But how selfish happiness makes us! There came now a time for us, in which we really were far too forgetful of everything which lay outside of our domestic heaven. The terrors of the cholera week kept taking always more and more in my memory the shape of a vanished evil dream; and even Frederick’s energy in the pursuit of his aim gradually abated. And it was no doubt discouraging, wherever one knocked at any doors with these ideas, to meet with shrugs of shoulders, compassionate smiles, if not a regular setting to rights. The world, as it seems, is fond not only of being cheated, but also of being made miserable. Wherever one tries to put forward any proposals for removing misery and woe, they are called “Utopian—a childish dream”—and the world will not listen to them.
Still Frederick did not let his aim fall quite out of sight. He plunged ever deeper into the study of international law, and got into correspondence by letter with Bluntschli and other men learned in this branch. At the same time, and here with my companionship, he diligently followed other studies, chiefly natural science. He formed a plan for writing a great work on “War and Peace.” But, before setting to work on it, he wanted to prepare himself for it and instruct himself by long and comprehensive researches. “I am, it is true,” he said, “an old royal and imperial colonel, and it would shame most of my equals in age and rank to dip into schooling. When one is an elderly man of office and rank one thinks oneself usually clever enough to act independently. I myself a few years since had that respect for my own individuality. But when I had suddenly attained to a new point of view, in which I got an insight into the modern spirit, then the consciousness of my want of knowledge came over me. Ah yes! Of all the gains that have now been made in the matter of new discoveries in all provinces of knowledge, there was nothing at all taught in my youth—or rather the reverse was taught—so I must now, in spite of the streaks of grey on my temples, begin again at the beginning.”
The winter after Sylvia’s birth we spent at Vienna in perfect quiet. Next spring we travelled to Italy. To travel and make acquaintance with the world was indeed a part of our new programme of life. We were independent and rich, and nothing hindered us from carrying it out. Small children are a little troublesome in travelling; but if one can take about a sufficient train of bonnes and nurses, the thing can be done. I had taken into my establishment an old servant who had once been nurse to me and my sisters, and then had married an hotel steward, and now was left a widow. This “Mistress Anna” was worthy of my fullest confidence, and in her hands I could leave my little Sylvia at home with perfect security, at any time when we—i.e., Frederick and I—left our headquarters for several days on some excursion. Rudolf would have been just as well seen after by Mr. Foster, his tutor; but it often happened that we took the little eight-years-old boy with us.
Happy, happy times! Pity that I then neglected the red books so much! It was exactly at this time that I might have entered so much that was beautiful, interesting and gay; but I neglected it, and so the details of that year have mostly faded out of my recollection, and it is only in rough outline that I can now recall a picture of it.
In the Protocol of Peace I did find an opportunity to make a gratifying entry. This was a leading article signed B. Desmoulins, in which the proposal was made to the French Government that it should put itself at the head of the European states by giving them the example of disarmament:—
In this way France will make herself sure of the alliance and of the honest friendship of all states, which will then have ceased to be afraid of France, while they would desire her sympathy. In this way the general disarmament would commence spontaneously—the principle of conquest would be given up forever, and the confederation of states would quite naturally form a Court of International Law, which would be in a position to settle in the way of arbitration all disputes which could never be decided by war. In so acting, France would have gained over to her side the only real and only lasting power—namely, right—and would have opened for humanity, in the most glorious manner, a new era.
—Opinion Nationale, July 25, 1868
This article, of course, got no attention.
In the winter of 1868–69 we went back to Paris, and this time, for we wished to make acquaintance with life, we plunged into the “Great World.”
It was a rather tiring process; but yet for a time it was very pleasant. In order to have some home, we had hired a small residence in the quarter of the Champs Élysées, whither we also could sometimes invite in turn our numerous acquaintance, by whom we were invited every day to a party of some kind or other. Having been introduced by our ambassador at the Court of the Tuilleries, we were invited for the whole winter to the Mondays of the empress, and, besides this, the houses of all the ambassadors were open to us, as well as the salons of Princess Mathilde, the Duchess of Mouchy, Queen Isabella of Spain, and so on. We made the acquaintance also of many literary magnates, not of the greatest, however, I mean Victor Hugo, as he was living in exile, but we met Renan,
