This brilliant way of life, only too overburdened with pleasure, reached its highest pitch in the spring months. At that time there were added long drives in the Bois in open carriages, numerous picture exhibitions, garden parties, horse-races, picnics, and with all this no fewer theatres, or visits, or dinner or evening parties, than in the depth of winter. We then began to long much for repose. In fact, this sort of life has never its true attraction, except when some flirtation or love affair is combined with it. Girls who are in search of a husband, women who want a lover, or men who are in search of adventures, for these every new fête, where it is possible they may meet the object of their dream, possesses a new interest, but for Frederick and me? That I was inflexibly true to my lord, that I never by a single glance gave anyone the occasion to approach me with any audacious hopes, I may say, without any pride of virtue—it was a mere matter of course. Whether, under different relations, I should also have resisted all the temptations to which, in such a whirl of pleasure, pretty young ladies are exposed, is more than I can say; but when one carries in one’s heart a love so deep and so full of bliss as I felt for my Frederick, one is surely armed against all danger. And as far as he was concerned, was he true to me? I can only say, that I never felt any doubt about it.
When the summer had returned to the land, when the Grand Prix was over, and the different members of society began to quit Paris, some to Trouville or Dieppe, Biarritz or Vichy, others to Baden Baden, and a third set to their châteaux, Princess Mathilde to St. Gratien, and the court to Compiègne, then we were besieged with requests to select the same destinations for travel, and with invitations to country-houses; but we were decidedly indisposed to prolong the campaign of luxury and pleasure which we had carried out in the winter, into a summer one also. I did not wish to return at once to Grumitz. I feared too much the reawakening of painful memories; besides, we should not have found there the solitude we desired, on account of our numerous relations and neighbours. So we chose once more for our resting-place a quiet corner of Switzerland. We promised our friends in Paris that we would come back next winter, and went on our summer tour with the joy of schoolboys going for their holidays.
Now succeeded a time of real refreshment. Long walks, long hours of study, long hours of play with the children, and no entries in the red volumes—which last was a sign of freedom from care, and spiritual peace.
Europe also seemed at that time tolerably free from care, and peaceful. At least no “black spots” were anywhere visible. One did not even hear any more talk about the famous Revanche de Sadowa. The greatest trouble which I experienced at that time was caused by the universal obligation for defence which had been introduced a year before amongst us Austrians. That my Rudolf some time or other must become a soldier—that was a thing I could not bear. And yet folks dream of freedom!
Frederick tried to comfort me. “A year of ‘volunteering’ is not much.” I shook my head.
“Even if it were but a day! No man ought to be compelled to take upon himself a certain office, which perhaps he hates, even for a single day; for during that day he must make a show of the opposite of what he feels—must pretend that he is doing joyfully what he really hates—in short, he is obliged to lie, and I wanted to bring up my son to be true, before all things.”
“Then he ought to have been born one or two centuries later, my dearest,” replied Frederick. “It is only the perfectly free man who can be perfectly true; and we are still poorly off for both things—freedom and truth—in our days; that becomes clearer and clearer to me the deeper I plunge into my studies.”
Now, in this retirement Frederick had twice the leisure for his work, and he set about it with true ardour. However happy and content we were with our life in this solitude, still we remained firm in our determination to spend next winter in Paris again. This time, however, it was not with the view of amusing ourselves, but in order to do something practical towards the fulfilment of the task of our lives. In this, it is true, we did not cherish any confidence that we should attain anything; but when a man sees even the possibility of the shadow of a chance offered him to contribute anything towards a cause which he recognises as the holiest cause on earth, he feels it to be a duty which he cannot refuse, to try this chance. Now, in recapitulating, during our familiar talks, the recollections of Paris, we had thought also of that plan of the Emperor Napoleon which had come to our ears by the communications of his confidants—I mean the plan for proposing disarmament to the great powers. It was on this that we based our hopes and our projects. Frederick’s researches had brought into his hand Sully’s Memoirs, in which the plan of Henry IV for peace is described in all its details. We meant to convey an abstract of this to the Emperor of the French; and at the same time to try, through our connections in Austria
