Memoirs of Bertha von Suttner: The Records of an Eventful Life (Vol. 1 of 2)

And now I was to be taken “into the world.” Our name might have given us the right to move among the highest aristocracy, for there is doubtless not a family of the high nobility of Austria with which we were not connected by blood or by marriage. But one is ill acquainted with this high nobility if one thinks that name and kinship suffice to get one received. For this there is required (it was especially so in my youth; now they have come to be somewhat less exclusive) first and foremost the possession of sixteen great-great-grandparents; in other words, the right of admission to court. This we had not—my mother was not Geborene; besides, our means were also very modest; so it was not possible for us to attain to the first society—the société, as it styled itself—of Vienna. That stung me; oh, what a vain, superficial thing I was! To think it was essential to the happiness of life to move among the crème, and to think I was suffering an unmerited wrong by the withholding of this happiness!

Now it came to pass that one of the richest men in Vienna sued for my hand through the mediation of the author Joseph von Weilen, who used to call at our house. Mother and guardian declared themselves favorable. To be sure the suitor was not an aristocrat, and already fifty-two years old. But he was willing to surround my existence and my mother’s with the utmost splendor, villas, castles, palaces,—I was dazzled and said “yes.”

I do not attempt to put a good face on this fact. It is an ugly fact when an eighteen-year-old girl is willing to give her hand to an unloved man so much older than herself, just because he is a millionaire! to call it by its right name, it is selling herself. If I were writing a novel I should certainly not tell such a story of its heroine, if she was intended to be attractive; but what I am setting down here is the experiences of a real person, for whose actions I am not by a long way so responsible as I should be for those of a figure drawn from fancy. For the latter would be fashioned according to my own present views and feelings, while this eighteen-year-old Bertha Kinsky—though it is I myself—is nothing more than a vague picture in memory. What the original of the picture experienced is retained in bare outlines in my recollection; it has also contributed to the shaping of my present character; but what sort of character that original itself had at that time appears to me as a thing in which I have as little part as in the caprices of Cleopatra or Semiramis.

A few pictures from this engagement episode:

The presentation: Herr von Weilen brings the suitor for a morning call. Stiff conversation in the drawing-room. Each studies the other. Pleased? No, the elderly gentleman scarcely pleases me—but does not displease me. Invitation to dinner the next day; Fürstenberg also there. Still stiff. On the fourth or fifth day a letter to my mother asking for my hand. I hesitate. That same evening we were to go to a ball—my coming out. An aristocratic picnic: the crème used to appear at this ball, but not exclusively—elements of less consequence are also present. I can still see my toilet, a white dress sprinkled all over with little rosebuds. Full of joyous anticipation I entered the hall. Full of piqued disappointment I left it. I had found but few partners; I should have been left to sit out the cotillion had not a homely infantry officer, who had had his matrimonial proposals rejected in numerous quarters, taken pity on me. The aristocratic mothers sat together, my mother sat alone; the countesses stood in groups and chattered, I knew none of them; at the supper merry little coteries were formed, I was left out. On the way home I said to my mother, “Mamma, I have made up my mind now, I will accept the proposal.”

The next picture: The happy suitor, in possession of my acceptance, brings me a whole cargo of betrothal presents: a set of sapphires and a pearl necklace. He also presents to me his nearly sixteen-year-old daughter (for he was a widower), and she calls me her dear, beautiful mamma, which is great fun for me.

Next picture: A brilliant ball in the haute finance, in which we participate as affianced lovers. Now I am surrounded, and the most gorgeous young cavalry officers are paying court to me—one in particular begs permission to call at my house when I am married. Evidently he thinks an old man’s young wife may become interesting. But my fiancé is furious, and makes a scene with me because I propose to go out to supper on the uhlan’s arm. I laugh, leave my cavalier, and take the arm of the angry man.

“Oh, I’ll be good,” I say soothingly.

Still another picture: A drive about the city, three of us, my mother and the engaged couple, to look at house-furnishing goods, carriages, gowns; also a drive to the suburbs to look at the truly princely villa that was destined as a nuptial gift for me.

One picture more: An afternoon at our home. My betrothed and I are alone for the first time.

“Bertha, do you know how ravishing you are?” He puts his arm around me and presses his lips to mine. The first love-kiss that a man had given me. An old man, an unloved man.—

With a suppressed cry of disgust I tear myself free, and in me arises a passionate protest—No, never—

On the next day the presents were sent back; I broke the engagement. My people had indeed tried to remonstrate: the scandal—the breach of faith—I ought not to have said yes, I had not been compelled to, but to draw back suddenly now—I should at least think it over for a while yet—

“No, no—I cannot, cannot—I’d rather die!”

And so the letter of dismissal was sent off.

A few hours later the daughter rushed to me and wept at my feet: I must not treat her father so badly—I must revoke the cruel decision....

But there was no changing my mind now. Stubbornly I clung to my “I cannot, I cannot!”

Soon the whole episode lay behind me like a bad dream which I felt it a refreshment to have waked from. My engagement and disengagement had taken place at carnival time; in the summer I was no longer thinking of them. We spent this summer in Baden near Vienna, where my mother had bought a small villa. It was a jolly summer, full of picnics, watering-place music, and dancing parties.

A little circle of society was formed, including a few elegant and pretty young girls and numerous young gentlemen, mostly officers, and also the indispensable mothers; we met daily—often three times a day, at noon in the park during the music, in the afternoon walking to the Helenental, and again in the evening (if there was not a réunion) at the home of one family or another, or at the evening music in the park. I had formed an especially intimate friendship with a girl of my own age, by name Marietta, Marchesa Saibante. She was a striking sight: a tall and rotund figure (at that time angular thinness was not yet stylish), raven-black hair and eyes, dazzling teeth, very red lips and very red cheeks—but withal a snub nose and coarse features in general.

Marietta’s mother, a Baroness Scheibler by birth, had been married to an Italian, Marchese Saibante, and was a widow of many years’ standing. She had only this single daughter, and worshiped her. With the two lived also an unmarried sister of the Marchesa, and this Aunt Helene, as she was called, worshiped Marietta still more. The two middle-aged ladies (what a pity there is no German word for the expressively descriptive English “middle-aged”) did not let their favorite get a step away from their immediate presence. They were living in very modest circumstances, but were rather prideful, since they were related to all the illustrious families of the aristocracy. A deceased third sister had been married to a Prince Auersperg. They had also a rich uncle, Field Marshal Count Wratislav, who cherished a particular affection for Helene. This uncle was constantly being spoken of. Very often, too, mention was made of a cousin with the proud name Rohan (Roi ne puis, prince ne daigne, Rohan je suis). Cousin Rohan was spoken of only incidentally—not pretentiously,—“I have a cousin who is a Princess Rohan,”—but there were told anecdotes and facts that were in themselves worth speaking of, and that only happened by chance to be connected with Cousin Rohan. Query: do not most people have among their kinsfolk and friends, or even mere acquaintances, a person who is in a higher position then theirs, whom they regard as their “Cousin Rohan” and utilize for the apparently unintentional embellishment of their conversation?

That summer Elvira celebrated her marriage with Doris in See. Marietta and I figured as bridesmaids. While the breakfast was still going on the young couple left Baden for Pola, where the newly married ensign’s ship was lying at anchor.

Now I was thrown altogether on Marietta. It was a strong contrast. After my cousin,—the poetess, the scholar,—the Rohan’s cousin, who was a worldling through and through, with nothing else in her head but the enjoyments and glitter of social life. She had tasted of them, despite her limited circumstances; for she had spent a whole carnival in Prague, and had there, under the ægis of the Auerspergs, the Wratislavs, and the Rohans, danced at twenty balls and flirted (without results) with many an épouseur. Now in Baden it was dancing and coquetting again; Marietta and I were the belles of the season. These entertainments were now “the important thing.”—As if the world had been created for no other purpose than to be our place of amusement.

The following winter we (that is, my mother and brother and I) spent in Rome. It had come about thus. The just-dethroned Queen of Naples, with her suite, had spent this summer at the Weilburg in Baden as guests of Archduke Albrecht. The historic tragedy that had preceded, the defense and loss of Gaeta, had made but little impression on me; I only listened with interest to the stories that were told of it by the queen’s chief steward, an old principe, who often visited us. It was he who depicted to us the life of foreigners in Italy, especially in Rome, so temptingly, and urged us so strenuously to come there next winter that we let ourselves be prevailed upon. The prospect took my fancy greatly. Yet, to my shame, I must avow that what attracted me was not eternal Rome with the magic of its historic memories, but the portrayals of Roman society life. And it remained so during our stay. What made most impression on me there—what was to me “the important thing”—was not the Vatican and Castel Sant’Angelo and the Forum, but the Monte Pincio with its elegant Corso, the Teatro Costanza with its opera season consisting of two alternating operas (one of them Il Trovatore), and the balls and soirées that we attended in the palaces of the Roman magnates or in the drawing-rooms of the colonies of foreigners. I did not bring away deep impressions in any respect from that stay in Rome; it was reserved to a time many years later for me to take in, with some comprehension, the enchantment which this classic soil must exert upon any half-way receptive mind.

Our friend of Baden days, the Neapolitan principe, once invited us to an excursion to his home city, and took us from there to Pompeii, the Blue Grotto, and the marvelous Capo di Monte, where he owned a villa—but it was rather dilapidated, as was he himself for that matter. When he came out next with a proposal of marriage, at the close of the season when we were already packed up for our journey, I said “no” without hesitation. I would not conjure down upon myself a second time the fate which I had newly escaped—that of becoming the wife of an unloved old man. Oh yes, if my suitor’s twenty-five-year-old son, the black-eyed Duca di ..., who quite pleased me, had appeared as suitor, I do not know—but he did not take it into his head; I think he was more inclined to feel an antipathy to me, for he must have seen into his father’s plans, and a second marriage on the father’s part would presumably have been extremely unwelcome to the son. Not till afterward did we learn that in our circle it had been generally assumed that the elderly principe, who loaded us with attentions, had even in Baden been my unacknowledged fiancé.

From Rome we returned to Baden, where the life of last year’s season was repeated; and in the following winter, 1864, we went to Venice to go “into the world” again there.

Venice! Thee too, marvelously charming, death-pale queen of the lagoons, I learned only in much later years to understand and love. Totally insensible to her beauty I was not, to be sure, even at that time; but yet “the important thing” to me was social life. It did my heart good to be again in the vicinity of my beloved cousin Elvira. Her husband was now stationed at Venice, and the couple were living there quite secluded, but in the profoundest domestic happiness. Only two things disturbed this happiness: first, the young husband’s prospective early return to sea service, which threatened them with a year’s separation, and secondly Elvira’s unsettled health; she coughed much, and was often seized with the fear that she was consumptive. Those who surrounded her, and the physician too, would talk her out of this fear, and then she would once more give herself up to the full gladness of living.

I, meanwhile, was reveling in the enjoyment of the Venetian carnival. Venice was at that time an Austrian city, and society life moved in Austrian circles. The houses which we frequented were those of the Austrian governor, the Austrian consul, and sundry Austrian aristocrats. A rich English family named Greaves, adorned by a beautiful daughter, also kept open house, but the Italian families were hostile and held aloof.

Our life ran this course: at noon a military band played in the Piazza di San Marco, and there—just as we used to do in the Kurpark at Baden—we promenaded up and down, accompanied by whatever gallants were at hand—mostly navy officers—and continued the conversations of last night’s ball. If it rained, we sat in the cafés under the Procuratie and had our social intercourse there. At five in the afternoon we called on each other, and every evening we met at private balls or soirées. A great fancy-dress ball was given, and once—I think it was in the Wimpffen house—there was an exhibition of amateur theatricals, and living pictures with them.

The toilets that I wore on these three occasions I can still see in my memory. I do not intend to describe them, but only to show by this confession what it is that makes so deep an impression on a silly girl’s mind—and, withal, I was not even one of the silliest. They made much of my intellect—they made much of me in every way that season at Venice, so that I felt myself one of their queens. An agreeable feeling, at all events. It went to my head violently, and I took advantage of this agreeable self-sufficiency to send some suitors off with vigorous refusals. This brought upon me worldly-wise reproaches from my people; but how well it is for me that I did this, for otherwise I should be to-day the wife of some admiral or commodore, and should not have possessed that husband whose possession was my life’s consecration, nor should I have come into touch with the peace movement, in which my activities and endeavors have received their most fervid inspiration.

One may be disposed to stigmatize as frivolity the type of character exhibited by a young female who is wholly taken up with social enjoyments, who does not concern herself about the events that move the world, but who does bestow on her own toilets, worn at festal occasions, such intense attention that after forty years the memory is not yet extinct. Well, I would ask an old, ever-so-efficient general if he does not remember the clink of the saber dragging behind him when he went out for the first time after he received his commission; I would ask the most learned professor of the political sciences if he cannot still see before his eyes the color of the ribbon which he wore on his student cap.

But in these things—ball bouquet, lieutenant’s saber, students’ society colors—there lies something additional, quite other than what they are; the fragrance and clink and gleam is of the symbol; they are admission cards to the advertised great festival, winning tickets for the hoped chief prizes of the great lottery,—the Future.

Ball triumphs—I can still remember what intensified feelings of intoxication they bring with them. I say intensified, for youth in happy and care-free circumstances is in itself an intoxication. One need not be “frivolous” by a long way—in the sense of superficial and brainless—if one then plunges with a certain passionate fullness of satisfaction in the flood of social amusements; there is vibrating a peculiar electric fluid full of invisible sparks which mean to discharge themselves as happiness or as love—or at least as joy. And the warmer a girl’s emotional life is, the more her mind has been fed on poetic diet, the more proudly she feels that she has treasures of happiness to bestow, the more devoted love she feels the force within her capable of, so much the more sensitive is she to the mysterious crackle of those sparks. He who does not hear the crackle, to whose head the intoxicating foam is not rising, through whom the passionate hopes of happiness are not glowing,—well, he does find the whole business flat and vapid, and charges the young fools who are giving themselves up to all this with being superficial.

But after a few seasons a sobering-down comes to everybody. One who lets himself be forever satisfied with social festivities, even when the first flush of youth is past and the promises have not been fulfilled, who does not then recognize “the important thing” in other aims, in new duties, in serious activity, is indeed irredeemably frivolous.

Besides, I was talking of the feelings of our young girls in society at the time of my youth. To-day everything has changed greatly. The girl fresh from a good school no longer, as at that time, finds in the ball her highest joy and her only opportunity for fulfilling her vocation, a happy conquest. Dancing is being displaced by sport, and of callings that are open to women there are more every day. Society life itself has grown more tedious too: the young men shun the ballrooms; the seasons do not last so long that people get better and better acquainted and so enjoy each other’s company more and more; neither in winter in the city nor in summer at the watering-place does society meet for the whole season—they fly from place to place, from the mountains to the sea, from the northern city to the South, from Scheveningen to St. Moritz, from the Pyrenees to Egypt, up to the not distant time when from the Isle of Wight they will make excursions to the fashionable Japanese baths.

1864—that was the year in which the Austrian troops, in conjunction with the German, were waging war against Denmark. When I call up that year in my own memory, this event plays no part in it at all. Doubtless I must have heard something of it, but, as no one near and dear to me was participating in it, what I heard was too faint a tone to leave traces on my psychical phonograph. And in general the naïve conception of martial events which was then mine, and is doubtless widespread even to-day, is that wars are things that take place as necessarily and regularly and outside of the sphere of all human influence as do processes in the interior of the earth and in the firmament; so one is not to get into a rage over them. And if they take place at a distance it is like the collision of two stars—such a thing does not really concern one, one will not let himself be disturbed in his occupations and amusements by it—at most one may find it interesting that “history” has again become active, and may be anxious to see what new lines its stylus will engrave on the map. I do not think, for that matter, that I felt this anxiety. I did not read the political part of the papers when I read papers at all (my reading consisted only of French and English books); and if I learned of the victory of the allies, and took pleasure in it, this was at most brought about by the fact that the Düppler-Schanzen-Marsch was to be seen in all the music shops, with the usual pretty picture of charging soldiers on the cover, one of them in the foreground at the left waving the flagstaff on high, while at the top the bunting rolls over the whole page in such great undulations that one positively hears it flap in the wind. The cover of that piece of music has remained in my memory; aside from this, of the whole Schleswig-Holstein campaign—nothing.

The year 1864, especially the summer, brought me far other experiences, which affected me deeply and have remained indelible in my memory.

We had gone to Bad Homburg v. d. Höhe. In causing my mother’s choice to fall upon this place, the attraction of the trente-et-quarante table was certainly the determining factor. It was her intention never again to enter a gambling-room—this she had declared years ago; but now the hankering had awakened again, and also the idea that perhaps it might after all be possible to repeat the experiment that had been made at home, and to harvest a trifle of a million, which is in all cases agreeable. I did not say no to this scheme, for Homburg was incidentally a very fashionable watering-place, where I should certainly find opportunity for entertainment. My guardian did not approve at all; he thought the gambling-room dangerous for my mother, and the society that moved there unsuitable for me. Homburg was reputed to be a haunt of the Parisian demi-monde. And in fact, we used to see on the terrace that year two notably striking figures whose names are doubtless still in the memory of those who go back to the time of the second French empire, Cora Pearl and Léonide Leblanc. I was not unacquainted with the existence of the haute galanterie of Paris. As a reader of the French novelists, Alexandre Dumas, Eugène Sue, George Sand, Paul Féval, who were then the latest thing, I had acquired a knowledge of the life and luxury of the grandes courtisanes, as they were called by those authors.—Yet, along with such society, Homburg harbored also a highly respectable community of foreigners who came to take the waters, from everywhere under the sun—especially Russians and English.

Our apartments had been engaged in advance, in a house that stood opposite the Kursaal; its owner was a banker named Wormser. Frau Wormser was a dear, sensible, prepossessing woman. With this mention I send a greeting to her in the realm of shadows.

I do not know how Homburg has developed since then. I see it before me like this: a long, wide street leading from the railway to infinity, interrupted on the right hand by a square where the Kursaal stands; along the street the houses either are hotels,—the usual Englischer Hof, Russischer Hof, or other Hof,—or bear a placard reading Appartements meublés. When you get beyond the Kursaal the hotels diminish, the street leading to infinity takes on the character of a small city, and into it open the little streets and alleys that pertain to the capital of the reigning Landgrave of Hesse-Homburg. At that time the last of the landgraves was seated on this throne; for two years later not only did his line die out with him, so that the landgraviate fell to Hesse-Darmstadt, but by the terms of the peace of September 3, 1886, it was incorporated into the kingdom of Prussia as a part of the province of Hesse. Hesse-Homburg patriotism, if there was any, must have been retrimmed in quick succession into a Darmstadt patriotism, a Nassau patriotism, a Prussian and an Imperial German patriotism.

Where the great street broke off at Kurhaus Square, a side street turned to the right, running opposite the Kursaal to the park. Here was the foremost hotel of the place, Hotel Bellevue, and around the corner, where the park was already beginning, stood the large three-story Weckerlin house, on the ground floor of which I had many a joyous hour—of this more anon.

When we arrived we knew nobody, but acquaintances are readily formed in watering-places. Thus it came to pass that on the very first evening, at our landlord’s bank, where my mother was having money changed (the capital for the indubitable winning of those millions), we fell in with an old gentleman whom Herr Wormser introduced to us as “Banker Königswarter from Paris.” Then when we came to the music the next afternoon Herr von Königswarter joined us, and introduced to us several other guests of the spa, both gentlemen and ladies. Thus we became acquainted with a Countess Vitztum who lived in Paris, Baron Alphonse Rothschild from Naples, and several others whom I do not now remember.

We had organized our life thus: mother spent the forenoon at her work, I stayed at home meanwhile (for it was settled as a fundamental principle that I was not to enter the gambling-rooms), and during this time I occupied myself with my piano and with my books. We had immediately rented a piano and subscribed for six volumes at a time from the circulating library, which was in the house next door. I was always a ravenous devourer of books: without three volumes of belles-lettres (novels in several volumes were the style then), two of Tauchnitz, and one of German science, I was not to be contented. In all time to which my thoughts go back, I have always, under all circumstances and in every situation, led two lives—my own and that of my reading. I mean, the events that I lived through and those that came to me through description have simultaneously enriched my store of memories; to the persons known to me in daily intercourse there have been added the heroes of my authors; it is under the influence of a double experience that what I am has taken shape. The stories of the “Thousand and One Nights” belong to my impressions of the Orient just as much as does my real stay in the Caucasus, and many a living gallant has quickened my pulse less acutely than has the imagined figure of Marquis Posa. And does not one often feel it as one of the experiences of life when from the words of a thinker or scientist a new truth breaks forth, when suddenly a fold of the veil that wraps the great mystery “Universe” is lifted?

—Well, then, I devoted the forenoon to my occupation at home. At one o’clock my mother came from her work (oh, how laborious and really hateful she said it was!) and we lunched in our room. In the afternoon we dressed nicely for the concert; at seven o’clock came dinner at the Kurhaus restaurant, mostly in company, and after it, three times a week, opera. Just then Adelina Patti, still quite young but already renowned, was singing there als Gast. She was receiving an honorarium of five thousand francs for every performance. I heard her in La Sonnambula, Faust, Lucia di Lammermoor, Don Pasquale, La Traviata, Linda di Chamouni, Crispino e la Comare. It must surely be a divine sensation to stand there on the boards, the incarnation of an ideal figure, and with the magic of one’s art to take so many hearts captive, to acquire so much glory, honor, wealth, and withal to intoxicate one’s self with the sweetness of one’s own voice,—these thoughts, joined with a certain feeling of envy, ran through my mind while Patti sang, and now I understood why my mother had felt it such an impairment of her happiness in life that she had been hindered from becoming a Malibran. Malibran, it was affirmed, had been a hundred times greater than Patti; and her voice (my mother’s) had, she said, been put on a level with Malibran’s by connoisseurs. Might not I, perhaps, have inherited this divine gift?

We sent for the leader of the orchestra at the opera to come and test whether I had voice, and if I had, to give me singing lessons. He came, tested, thought the material was good, and gave me lessons; of course only exercises for developing the voice. That was somewhat of a bore to me; I should have liked to learn a bravura aria at once, and I felt it as a disappointment that when I let a beautiful F or G swell to fortissimo and then diminish again till it died away, the Herr Kapellmeister did not spring up to cry out in enthusiasm, “Why, that beats Patti!” And so we gave up the lessons after a week—the more readily because to my mother, whose work often failed of success in most inexplicable fashion, the fee of twenty francs an hour seemed decidedly too high.

One afternoon, at the music, Herr von Königswarter said to us,

“The Princess of Mingrelia has a keen desire to make the acquaintance of the ladies.”

We had long known who the Princess of Mingrelia was, since we saw her daily in the Kurpark and at the theater, and since Herr von Königswarter, who was on friendly terms with her, had told us as much as he knew of the story of her life. Ekaterina Dadiani, formerly princess of the Caucasian country (now incorporated in the Russian empire) of Mingrelia, was a very elegant lady of about forty-six or forty-seven, still goodly to look upon, and must in her youth have been a dazzling beauty of the genuine Georgian type. She had for some years been living in Europe, alternately Paris and St. Petersburg, for the sake of her children’s education; in summer she came regularly to drink the health-giving waters of Homburg. Every morning at seven o’clock she went to the spring; she often made the round of the gambling-rooms, but never played; at the afternoon concert she used to sit in a particular place on the Kurhaus terrace, always surrounded by a whole little court. Her family consisted of two sons and a daughter. Her oldest son Nikolaus, called Niko, was at that time seventeen years old, her daughter Salomé sixteen, and her youngest son André fourteen. Her household (she occupied the whole ground floor of the Weckerlin house) comprised a secretary, the governess for her daughter, the tutor for the boys, a valet, and two maids.

After her husband’s death she had taken the reins of government as her son’s guardian. Once, hard pressed by the Turks, she herself went against the enemy at the head of her horsemen. But it had been impossible for her to hold her ground, and she had to accept the protection of Russia, a protection that was practically annexation. The heir was allowed to keep his title of Prince of Mingrelia, and his lands, but in the form of a majorat; the throne he must forego. A considerable appanage was set apart for the dowager princess, and at the Russian court she was allowed the rank of a foreign sovereign. She was content, for those Caucasian principalities and kingdoms—Georgia, Imeretia, Mingrelia, etc.—were always threatened by Mohammedan enemies, and under Russian safeguard they could develop peacefully, thrive, and remain true to their ancestral standards of life, their customs, their languages, and their dress.

In the princess’s company there were frequently to be seen a few Caucasian ladies wearing their picturesque home costume; she herself ordered her gowns from Worth and wore them with all the chic and elegance of a genuine grande dame. She spoke French fluently, even though it was with a strong Russian accent; with her children she conversed mostly in the Georgian language.

The desired acquaintance was made. I brought the interesting woman girlish admiration, and she took me to her heart. Soon I became almost a child of the house. At first I only sat in the great circle during the concert; then the princess invited me to accompany her to the spring in the morning, to come and see her at her apartments, to dine with her. My mother held aloof: a few formal calls made and returned, that was all. I, on the other hand, was taken into the intimacy of the princess, who had a great predilection for young people. Salomé, her daughter, far nearer to me in years, came in contact with me much less than did her mother; she, with her hardly completed sixteen summers, was still rated as a child, and had to stay with her governess most of the time.

By her fellow-countrymen the princess was addressed as “Dedopali”; this means queen, literally “mother of mothers,” and is in that country the correct title for every female sovereign. I was generally called by the family “la contessina.” A friend of the Dadiani household, the Italian Marchese Almorini, had thus addressed me, and the designation had stuck to me. He was a comical sight, this Almorini. An old beau, always paying compliments, always skipping about, always aux petits soins with the ladies. He did not show his age: he wore a coal-black wig and dyed his beard. He could relate so many stories and chronicles of times long gone by that there had grown up a standing joke that he had been centuries in the world, like Cagliostro.

The princess’s secretary, who was likewise her courier, major-domo, shawl-bearer,—in a word, factotum,—bore the name of Monsieur Ferry, and was a Frenchman. He was the picture of devotion. Since one cannot all the time be bending the upper part of the body forward as in reverential salutations, he stood with his hip sloping to one side when he spoke to his mistress, and always addressed her as “Altesse.” He was a man of about forty, with a reddish imperial and side whiskers. The old valet, called Monsieur David, a fat, smooth-shaven Swiss, had been one of the household for twenty years, had served the late prince in Mingrelia, and was the genuine type of the devoted old servant, possessing the absolute confidence of his mistress and the love of her children.

Innumerable and clear-cut are the recollections which the hours that I spent in the Dedopali’s house and in her company have left in my mind. The oriental, exotic quality, commingled with the Russian and Parisian tone of high society, spiced with romance and surrounded with the glitter of wealth, exercised a peculiar fascination upon me; I was truly downright happy in this relationship, it was to me like the coming true of indefinite, long-cherished dreams. When I entered her apartments in the Weckerlin house at any hour I had a glad and buoyant feeling. From the front room one entered a large dining-room with three windows and a balcony; at its right there was a corner drawing-room in which the princess spent most of her time, and back of that was her sleeping-room. At the left of the dining-room were the children’s rooms. It was only an ordinary appartement meublé, though a high-grade one; nothing of princely splendor about it; but yet by the many personal objects scattered about, by the flowers, by the fashion in which the furniture was placed, the whole had a private and characteristic stamp of its own; the very odor that filled these rooms—a mixture of orange-flower perfume, Russian cigarettes, and leather—had something personal about it. In the course of years I met the Dedopali in many places, and everywhere that she stayed this same odor hovered about her rooms and adhered to all her possessions.

I spent many hours in that corner drawing-room and listened to the words of the princess, who related to me much that was romantic in her career. She would stay in Europe a few years more, and then return to her own country with her sons. In the meantime her daughter would doubtless have married. “And you, too, Contessina, will sometime visit me in the Caucasus with your husband, will you not? You are already twenty-one, and so pretty—you must soon make a brilliant match and be right happy.—Come, I will show you what wedding present I intend for you.”

And she took me into her sleeping-room, commanded her maid to set out the jewel casket, and showed me her treasures,—a magnificent collection of pearls, diamonds, and other precious stones. She took out a pretty little brooch of brilliants.

“See, this is the cadeau de noce, mais d’abord il faut avoir ‘le promis.’”

She questioned me: was there no one who was attentive to me, no one who especially pleased me? No, my heart was free.—She herself, a short time before, had been not far from contracting a second marriage. The preceding summer at Biarritz the Duke of Osuna, the greatest and richest nobleman of Spain, had sued for her hand, but she could not make up her mind to it; she was now living only for the future of her children, and besides she was already taking too much delight in looking forward to her return to her native land, from which she was banished until her son Niko should have reached his majority.

One afternoon, during the Kur-concert, we were all sitting on the terrace once more in our usual places in the Dedopali’s circle. There was a rumor that the Tsar, Alexander II, was in Homburg on that day: perhaps he would come into the Kurpark. In fact, suddenly a commotion arose, and from all sides came the cry, L’Empereur, l’Empereur!... And down below in the park could be seen the tall, imposing figure of Alexander II, who, accompanied by his aides, was promenading below the terrace. As soon as his eye fell on the Dedopali he came hurrying up the steps. The princess arose and moved forward to meet him, and he seized her hand and kissed it. The rest of us stood at a respectful distance; but I heard when after a short conversation the Emperor proposed in a somewhat louder tone and in French, “Shall we not take a turn through the gaming-rooms?” And he offered her his arm. The rest of us followed.

At the roulette table Alexander II borrowed a few gold pieces from his companion,—either he had no money with him or else he thought that borrowed money brings luck,—and threw the stake on the red. He won, let the money stand a few times, but ultimately it was swept in by the little rake, relentless even toward autocrats.

Another episode remains in my memory, a call which Adelina Patti paid to the Princess of Mingrelia. She came accompanied by a lady companion, and remained a short half hour in the corner drawing-room, while I also happened to be there. The sort of awesome timidity with which the autocrat of all the Russias had affected me a few days before filled me now in a different way, but almost to the same degree, in the presence of this victorious yet childishly bashful sovereign in the empire of song—an empire which had stood before my mind as one of the mightiest ever since my childhood. The conversation turned principally on music, and when she was asked as to her favorite rôle, Adelina Patti named Marguerite in Faust.

One day a new figure appeared in the princess’s circle. A man of about forty: elegant figure of medium height, regular features with a melancholy, almost gloomy expression, and a long, narrow black imperial.

“My dear cousin, Prince Heraclius of Georgia—my darling Contessina, of whom I have told you so much,” said the princess, as she introduced us.

The cousin from Georgia pleased me and I pleased him also. Such a thing is detected instantly. A lively conversation immediately sprang up between us. Now we met several times a day, for the prince was constantly in his cousin’s company, was invited to her rooms for all meals and for the evenings. In the evening they used to have music—what is called music: the oldest son drummed on the piano and sang all kinds of songs from the music-halls and the boulevards; the rest joined in; I rendered a few real piano pieces,—Chopin nocturnes, Mendelssohn caprices, and Liszt rhapsodies,—sang a few of the ballads that were lying around, and reaped a rich harvest of applause. I was admired day after day as a musical marvel.

I liked to have the Dedopali tell me about her cousin. He was the son of the last King of Georgia; properly bore the name Bagration, just as the Russian emperors are Romanofs—he was a “Bagratide.” This designation sounded to me particularly heroic and classic. He had a palace in Tiflis and an ancient royal castle in the mountains. He lived much in Europe, but frequently went back to his home in the Caucasus, where he was still treated by the population as a king. In temperament he was melancholy rather than cheerful, the probable cause being his not altogether robust health—his yellowish complexion indicated a diseased liver. To cure such ailments he alternately drank of the waters of Homburg, Karlsbad, or Vichy.

“He would cure his ailments better,” added the princess, “if he would take a young wife who would cheer him up and make him right happy, a sweet young wife like you, ma petite Contessina—Just try and see if you can’t turn his head a little; it has long been the wish of my heart to have him married.”

Such advice turned my head a little. I really found this exotic sprig of royalty, this dark Bagratide, who was at the same time a thorough homme du monde, in the highest degree interesting. There is yet a step from being interested to being in love, but not a very long one. The slightest occasion, and this step is taken. This is the way it happened with me (I made use of this episode many years later in my novel Trente-et-quarante):

One day I had again been invited to dinner at the Villa Weckerlin. Those who sat next me at table were an Englishman—Lord Hillsborough—and Heraclius. After dinner the company repaired to the salon; the mistress of the house requested me to play something for them. Without being urged, I sat down at the grand piano and played with bravura a Chopin valse. Heraclius stood near me.

“You are an artist,” he said when I had finished.

It was now time to break up. The princess’s guests had also taken a box at the opera for that evening, and it had been agreed that we should go to the opera together.

I followed the princess into her dressing-room to rearrange, my hair a little. The locks to be curled, and the faded roses to be replaced with fresh ones. While Masha, the maid, was doing this work, I looked at my own picture set in the silver frame of the toilet mirror. How advantageously this thick polished glass showed the image: or was it the effect of the champagne that my cheeks glowed so vividly, as if they had been rouged? I took up the oval hand mirror; it showed the same dazzling color; and by means of the double reflection I could now also see the effect of the spray of roses drooping between the dark locks at the back of my neck.

The princess stood near the toilet table.

“Take a little poudre de riz, my love,” she said, and lifted the silver cover of a round glass jar. I pressed the puff into the fragrant powder and dabbed it against my face and neck; how cooling it was, how refreshing to the hot cheeks! And then, after the visible traces of rice flour had been wiped off with the soft rabbit’s foot, the too deep red in the cheeks had been changed to a tender rose, the lips glowed the more vividly, and the eyes sparkled darker than before.

To complete my toilet the princess gave me a sandalwood fan with steel spangles, and now we were ready.

When we entered the box the performance was already in progress. They were giving Rigoletto. Gilda was just rushing down the steps to meet her father. Mio padre!—Figlia mia! As it were a flood of delicate waves of tone came purling down from the stage, and the thickly packed theater presented a brilliant spectacle. The impressions of life’s splendor and joy which I was receiving that day kept on crescendo.

Heraclius of Georgia was present in the box. He sat opposite me and kept his eyes fixed on me. It seemed to me as if the captivating melodies in the duet between Gilda and the duke expressed what was streaming from heart to heart between Heraclius and me, still unspoken but already understood on both sides. I listened to the fiery strains of Verdi, and slowly moved my fan back and forth, every motion sending me a breath of sandalwood. Once I slightly turned my head and met the eyes of my vis-à-vis fixed upon me full of tenderness and admiration. Then I dropped my lids, but soon, in spite of myself, I lifted them again and gave the dear fellow a long, full gaze of love.

Now the curtain fell; the princess turned around, and Heraclius stood up; he made room for various visitors who came crowding into the box, and went out. Shortly afterwards I saw him on the other side of the house with his opera glass directed on me. During the rest of the performance Lord Hillsborough stayed in the box and Heraclius did not return.

After the quartet in the last act the princess stood up.

“Let us go,” said she; “I do not want to see the coming storm and the dragging out of the bag with the corpse. Instead, let us take a turn through the gaming-rooms.”

At the exit of the auditorium stood Heraclius. He came to my side.

“The performance is over at last! Were you very much fascinated by the Englishman’s conversation?”

“I was fascinated by the Italian’s music,” said I in reply.

A long gallery leads from the theater to the gaming-rooms. Heraclius walked by my side, and I expected every moment that he would put into words what had just now been uttered through the eyes; but then the princess began to involve her cousin in a conversation, which lasted till we entered the gaming-rooms.

Here we took our stand at the roulette table, and the princess flung some gold pieces on the tableau.

“I am going to make a proposition,” said Heraclius to his cousin. “To-day is Wednesday, and there is a ball here; let us go to the gallery and look on.”

The princess agreed, and the little company mounted the steps leading to the ballroom gallery.

This was full of people. There was hardly a place to be found between the spectators who were leaning over the railing. We had to separate; the princess took her place at one end of the gallery, I was at the other. Heraclius joined me. It was like a tête-à-tête. Crowded by the people who stood beside us, he had to come so near me that his arm rested on the railing close against mine. What we said no one else could hear, for the noise of the waltz music prevented words exchanged at close quarters from carrying to any remoter place. It was to a Strauss waltz—the Morgenblätter—that the couples on the floor below were whirling. But, though I looked down, I saw little of the swarm on the floor; my ball was up above. More giddily than under the maddest galop time I felt myself whirled onward by the prince’s proximity, by his words. The atmosphere was oppressive; the chandelier near us poured out a hot and dazzling light. I kept my fan going incessantly, and with its sandalwood scent it said something to me—for scents also speak—that enravished me.

“You are a magnificent girl,” Heraclius’s flattering voice was whispering in my ear meantime. “You have all the qualities to turn the soberest heads, to set the coldest hearts to beating. I had no idea that earth contained a being who could exercise such a witchery as you—”

“Children!” exclaimed the princess, coming up to us, “it is beyond endurance here; this heat is suffocating, the light makes one’s eyes ache, the music is deafening, and there is not much to look at in the dancing of those four or five ill-gowned Homburg girls. Don’t you agree with me? Let us go!”

Well, we had to go, for it was for the princess to decide, but I assuredly did not agree with her. The heat-radiating chandelier was to me a magic sun, the noise of the wind instruments was like the music of the spheres—a more glorious festivity I had never yet experienced.

The princess and her cousin accompanied me to the door of my house. It was still open.

“A demain, chérie!” said the princess, kissing me on the forehead. “But not at the spring,” she added. “Come at two o’clock.”

My mother was still up.

“How late you are! The theater was out long ago!”

“We have been looking on at the ball, mamma.”

“How did you enjoy yourself? Tell me.”

“To-morrow, dear mamma!”

I kissed my mother and went to rest.

Rest? “Who ne’er distressful nights upon his bed has sat in tears,” runs the well-known poem; but whoever has not through a long night, awaking every ten minutes, kept tossing from one side of the bed to the other, with a beloved name upon his lips, a glowing beatitude in his heart,—he also “knows you not, ye heavenly powers.”

A hundred times I started up from my slumber, and if I was not at once conscious why I was so utterly happy and whom I loved so very dearly, the sandalwood fan, which lay close to me on the stand, quickly told the story. Its fragrance played the Morgenblätter, poured out the hot light of the ballroom chandelier, and pressed a sleeve of black cloth gently and tremblingly against a sleeve of white muslin. Then I would deliciously go to sleep again, only to be reawakened soon by a powerful heart-throb. And so it went till morning.

Once again, just as when I was enamored of Friedrich von Hadeln, I was seized at waking by the consciousness of the rapturous “I love,” and with it the still more rapturous “I am loved.” Warm, almost tangible, it gushes from the heart, sweet, tender, full of yearning and yet glad in possession—for even yearning is a possession. Thus there is on earth something which yesterday was still unknown, still not in existence, and which to-day, so to speak, fills the world,—the unspeakably precious treasure, which is so wholly and completely the “one important thing.”

I was not to see him for three days; he had gone to Paris for that time. I filled these days with studies regarding the Caucasus and its history. Not only what the Dedopali could tell me, but also what I found in the encyclopedia and in Dumas’s book Le Caucase, gave me a glimpse into the distant, fabulous realm whose throne should by right have belonged to my Prince Heraclius.

On the second day I received from Paris a package and a letter. The package contained a full bonbonnière from Boissier, the accompanying letter a few polite lines. There was nothing out of the ordinary in it, but it intoxicated me outright, for it was signed with the name of Heraclius of Georgia, and from its thick paper adorned with a princely crown there exhaled a faint, but peculiarly sweet, fragrance. This letter-sheet and the sandalwood fan—both told me untranslatable things.

On the third day I went over to the Dedopali’s with quick-beating heart. I found her in her usual place in the little drawing-room.

“Ah, bon jour, Contessina—I have a greeting to transmit to you. My cousin writes me from Paris.... He was to be here to-day himself, but—I am not surprised at it in him, he is a man of moods—instead of coming, he writes to bid me farewell for this year; he left Paris yesterday to go direct to Tiflis.”

And I—silly thing—I burst into tears.

“For God’s sake, what is the matter, Contessina?”

“Oh, Dedopali,—it is too cruel!”

“What?... that my cousin has gone home? So you are in love with him?... Perhaps it may be your fate after all,—he may come back again; don’t cry. No man deserves to have a girl cry for him if he is capable of passing by his own good luck like that. Besides, all may yet turn out as your heart desires.”

These words were a balm to me. Merely the right to hope,—that is all that youth desires. And so I hoped that Heraclius would write me from Georgia. But he did not.—