Diary And Notes Of Horace Templeton, Esq. Volume II

H. has just been here. How difficult it was to force him into candour! A doctor becomes, by the practice of his art, as much addicted to suspicion as a police agent. Every question, every reply of the patient, must be a “symptom.” This wearies and worries the nervous man, and renders him shy and uncommunicative.

For myself, well opining how my sudden demand, “How long can I live?” might sound, if uttered with abrupt sincerity, I submitted patiently to all the little gossip of the little world of this place, – its envy, hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness – which certainly are prime features in an English colony on the Continent – all, that I might at last establish a character for soundness of mind and calmness of purpose, ere I put my quore.

The favourable moment came at last, and I asked in full earnest, but with a manner that shewed no sign of dread, – “Tell me, Dottore mio, how long may such a chest as mine endure? I mean, taking every possible care, as I do; neither incurring any hazard nor neglect; and, in fact, fighting the battle bravely to the last?”

He tried at first, by a smile and a jocular manner, to evade the question; but seeing my determination fixed, he looked grave, felt my pulse, percussed my chest, and was silent.

“Well,” said I, after a very long pause, “I await my sentence, but in no mood of hope or fear. Is it a month? – a week? – a day? – nay, surely it can hardly be so near as that? Still silent! Come, this is scarcely fair; I ask simply – ”

“That which is perfectly impossible to answer, did I concede that I ought to reply, as categorically as you ask.”

“Were I to tell my reasons, doctor, you might judge more harshly of my intelligence than I should like; besides, you would certainly misinterpret my meaning. Tell me, therefore, in the common course of such changes as my disease involves, can I live a year? You shake your head! Be it so. Six months? – Three, then? – Have I three? The winter, you say, is to be feared. I know it. Well, then, shall I own that my convictions anticipate you at each negative? I feel I have not a month – nay, not half of one – a week will do it, doctor; and now excuse scant ceremony, and leave me.”

Alone – friendless – homeless – ruined, and dying! Sad words to write, each of them; sadder when thus brought in brotherhood together. The world and its pageants are passing fast by me, like the eddies of that stream which flows beneath my window. I catch but one glimpse and they are gone, beneath the dark bridge of Death, to mingle in the vast ocean of Eternity.

How strange to see the whole business of the world going on, the moving multitude, the tumult of active minds and bodies, – at the very moment when the creeping chill of ebbing life tells of days and hours numbered!

I am alone – not one to sit by me to combat thoughts that with the faintest help I could resist, but which unaided are too strong for me. In this window-seat where now I rest, who shall sit this day week? The youth, perhaps, in gushing pride of heart and buoyancy, now entering upon life, ardent and high-souled – or the young bride, gazing on that same river that now I watch, and reading in its circles wreathed smiles of happy promise. Oh, may no memories of him, whose tears fall fast now, haunt the spot and throw their gloom on others!

I am friendless – and yet, which of those I still call friends would I now wish beside me. To drink of the cup of consolation? I must first offer my own of misery – nay, it is better to endure alone!

Homeless am I, too – and this, indeed, I feel bitterly. Old familiar objects, associated with ties of affection, bound up with memories of friends, are meet companions for the twilight hours of life. I long to be back in my own chosen room – the little library, looking out on the avenue of old beeches leading to the lake, and the village spire rising amid the dark yew-trees. There was a spot there, too, I had often fancied – when I close my eyes I think I see it still – a little declivity of the ground beneath a large old elm, where a single tomb stood surrounded by an iron railing; one side was in decay, and through which I often passed to read the simple inscription – “Courtenay Temple-ton, Armiger, aetatis 22.”

This was not the family burying-place – why he was laid there was a family mystery. His death was attributed to suicide, nor was his memory ever totally cleared of the guilt. The event was briefly this: – On the eve of the great battle of Fontenoy he received an insult from an officer of a Scotch regiment, which ended in a duel. The Scotchman fell dead at the first fire. Templeton was immediately arrested; and instead of leading an attack, as he had been appointed to do, spent the hours of the battle in a prison. The next morning he was discovered dead; a great quantity of blood had flowed from his mouth and nose, which, although no external wound was found, suggested an idea of self-destruction. None suspected, what I have often heard since from medical men, that a rupture of the aorta from excessive emotion – a broken heart, in fact – had killed him: a death more frequently occurring than is usually believed.

“Ruined and dying” are the last words in my record; and yet neither desirous of fortune nor life! At least, so faint is my hope that I should use either with higher purpose than I have done, that all wish is extinguished.

Seriously I believe, that love of life is less general than the habit of projecting schemes for the future – a vague system of castle-building, which even the least speculative practises; and that death is thus accounted the great evil, as suddenly interrupting a chain of events whose series is still imperfect. The very humblest peasant that rises to daily toil has his gaze fixed on some future, some period of rest or repose, some hour of freedom from his lifelong struggle. Now, I have exhausted this source; the well, that once bubbled with eddying fancies of days to come, is dry. High spirits, health, and the buoyancy that result from both, when joined to a disposition keenly alive to enjoyment, and yet neither cloyed by excess nor depraved by corrupt tastes, will always go far to simulate a degree of ability. The very freedom a mind thus constituted enjoys is a species of power; and its liberty exaggerates its range, just as the untrammelled paces of the young colt seem infinitely more graceful and noble than the matured regularity of the trained and bitted steed.

It was thus that I set out in life – ardent, hopeful, and enthusiastic: if my mental resources were small, they were always ready at hand, like, a banker with a weak capital, but who could pay every trifling demand on the spot, I lived upon credit; and upon that credit I grew rich. Had I gone on freely as I began, I might still enjoy the fame of wealth and solvency, but with the reputation of affluence came the wish to be rich. I contracted my issues, I husbanded my resources, and from that hour I became suspected. To avoid a “run” for gold, I ceased to trade and retired. This, in a few words, is the whole history of my life.

Gilbert comes to say that the carriage is waiting to convey me to the villa – our luggage is already there. Be it so: still I must own to myself, that going to occupy a palace for the last few hours of life and fortune is very much like good Christopher Sly’s dream of Lordliness.

CHAPTER X. SOME REVERIES ABOUT PLACES

What would the old school of Diplomatists have said if they saw their secret wiles and machinations exposed to publicity, as is now the fashion? When any “honourable and learned gentleman” can call for “copies of the correspondence between our Minister at the Court of – and the noble Secretary for the Foreign Department;” and when the “Times” can, in a leader, rip up all the flaws of a treaty, or expose all the dark intentions of some special compact? The Diplomatic “Holy of Holies” is now open to the vulgar gaze, and all the mysteries of the craft as commonplace as the transactions of a Poor-law Union.

Much of the “prestige” of this secrecy died out on the establishment of railroads. The Courier who travelled formerly with breathless haste from Moscow to London, or from the remotest cities of the far East, to our little Isle of the West, was sure to bring intelligence several days earlier than it could reach by any other channel. The gold greyhound, embroidered on his arm, was no exaggerated emblem of his speed; but now, his prerogative over, he journeys in “a first-class carriage” with some fifty others, who arrive along with him. Old age and infancy, sickness and debility, are no disqualifications – the race is open to all – and the tidings brought by “our messenger” are not a particle later, and rarely so full, as those given forth in the columns of a leading journal.

How impossible to affect any mysterious silence before the “House!” – how vain to attempt any knowledge from exclusive sources! “The ordinary channels of information,” to use Sir Robert’s periphrasis, are the extraordinary ones too; and not only do they contain whatever Ministers know, but very often “something more.”

Time was when the Minister, or even the Secretary at a Foreign Court, appeared in society as a kind of casquet of state secrets, – when his mysterious whispers, his very gestures, were things to speculate on, and a grave motion of his eyebrows could make “Consols” tremble, and throw the “Threes” into a panic. Now the question is, Have you seen the City article in the “Times?” What does the “Chronicle” say? No doubt this is a tremendous power, and very possibly the enjoyment of it, such as we have it in England, is the highest element of a pure democracy. Political information of a very high order establishes a species of education, which is the safest check upon the dangers of private judgment, and hence it is fair to hope that we possess a sounder and more healthy public opinion in England than in any of the states of the Continent. At least it would not be too much to infer, that we would be less accessible to those sudden convulsions, those violent “coups de main” by which Governments are overturned abroad; and that the general diffusion of new notions on political subjects, and the daily reference to such able expositors as our newspaper press contains, are strong safeguards against the seductive promises of mob-leaders and liberty-mongers.

In France, a Government is always at the mercy of any one bold enough to lead the assault. The attempt may seem often a “forlorn hope” – it rarely is so in reality. The love of vagrancy is not so inherent in the Yankee as is the destructive passion in the Frenchman’s heart; but it is there, less from any pleasure in demolition than in the opportunity thus. offered for reconstruction. Mirabeau, Rousseau, Fournier, La Mennais, are the social architects of French predilection, and many a clearance has been made to begin the edifice, and many have perished in laying the foundations, which never rose above the earth, but which ere long we may again witness undertaken with new and bolder hands than ever.

Events that once took centuries for their accomplishment, are now the work of days or weeks. Steam seems to have communicated its impetuosity to mind as well as matter, and ere many years pass over how few of the traces of Old Europe will remain, as our fathers knew them?

I have scarcely entered a foreign city, for the last few years, without detecting the rapid working of those changes. Old families sinking into decay and neglect – time-honoured titles regarded as things that “once were.” Their very homes, the palaces, associated with incidents of deep historic interests, converted into hôtels or “Pensionnats.”

The very last time I strolled through Paris, I loitered to the “Quartier” which, in my young ambition, I regarded with all the reverence the pilgrim yields to Mecca. I remembered the first “soirée” in which I was presented, having dined at the Embassy, and being taken in the evening, by the Ambassador, that I might be introduced to the Machiavel of his craft, Prince Talleyrand. Even yet I feel the hot blush which mantled in my cheek as I was passing, with very scant ceremony, the round-shouldered little old man who stood in the very doorway, his wide black coat, far too large for his figure, and his white hair, trimly brushed back from his massive temples.

It did not need the warning voice of my introducer, hastily calling my name, to make my sense of shame a perfect agony. “Monsieur Templeton, Monsieur le Prince,” said the Ambassador; “the young gentleman of whom I spoke;” and he added, in a tone inaudible to me, something about my career and some mention of my relatives.

“Oh, yes!” said the Prince, smiling graciously, “I am aware how ‘connexion,’ as you call it, operates in England; but permit me, Monsieur,” said he, turning towards me, “to give one small piece of advice. It is this: ‘If you can win by cards never score the honours.’” The precept had little influence on himself, however. No man ever paid greater deference to the distinctions of rank, or conceded more to the prestige of an ancient name. Neither a general, an orator, nor an author – not even the leader of a faction – this astonishing man stood alone, in the resources of his fertile intellect, directing events, which he appeared to follow, and availing himself of resources which he had stored up for emergency; but so artfully, that they seemed to arise out of the natural current of events. Never disconcerted or abashed – not once thrown off his balance – not more calmly dignified when he stood beside Napoleon at Erfurth, then master of Europe itself, than he was at the Congress of Vienna, when the defeat of France had placed her at the mercy of her enemies.

It was in this same house, in the Rue Saint Florentin, that the Emperor Alexander lived when the Allies entered Paris, on the last day of March, 1814. His Majesty occupied the first floor; M. de Talleyrand, the rez de chaussée. He was then no more than ex-Minister for Foreign Affairs; neither empowered by the Bourbons to treat for the Restoration, nor by the nation for the conditions of a government – he was merely “one among the conquered;” and yet to this man all eyes were turned instinctively, as to one who possessed the secret of the future. That rez de chaussée was besieged with visitors from morning till night; and even when, according to the custom of the French, he made his lengthened toilette, his dressing-room was filled by all the foreign ministers of the conquering monarchs, and Nesselrode and Metternich waited at these daily levées. In all these discussions M. de Talleyrand took the lead, with the same ease and the same “àplomb” discussing kings to make and kingdoms to dismember, as though the clank of the muskets, which now and then interrupted their colloquy, came from the Imperial Guard of Napoleon, and not the Cossacks of the Don and the Uhlans of the Danube, who crowded the stairs and the avenues, and bivouacked in the court.

Here the Restoration was decided upon, and Talleyrand himself it was who decided it. The Emperor Alexander opposed it strongly at first, alleging that the old spirit and the old antipathies would all return with the elder Bourbons, and suggesting the Duc d’Orléans as king. Talleyrand, however, overruled the objection, asserting that no new agent must be had recourse to for governing at such a juncture, and that one usurpation could not be succeeded by another. It is said that when the news reached Vienna, in 1815, that Napoleon had landed from Elba, the Emperor Alexander came hurriedly over to where Talleyrand was sitting, and informing him what had occurred, said, “I told you before your plan would be a failure!” “Mais que faire?” coolly retorted the calm diplomate; “of two evil courses it was the better – I never said more of it. Had you proclaimed the King of Rome, you had been merely maintaining the power of Napoleon under another name. You cannot establish the government of a great nation upon a half-measure. Besides that, Legitimacy, whatever its faults, was the only Principle that could prove to Europe at large that France and Napoleon were parted for ever; and, after so many barterings of crowns and trucklings of kingdoms, it was a fine opportunity of shewing that there was still something – whether it be or be not by right divine – which was superior to sabres and muskets, generals and armies.”

It was the sanctity of right – whether of kings, people, or individuals – which embodied Talleyrand’s conception of the Restoration; and this it was which he so admirably expressed when arriving at the Congress of Vienna, the ambassador of a nation without wealth or army. “Je viens” said he to the assembled Kings and Ministers of conquering Europe – “Je viens et je vous apporte plus que vous n’avez, – Je vous apporte l’idée du droit!” This was happily expressed; but no one more than he knew how to epigrammatise a whole volume of thought. In private life, the charm of his manner was the most perfect thing imaginable: his consciousness of rank and ancient family divested him of all pretension whatever, and the idea of entering the lists with any one never occurred to his mind. Willingly availing himself of the talents of others, and their pens upon occasion, he never felt any embittering jealousy. Approachable by all, his unaffected demeanour was as likely to strike the passing observer as the rich stores of his intellect would have excited the admiration of a more reflecting one. Such was he who has passed away from amongst us – perhaps the very last name of the eventful era he lived in which shall claim a great place in history!

A singular picture of human vicissitude is presented to us in the aspect of those places, but more particularly of those houses wherein great events have once occurred, but where times’ change have brought new and very different associations. A very few years, in this eventful century we live in, will do this. The wonderful drama of the Empire sufficed to impress upon every city of Europe some great and imposing reminiscence. A small, unpretending little house, beside the ducal park at Weimar, was Napoleon’s resting-place for three days, when the whole world was at his feet! The little salon where his receptions were held at evening – and what receptions were they! the greatest Ministers and the most distinguished Generals of Europe! – scarcely more than an ordinary dressing-room in size, remains to this hour as he left it. One arm-chair, a little larger than the others, stands at the window, which always lay open. A table was placed upon the grass-plot outside, where several maps were laid. The salon itself was too small to admit it, and here from time to time the Emperor repaired, while with eagle glance and abrupt gesture he marked out the future limits of the continental kingdoms, creating and erasing monarchies, fashioning nations and people, in all the proud wilfulness of Omnipotence! And now, while thinking of the Emperor, let me bring to mind another local association.

In the handsomest part of the Chaussée d’Antin, surrounded on every side by the splendid palaces and gorgeous mansions of the wealthiest inhabitants of Paris, stands a small, isolated, modest edifice, more like a Roman villa than the house of some northern capital, in the midst of a park; one of those pleasure-grounds which the French – Heaven knows why – designate as “Jardin Anglais.” The outer gate opens on the Rue Chantereine, and here to this hour you may trace, among the time-worn and dilapidated ornaments, some remnants of the strange figures which once decorated the pediment: weapons of various ages and countries, grouped together with sphinxes and Egyptian emblems; the faint outlines of pyramids, the peaceful-looking ibis, are there, among the helmets and cuirasses, the massive swords and the death-dealing arms of our modern warfare. In the midst of all, the number 52 stands encircled with a little garland of leaves; but even they are scarce distinguishable now, and the number itself requires the aid of faith to detect it.

Within, the place speaks of neglect and decay; the shrubs are broken and uncared-for; the parterres are weed-grown; a few marble pedestals rise amid the rank grass, to mark where statues once stood, but no other trace of them remains: the very fountain itself is fissured and broken, and the water has worn its channel along the herbage, and ripples on its wayward course unrestrained. The villa is almost a ruin, the sashes have fallen in in many places; the roof, too, has given way, and fragments of the mirrors which once decorated the walls lie strewn upon the floor with pieces of rare marble. Wherever the eye turns, some emblem of the taste of its former occupant meets you. Some fresco, Stained with damp, and green with mildew; some rustic bench, beneath a spreading tree, where the view opens more boldly; but all are decayed. The inlaid floors are rotting; the stuccoed ceilings, the richly-carved architraves, fall in fragments as your footsteps move; and the doomed walls themselves seem scarce able to resist the rude blast whose wailing cadence steals along them.

Oh, how tenfold more powerfully are the memories of the dead preserved by the scenes they habited while in life, than by the tombs and epitaphs that cover their ashes! How do the lessons of one speak home to the heart, calling up again, before the mind’s eye, the very images themselves! not investing them with attributes our reason coldly rejects.

I know not the reason that this villa has been suffered thus to lapse into utter ruin, in the richest quarter of so splendid a city. I believe some long-contested litigation had its share in the causes. My present business is rather with its past fortunes; and to them I will now return.

It was on a cold dark morning of November, in the year 1799, that the street we have just mentioned, then called the Rue de la Victoire, became crowded with equipages and horsemen; cavalcades of generals and their staffs, in full uniform, arrived and were admitted within the massive gateway, before which, now, groups of curious and inquiring gazers were assembled, questioning and guessing as to the unusual spectacle. The number of led horses that paraded the street, the long lines of carriages on either side, nearly filled the way; still there reigned a strange, unaccountable stillness, among the crowd, who, as if appalled by the very mystery of the scene, repressed their ordinary tumult, and waited anxiously to watch the result.

Among the most interested spectators were the inhabitants of the neighbouring houses, who saw, for the first time in their lives, their quiet quarter the scene of such excitement. Every window was filled with faces, all turned towards that portal which so seldom was seen to open in general; for they who dwelt there had been more remarkable for the retirement and privacy of their habits than for aught else.

At each arrival the crowd separated to permit the equipage to approach the gate; and then might be heard the low murmur – for it was no louder – of “Ha! that’s Lasalle. See the mark of the sabre wound on his cheek!” Or, “Here comes Angereau! You’d never think that handsome fellow, with the soft eye, could be such a tiger.” “Place there! place for Colonel Savary!” “Ah, dark Savary! we all know him.”

Stirring as was the scene without, it was far inferior to the excitement that prevailed within the walls. There, every path and avenue that led to the villa were thronged with military men, walking or standing together in groups, conversing eagerly, and with anxious looks, but cautiously withal, and as though half fearing to be overheard.

Through the windows of the villa might be seen servants passing and repassing in haste, arranging the preparations for a magnificent déjeûné– for on that morning the generals of division and the principal military men in Paris were invited to breakfast with one of their most distinguished companions – General Buonaparte.

Since his return from Egypt, Buonaparte had been living a life of apparent privacy and estrangement from all public affairs. The circumstances under which he had quitted the army under his command – the unauthorised mode of his entry into France, without recall, without even permission – had caused his friends considerable uneasiness on his behalf, and nothing short of the unobtrusive and simple habits he maintained had probably saved him from being called on to account for his conduct.

They, however, who themselves were pursuing the career of ambition, were better satisfied to see him thus, than hazard any thing by so bold an expedient. They believed that he was only great at the head of his legions; and they felt a triumphant pleasure at the obscurity into which the victor of Lodi and the Pyramids had fallen when measured with themselves. They witnessed, then, with sincere satisfaction, the seeming indolence of his present life. They watched him in those soirées which Madame Buonaparte gave, enjoying his repose with such thorough delight – those delightful evenings, the most brilliant for all that wit, intellect, and beauty can bestow; which Talleyrand and Sieyes, Fouché, Carnot, Lemercier, and a host of others frequented; and they dreamed that his hour of ambition was over, and that he had fallen into the inglorious indolence of the retired soldier.