We were also very industrious visitors to the theatres. At least three times a week we spent our evenings either at the Italian opera, where Adelina Patti, just married to the Marquis de Caux, was enchanting the audience, or at the Theâtre Français, or even at one of the little boulevard theatres to see Hortense Schneider as the Grand Duchess of Gerolstein, or some of the other celebrities of operetta or vaudeville.
It is wonderful, however, how, when one is once plunged into this whirl of splendour and entertainments, this little “great world” appears to one all of a sudden so terribly important; and the laws which prevail therein of elegance and chic (it was even then called chic) as laying on one a kind of solemnly undertaken duty. To take at the theatre a less distinguished place than a stage-box; to appear in the Bois with a carriage whose equipage should not be faultless; to go to a court ball without putting on a toilette of 2,000 francs, “signed” by Worth; to sit down to table (Madame la Baronne est servie), even if one had no guests, without having the finest dishes and the choicest wines served by the solemn maître d’hôtel in person and several lackeys, all these would have been serious offences. How easy, how very easy it becomes to one, when one is caught up in the machinery of such an existence as this, to spend all one’s thoughts and feelings on this business, which is really devoid of all thought and feeling, and in doing this to forget to take any part in the progress of the real world outside, I mean the universe, or in the condition of one’s own world within, I mean domestic bliss. This is what might perhaps have happened to me, but Frederick preserved me from it. He was not the man to allow himself to be torn away and smothered by the whirlpool of Parisian “high-life.” He did not forget, in the world in which we were moving, either the universe or our own hearth. An hour or two in the morning we still kept devoted to reading and domestic life; and so we accomplished the great feat of enjoying happiness even in the midst of pleasure.
For us Austrians there was much sympathy cherished at Paris. In political conversations there was often a talk about a Revanche de Sadowa, certainly in the sense that the injustice done to us two years before was to be made good again—as if anything of that sort could make it good again. If blows are only to be wiped out by fresh blows, then surely the thing can never cease. It was just to my husband and me, because he had been in the army and had served the campaign in Bohemia, it was just to us that people thought they could say nothing more polite or more agreeable than a hopeful allusion to the Revanche de Sadowa which was in prospect, and which was already treated of as an historical event which would assure the European equilibrium, and was itself ensured by diplomatic arrangements. A slap to be administered to the Prussians on the next opportunity was a necessity in the school-discipline of the nations. Nothing tragical would come of the matter, only enough to check the arrogance of certain folks. Perhaps even the whip hanging up on the wall would be enough for this purpose; but if that arrogant fellow should try any of his saucy tricks he had received fair warning that it would come down upon him in the shape of the Revanche de Sadowa.
We, of course, decisively put aside all such consolations. A former misfortune was not to be conjured away by a fresh misfortune, nor an old injustice to be atoned for by a new injustice. We assured our friends that we wished for nothing, except that we might never see the present peace broken again. This was also essentially the wish of Napoleon III. We had so much intercourse with persons whose position was quite close to the emperor, that we had plenty of opportunities of becoming acquainted with his political views, as he gave utterance to them in his confidential conversation. It was not only that he wished for peace at the moment—he cherished the plan of proposing to the powers a general disarmament. But, for the moment, he did not feel his own domestic position in the country secure enough to carry this plan out. There was great discontent boiling and seething among the populace; and in the circle immediately surrounding the throne there was a party which laboured to represent to him that his throne could only be rendered secure by a successful foreign war—just a little triumphal promenade to the Rhine, and the splendour and stability of the Napoleonic dynasty were secured. Il faut faire grand, was the advice of his counsellors. That the war, which was in prospect the year before on the Luxembourg question, had come to nothing, and was displeasing to them; the preparations on both sides had gone on so grandly, and then the matter had been adjourned. But in the long run a fight between France and Prussia was certainly inevitable. They were incessantly urging on further in this direction. But only a feeble echo of these matters came to us.
