurations, etc. 
 The ordinary expenses of my household in the Low Coun- 
 tries was 60,000" florins, without counting my ambulating 
 residences [maison ambulante], which cost me 30,000 or 
 40,000 more. So in all, I think, I have spent some six or 
 seven millions of our Viennese florins, or twenty millions 
 of French francs, since I came into the world. 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 283 
 
 In 1780 I started, I do not now remember what day in 
 tlie month of May or June, for Vienna, Prague, Dresden, 
 Berlin, Petersburg, Warsaw, Cracovia, where I had business, 
 MoghUani, which almost belongs to me, L^opol and Brunn, 
 where I thought I was in love. 1 am forgetting to say 
 that I started from Paris, No. 2 rue de Bourbon, the house 
 of the Duchesse de Polignac, who had just been confined, 
 where I had dined with the queen. I promised them to 
 return at the same hour six months later ; and I ordered 
 the hired coach and my hired valet to be ready at that 
 time. I found them at the very spot at the right hour, 
 though many events had occurred in the meantime, among 
 others the death of the Empress Maria Theresa. 
 
 It was on my return that I displeased the queen very 
 innocently. As she mourned the death of her mother so 
 deeply, I did not expect to see her first in public. But 
 one of those officious persons who are always seeing and 
 hearing things crookedly, found me with the Comtesse 
 Diane during the hour for the public dinner of the queen. 
 " She knows you have arrived," he said, " and she takes it 
 very ill of you not to go to her at once." I was foohsh 
 enough to believe him and went. When she saw me the 
 queen began to weep before all the Court, who were present, 
 as usual, at the Sunday dinner, and she said to me on leav- 
 ing the table : " You might have spared my feelings this 
 pubhc scene ; you ■ are not Austrian enough to disregard the 
 customs of this country." I explained to her the cause of 
 my indiscretion, and the storm, hke so many others when 
 we live in a zone of tempests, went by. 
 
 At Versailles, where I stayed only to amuse myself, they 
 had the absurdity to suppose I was there with political 
 intentions, and they said the same thing a little later when 
 I went to Eussia. " It is not natural," people said, " but very 
 
2^ MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 clever of tim to be so continually in the intimate society 
 of the queen." 
 
 On another occasion I found myself suddenly out of 
 favour with the queen, without suspecting it, because of 
 some trifling gayety I had permitted myself (so she told 
 me afterwards) about the Emperor and the Queen of Naples. 
 While she was playing cards in the apartments of the 
 Princesse de Lamballe, I placed myself behind her chair 
 with my usual confidence, which never supposes that people 
 are displeased with me. She did not speak to me, but I 
 thought that was only because I was so much with her. 
 I spoke to her and she answered curtly; still I suspected 
 nothing. Mme. de Lamballe reminded me of it after the 
 game and seemed quite frightened ; and being as good and 
 kind as she is pretty, she promised to find out the reason. 
 She told me the next day. As there was a masked baU in 
 Paris that night, I hoped for an opportunity to have an 
 explanation with the queen. She noticed that I was ex- 
 tremely sad all day, and she told Mme. de Simiane to make 
 me believe that she was the queen, telling her a part of our 
 quarrel, and assuring her that I should be a very good sub- 
 ject to mystify. 1 fell into the trap. Mme. de Simiane 
 showed me her beautiful hands, which were not however 
 as beautiful as those of the queen, but she made them her 
 letters of credit. I was agitated; I believe I wept, and I 
 justified myself with excessive warmth. She promised that 
 we should continue on the same good terms as before. I 
 represented to her that one never could trust to kings and 
 queens, and I was afraid she would not be as kind to me 
 the next day ; therefore, to reassure me, I begged her to 
 pinch the tip of her right ear every time that I pinched 
 mine during the play the next evening at Versailles, where 
 I always stood just below her box. In vain did I almost 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE 1.1GS^. 2^5 
 
 tear my ear off ; the queen did not touch hers. I had an 
 opportunity of speaking to her about it as we came out. 
 She thought me crazy, and it made her laugh so much she 
 forgot her anger ; which, after all, was not great, and there is 
 but a step from laughter to forgiveness : people who laugh 
 are always ready to pardon; and all the more if they are 
 charming young queens. 
 
 The queen had the kindness to permit me to always 
 stand beneath her box [at the theatre] where I could talk 
 with her. The day when the Notables had been convoked 
 I could not help looking at her when Cassandra said, in the 
 Tableau Parlant, " The notables of these regions are now 
 to assemble." The queen made terrible eyes at me to warn 
 me to hold my tongue in case I should want to say a word 
 about it ; but she had some difficulty in repressing a laugh. 
 The more she had been opposed to that cursfed invention, 
 the less she wanted to show it, holding it as a principle of 
 her conduct never to seem to condemn what the king did ; 
 but nothing could be more amusing than the air of prudence 
 she assumed at such times. 
 
 It was those cursfed grumblers at Louis XV. who really 
 flung poor Louis XVI. into his grave. It was the fashion to 
 gird at everything. People watched for M. de Choiseul at 
 his first relay on his way to exile. They rushed to Chante- 
 loup; they cried out against the parliament of Maupeou. 
 The latter, who knew his countrymen well, made Mme. du 
 Barry (she told me this herself) buy a portrait of Charles I., 
 that the king might daily behold before his eyes the results 
 of weakness. M. de Voltaire also wrote to him with the 
 same meaning, as I may have said elsewhere. It was the 
 higher nobility who were most ungrateful, — they who had 
 been loaded with Court favours, who, royalists and emigres 
 later, were scouting then at royalty. If there are, indeed, 
 
286 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 Elysian Fields hereafter, that beautiful and most unfortunate 
 queen will tell me she remembers how, on her relating to 
 me some outrage those people had done her, I called them 
 her " vile, charming subjects," seeing, even then, the harm 
 done by levity and ingratitude, but far, indeed, from foresee- 
 ing that those subjects would cease to be charming and 
 become what they have been from 1789 to 1797. Noble, 
 sublime, beautiful, adorable, and hapless daughter and sister 
 of my masters, look down from where you are amid the rec- 
 ompense of your virtues, and see the eternal regrets of those 
 who, like myself, were the witnesses of your goodness, and 
 are ever fiUed with the tenderest admiration and unceasing 
 sorrow. 
 
 The king said one day, among his brutal, stinging sallies : 
 " I always think of hunting dogs when I hear the names of 
 Du Lot, D^ssaulx, Turgot, Baudeau, Mirabeau, and the rest 
 of those Economists." The Abb^ Baudeau talked as badly 
 as a man could about the art he professed [political econ- 
 omy], which only proves that it is not an art, but a trade. 
 As he was one of my Council [in the Low Countries], though 
 I never asked him for any advice, I took him one day into 
 the country. After talking to me all the Economies, political 
 and rural, I proved to him, by the latter, that he. did not 
 understand the former. I set him arguing with my farmers, 
 mechanics, workmen, labourers, and the peasants of several 
 villages ; and I admired anew the good sense of that mer- 
 chant of Smyrna, when a plough made by a learned man was 
 in question. It was Mirabeau's father, by the way, who, in 
 order not to compromise himself, used to pray : " My God, if 
 there be one, I commend to you my soul, if I have one." 
 That is all very pretty, as long as the death-knell does not 
 sound. 
 
 The quarrel caused by the too clever friends and the too 
 
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liu Uii, ; '■ 
 
 of thme I 
 
 as a nmu (<■>■'. 
 omy], which ^^Ltir yt ; ■ 
 As he was <>n& of uiy '• tJ^! ^- • ■ ■ 
 I iiever asked iiiui f<»r ^jiy :.'!Vi>. •.- ' 
 (he country. After tail. mg to «ie all i 
 juid rural, T proved to him, by thf 
 -Jerstiin.j the former- 1 set him nij 
 ,-T!ir,!(u-«, worTciuen. hibourers, ami 
 and I adriu red anew th<' ,. 
 , - ■\ynm, when a pliiugh 
 H wdi MirabeftH'- 
 
JIY 
 
MEMOIR or THE PKINCE JDE EIGNE. 287 
 
 wide-awake enemies of M. de Calonne and the Baron de 
 Breteuil, was a chief cause of the misfortunes of Prance, 
 consequently of Europe. I besought them a score of times 
 to reconcile the excellent head of the one with the penetrat- 
 ing (though perhaps rather volatile) intelligence of the 
 other ; for the union was necessary and would have made 
 an excellent administration. 
 
 M. de Pezai was one of M. Necker's last hopes, and 
 became, in consequence, completely spoiled and puffed up. 
 Necker employed him to write anonymous letters to the 
 king, saying good of himself, Necker, and giving the king 
 advice. Louis XVI. read the letters with pleasure. Necker, 
 wishing to know their effect, made Pezai write that he 
 should send no more unless the king should express a desire 
 for them by looking in a certain direction as he came 
 through the glass door of his cabinet into the gallery, and 
 by making a sign. The king did so. Pezai continued writ- 
 ing. He happened to mention M. de Sartine as among his 
 acquaintance, was seen to talk with him, and was guessed 
 when the king asked that minister who he supposed was 
 the author of the letters. Sartine expected to play a role, 
 and Necker was then playing that which ruined France. 
 Pezai afterwards pleased M. de Maurepas, made a fool of 
 himself, was scolded, and died of the mortification. In his 
 letters to the king he went so far as to prompt the king as to 
 what he ought to say and do. " You cannot reign with grace, 
 Sire," he wrote ; " nature has denied you that ; make yourself 
 imposing, therefore, by great severity of principles. Your 
 Majesty will soon attend a horse-race. You will there see a 
 notary who will be writing down the bets of M. le Comte 
 d'Artois and M. le Due d'OrMans. You should say, Sire, on 
 seeing him : ' What is that man doing here ? should there 
 be writings between gentlemen ? their word suffices.' " AH 
 
288 MEMOIK or THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 this took place ; I was there and saw and heard it. Every 
 one cried out : " How true ! how right ! what a grand, kingly- 
 saying ! — but that is the king's way." 
 
 Horses and cabriolets in the morning are the ruin of the 
 young men in Paris. Englishmen do more harm to French- 
 men by their manners and customs, which Frenchmen adopt, 
 than by their navy. The latter now waste their morning 
 going about ; they diue with men ; they sup with courtesans, 
 because they are in frock-coats and it is too late to dress and 
 go into good company. And the " clubs " are putting a last 
 touch to this state of things. Farewell politeness, respect, 
 gallantry, the desire to please. They talk Parliament, House 
 of Commons ; they read the Courier de V Europe ; they talk 
 horses; they bet, they play at crebs; they drink a melan- 
 choly " clairet '' wine, instead of the good champagne that en- 
 livened their charming forebears and inspired their songs. 
 Amiable Gauls ! I entreat you to give the tone, and not to 
 take it. 
 
 If Frenchmen cease to be children I will not answer for 
 them. If races, newspapers, English clubs, frock-coats, boots, 
 little cords in their leather breeches, theatres, and dreadful 
 dramas cause them to lose their natural graces, — if they cease 
 to be singing, dancing, and gallanting, the French wiU become 
 furious madmen. The fashions and monstrosities that are 
 leading them to this should be smothered. Never were any 
 people so made for a Court. They were not created to think, 
 but to obey, and to amuse themselves, without being responsible 
 or intrusted with anything. Frenchmen of to-day, who 
 are losing the friendship of Europe without having acquired 
 its esteem, you are rushing to perdition. This is no child's 
 play. You are changed ; and blood will have to flow to bring 
 you back to common-sense. [Note by the prince in 1795 : 
 It was thus that I foresaw the evils of to-day. I can prove 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 289 
 
 that these words were written during the Assembly of the 
 Notables. It is sometimes easy to be a prophet.] 
 
 What are called men of letters in the present day, discon- 
 tented because men of the world are as well informed as 
 themselves, show a great deal of haughtiness; they are sulky 
 because they are not consiilted by kings and ministers. They 
 have read in the classics that philosophers were at Court in 
 those days ; but iq the first place those were not philosophers, 
 and in the second these gentlemen are not philosophers 
 either, much as they talk philosophy. The ancients taught 
 it without having it ; it was their business, and it did neither 
 harm nor good. But those of the present day are dangerous. 
 A bone should be given them to gnaw. It is clear that those 
 who have the most capacity will overthrow those who have 
 least ; it is also clear that those who are nothiag are seeking 
 to be something. They are saying (as if it were possible) 
 that nobility should not be hereditary, and they aver that 
 they speak in the name of the psople — the People ! who, if 
 it were not for them, would be drinking in their cafds and sing- 
 ing without a desire to kiU or to govern any one. In order to 
 bring themselves nearer to the nobles (whom I don't like 
 myself, unless they have merit, any better than the authors), 
 why don't they write in favour of misalliances, marriages that 
 Love, who was never a gentleman, ought to arrange with 
 Hymen ? 
 
 It would be much better if aU the governments of Europe 
 regarded these philosophers as in England they regard the 
 party of the Opposition, where they make use of it in politics 
 and in administration when they want to make changes by 
 calling it the majority. The writer, the lawyer, the little 
 curate would soon write for the Court, and against those it 
 formerly sided with. To complete the matter, the first 
 bourgeois author who wrote against the nobility should be 
 vot. I. — 19 
 
290 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 made a baron. That would catch him, and the man of 
 intellect would be the proudest of barons. 
 
 M. de la Blache challenged Beaumarchais, on one occasion, 
 to fight a duel with him, but Beaumarchais replied, apropos 
 of the Due de Chaulnes, who had also sent him a challenge, 
 " I can't, for I have refused a better." The assassination of 
 Beaumarchais was a very singular hoax. I saw him when he 
 arrived in Vienna with the air of a murdered man, for that 
 excellent mimic could make himself any face that he chose. 
 " Look at my hand," he said, " there is the cut of the knife. 
 Here upon this box of imitation gold the poignard struck. The 
 king gave it to me, I owe my life to him. Had I not hung 
 it round my neck to preserve this order, written by his own 
 hand (which you may read), I was a dead man." Sure 
 enough, the paper said: "The Sieur Beaumarchais will 
 execute the orders that I have given him, and his punctual 
 obedience will be the measure of my gratitude. Louis." He 
 was always chasing after the so-called libels against the 
 queen, which, as I think, he sometimes invented in order to 
 get a royal commission to investigate them. " A Jew," he 
 went on to say, " who was hawking an infamous book about 
 the queen, tracked me. I got out of my travelling-carriage 
 the other side of Nuremberg because I had to get out. I 
 stepped aside ; I went into a wood. Eight or ten soldiers in 
 uniform, recruiters or deserters, attacked me. Without arms ! 
 what a position ! I tried to slip behind a tree ; in an instant 
 aU their poignards were raised and — see the wound!" 
 " But, my dear Beaumarchais," T said, " soldiers don't carry 
 poignards ; you must mean bayonets." Poignards, however, 
 sounded better. Here is what the postilion, who brought 
 him the last stage before Nuremberg, related : " M. Beaumar- 
 chais made me stop. He went into a wood ; he was gone so 
 long that I got impatient, and went in myself to see what he 
 
MEMOIR or THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 291 
 
 was doing. ,1 saw him put his penknife into his pocket, 
 having just cut his hand with it." Beaumarchais took the 
 needful time to play the wounded man, and then he went to 
 his audience with Maria Theresa. He thought proper to ask 
 for a chair to sit in her presence. " The excess of my ad- 
 miration," he said, " the surprise — the emotion — my con- 
 valescence — ah ! Madame, I can no more ! " The farce was 
 discovered a few days later. The police arrived. " Take 
 care!" said Beaumarchais, "there are pistols on my table. 
 I am capable of anything." The officer laughed, arrested 
 him and carried him off to the nearest post. 
 
 I encountered Beaumarchais one evening at M. de Ver- 
 gennes', then Minister of Foreign Affairs, and said to him in 
 a low voice, " What brings you here ? is it Figaro ? " " No," 
 he said, "public business ; look at all these papers ; see what 
 I am doing." And he showed me a portfolio stuffed full of 
 letters, projects, manifestoes, etc. So the dullest of all min- 
 isters that France ever had was employing a jester to do 
 his business, and that, too, with the knowledge of the most 
 serious and austerely moral of kings. But this same droll 
 jester, who amused himself with friends and enemies alike, 
 had a marvellous style. He knew well how to dazzle with 
 his singular ideas, the construction of his sentences, and 
 the sparkling wit that makes itself remembered. Where is 
 the author who is quoted as he is ? There is not a day that 
 one does not hear, "As Figaro says;" he is known every- 
 where. I love him much ; there is real philosophy in the 
 Barbier, and philosophism in that detestable and weari- 
 some Tarare. As for the " Noces " it will not do to say it is 
 a witty play, it is all wit. What fineness, and sometimes 
 what delicacy ! 
 
 I have often had occasion to observe that men of talent 
 are queer people. Some of them have cost me dear. I re- 
 
292 MEMOIR or THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 member Le Kain, for instance [celebrated tragic actor], whom 
 I had at Belceil to play Mahomet before Prince Henry of 
 Prussia. Though he had a proper coat, he asked me for 
 another, and ordered it to be covered with gold and silver. 
 " That ought not to be so," said the tailor. " Very well," he 
 replied ; " thea make it as it ought to be, but use the costliest 
 furs and line it with the finest Brussels camlet." On another 
 occasion Albanese told me that he suffered with cold ; so I 
 ordered a superb cloak made for him. The next day he 
 said to me : " And the breeches, monseigneur, — could n't I 
 have breeches to match the cloak ? " I had employed,, pro- 
 tected, and known so many actors in province and in garri- 
 son, that I was often able to help them out of their troubles 
 and repair their follies, although not always. I do not 
 know how it happened, but the Italian comedians who 
 played " The Eeduction of Paris " wore cordons Ileus around 
 their necks (they were worn round the neck in those days 
 because they made less show). I frightened Louis XVI. 
 one day, when we were playing at billiards, by asking him 
 for a cordon bleu. " It can't be for yourself," he said, " be- 
 cause you are a Grandee of Spain ; besides your Orders pre- 
 vent you from wearing mine. I will wager it is for some of 
 your devilish prot^g^s." " No, Sire," I said, " it is only 
 for Mol^ ; he wants to wear the star of the Saint-Esprit 
 in playing the ' Malheureux Imaginaire ; ' " whereupon he 
 sent me marching, and would not let the piece be played at 
 all. I busied myself also about the illumination of the 
 theatre for the i%te that was given to the Grand-Duke Paul 
 of Eussia at Versailles. The king was astonished that the 
 Grand-Duke was so little astonished by the coup d'ceil when 
 the doors were thrown open, for nothiag could have been 
 added in the way of lights and decoration. " One would 
 really think," the king said to me, " that that gentleman 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 293 
 
 [ce monsieur] sees sucli things every day." I answered: 
 " Not precisely every day. Sire ; but it is true that he is Uase 
 on magnificence.'' 
 
 It is singular that there should be so much thick pro- 
 nunciation at the Th^atre-FranQais. Pr^viUe and Grandval 
 (whose last years I saw, and they did not give me the idea 
 of great actors), Clairval, M. and Mnie. Larouette, and Mme. 
 Trial all said chamais for jamais, and p instead of b, as if 
 they were Germans, Swedes, or Spaniards. 
 
 To return to the men of letters, I escaped their demands 
 upon me with praises against their praises and as many 
 verses to them as they made upon me. 
 
 The Marquis d'Adhdmar had the credit of not being the 
 author of his own songs, some of which I had seen him 
 make. A great deal of harm was said of him and quite 
 \infairly, for without being perfectly well-bred he was very 
 amiable. His indiscreet friends procured him enemies by 
 his appointment as ambassador to England. The queen, 
 one evening, brought us, laughing, a quantity of songs against 
 her and her society. We were beginning to sing one against 
 M. d'Adh^mar to the tune of the " Bourbonnaise " which 
 began : " Marquis by accident. Chevalier d'industrie, Colin 
 of comedy. Major of infantry," when in he came. To save 
 him from playing a poor part and to put the laugh on his 
 side, I called out, " Adh^mar can sing that better than any 
 of us. Sing it, Adh^mar, it is your affair;" which he did 
 gayly and with good taste, saying to the queen : " Major 
 of infantry proves that I serve the king, Colin of comedy 
 proves that I serve your Majesty." 
 
 If La Bruyfere had drunk, if La Eochefoucauld had hunted, 
 if Champfort had travelled, if Lassay had known foreign 
 languages, if Vauvenargues had been in love, if Weisse had 
 been at Court, if Theophrastus had lived in " Paris, they 
 
294 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DB LIGNE. 
 
 would all have written better than they did. Some of the 
 above, and others also, are like delayed fireworks, with great 
 spaces of obscurity between whiles. In the "Pens&s" of 
 my friend M. du Meilhan there are flashes of fire which 
 light up everything continuously, with rockets that go so 
 high their sound is not heard, and the whole winds up in a 
 final display. That is because he is a statesman and a man 
 of the world. Open his " Considerations on Mind and 
 Morals " and you will see how he has closed the door of the 
 illustrious French writers and taken the key. Men of letters 
 are making themselves, for the sorrow of the century, 
 statesmen. Meilhan, a statesman, has made himself a man 
 of letters. He had never before been remarked upon except 
 in his ministry and for his good administrations. His last 
 work, perfect in style and thought, has induced people to 
 reread his first, the work of his leisure in the midst of his 
 important avocations. 
 
 Every one has his favourite author. Voltaire made the 
 fortune of the Arabian Nights ; Eousseau that of Eobinson 
 Crusoe. If I were as great as Voltaire and Eousseau, I 
 should make that of Amelot de la Houssaye. His work 
 ought to be the breviary of Sovereigns. He was a pedant. 
 So much the better; we can find ia him without trouble 
 what he spent his life in digging out of others whom we 
 should never have the time or the courage to read. There is 
 nothing in his political Notes that is not profoundly thought 
 out and applicable to these times. If persons are afraid 
 of imdertaking to read the ten volumes of his Tacitus, let 
 them take him hap-hazard and open his books where they 
 please. I repeat, and I maintain, that he is sublime and 
 admirable. Apparently no one has read him, for no one is 
 of my opinion. 
 
 The Comte de S^gur is rightfully a man of letters, and the 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 295 
 
 only one in the highest good society of France. The Comte 
 de Vaudreuil might be if he desired it; the Comte de 
 Coigny also. M. de Chastellux, de Bissy, and Montesquieu 
 do desire it, and cannot be. Dorat is so in his class, as much 
 for the quality as for the quantity of his writings. The 
 Chevalier de Boufflers is more and also less than a man of 
 letters. Just as the grace, origiaality, and gayety of his 
 charming little verses are superior to those of others on 
 the same ground, so his lack of serious work and his ami- 
 able indolence deny him the title of author. He might 
 have had it, and also that of one ,of the first men of letters 
 in France. 
 
 Nature, so prodigal to Frenchmen in graces of every other 
 kind, has refused them the two gifts of music and painting. 
 When I think of the admiration I have heard bestowed on 
 the shepherdesses of Watteau, the insipid voluptuousness of 
 Boucher, the spinach-green, the cream-like water, the scaffold 
 architecture of Eobert, the pretty daintinesses of Greuze, the 
 deformities, flippancies, mannerisms, and flat gray tones of 
 the rest, I wonder they exhibit their pictures at all in France. 
 It is the study of flesh ia the Italian masters and colouring 
 from the Flemish which in my opinion has made Mme. 
 Vig^e Le Brun superior to her countrymen in the magic and 
 the boldness of the colour she employs in her draperies, 
 where she dares aU, while none conflict. On the contrary, a 
 rare harmony, the liquid light of the eyes, the transparency 
 of the skin, conceal the very trifling defects with which she 
 may be charged, — such as making her beauties too young, 
 her backgrounds insignificant, and an occasional want of 
 drawing. The accusation, made perhaps once in a dozen 
 cases, of a lack of resemblance, is an injustice. Look at 
 her Hamilton, her Sibyl, and fall at her feet. How beautiful 
 that picture of the queen all in white ! what art in express- 
 
296 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 ing so perfectly the various tones of it, from the slippers, 
 the stockings, the gown, the chemise, to the dazzling skia of 
 that beautiful princess ! 
 
 And in music, how far behind other nations are the 
 French ! They have not the divine gift ; they have not the 
 composers, nor the apprehension in their nature from which 
 the composer is born. We should restore to Music her 
 ancient virtue. That duet, Liehst du mich? has often 
 made me weep. A woman of my acquaintance assures me 
 that whenever they play " Orpheus " she is in a state of 
 which she can give no account to herself. This might be a 
 charming means to move an inhuman heart. 
 
 It was interesting to watch Gluck as I did in Vienna, at 
 the rehearsals of his opera of " Iphigenia ; " the devil was in 
 him (as Voltaire said he ought to be in tragic actors), with 
 compliments and insults to the singers and musicians splut- 
 tering from his mouth. He was the first man who exacted 
 the keeping of time in actors and orchestra ; and that was a 
 good thing done, as Piccini found on arrival. Gluck was 
 born in a village belonging to my brother-in-law, Waldstein, 
 in Bohemia ; and I was told there that when he was a child 
 he used to sing airs with dramatic effect, and teach that 
 effect to his little companions. A French company came to 
 Vienna, and a meddlesome censor, named Gautier, prevented, 
 by order of the empress who was rather too chaste, the pro- 
 duction of some very good plays, considered by him to be 
 indecent. M. Durazzo, the minister for theatrical matters, 
 engaged Gluck, who by that time was known by certain 
 songs and instrumental pieces performed in concerts for a 
 coming genius, to recompose " The Siege of Cythera," " The 
 World Upset," " The Pilgrims of Mecca," and « The Duped 
 Cadi." Gluck knew scarcely any French, and he made a 
 detestable business of it. In that air, " 'T is thus that all 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PEINCE DE LIGNE. 297 
 
 like us are found," he knew so little of stage work tliat he 
 put a word of three syllables to one note ; wishing to repre- 
 sent, so he told me, the gabble of a woman. I admired and 
 encouraged his music, half warlike, rural, animated, flowing, 
 gliding, sometimes almost French in moments of sentiment 
 and repose, and more German than Italian. He studied 
 French and began to read Eacine, whose beauties he divined. 
 When he did not understand them I helped him, and he 
 finally adored him. After a conversation at dinner with 
 Prince Kaunitz and M. du Eoulet at my house, they made 
 choice of Iphigenia for his subject. But how was he to 
 keep to those fine Alexandrines ? He used to ask me this 
 continually. He would fain have left nothing out, but that 
 was impossible. However, he preserved the ideas as much 
 as he could. 
 
 When Mar^chal de Lacy was in Paris there was much 
 talk about Gluck and Piccini ; discussions ran high as to 
 their respective merits. M. de Voyer, minister of war, asked 
 me to bring the marshal to dinner at his house, for he 
 wanted to listen to him and judge of him. At the same 
 dinner there happened to be an ardent admirer of Gluck. 
 M. de Voyer broached the Seven Years' War and Military 
 Constitution, and was on the point of making the marshal 
 talk when the musical enthusiast broke in with: "M. le 
 mar^chal, did Gluck sup with you in Vienna? What a 
 man, M. le mar^chal ! And that Piccini, how paltry beside 
 him ! Compare, M. le mardchal, those duets in Iphigenia 
 and Eoland," — and he came near singing them on the spot. 
 The marshal looked at me and smiled ; he was charmed 
 to escape his other inquisitor. M. de Voyer was furious at 
 missing his object ; and all the more because, when question- 
 ing me about the marshal, he had said, in reply to the por- 
 trait I drew of him: "Either he is a great man, or you, 
 
298 MEMOIR OF THE PEESrCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 knowing what that is, are making him one. I shall find out 
 the truth for myself to-morrow." 
 
 Never can the enthusiasm of a place so little given to 
 enthusiasm as Vienna he forgotten as it Ustened to the Fiat 
 Lux of Haydn's symphony in his truly sublime work " The 
 Creation." Haydni heard, and he wished to make heard, the 
 roaring, bellowing, lowing, bleating, almost the croaking and 
 the cawing, the flight of birds, the creeping of insects. I 
 exaggerate somewhat. But all, as in the Four Seasons, 
 glows with colour and delightful freshness. There are 
 ravishing duets between Adam and Eve. The chase, the 
 vintage, the rising of the sun, all are given with the same 
 vigour. The whole, the Angels and the Choir, did infinite 
 honour to the composer and to Vienna. What with the 
 clever SaUeri, a worthy pupil and almost a rival of Gluck, 
 and Mozart, who was just beginning to succeed him, Vienna 
 at this time swarmed with musicians. 
 
 The Emperor Joseph II. was a passionate lover of good 
 music, and having heard " Don Giovanni" at Prague, on the 
 occasion of his brother Leopold's marriage to the Grand- 
 Duchess of Tuscany, he urged Mozart to bring the opera to 
 Vienna ; which he did. It was coldly received at first, and 
 the emperor was greatly annoyed with the audience. " It 
 is a divine work," he said to Mozart, whom he summoned 
 to his box, " but it is not a morsel for my Viennese." " They 
 need time to taste it," replied Mozart, modestly. " It cer- 
 tainly suited the Prague public better; but I only wrote 
 it for myself and my friends." A number of those present 
 had gone after the performance to sup with Mme. de Thun, 
 where they were discussing the new opera eagerly when 
 Haydn entered. All were giving their opinions right and 
 left, and while agreeing that the music bore the stamp of 
 genius, they said it was obscure and incomprehensible in 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 299 
 
 certain places, and they called upon Haydn to be the judge. 
 " I am not competent," he said with malicious humility, " to 
 decide this learned dispute. All I know is that Mozart is 
 the greatest musician in existence." 
 
 The souvenirs of the Baron de Besenval I might have 
 written myself (so fully are the same incidents known to 
 me), though never in a style so brilliant, — as brilliant as 
 their author, and that is saying all. No one was ever more 
 so than he in war and at Court, where his fine social quali- 
 ties brought him into the favourite society of the queen. 
 We were all surprised that he sought to be in that of the 
 king also ; that is to say, among the latter's hunting com- 
 panions, for he had no others. At sixty years of age 
 Besenval had the appearance of a young man on his pro- 
 motion, wearing the gray coat of a beginner while awaiting 
 the blue. He had made himself a few noble quarterings, 
 of which he had no need, for nobility was in his soul. But 
 there he was in the king's carriages and among the king's 
 huntsmen and consequently supping in the cabinets. A 
 Swiss lieutenant-general with a gray head, who was present 
 at the death of Berwick [1734], might have dispensed with 
 being in at the death of the stag forty years later. It is 
 plain that he wished to be concerned with many things ; 
 but at bottom he was like all the rest of the world at Court, 
 where good and evil were said of the ministers alternately. 
 
 The baron makes himself out more intriguing than he 
 really was. He was always rather morose in spirit, and apt 
 to grumble in his own home to his servants and his women- 
 kind ; but he was one of the gayest and most amiable men 
 in society that I have ever seen. People would say to him 
 when he gave them occasion by his gruff manner to the 
 Swiss guards : " Baron, what bad taste ! you are dreadful." 
 His frank, handsome countenance allowed him to risk such 
 
300 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DB LIGNE. 
 
 insolences ; which, after all, became him. He had, as one 
 might say, an excellent tone in his bad tone. His famil- 
 iarities had an air of confidence ; he related things pleas- 
 antly, with gay good-humour, in a style and manner that 
 was all his own. 
 
 Besenval quotes me once; he might have done so a 
 hundred times. I was everywhere in the midst of those 
 storms, in which I took no part, although I often warded 
 them from the heads of men whom I did not even know. 
 I am sorry that his editor has suppressed so many names, 
 and so many of the baron's adventures, of which, handsome, 
 insolent, and charming as I represent him, he had many. 
 I know of a dozen at this moment ; and he has told me a 
 score of others which I do not now remember. If I dared, I 
 would tell facts as he does ; but I fear to give pain to the 
 living. If the anecdotes of a past time afford pleasure it 
 can be imagined how much I should find in relating those 
 I know of noted persons with whom I have passed my hfe 
 in many lands. All that the baron says in praise of the 
 Polignac family, and aU that ever could be said of them, 
 is below their merits. 
 
XIII. 
 
 1780-1787. 
 RUSSIA: THE EMPRESS CATHERINE. 
 
 [In 1780 the Prince de Ligne paid, as he has already men- 
 tioned, his first visit to Eussia. He went to obtain the 
 dowry of the wife of his son Charles, Princess H^lfene Mas- 
 salska, subsequently married, on the death of her first hus- 
 band, to Comte Potocki, and the original of the well-known 
 charming portrait by Mme. Vig^e LeBrun. The young lady's 
 dowry consisted of Moghilani, an estate with chateau and 
 country-houses, two palaces in Cracovia, and one palace in 
 Warsaw. Prince Eadziwill owed the Massalski family 
 eight hundred thousand Polich florins (one million francs), 
 the inheritance of H^lfene's mother, who was a Eadziwill; 
 half of this property belonged to Hdlfene, half to her brother, 
 they being orphans. Prince Eadziwill's property, as will 
 appear later, was under sequestration to the Eussian Court, 
 in consequence of the part he had taken in a Polish revolu- 
 tion. H^lfene was niece and ward to the Prince-Bishop of 
 Wilna, who was tortured and hung before the cathedral he 
 had himself built in Warsaw, by the followers, though not 
 by the orders, of John Sobieski. He settled upon H^lfene 
 Massalska, on her marriage with Prince Charles of Ligne, a 
 revenue of sixty thousand francs a year. The Prince de 
 Ligne, on his side, engaged to give his son a revenue of 
 thirty thousand francs, and a home at Brussels, Beloeil, and 
 Vienna in one of his palaces or chSteaus ; and if, at the end 
 of four years, the couple had children, to double the revenue. 
 
302 MEMOIR OF THE PEINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 The marriage had taken place in July, 1779, and the Prince 
 de Ligne went to Petersburg in 1780 to endeavour to obtain 
 the sequestrated property. It is rather characteristic of him 
 that when he found how warmly he was received, he was 
 reluctant to press the claim, and did not then do so. 
 
 The Emperor Joseph II. had just paid a visit to the 
 Empress Catherine, and his friendship for the Prince de 
 Ligne caused the latter to be received with great cordiality 
 at the Eussian Court ; from that time, until her death in 
 1796, the empress was in more or less frequent correspond- 
 ence with him. In 1786 she proposed to him to join her on 
 her famous journey to her newly acquired territory, the 
 Crimea, or Taurica, as she and the Prince de Ligne preferred, 
 classically, to call it. This journey, which took place in the 
 following year, 1787, is fuUy described in the letters of the 
 prince to the Marquise de Coigny, which will be found, 
 unabridged, in Chapters I. and II. of Vol. II.] 
 
 Who has not felt, on arriving in Petersburg, as if he were 
 entering a temple? Everything breathes of divinity, a 
 divinity that seems divided between the palaces and the 
 marble churches. All that is not marble is of precious 
 stones. The granite of the splendid quays on the finest of 
 rivers, the columns, the walls, are dazzling in the sunlight, 
 like the sun itself. London surprised me even more than 
 Venice. I could imagine a city in the midst of the sea ; one 
 has only to think of a flood through the streets, and one has 
 an idea, at the least, of Venice. But wide and convenient 
 sidewalks, convenient shops, inconceivable cleanliness every- 
 where, lighted promenades, where there are concerts and games 
 and no police, delightful gardens, a river which adds to all this 
 a hundred varied scenes ; in short, whatever can be imagined 
 for the best-planned fSte is found daily in four or five differ- 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 303 
 
 ent quarters of London. Indifference, an air of freedom and 
 magnificence, elegant phaetons, the whole town on the trot, 
 fine houses, charming women, and excellent fruit. Paris, on 
 the other hand, disgusts a newly arrived stranger with its 
 dirt ; also the appearance of the populace and their villanous 
 manner of dressing; the savage air of ihe fishwives and. the 
 rag-pickers ; the narrowness and mud of the streets ; the 
 clatter of the hundreds of carts one meets everywhere, and 
 that vile wicket, through which all Paris is forced to pass 
 daily. But Petersburg I found another thing, always stately 
 and majestic, like its empress. 
 
 That empress is a mixture of soul and good sense, of lofti- 
 ness and vigour. Those are the four columns that support 
 the great colossus that she governs. Her perceptions are not 
 quick ; one must never be too subtle in jest or wit, for she is 
 liable to suppose it the reverse of what is meant ; what we 
 say to her must be as simple as she herself. Her Majesty is a 
 little susceptible. If her imperial self-love takes umbrage as 
 to her wars or her finances, or even as to the Eussian cU- 
 mate, she is no longer at her ease. But far from revenging 
 herself, even for a real offence, she merely withdraws her 
 famiharity, and it is difficult to obtain it again. She has so 
 amazing a kindliness that even after heavy labours, which 
 may have related to treaties of alliance, or partitions of 
 Europe and Asia, she is ready to concern herself with the 
 interests of her friends ; persuading one of them, for instance, 
 as I knew her to do, to cease making debts. 
 
 In proof of what I said above as to her manner of some- 
 times taking things askew, I give the following incident, 
 which amused me very much, though I greatly love M. de 
 Sdgur [French ambassador at the Court of Petersburg]. It 
 is a Eussian custom to chant the Te Deum all over the em- 
 pire after a victory ; and in Petersburg a minister of State 
 
304 MEMOIR OS" THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 reads in a loud voice an account of the battle, ■with, a list of 
 the killed and wounded, and of all those who have specially 
 distinguished themselves. On one occasion when this was 
 done, the empress, on her return from the ceremony to give 
 audience to M. de S^gur, said to him, " I beg your pardon 
 for having kept you waiting." To which, as a flatterer of 
 charming good taste, he replied, " Madame, I am resigned ; 
 though I foresee it will soon be intolerable, for we shall have 
 these ceremonies every day." Eeferring to this bit of flat- 
 tery, which meant, of course, that he expected her to be 
 always victorious, the empress said to me : " Did you notice 
 how ill-humoured the Comte de S^gur was ? These French- 
 men never can get accustomed to my successes." In vain I 
 endeavoured to set her right. With an air of the utmost 
 attention she did not listen to me, or even understand that 
 I was explaining the matter. Sdgur was not happy in his 
 compliments. One day, when Peter the Great was men- 
 tioned before her, I said, without wit, but with much truth, 
 that she was worth more than he. S^gur told her the same 
 thing, but with far more dehcacy, to which she answered, 
 " You are right, M. le Comte, in saying that we cannot be 
 compared." He gave himself to all the devils ; and as for me, 
 I could not speak for laughing. 
 
 Among the many occasions when I have seen and appre- 
 ciated her lofty good sense, here is one that I remember at 
 this moment. When [before the war with Turkey in 1788] 
 I was charged by Joseph II. with the duty of making, with 
 her, a plan for the concerted operations of her armies and 
 ours, she said to me : " Write to your emperor that this is 
 the way in which allies always end by quarrelling. It is 
 impossible to fix precisely, especially at such a distance, an 
 exact arrangement; each side will complain of the other. 
 Now we both have the same object. Let us each go for it 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 305 
 
 in our own way. Whatever one does for Ms own interest 
 will serve the interest of the other. I am sure of his 
 friendship ; he is sure of mine. That is the whole of my 
 plan." 
 
 By principle, whether because she did not want to be led 
 away in conversation, or because she wished to avoid being 
 bored (a thing she hated), the empress never allowed any 
 one to speak to her of public affairs. All things had to go 
 through her ministers, who were only the canals of her 
 ocean of wisdom ; her own head was her cabinet. Catherine 
 was never so great as under some reverse. She would have 
 given her whole wealth, the last inch of her vast dominions, 
 and life itself sooner than do, I will not say a meanness, but 
 any action that was not honourable. In her could be seen 
 and noted all the points of difference between exalted and 
 exaggerated sentiment. 
 
 When I found myself obliged by her great kindness to 
 spend my days, from five o'clock tUl ten, in her private 
 society with five or six other persons, I brought her to trial 
 in my own mind, and judged her living, as the Kings of 
 Egypt ia ancient times were tried and judged at their 
 deaths, in order to feel wholly at my ease. M. de la 
 Eulhiferes, in his history of " Anarchy in Poland," has col- 
 lected all sorts of lies and false tales of every kiad. Before 
 speaking of the death of Peter III. he ought to have ques- 
 tioned, as I did, the old servants at Oranienbaum, where the 
 emperor was murdered. Nothing could better prove the 
 total ignorance of the great Catherine about a death she 
 never ordered, than the perfect liberty those old servants 
 of the emperor have to tell what happened. Apparently she 
 is ignorant that the crime was imputed to her. I learned, 
 incidentally, from those who did not like her, that she was 
 seized with an involuntary convulsion when she heard of 
 VOL. I.— 20 
 
306 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 the death at the house of Comte Panin, where she happened 
 to he with the grand-chamberlain Schuvaloff. Probably the 
 fear of being thought an accomplice produced that effect. 
 She did not dethrone her husband until she knew positively 
 that on the following day he would iacarcerate her in a con- 
 vent, for the sole crime of being loved by the empire as much 
 as he was detested by it. 
 
 Jesting with us one day when the grand-equerry, N'arisch- 
 kin, pretended to be the Grand Turk, " Let us strangle him," 
 she said. Would she ever have uttered that word if she had 
 stained her hands with a death of that kind ? To this first 
 accusation her detractors have added crime upon crime, — 
 the poisoning of Ivan, that of the first Grand-Duchess, and 
 lastly of Potemkia. The lies of lacqueys, or of souls as base, 
 have endeavoured to tarnish the lustre of that immortal 
 reign. So much the worse for the fools who invented them, 
 and the malignant souls who believe them ! 
 
 It was for love of truth, and in order that nothing might 
 trouble the pleasure I should have in being with her, that I 
 investigated these facts. But one only needed to see the 
 empress, to hear her, to know the history of her life, in order 
 to be certain of her goodness, her justice, and her unalterable 
 kindness. 
 
 Whether from malice in those who do not like me, or 
 foolishness in those who do, a hundred stories are told of me 
 that have not even common-sense. They are repeated to 
 me constantly, and yet I am too lazy to prove they are not 
 true. I am told that I have made answers that are thought 
 to be charming and are not worth a deuce, jests and repartees 
 which make people (or so they say) die with laughter. I 
 have played most piquant tricks; I have rapped generals 
 over the knuckles when I was young, and sovereigns when 
 I grew older ; in short, I have said and done so many clever 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PKINCE DE EIGNE. 307 
 
 things that there are none but a few persons of taste who 
 know better. 
 
 One of my sayings did, however, serve to baffle Prince 
 Frederick of Prussia [afterwards Frederick Williain III.] 
 and pleased Joseph II., who feared the prince might have a 
 success in Petersburg after his own visit. The day Prince 
 Frederick caused himself, quite inappropriately, to be re- 
 ceived by the Academy of Sciences where it was very hot, he 
 fainted. I told the empress, who asked me how the reception 
 had gone off, that "the prince found himself without sense 
 [sans connaissance] in the midst of the Academy." I saw at 
 once how that devil of a speech was running, and I ran after 
 it, and told it to the prince himself, transposing the words to 
 his " finding himself in the midst of the Academy without 
 sense." On this, each side laughed at the other ; all were con- 
 tent, and so was I ; still more the empress, to whom I con- 
 fided my innocent little perfidy, who thought it was true of 
 her Academy and also of the prince, by whom she was con- 
 siderably bored. It is my opinion, however, that it is best 
 to be discreet and reserved with crowned heads. I have 
 always been convinced that we cannot do them a greater 
 service than to make them talk and put them at their ease, 
 taking the precaution not to seem so ourselves. 
 
 On my return from Petersburg, a fool of a bishop, uncle 
 of my daughter-in-law [the Prince-Bishop of Wilna], imagin- 
 ing that I was on the very best terms with the empress 
 because she had treated me so kindly, persuaded him- 
 self that I should certainly be King of Poland if I were 
 naturalized. " "What a change," he cried, " in the face of 
 the affairs of Europe ! What joy, what happiness for the 
 Lignes and the Massalskis ! " I laughed at him ; but the 
 desire took possession of me to please the nation which 
 was then assembling at Warsaw for a Diet. The nation 
 
308 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNB. 
 
 applauded me. Out of twenty-five candidates desired and 
 proposed by Poland for naturalization, I was the only one 
 who obtained it. Three presented themselves, and came 
 near being sabred. The hand that a nuncio put upon his 
 sabre, with loud menace, came near dissolving the Diet, 
 and possibly cutting off the head of my too zealous partisan. 
 I went to my opponents, and succeeded in overcomiag 
 their prejudice ; so much so, in fact, that with much grace 
 to me, and an eloquence worthy of their country, they said 
 that in favour of an election they now thought honourable 
 they solicited the votes of their friends. The first candidate 
 was an Austrian minister, the second a Prussian minister, the 
 last a Eussian colonel ; and against all usage I sprang into 
 the hall and embraced the moustache of the three orators. 
 It electrified me, for I became an orator myself and said to 
 the assembly in Latin: "I have not so direct a claim as 
 these gentlemen, for I am of many countries, but I want 
 to belong to yours." I took them by the hand, I cajoled 
 them. Sgoda ! general, which shook the very hall three 
 times and came near bringing down the buildiug by the 
 roar of such applause. This was one of the finest moments 
 of my life. 
 
 Who does not love Poland, the Poles, and, above all, the 
 Polish women, for the intelligence and courage of the men, 
 the beauty and grace of the women, who have, even the 
 least amiable, a laissez-aller, an eloquence, a piquancy, a 
 charm superior to the women of aU other countries ? Who 
 would not prefer a life in Warsaw, where the choicest 
 French tone reigns, mingled with an Eastern allurement, the 
 charm of Europe and of Asia both, the urbanity of the 
 most civilized of lands joined to the natural hospitality of 
 those who are not urbane at all? Who does not admire 
 a nation of noble yet pleasant faces, gentle, yet simple 
 
MEMOIE OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 309 
 
 manners, manners that are polite, or frankly sincere and 
 courteous in the capital, but jovially kind-hearted in the 
 country? a nation ready of comprehension, easy and gay 
 in conversation, of good education ; possessiag the gift of 
 languages and of all the talents, even those for bodily exer- 
 cise, especially on horses ; fine voices, eloquence, splendour 
 of appearance; a taste for the fine arts, luxury, gallantry, 
 fetes, social exhibitions, national dances ; a little barbaric 
 in costume and singular in customs perhaps, but easy to 
 live with, full of kindliness, good feeliag, and gratitude ? 
 
 As for mine to Poland, it is unlimited. The honour that 
 she did me, my admittance to that noble and superb nation, 
 the applause that the unanimous consent in giving me that 
 illustrious naturalization procured for me, will never be 
 effaced from my heart. 
 
 But for that very reason I ventured to submit to that na- 
 tion of heroes a few reflections. If, I said, instead of three 
 empires and one kingdom you were surrounded by seas you 
 would be tranquil on their bosom and safe in your laws, 
 many of which are more reasonable than those of that 
 famous isle said to be the abode of wisdom. Your Con- 
 stitution is a species of miracle, but beware lest it end. 
 The slightest leaning towards any one of your neighbours 
 will give the others a pretext to drive you from the face 
 of the earth. No doubt from time immemorial Eussia, 
 through her strength, language, and geography, has sheltered 
 you with the wings of her double eagle, — a protector if you 
 treat her wisely, a destroyer if you affront her. At present 
 she wishes you well. Eejoice in this period of moderation, 
 which should have come sooner, but do not abuse it. 
 
 I can answer to you for our emperor, and I am authorized 
 by him to tell you so. Lately, when Stanislas-Augustus, en- 
 couraged by Joseph II., said to him : " Can I rely that I shall 
 
310 MEMOIB OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 not be made to die of grief by the seizure of more of my 
 unhappy country ? " the emperor replied : " I promise it ; I 
 answer for myself. Not a tree." Those were his very words, 
 for they each repeated them to me. " Give me your hand," 
 said the king, moved to tears by the frankness of the other 
 monarch. "There it is," said Joseph II., "but more than 
 that, I give you the word of a gentleman." The King of 
 Prussia, in whose loyalty I believe, would promise you, I 
 think, as much, if you asked him to explain himself clearly ; 
 and would keep his word, unless you lay traps to mislead 
 him. 
 
 But the moral of all this is : do not look outside of your 
 own country, either to Vienna, Berlin, or Petersburg; be 
 Poles ; that is what I ask of you. Do not mourn the old 
 partition, but avoid a new one. No more secret machina- 
 tions, especially with Eussia ; no more incoherence in your 
 principles; let your great families cease to quarrel among 
 themselves ; let honest men no longer be tricked and fooled 
 by those who are not honest. Cease to accuse one another, 
 saying, " He is Prussian," or " That man is Eussian." For- 
 get your private animosities; drive away from you those 
 subaltern intriguers who foster your petty jealousies and then 
 laugh at you; beg your women to think of giving pleasure, 
 and not of politics. Make yourselves a nation, and begin 
 by making a king, for Stanislas-Augustus, always thwarted, 
 always insulted, is not one. This is no time for shams. . . . 
 
 In a letter that I wrote to that most excellent and most 
 imfortunate king, who is, of a truth, without a kingdom, I 
 said : " Sire, do you not see the storm that is gathering 
 about your head ? " " Yes," he replied, in a letter full of in- 
 telligence, good sense, humanity, and feeling (like all else 
 that comes from him), " but I shall try to place a lightning- 
 rod, and draw the thunderbolt elsewhere." That will be 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PEINCE DE LIQNE. 311 
 
 difficult to do. The surest way is to disperse the clouds 
 while yet there is time. I repeat to you : Be still, be stilL 
 If you stir, Poland is dead. 
 
 [The rest of this address, made to certaiu Polish nobles, is 
 published ia VoL IX. of the Works. The prince is said by 
 all who have written about him to have taken little interest 
 and no part in politics. It is difficult to beheve, when read- 
 ing of his intimate intercourse with the Empress Catherine 
 and Joseph II., that he was not confidentially informed, and 
 perhaps employed, by them politically. If he was, he shows 
 the same self-restraiat and discretion ia speaking of it that 
 he does about the private life of their Courts. 
 
 The Eadziwills were among the oldest and noblest families 
 of Poland; they had always defended the ancient Polish 
 republic, and were hostile to Eussia and the election of 
 Stanislas-Augustus Poniatowski. The mother of the young 
 Priucesse Charles de Ligne was a EadziwOl, and her brother 
 Charles-Stanislas, who had a revenue of ten millions and 
 maintained a regular army of 20,000 men in his towns and 
 chateaus, fought against Eussia to prevent the first partition 
 of Poland in 1772. It was then that the family estates were 
 sequestrated. Among the EadziwUl treasures and heirlooms 
 were statues of the twelve apostles in gold, each of them one 
 foot and a half high. When Prince Charles-Stanislas saw 
 that the war was going against him, he sent these statues to 
 Munich, and he lived for several years on the melting up of 
 this golden treasure, the proceeds of which enabled him to give 
 a most generous hospitality to his exiled countrymen. The 
 folloAraig are little vignettes of his daughters.] 
 
 H^roise [Princess Louise Eadziwill] is thus called, so they 
 ten me, because of a dozen heroes who have borne the name 
 
312 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DB LIGNE. 
 
 of her family, among them two demigods. What is singular 
 is that she has between the eyes, starting from the root of the 
 nose, a faint line which shows me that she could have been 
 one of the prettiest of heroes herself had she belonged to that 
 profession. That line teUs me (I speak now to subtle physi- 
 ognomists only) of a style of nobleness that becomes in a 
 woman the sign of much firmness and great character. I do 
 not mean that she is a heroine of virtue, for virtue costs her 
 nothing, loving as she does to realize ideal perfection. She 
 surrounds aU who belong to her with such cordial tenderness 
 that all who are not hers would fain be so. 
 
 H^roise is a receipt agaiust Jacobinism near thrones, 
 dominations, and powers. That heroic blood, mingled with 
 the blood of the Jagellons, promises to reproduce on earth 
 the virtues that do it most honour. Meantime her style of 
 beauty, her facility in living, her grace, her bonhomie, if I 
 may so express myself, win the suffrages and the homage of 
 all hearts. 
 
 Angela [Princess Ang^lique Eadziwill] can only be painted 
 by Michel Angelo and Eaffaelle, who understand angels; 
 though at one time the latter requested Albano and Correggio 
 to attempt them. The first two undertook the grace, the 
 dignity of their emanation from the Divine ; the others the 
 profane graces we admire in those who accompany Cupid's 
 mother. If the first attributes keep us at a certain distance 
 apart from Angela, the second bring us back to her ; and she 
 herself is the only person who is unconscious of it. This is 
 not stupidity, for she cannot look, or move, or seem to reflect 
 without our perceiving as much intelligence as she has taste 
 and tact in everything. Her mind rings true, like her voice ; 
 there is nothing prettier than her speech ; she has a delight- 
 ful pronunciation, even in singing ; and her quick, agreeable 
 way of throwing out her words adds piquancy to what is 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 313 
 
 already agreeable and distinguished. Her laugh is amusing ", 
 it is short and precipitate, but only a little louder than a sort 
 of murmur of gayety. She is beautiful, yet pretty in doing 
 and saying nothing ; but whatever she says or does, whether 
 she dances, sings, or plays, she is handsomer and prettier 
 still. If the devil has cast his eyes upon her to make havoc 
 in hearts, the angels reclaim her, because of her name, and 
 say, seeing how she makes, and is, the happiness of all 
 around her : " Angela is our angelic work." 
 
 [The Prince de Ligne's correspondence with the Empress 
 Catherine began on his return to Vienna, with the following 
 letter.] 
 
 To H. I. Majesty Catherine II. 
 
 October, 1780. 
 
 Madame, — I feel as though I had just awakened from 
 the most beautiful dream in the world. I went to Petersburg 
 for two weeks only, merely to admire your Majesty, and tell 
 my children's children that I had had the happiness of see- 
 ing the noble object of so much worship and celebrity. You 
 deigned to allow me to pass beyond that circle of admiration, 
 in order to convince me how much is gained by a nearer 
 view of superiority of all kinds, such as that of your Majesty. 
 
 As you know all things, you will remember how Simeon 
 says in his canticle : " You have sent away your servant in 
 peace, for he has seen your Divinity." I trust he will see 
 it again. Meantime I leave you, filled with a sense of your 
 goodness and of the kindness that permits me to give to your 
 Majesty this assurance of my gratitude. Prince Potemkin 
 allows me to hope that you wiU accept it, and he offers to 
 present it to your Majesty himself. He has just added to 
 the other marks of friendship with which he has honoured 
 
314 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 me that of showing me the finest regiment of cavaky, and 
 the best manoeuvred that I have ever seen. 
 
 May I soon again have another such dream, and waken 
 from it to the sound of cannon announcing the glory of the 
 two empires [this allusion is to his hope of a war against 
 Turkey by Eussia and Austria]. The last thing that I re- 
 member saying to your Imperial Majesty, murmuring it 
 between my teeth, was the thought that I should be at the 
 summit of happiness could I risk my life in your service. It 
 is also the last thing that I take the liberty of writing to 
 you. 
 
 I have the honour to be, with the utmost attachment, etc. 
 
 From the Empress Catherine. 
 
 December, 1780. 
 
 Monsieur le Prince de Ligne, — You must know that 
 the farce of a political conference which you played in my 
 presence at Czarsko-zelo with the grand equerry [a pretended 
 conference between all the existing sovereigns of Europe and 
 Asia, out of which, after much prating, nothing came] struck 
 me so forcibly as to give me a decided taste for general dis- 
 sertation. All laconic communications, even the game of 
 macao, have, since then, been discredited with me. The 
 letter I have just received from you gives me an agreeable 
 occasion to tell you of a dissertation of my ovrai on the letters 
 I receive and those I write. It would be herewith enclosed 
 if I knew of any one who could translate it into ordinary 
 Chinese. Meantime, all that I can teU you of its contents 
 is that the letters I receive are classified; that yours are 
 among the very few that are as good to read as they are to 
 receive. Each class has many letters to illustrate it, each 
 letter is ticketed, as, for example, yours : " Good to know ; 
 easy to live with ; enlightened mind ; sensibility ; gayety, 
 
MEMOIR OP TEE PEINCB DE LIGNE. 315 
 
 etc.," — all of which are things that I, neighbour of the Tar- 
 tars, hold in great honour, because they are becoming very 
 rare ia the present world. 
 
 You, who speak to me of Saint Simeon, and quote him in 
 a manner so fiatteriag to me, you, who have Holy Writ, as 
 you have so many other things, at your fingers' ends, cannot 
 be ignorant that it is written, " Compel them to come in," 
 but nowhere, " Compel them to depart." Now the cannon 
 of the two empires which you mention to me may very well 
 some day be compelled to depart. 
 
 Believe me, mon prince, etc. 
 
 [During the prince's stay in Petersburg he became very 
 intimate with the grand equerry, Narischkin, who concealed 
 under an innocent and childlike air an able mind and the 
 art of telling home truths. He amused the empress, who 
 was fond of him and very kind to him. His vice was ex- 
 travagance, and she took various amusing ways to correct 
 it. The Prince de Ligne wrote to him on his return to 
 Vienna ; the letter, which has not been preserved, appears to 
 have turned on a joke between them about a journey which 
 they professed to have made together to China. As Prince 
 Narischkin did not write French with ease he asked the 
 empress to write the answer for him. The following letter 
 is in her handwriting.] 
 
 The Grand Equerry to the Prince de Ligne. 
 
 Petekbbukg, December, 1780. 
 MoN Prince, — I have just received a letter without 
 date of time or place, and without signature. I have de- 
 voured it, and having nothing more pressing to do I have 
 shown it to everybody, because it has given me infinite 
 pleasure. I am only sorry that the letter has been strangely 
 
316 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 crumpled and soiled. I wish to preserve it, for every word 
 it contains recalls to my mind one who gave additional 
 wings to my natural faculties and whose memory is ever 
 dear to me. Those Chinese expressions overcome me with 
 joy. Yes, yes, there are none but you and I, dear prince, 
 who really understand the Chinese language in Europe. 
 Always devoted to the Court of Pekin, though far away 
 from it, I have lately composed the following lyric : — 
 
 Le Roi de la Chi, i, i, i, i, i, i, ne 
 Quand il a bien bu, u, u, u, u, u, u. 
 Fait la plus f aebeuse mi, i, i, i, i, i, ne 
 Qu'on ait jamais vu, u, u, u, u, u. 
 
 Is it not pathetic ? While I was busy with these lines 
 people were urging me to answer your letter. I myself had 
 the strongest desire to do so ; but, as all the world knows, 
 every one has his own head, and mine goes often quite the 
 contrary of the wishes within it. So, to cut the matter 
 short, I said to a person whom I shall not name : " If you 
 would write that answer for me you would do me the great- 
 est pleasure." All present exclaimed about the rarity of 
 that invention and the necessity of executing it. 
 
 The secretary understands the Chinese language almost 
 as well as I do. I cannot precisely say that he is a pretty 
 lad, but he is gay, easy to live with, and, above aU, he costs 
 me nothing ; a matter that is not without its convenience ; 
 especially for one Mfho keeps his pockets empty by buying 
 things he does not want. But whatever his pockets may be, 
 his heart is not Uke them : that is always full of friendship 
 and gratitude for the kindness that you have shown to me, 
 mon prince. If it gives you pleasure to remember your stay 
 here the game is even ; all whom I know remember you with 
 the utmost interest, and if you do not believe me I shaU 
 quote to you Annette's song; "Come here, and you shall see," 
 
IIEMOIR OP THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 317 
 
 The empress, to whom I showed the passage in your 
 letter which concerns her, desires me to say that she con- 
 tinues to regard in a quite particular manner the Prince de 
 Ligne. Prince Potemkin and the two Princes Bariatinski 
 salute you. Prince Basile Dolgorouki has gone to Moscow 
 and Prince Wolkonski has not yet returned from Italy. I 
 conclude by offering you the assurance of my most profound 
 attachment in all the languages of the known world. 
 
 The Umpress Catherine to the Prince de Ligne. 
 
 Petersburg, March 7, 1781. 
 
 MoNSlEUE LE Peince DE LiGNE, — I do not know which 
 writer of China, or other lands, has said that the best method 
 of avoiding temptation was to yield to it. According to 
 that fine rule — which may not, however, be to the taste of 
 everybody — I choose that whenever you desire to write to 
 me you shall employ your two hands, not in holding your- 
 self back, as you say, but, the right, if you please, in seizing 
 a pen, the left in taking a sheet of paper, on which you will 
 write whatever may seem good to you ; and be assured that 
 this will give me as much pleasure as the letter which you 
 addressed to me on the 15th of February. 
 
 Thrones, and those who are upon them, are usually very 
 fine to look at in perspective; but, without wronging my 
 honoured brethren, I suppose that all of us, such as we are, 
 must be intolerable personages in society. I know it by 
 experience. When I enter my salon I create the effect of 
 Medusa's head. Every one is petrified, and takes root on 
 the spot where he stuck. It is very flattering to me that 
 you say the contrary ; but experience shows me daily that I 
 am Mke all the rest ; there are not more than ten or a dozen 
 persons who can endure me without constraint or uneasiness. 
 
318 MEMOIR OF THE PKINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 I have pitied you for being a spectator of the sad event 
 that awaited you in Vienna [the death of Maria Theresa]. 
 The regrets of all Europe accompany that great princess to 
 the grave. That, I think, is the noblest eulogy that can be 
 made upon her. For myself, I take so sincere a part in this 
 grief that I could not refrain from expressing my feelings 
 immediately to her august son. You know my sentiments 
 for him. 
 
 Have the kindness to remember sometimes, mon prince, 
 
 that you have left here the hope of seeing you again ; and 
 
 be assured that on the list of those who wUl see you with 
 
 pleasure you will find the name of 
 
 Catherine. 
 
 The Prince de Idgne to H. I. M. the Empress Catherine. 
 
 Vienna, February 12, 1782. 
 
 Madame, — Nothing but the fear of taking too much 
 liberty prevents me from recalling myself more frequently 
 to the memory of your Imperial Majesty. I did not need 
 to see your distinguished subjects in this city to glow with 
 the sentiments that are always in me. While whoever is 
 nearest to your august person, or indeed, whatever comes 
 from your vast and superb empire is precious to me, T find 
 myself always the same in mind when I think of what I 
 saw there. 
 
 When weary of thinking of what I admired, I think of 
 the things that interested me ; that is a species of repose 
 for the souL Thence I pass to recollections of gayety ; still 
 sweeter to rest in. Sometimes I remember the tinteret 
 [game of cards], sometimes I think of Czarsko-zelo, or else 
 of the prince without sense ; and often of the pains that 
 She who knows all, does all, plans all, gives Herself to pre- 
 vent us from believing it; and then I laugh out loud. 
 
MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE BE LIGNE. 319 
 
 Metliiuks I have seen the Divinity Herself laugh. Divin- 
 ities in the olden time never so much as smiled. I should 
 have been terribly bored on Olympus, and my yawns, com- 
 pelling aU those gentlemen to yawn too, would have cost 
 me a perilous flying leap across the firmament. I am 
 quite content on earth, and shall be more so when I can 
 return to that part of it of which your Majesty is the joy 
 and ornament. You can believe the truth of what is said 
 in prose, provided the writer is not a subject, an encyclo- 
 pedist, or an economist. 
 
 If your Majesty were a little nearer to this city I would 
 ask you to complain of the little care that M. le Comte de 
 Falkenstein [the name Joseph II. took ia visiting her] takes 
 of his health and his eyes ; but they will both be better, I 
 hope, before the arrival of this letter. Fatigue, and his con- 
 tinual but useful work have done great injury to his eyes. 
 However, they are stiQ good, for they see your Majesty ex- 
 actly as you are. I am witness of that, not as oculist, as a 
 friend of mine said, but as oculaire [eyeglass]. 
 
 Will Her Majesty have the time to read me ? Perhaps 
 some of Her neighbours, the Emperor of Byzantium or of 
 Pekin, for instance, are at this moment writing to her to 
 make submissions. Those two foreign courtiers deserve the 
 preference ; they are no more to be feared than I am, but 
 they hold a higher rank in the Almanach. I retire, there- 
 fore, and close up my rear-guard with the assurance of the 
 most respectful attachment that ever existed. Can I say 
 more than that? Its first enthusiasm was no choice of 
 mine ; I felt it first because I could not do otherwise ; but 
 it is in cool blood that we delight in sentiments which we 
 feel are in us to the end of life. 
 
 I have the honour to be, with those sentiments and a most 
 profound veneration, Madame, etc. 
 
320 MEMOIR OF THE PRINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 The Empress Catherine to the Prince de Idgne. 
 
 CzABSKO-zELO, July 11, 1782. 
 
 I have just received at Czarsko-zelo, on this 11th of July, 
 the letter that you wrote to me, mon prince, under date of 
 February 12. I trust that this answer will reach you before 
 the total revolution of the year. Inasmuch as you like to 
 remember us, it is not useless to tell you that aU who sur- 
 round me are not only not indifferent to your recollection, but, 
 a rare thing ! not one is ungrateful for it. In a word, we 
 all like to remember your stay in this country ; but you no 
 longer know the map of it : reversi has succeeded tinteret, 
 Czarsko-zelo has acc[uired apartments, and kiosks that look 
 like snuff-boxes. 
 
 Voltaire used to say that all sorts were good except the 
 tiresome sort. If ennui reigns on Olympus it is not sur- 
 prising that so few people want to go there. Go there your- 
 self as late as possible ; I shall do the same ; but if no one 
 laughs there, you and I will be very much out of place ; 
 and that poor grand equerry, what will he do ? When you 
 return here we must all three take measures together not to 
 be so caught. 
 
 I do not hke that trouble in the eyes of M. de Falken- 
 stein ; I fear the gifts of miracle of Saint Paul. Neither 
 my dear friend, the Emperor of Byzantium, nor my good 
 neighbour, he of China, can prevent me from reading your 
 letters, which are infinitely more agreeable to me than theirs, 
 in spite of their high rank in the Almanach. 
 
 No deployment of the rear-guard was ever more satis- 
 factory to me than that with which you finish your letter. 
 Preserve to me the sentiments that you express, and be 
 assured, mon prince, that it is with a most distinguished 
 esteem for you that I end my letter. 
 
 Catherine. 
 
APPENDIX. 
 
 WOEKS OF THE PEINCE DE LIGNE. 
 
 IN THIETT-POUR VOLUMES, PUBLISHED FBOU 1794 tO 1811 AND ENTITLED 
 
 MELANGES MILITAIRES, LITT:fcKAIRES ET SENTIMENTAIRES, 
 
 CONTAINING 
 
 Vol.1. Pr^iug^sMilitaires (Military Judgments), topics; Changes. 
 Exclusives. Cavalry. Horses. Infantry. Tactics. Formation. 
 Drill. Marching. Fires. Deployment. Masses. On the Superior- 
 ity of the Enemy. Promotions. Discipline. Severity. Excellence 
 of our Army. Of our Constitution. Medicine. Hospitals. Terms. 
 Semestres. Marriages. Conscription. Magazines. Quarters. Suc- 
 cessors. Recruiting and Recruits. Baggage. Cattle. Distribution 
 of Orders. On more or less Contempt of Life. Feeling in Soldiers. 
 Honour. Religion. To those dissatisfied with the Service. 
 
 Vol.11. Fantaisies Militaires (Military notions). Topics ; To Be- 
 ginners. On Armament. Camping. My Orders of Battle. War. 
 Plans of Campaign. Peace. The Battle. Pursuit. Retreats. The 
 Marshal or General commanding. Generals. Soldiers. Aides-de- 
 Camp. Volunteers. On Disorder. Guards. Fortifications. Ar- 
 tillery. On Regiments in Garrison. On the Corps of Artillery, 
 Engineers and General Staff. On Villages. The Danube. Schools. 
 Toung Men. On the Different Species of Troops. Detached 
 Thoughts. To the Military Chiefs of Provinces. To Criticisers. 
 
 Vols, in., rV. Memoirs of the Campaigns of Prince Louis of Baden. 
 
 Vol. V. Memoirs of the Campaigns of Comte de Bussy-Rabutin. 
 
 Vol. VI. Memoirs of the Turkish War from 1736 to 1789. On 
 the two Marechaux de Lacy. On Frederick 11., King of Prussia. 
 
 Vol. VII. Secret Instructions of Frederick II., King of Prussia, in 
 1778. Translated from the German, with notes. Letters on the 
 Turkish War of 1787-1789. 
 
 Vols. Vm. , IX. Coup d'oeil on Belceil and a part of the Gardens 
 of Europe. 
 
 VOL. I. — 21 
 
322 APPENDIX. 
 
 Vol. X. Discourse on the Profession of Arms. Dialogue of Dead 
 Men. Funeral oration. Sermon for a Wallon regiment. Letters to 
 M. de La Harpe on Csesar. Letters to M. Schopfflin on Csesar. Of 
 Myself during the Day. Of Myself during the Night. Letter to 
 two Brothers, friends of mine. Memorial for my Accused Heart. 
 Prophecies. Notes on Vienna. Notes on Paris. My Conversations 
 with M. de Voltaire. My Conversations with Jean-Jacques Kousseau. 
 Letter and Portrait in monosyllables. 
 
 Vol. XL Letters to Eulalie. On the Stage. 
 
 Vols. XII., XIII. Mes hearts (My Scatterings) or my Head at 
 liberty. Mixtm-e, very careless, of several styles of Poetry and 
 Thoughts. 
 
 Vols. XIV., XV., XVI. Journal of the Seven Years' War. 
 
 Vol. XVII. Journal of the Seven Months' War in Bavaria. 
 
 Vol. XVIII. Plays. The Queen of Majorca. The Samnite Mar- 
 riage, comic opera in 3 acts. Diana and Endymion. The Disen- 
 chantment of the Companions of Ulysses. The Wedding Literrupted, 
 comedy in 3 acts. Alcibiades, comedy in 1 act. The Sultan of the 
 Congo. 
 
 Vol. XIX. Memorial of Great Generals. 
 
 Vol. XX. Mes jficarts. Supplement and Portraits. Portrait of 
 H. I. M. Catherine IL 
 
 Vol. XXI. Letters from the Crimea to the Marquise de Coigny. 
 Short Essays and Poems. Dialogue between a Sceptic and a Capuchin. 
 Notes on the Jews. On the Gipsies. On the Greeks. On Poland. 
 Notes on the old French army. On the new French army. 
 
 Vol. XXII. Poems. Discourse to the Belgian Nation. Letters to 
 the Empress of Russia. The Abduction, comedy in 3 acts. 
 
 Vol. XXIII. Reign of the Great Selrahcengil. Thoughts and 
 Poems. Immoral Tales; conversations with Belial or the Good 
 Devil. 
 
 Vol. XXIV. Relation of Campaigns against the Turks in 1788- 
 1789. Letters to H. I. Majesty Joseph II. Letters to Mardchal de 
 Lacy, Prince Kaunitz, and others. 
 
 Vol. XXV. Poems. Portraits. Letters. Thoughts. The Found- 
 ling, comedy in 3 acts. 
 
 Vol. XXVI. Memoirs of the Comte de Bonneval, Achmet-Pacha. 
 Poems, Proverbs, Thoughts, and Portraits. The Perfect Egoist. 
 
 Vol. XXVII. Notes on the Literary Correspondence of M. de La 
 Harpe with the Grand-Duke Paul of Russia. Notes on the Cours de 
 Littdrature of M. de La Harpe. Principles of Health. Poems. 
 
 Vol. XXVIII. Detailed Catalogue, with notes, of the Military 
 Library of His Highness the Prince de Ligne. 
 
APPENDIX. 323 
 
 Vol. XXIX. The Cours de Literature of M. de La Harpe. Frag- 
 ment upon Casanova. Mes l^carts. Poems, etc. Notes on the 
 Memoirs of the Baron de Besenval. 
 
 Vol. XXX. Motes on the Order of the Golden Fleece and the Order 
 of Maria Theresa. 
 
 Vol. XXXI. The Art of Travelling, poem in 3 cantos. Reflections 
 on the two Condes. !]ficarts and Poems. Delights of Vienna, or the 
 Four Seasons, poem. 
 
 Vol. XXXn. Plays. Don Carlos, tragedy in 5 acts. Saul, tragedy 
 in 5 acts. The Fortunate Bad Advice, comedy in 2 acts in verse. 
 
 Vols. XXXin., XXXIV. The Little Plutarch of aU Nations. 
 
INDEX TO VOL. I. 
 
 Adh^mak (the Marqnis d'), anecdote 
 of, 293. 
 
 Antoinette (Qaeen Marie), the Prince 
 de Ligne's portrait of her, 198-204 ; 
 her innocent pleasures thwarted, 
 charming to hoax, 206-208 ; the 
 slanders on her luxury and gallantry 
 answered, 208-210 ; pretty anecdotes 
 of, 283-285 ; the prince's tender apos- 
 trophe to her, 286. 
 
 Artois (Charles, Comte d') first meeting 
 with Prince de Ligne, 197 ; his arbi- 
 trary fun, 20.5, 206 ; illness at Beloeil, 
 211 ; fete of convalescence, 211, 212. 
 
 Baret (Marie-Jeanne, Comtesse du), 
 
 anecdotes of, 131, 196, 197, 285. 
 Bavarian War of 1778-1780 (The), 
 
 217-229 ; " a dog of a political war," 
 
 228. 
 Be AUMAKCHAis (Pierre- Augustin Caron 
 
 de), anecdotes of, 290, 291. 
 Belceil, life at, 233-255 ; a coup-d'oeil 
 
 on Beloeil, 256-281 ; vignette drawn 
 
 by Prince Charles for his edition of 
 
 " Coup-d'oeil sur Beloeil," 281. 
 Burnard (" GentU "), portrait of, 143. 
 Bernis (Fran9oia-Joachim de Pierre, 
 
 Abb€ and Cardinal de), 146. 
 Besenval (Baron de), his memoirs, 202 ; 
 
 souvenirs and character, 299, 300. 
 BouPFLEES (Stanislas, Chevalier de), 
 
 hisportrait,141-143; his writings, 295. 
 
 Cagliosteo (Alessandio, Comte de), 
 213. 
 
 Cakaocioli (Francesco, Admiral), anec- 
 dotes of, 146, 147. 
 
 Catherine II. of Russia (Empress), 
 first portrait of, 303 ; the Prince 
 de Ligne investigates the charges 
 against her, 305, 306; beginning of 
 her correspondence with the prince, 
 313-320. 
 
 CoNTi (The Prince de), his teas and 
 hunts, 129, 130. 
 
 CosSEL (Comtesse de), mistress of Au- 
 gustus the Strong, King of Poland, 
 82, 83. 
 
 Daun (Leopold-Joseph-Maria, Comte 
 and Marechal), commands Austrian 
 army through the Seven Years' War, 
 69-110; battle of Kolin, 70, 71; at 
 the battle of Maxen, 96, 98. 
 
 Deffand (Marie, Marquise du) Prince 
 de Ligne's intercourse with her, 127, 
 128. 
 
 Ettbilla, celebrated wizard, 215, 216. 
 
 Francis I. of Germany (Emperor), his 
 love of fStes, 120. 
 
 Frederick the Great (King of Prus- 
 sia), during the Seven Years' War, 
 chaps, ii., iii. ; interviews of the 
 Prince de Ligne with him at Neu- 
 stadt in 1770 and at Berlin in 1780, 
 his talk, his opinions, etc., 169-195. 
 
 Frederick-William III., anecdote of 
 him as Crown Prince of Prussia, 307. 
 
 FeIieon, French critic, 166. 
 
 Geoffein (Marie-Th&fese, Mme.), La 
 Harpe's description of her true, 128 ; 
 her death, 129. 
 
326 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 Gluck (Christoph Wildbad von), in 
 "Vienna, liis " Iphigenia," etc., 296, 
 297. 
 
 Haydn (Joseph), enthusiasm for his 
 "Creation" in Vienna, 298; liis re- 
 mark on Mozart, 299. 
 
 Heloisb, a portrait, 252-255. 
 
 Henet of Prussia (Prince), brother of 
 Frederick the Great, 94-96. 
 
 HoussATE (Amelot de la), the prince's 
 opinion of him, 294. 
 
 Joseph II. (Emperor), at the camp of 
 Neustadt, 170, 171, 178-180; during 
 the Bavarian War, 217-229. 
 
 Keith (James, General), kUled at the 
 battle of Hochkirch, 87. 
 
 Lacy (Maurice-Petrowitz, Comte and 
 Marechal de), 81 ; his fine disposi- 
 tions for battle of Hochkirch, 84 ; de- 
 cides the fortunes of the day, 86 ; 
 induces Mar&hal Daun to fight the 
 battle of Maxen, 96, 98 ; immortalized 
 by the campaign of 1760, 102 ; his 
 splendid retreat from Silesia and 
 taking of Berlin, 103 ; refuses to be 
 made a marshal, why, 105, 106 ; per- 
 sonal history of his father and him- 
 self, 106-108, 110; manages a, duel 
 for the Prince de Ligne, 114, 115; 
 anecdote of him in Paris, 297. 
 
 La Fontaine (Jean de), simple and 
 sublime, 242, 243 ; his old rabbit, 
 244, 245 ; his statue at Belceil, 264. 
 
 Ligne (Charles- Joseph, Mardchal Prince 
 de), his lineage, 37 ; his bibliographi- 
 cal history, 39-43 ; birth and lineage, 
 51 ; his father, 52 ; his uncles, 53, 54 ; 
 his tutors, 55-62 ; what are the prin- 
 ciples of education ? 57-59 ; his pas- 
 sion for heroism, 60 ; Treatise on 
 Arms, 60, 61 ; plans to run away to 
 the wars, 61, 62 ; goes to Court with 
 his father, 63 ; marriage, 64-66 
 advice to beginners in war, 66, 67 
 first military service, the Seven Years' 
 War, 68-78; second campaign, 79 
 
 90 ; defeat of the Prussians at Hoch- 
 kirch, 83-87 ; attack on Dresden, 88, 
 89 ; anecdotes, 90-92 ; third campaign, 
 93; birth of his son, 94; battle of 
 Maxen, 96, 97; is sent to Paris to 
 carry news of that victory to Louis 
 XV., 98 ; interview with the king, 
 99 ; with Mme. de Pompadour, 100 ; 
 with the ministers, 101 ; pawns, and 
 sells to the empress, Louis XV.'s 
 presents, 101; his heedlessness, 102; 
 enters Berlin, 103-105 ; the weari- 
 some campaign of 1761, 105 ; peace 
 of Hubertsburg, 110; anecdotes of 
 life in Vienna, 111-117; kept short 
 of money by his father and makes 
 debts, 117; the composition of a 
 perfect man,118,119; Francis L, 1 20 ; 
 a miniature, 121 ; anecdotes, 122 ; 
 death of his father, 124, 125 ; life in 
 Paris and anecdotes of noted persons, 
 126-131 ; his chronology difficult to 
 follow, 132 ; two interviews with J.- 
 J. Rousseau and comments on him, 
 133-141 ; portrait of the Chevalier de 
 Boufflers, 141, 142 ; of Gentil Bernard, 
 143 ; anecdotes of men of note, 144- 
 147 ; opinion of England and English- 
 men and portrait of an Englishwoman, 
 147-150; enthusiasm for Voltaire, 
 151 ; intercourse with him at Ferney, 
 151-158; comments on him, 159-161 ; 
 portrait of the Comte de Segur, 161- 
 164; the French Academy, the En- 
 cyclopedia, 164, 165; anecdotes of 
 authors, 166-168 ; his intercourse 
 with Frederick the Great in 1770 and 
 1780, 169-195 ; regard for Mme. du 
 Barry, 196 ; first acquaintance with 
 the Comte d'Artois, 197 ; refrains 
 from writing details of Court life, 
 198; his tender picture of Queen 
 Marie-Antoinette, 198-204; his rela- 
 tions with Louis XVI., 205 ; resists 
 the Comte d'Artois, 205, 206; inti- 
 macy with and judgment on Marie- 
 Antoinette, 206-210; his fSte to the 
 Comte d'Artois, 211 ; devotes him- 
 self in vain to sorcery, 212, 213 ; 
 tricks Cagliostro, 213 j Mesmer's re- 
 
INDEX. 
 
 327 
 
 mark to him, 213 ; the Montgolfier 
 balloon, 214; the hazel wand, 214; 
 takes the Due d'Orleans to the wizard 
 Etteilla, 214 ; judgment on the Due 
 d'Orle'aas (Philippe Egalite'), 215, 
 216; his account of, and part taken 
 in the Bavarian War of 1778-1780, 
 217-229; enthusiasm of his Wallons, 
 223; his Wallon song, 224; what 
 kind of sermons should be preached 
 to soldiers, 226 ; his brave son 
 Charles, 227, 229 ; visits Spa, 230- 
 232 ; his life at Beloeil, 233 ; fetes, 
 etc., 234-236 ; remarks on reading, 
 writers, and literature, 236-242 ; the 
 reign of the Great Selrahcengil, 246- 
 251 ; a portrait, 252-255 ; a coup- 
 d'oeil on Beloeil, 256-281 ; gardens in 
 England, 271-273; in Italy, 273; in 
 Russia, 274, 275 ; the moral of gar- 
 dens, 275-280 ; his intercourse with 
 Marie-Antoinette, 283-285 ; his ten- 
 der apostrophe to her, 286 ; a prophecy 
 of the French Revolution, 288; his 
 opinion of men of letters, 289, 295 ; 
 of men of talent, 291-293 ; opinion of 
 French art, of Mme. Vig^e Le Brun 
 295 ; of French music, 296 ; visits 
 Russia for the first time, 301-307 ; 
 first intercourse with Empress Cathe- 
 rine and judgment upon her, 303, 304 ; 
 investigates the charges against her, 
 305, 306 ; visits Poland and is natural- 
 ized there, 307-309 ; advice to Poles, 
 309, 310; portraits of the Princesses 
 Radziwill, 311-313 ; the beginning of 
 his correspondence with the Empress 
 Catherine, 313-320. 
 
 LiGNE (Claude-Lamoral, Prince de), 
 father of Charles-Joseph, 52, 63, 64- 
 66, 117, 124, 125. 
 
 LiGNE (Elisabeth- Alexandrine-Char- 
 lotte de Salm, Princesse de), mother 
 of Charles-Joseph, 52. 
 
 LiGNE {Fran9oise-Xavifere de Lichten- 
 stein, Princesse de), marriage to 
 Charles-Joseph, Prince de Eigne, 
 64-66. 
 
 Eigne (Charles, Prince de), accom- 
 panies his father to Berlin, 181 ; 
 
 ascends in the Montgolfier balloon 
 from Lyons, his bravery at nine years 
 old, 227-229; his vignette to the 
 " Coup d'oeil sur Beloeil," 281 ; his 
 obelisk at Beloeil, 267, 268. 
 
 London, appearance and charm of, 
 302, 303. 
 
 LoKEAiNE (Charles, Prince de), his por- 
 trait, 118; his death, 183, 184. 
 
 Loudon (Gideon-Ernst, Baron von), 
 in the Seven Years' War, 80, 85, 86 ; 
 commanded one wing of army in 
 Bavarian War, 218-229 ; a god in of- 
 fensive war, an iU-tempered man on 
 the defensive, 228. 
 
 Louis XV., his inane behaviour, 99, 
 131 ; ill-used by public opinion, 196 ; 
 his death well described by Besenval, 
 202. 
 
 Louis XVI., his rough, unpleasant 
 manners, 204, 285, 286. 
 
 Luxembourg (The Mar&hale de) , the 
 epigram upon her, and how she pun- 
 ished the author, 145, 146. 
 
 Marie-Antoinette (Queen). See An- 
 toinette (Queen Marie). 
 
 Marmontel (Jean-Franpois), 166. 
 
 Maria Theresa (The Empress), anec- 
 dotes of her management of the 
 Prince de Eigne, 112-114; her death, 
 318. 
 
 Meilhan (S^nac de), the prince's opin- 
 ion of him, 294. 
 
 Mesmer (Friedrich-Anton), his remark, 
 213. 
 
 Mirepoix (The Marechale de), her 
 siren spirit, 127. 
 
 MoLii)EB (Jean-Baptiste Poquelin, 
 called), remarks on, 237-239 ; his 
 statue at Beloeil, 265. 
 
 Montgolfier (Jacques-Etienne and 
 Joseph-Michel), ascension of their 
 balloon from Lyons, 214. 
 
 Mozart (Wolfgang), cold reception of 
 " Don Giovanni " in Vienna, 298. 
 
 Narischkin (Prince), his nature, the 
 letter the Empress Catherine writes 
 for him, 315, 316. 
 
328 
 
 INDEX. 
 
 NxcKER (Jacques), employs M. deFezai 
 to write to Louis XVI., 287. 
 
 KovEBRE, a famous ballet-mastei ; an- 
 ecdote of, 170, 171. 
 
 OKLtANS (Philippe " ifegaUt^," Due d'), 
 198 ; the Prince de Ligne's judgment 
 upon him, 215, 216. 
 
 Paris and Versailles, 98, 99, 126 ; of- 
 fensive appearance of Paris to stran- 
 gers, 303. 
 
 Petersburg, its majestic appearance, 
 302. 
 
 POLIGNAC (The Jules de), 200, 203, 204. 
 
 Pompadour (Jeanne-Antoinette Pois- 
 Eon, Mme. de), her speeches to the 
 Prince de Ligne, 100; reported free- 
 dom between her and the Empress 
 Maria Theresa untrue, 100. 
 
 Eatnal (Guillaume-Thomas-Eranfois, 
 the Abbd), 165, 166. 
 
 EoEii, poet, anecdote of, 144, 145. 
 
 EoussEAU (Jean-Jacques), Prince de 
 Ligne's interviews with, and com- 
 ments upon him, 133-141 ; his statue 
 excluded from the philosopher's gar- 
 den at Beloeil, 265. 
 
 Sainte-Bbuvb (Charles-Augustin), his 
 essay on the Prince de Ligne, 1-34 ; 
 his portrait of the prince the best we 
 have, 36 ; his merits as a critic, 38, 39. 
 
 SiiGUR (Louis-Philippe, Comte de), his 
 portrait, 161-164; a man of letters, 
 294; amusing failure of his compli- 
 ments, 303, 304. 
 
 Selbahcengil (The Eeign of the 
 Great), 246-251. 
 
 Spa, a picture of, 230-232. 
 
 Staei.-Holbieiit (Anne-Louise-Ger- 
 maine, Baronne de), her preface to 
 her selection of the Prince de Ligne's 
 Thoughts and Letters, 45-49. 
 
 Translator's Note, 35-43. 
 
 Voltaire (!Fran9ois-Marie Arouet, 
 called), the Prince de Ligne's inter- 
 course with him at Femey and com- 
 ments on him, 151-161; bequest of 
 his coat and waistcoat, anecdote of 
 him, 166, 167. 
 
 Wallons (The), origin of the name, 
 anglicg Walloons, unknown, 78, 79 ; 
 gaUant conduct of a captain of Wal- 
 lons, 95 ; their behaviour at Maxen, 
 97 ; and in Berlin, 104 ; sad fate of a 
 captain of Wallons, 167, 168; who 
 the Wallons are, 223; their battle- 
 song, 224. 
 
 Works of the Prince de Ligne, 39-43, 
 321-323. 
 
 WtJRTEMBERG (Louis, Princo of), poor 
 and generous, 117.