Chapter XI: Part TWO (2)

“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.—

VIII
NOVITIATE IN ART
Back to Baden · Singing lessons · Great hopes · A test before Madame
Viardot

However, it was not an inordinately long time before the image of the Georgian prince had grown dim in my memory. And gradually, once more, something quite new became the object of my life, the “one important thing.”

We returned to Baden greatly disappointed—my mother in her great hopes of gain, which had to be exchanged for no inconsiderable certainty of loss, and I in my exploded dream of love; and there we proposed to live very quietly and frugally in our country house, and spend the winter too in seclusion there.

We had a lodger in our house, an old music teacher, who had been an orchestra conductor. One day he asked to see us.

“Pardon me, Frau Gräfin, and pardon me, Komtesse,[15] if I permit myself to make this call; but I consider it my duty—it is perhaps a question of something great and rare—something extraordinary in the Komtesse’s fate, something which—” He struggled to find words.

“Well, what do you mean?” asked my mother, and I too was keyed up to a high pitch. (“Something great and rare”—those who are hungry for life are always looking for that with yearning eyes.)

“I have often heard the Komtesse sing. She has had no training at all, but she has a voice such as comes only once in a hundred years, such as I have not heard since Jenny Lind, and it really quite reminds one of Jenny Lind’s. The same meltingness, the same power, that same something,—in short, the Komtesse has millions in her throat, she has a glorious career before her if she wishes—this I had to say.”

So, then, it might be that glory and fortune were to be mine—I did not at all distrust the artistic judgment of the music teacher and experienced orchestra conductor. My mother was likewise entranced. Her old predilection for the profession of a great singer, the profession which in youth she had so longed to have as her own, caused her now to grasp with delight the hope that her old-time dreams might be fulfilled in her daughter. And the millions which she had had to let dry up in her throat, the confidently expected millions which the abominable trente-et-quarante table had denied her, should come flowing to our house after all! She immediately arranged with the music teacher to give me lessons every day.

Professor Beranek had in fact been a singing-teacher at the conservatory, and had trained several important operatic artists; so the formation of my voice could be intrusted to him. He wanted to instruct me for a year, make me thoroughly musical, give my voice the right position and fluency; after that I should have to study a year or two more with an Italian maestro, and then I might rise above the musical horizon as a star of the first magnitude. I must take up the Italian career, that was settled; my mother herself insisted upon that, for the names of Pasta and Grisi and Malibran still filled her head, and only by traveling from Paris to London, from Milan to Madrid, from St. Petersburg to America, could one win the aforesaid millions and that world-wide reputation which makes artists in song into half-queens.

Ah yes, crowns,—that was what my young ambition craved. Nothing had come of the royal crown of Georgia; that had faded into air together with the dream of love; in its place glory should now crown me, and instead of love should be Art! One can burn as passionately for Art as for a beloved. Whoever loves Art and is loved by Art—that is, whoever loves it with the power of achievement—may find life perfectly satisfying.

Now came for me a time, a whole year, when I lived for only one object,—Song; that had now become the “one important thing.” On the very day after our interview the instruction began. In order that it might make rapid progress, and I might in a year advance as far as others did in a conservatory course of several years, the lessons were fixed at four hours a day,—two hours in the forenoon and two in the afternoon, with the requisite interval of rest between. Scalesinging, vocal exercises, score-reading, the science of harmony: I was to become a thorough musician; as phenomenal in artistic schooling as in vocal talent,—simply the greatest cantatrice of the century. Herr Beranek went into ecstasies every day, and thus kept us fancying that the marvelous had really come to pass, that an enormous prize had fallen to me in the lottery of life. Or rather that a treasure-trove was assuredly within sight, but that it must be dug for. And I dug and dug with a diligence, a perseverance, a joy, that was unique of its kind. From morning till night, through the long months of the autumn, of the winter, of the spring, nothing but notes,—sung, played, read, written notes,—and yet it was a whole world, full of sweetness and beauty, full of inspiration, full of proud satisfaction. I do not know (seeing that I never attained to it) whether a successful career as a prima donna really carries with it as much happiness as is to be experienced in the preparation for it, when the time is occupied with study, and triumph seems sure.

As material for study we ordered a whole little music library: Garcia’s “Method” in two large volumes; the scores of all the operas that were to form my future repertory—all with Italian text. That was by no means a monotonous life. On the contrary, it was full of the tragic, of passion, of ebullient joy, of the tenderest devotion, of the most heroic uplift, of funereal horror, of epithalamial bliss; in short, of all the feelings and fates which belonged to the heroines of my operas. Norma, Amina, La Traviata, Lucia, Linda, I myself was—one after the other, as I sat at the piano and memorized the text and melody in which were expressed all the sadness and the joy, the sweetness and the horror, which I tried with all my might to realize so that I might one day carry it triumphantly into the souls of my listeners. And the Edgardos and Manricos, Gennaros and Alfredos, who were destined to accompany my soprano in harmonious trios and sextets,—these also I saw before me; I simply _loved_ them. Do not take it that I was imagining the singers,—they were to remain a matter of indifference to me,—but the forms created by the dramatist and composer, and all their heroism, all their poetry. In just the same manner the young girl reading her Schiller becomes enraptured by the Don Carloses and Posas, the Ferdinands and Karl Moors,—only in the study of the operas there is added the ineffable something that wells forth from the magic tones of the music. Music says things which are not contained in any language. What can now and then stream forth from a sequence of tones, from a chord, from a rhythmical crescendo, is as little to be repeated in words as is the fragrance of flowers, the taste of a fruit. There are melodies which tell a story, arpeggios which caress, chords which burn; in many measures one feels as if—now I am endeavoring, after all, to find words for that of which I have just said that it lies outside of language; it is in vain. But a hundred times more powerful yet is the enjoyment of the charm of music when one is filled with it not only as a recipient but also as a giver, as a creator; when one is himself the transmitter of this mysterious and ineffable something to the souls of others; when one feels that thousands of auditors are seized by the same waves of passion, of rapture, of exultation, or of pain.

To be sure, I experienced all this not as a reality, but only as the foretaste of a thing to come—but a thing whose coming I did not doubt, which seemed to me like a boundless wealth that was not indeed in my hands in the form of gold, but I had in my possession well-secured drafts for it. Not only did the study of the rôles afford me this enjoyment, but even the mere practice of scales and the composition of roulades, the dry work of the technic of my art, gave me gladdening and enlivening sensations. For the concept “Art” had taken hold of me with all the power that is inherent in it, that results from the worship of art in books on the history of art, and from the worship of artists by the public. When studying for the chosen calling, one feels—at least I felt—intrusted with a mission which carried with it something priestly, something holy.

The question arises, Was not vanity also involved? Was I not gloating rather over the prospect of arousing admiration, of enjoying a world-wide fame (for I was not expecting anything small, thanks to my master’s indefatigable praise and expressions of wonder), or else over the thought that the heroine whom I should represent would be so graciously personified in me, that the brilliant satin train in the first acts would make my tall, slender figure so effective, and that my loosened hair in the tragic final scene would fall down below my knees in billowy natural abundance? Should I not—apart from the might of song—also as a woman set all hearts afire?

Oh, but nothing, nothing should or could turn me from my art; all homage I would put away from me, every discreditable demand the proud lady in me would spurn, and every enticement to renounce the stage and enter wedlock would leave the proud artist unmoved. Whoever stands on the highest pinnacle of Art belongs henceforth and forever to its temple service.

Such were my thoughts and intentions as I practiced solfeggios or wrote out my harmony exercises; and I was happy in it.

We lived in absolute retirement; my guardian visited us only once or twice a month, and nothing of these musical plans was divulged to him. The first that he should learn was to be the _fait accompli_, when I had made my appearance in a great theater with overwhelming success. We had no intercourse with the families that wintered in Baden, and we never went to Vienna. It was a rigorous novitiate in art; nothing was to divert me from my studies, nothing else but learn, learn, learn, was to fill my time. I was no longer so young, and I had to make up in a single year what other pupils accomplish in four or five years.

There was only a single family which we met socially from time to time; this was two old ladies, daughters of a general, and their brother, a retired first lieutenant of hussars, also well on in years, who had a barytone voice and had missed his calling,—that of an opera singer,—to his deep regret. I sang Italian duets with him, but without letting him guess my plans of the future. I should properly say, a duet; he had no more in his repertory. It was the scene between the brother and the sister in _Lucia di Lammermoor_. We performed the piece dramatically, singing by heart and putting in all the action, I carrying myself forward into my beckoning future and my partner going back to the past that he had let slip. He was convinced that he would have made a great singer, exactly as I was convinced of my coming greatness, and most likely his melancholy conviction was just as fallacious as my joyful one was.

I remember that our duet cost us much study before we could do it together. The lieutenant was not especially musical, and did not keep time well, and I too was very prone to slip, for I had not yet begun to sing arias at all with my teacher—he insisted strictly on my practicing nothing but scales and arpeggios; the _Lucia_ duet, which was performed in the house of the Cortesi sisters, was basely kept a secret from my master.

After about a year and a half of this preparatory course, Professor Beranek made the announcement that it was now time for me to finish my studies under a famous singing-teacher. Our choice fell on Pauline Viardot-Garcia. Many artists had gone forth from her instruction; and anyhow, Garcia’s two-volume “Method” having been my gospel, in whom could I have felt greater confidence than in the daughter of that incomparable master?[16] So off went a letter to Baden-Baden.

It must have been an exuberant letter. I knew that Madame Viardot was very particular and refused many who wished to take lessons of her. To be received by her was an especial favor granted only to those who had real talent. I tried, therefore, to prejudice her in my behalf by my letter itself. I could not well speak of my talent (although, resting on my teacher’s assurances, I felt no doubt of it), so I must have written all the more of enthusiasm for art, of ardor in my vocation, and such trite things, and naturally intimated also that I desired to put myself under none but the foremost teacher in the world. At any rate, Madame Viardot answered that I might come and let her test me.

My mother and I went to Baden-Baden without delay. On the appointed day and at the appointed hour we presented ourselves at the Villa Viardot. We were shown into a small ground-floor salon and told to wait a little while. I still see the piano in the corner at the right by the window. There were several music cabinets with scores; on the walls, pictures and photographs of artists; through the open balcony door a glimpse of the garden. In the background of this was a pavilion, presumably the dwelling of Ivan Turgénief, Madame Viardot’s friend of many years.

In this waiting time I was seized by a horrible panic. Something that I had never yet felt in my life. Something that actually took away my breath and tortured me. Is this, then, what is called stage fright, _le trac_? Why, that is not at all unlike what one must feel at going to the guillotine! How can one—God have mercy!—sing in such a state?

“Mamma,” I wailed, “I shan’t be able to sing a note!”

“Don’t be childish! Who’d be worried, when you have such a voice? Madame Viardot will consider herself fortunate to get such a pupil.”

The door of the next room opened and in came the dreaded one. A lively, elegant woman of forty, with features not beautiful but interesting. There was a little introductory conversation which I do not remember, and then I was dragged to the block—I mean the piano.

“Have you brought any music? What will you sing for me?”

“All I can do is scales and exercises.”

“One can judge of your voice by those, no doubt, but not of your talent, not of your degree of ability.”

“Then, please, the duet with the barytone from _Lucia_.”

“A duet?”

“Yes, madame; so far I have not sung any pieces at all; it only happens that I know this one.”

“Very well.” She found the score and played the introduction.

My throat was utterly choked. I started in a tremble. But after a while my voice grew firmer, and after a few measures it went to my own satisfaction. Mother nodded approvingly. I believed that I had given of my best.

But the great teacher shut up the score in the middle of a measure and said, “The truth of the matter is, you can do nothing at all.”

It was as if I had been given a box on the ear and a dagger-thrust both at once.

“Let us have another trial, then, with _notes filées_—in order to see what might be made of the material—there is certainly voice there—”

And she struck low C. This test was easier for me. Still I could not give all that I had—the tones were hoarse and my breath was short. After the two octaves up to high C were tested, she stood up.

“How old are you?” she asked.

“Past twenty,” I replied with a half lie, for I was already twenty-two.

“That is too late to start from the beginning. At twenty, one ought to be already trained. And tell me, why do you really want to go on the stage? You have social standing—your name shows it.”

In reply I said something about ambition and love for art.

“That is all very pretty, but I can only advise you not to give up your position. Your voice is not bad, but it is not extraordinary, and it is questionable whether you could learn anything.”

“Madame, she has talent,” insisted my mother. “And under your instruction it would most certainly develop.”

“But I cannot tell to-day whether I will undertake to give her this instruction. The young lady must first take a few lessons, and then I will decide whether I will go on with her—yes or no. According to my impression of to-day, there is little chance for yes.”

“Oh, do not judge by to-day’s test; the poor girl was so nervous—I really did not know her.”

“If one suffers from nervousness, one is not fitted for the career of an artist; an additional reason for giving it up.”

“Her timidity will disappear when she gets used to it,” urged my mother.

“Very well, then; come next Monday at the same hour.” And we were dismissed.

We returned to the hotel, and there I gave vent to my suppressed anguish in a burst of tears.

“Never, never again will I set foot in that Viardot villa! Let us go away, mamma; I will never let myself be seen in that woman’s presence again! It is over—it is all over!” My world lay in ruins. The “one important thing” was annihilated.

IX
THE YEAR 1866
Return · Elvira’s death · Fürstenberg’s death · The war · Homburg once
more · Back to Baden · Baron Koller

We journeyed back to our Baden villa. Professor Beranek was indignant at Madame Viardot. For a long time I would sing no more. But at length he brought me to it.

“You will not have been the first,” he said consolingly, “who has failed of recognition at a trial and has then put the false prophets to shame through greatness fairly won.”

But my self-confidence was too completely crushed. It did not so quickly wake to new force. At the same time a hard sorrow befell me. Word came from Venice that my cousin Elvira was very ill, that her lung trouble had taken a turn for the worse, and that she was confined to her bed. Not many days later there came the news of her death. For the first time in my life I learned how it feels to lose a dear one. An incomprehensible emptiness, an unintelligible shuddering....

The bereaved mother came to us. She was on the verge of despair. Now of course all singing was hushed in the house.

The year 1866 brought me still another severe loss, that of my much-loved paternal friend Fürstenberg. He departed this life after a brief illness at his residence in Vienna. And one thing more that unblest year brought,—war.

I am ashamed to say it again, but this event made no impression upon me—none at all. I took knowledge of it just as one learns by hearsay that somewhere in the distance floods have set in, or fires broken out,—elemental events, of a very lamentable nature, but they will pass by. And at bottom the thing is not uninteresting—it is something historical. The Prussians will of course get a thrashing; and if we should lose the game, there would be peace again after it anyhow. We had no one dear to us in the army, so we were not anxious. I read no newspaper; and the stories that they told,—victories of the Prussians in Hannover, at Frankfurt, later also in Bohemia (but not much of it came to our ears, and if anything did I have forgotten it),—nothing of all that has remained imprinted on my memory: a proof that it was heartily indifferent to me.

To-day I cannot understand how I could be so stupid. Even apart from my future ardent sentiments in behalf of peace, which ought at that time to have been already dormant in the young woman of twenty-three and to have been awakened on this occasion, such a tremendous event should at any rate, even from the ordinary point of view, have stirred me, should have filled me with some kind of emotion, either patriotic enthusiasm or tingling human sympathy or, if nothing more, anxiety and terror; but there was nothing, nothing.

It would not be necessary to set down in these reminiscences the confession of such a fact, doubly humiliating for a future opponent of war, but the incongruity that is here apparent is a thing that distinctly deserves scrutiny. The most interesting thing for the reader of memoirs, I think, is always the opportunity to observe how and whereby certain destinies, talents, or deeds, which are known to pertain to the writer of the memoir, have been prepared for and developed; one wishes to trace out what inner aptitudes, and what outer influences, have contributed to the formation of the total product. From this there always result useful lessons and bits of knowledge. Provided, of course, that the autobiographer is entirely sincere: useful lessons are to be drawn only from unfalsified facts.

Here, in bringing to my present consciousness the conception of war that I then had, I myself find occasion for an interesting observation, an instruction worth taking to heart. Human society as a whole passes through just such stages of shifting ideas, knowledges, conceptions, and judgments, as does an individual man. Should not I to-day fully understand, and fully pardon, the fact that the generality of men in their preponderating mass take as cold and unconcerned an attitude toward war (when it does not lay hold directly of their own lives) as did I myself a few decades ago? Should I be amazed that this same generality regards the occasional breaking out of wars as a matter of course, a thing involved in natural law, which one may possibly sigh over, but which one cannot condemn and cannot antagonize? Against the inevitable one raises no voice of blame, strikes no blow.

And as the individual (in the case in hand, I myself) may under the influence of experiences and considerations come to have quite altered views, so may and will the generality obtain new insights and act accordingly.

When to-day in certain circles I meet with case-hardened misconception of the peace movement, when they try to show me the obvious naturalness and historical necessity of the scourge of war by arguments at which wrath and discouragement threaten to take possession of me, all I need to do, that my wrath may subside and my courage rise, is to think back to my own past. Moreover, in the matters of war and peace the generality is not even in such a state of stupidity any longer, for by this time almost every one has at least heard something of the movement, and the number of those who sympathize with it or even take an active part in it is growing every day. A greater and greater number of people are taking sides on the issue, either for it or against it; but at the time of which I am now talking the fact was that no one knew anything about the peace movement, because there was none; for the sporadic emergence of individual minds who took a stand for the abolition of war cannot be called “a movement.”

We spent the summer of 1886 once more in Homburg vor der Höhe, and although the war penetrated into our very near neighborhood there were no indications of it to be detected in the life of the bathers and gamblers at that cosmopolitan watering-place. The official band played; Patti sang; the Spaniard Garcia, who had become famous for his luck at gambling, continued to make his harvest of a hundred thousand francs a day at the trente-et-quarante table—until one fine morning he did begin to lose, and gradually put in all the millions he had won, and something of his own besides.

The Princess of Mingrelia was there again with her family, and I spent many hours of the day in her company. Her daughter, Princess Salomé, was by this time eighteen and released from the nursery, and I now kept up as lively an intercourse with her as with her mother. In age we two girls were actually better mates; an additional point was that we took riding lessons together, and every morning we used to go for a ride side by side in the roads of the park, under the oversight of the riding-master. That was a fine occasion for chatting, and we soon formed a cordial friendship.

Salomé was to be presented at court at St. Petersburg the following winter, and to be introduced into society there—she looked out into the future with joyous hopes and plans; I, on the other hand, assumed rather a melancholy and resigned aspect, as one who no longer expected much from life. The two deaths by which dear ones were taken from me had really made me low-spirited; and the collapse of my artistic dreams had left me in a bad frame of mind, but of this matter I told her nothing. I confided to my new friend only the fact that two years before I had been in love with her uncle Heraclius—now, indeed, I had got the unhappy passion out of my mind, but yet there remained a certain dejection. Salomé only laughed at me for it.

“How could one ever fall in love with such a sallow, bilious old man! No, no, Contessina, you will yet find a much better one.”

The Dedopali’s two sons also had now grown up into tall, handsome young men. Prince Niko, the older, once caused us all a fine fright. He was to have a duel. He had been pursuing a little lady from Paris too ardently, and a rival had got into a rage over it; ugly words were exchanged, and the other man announced that on the following day he should send his seconds. The scene had had witnesses, and the old princess learned of it. Weeping and trembling she told me about the misfortune that had befallen, and I wept and trembled with her. Nothing was to be done about it: duels also belong to the unavoidable dispensation of things in this world—what young nobleman could refuse to take part in them?

It was a sad business, of course, but no one in our circle dreamed of such a thing as harboring a mutinous thought against the absurdity of it. There was at that time as little talk of an anti-dueling league as of a league in opposition to duels between nations. To be exposed to murdering and being murdered was simply one of the chivalric and patriotic necessities that life brings to men. And when that is the case women can do nothing else but weep in timid admiration.

But the duel did not come off: I cannot recall now whether the opponent had left town or whether the witnesses had succeeded in effecting a reconciliation. I only know that the threatening cloud passed over, and that we were all very happy. My really deep-felt and spontaneously shown sympathy had brought me much closer yet to the Mingrelian family; and especially Prince Niko himself, as long as he lived, never forgot that I had so taken to heart the danger to which he had been exposed.

When we went home that autumn the war was a thing of the past. We took still another lodger in our Baden villa, a Saxon officer. He most courteously came to make us a call. I do not think that we talked much about the campaign just ended, for I remember only that at the Herr Lieutenant’s second visit, which was his visit of farewell, I sang something for him; I can also remember what it was,—the adagio from the grand aria in _La Sonnambula_, “Ah non credea.” The Saxon officer was enraptured.

“Oh, most gracious countess, you sing like Patti!”

“That young man has a great appreciation of art,” remarked my mother, when the lieutenant had taken his departure.

“And are you really going to stick to your decision that you will renounce an artistic career,” she added after a while; “is that reasonable, is it courageous?”

“But Madame Viardot’s decision—” I opposed hesitatingly.

“Madame Viardot is not infallible; and if you had only kept on with her for a while—”

“Not for the world would I have come into her sight again!”

“But there are other great singing-teachers; we will ask Beranek.”

Herr Beranek was still our lodger, and naturally he was ready at once to take up the proposition of resuming the musical plans. He spoke of Lamperti in Milan, Duprez in Paris, and Marchesi in Vienna as among the greatest teachers. I would not hear of Vienna, but in the very act of pronouncing this limitation I had already tacitly acknowledged that perhaps I would be content, either in Milan or in Paris, to pick up the thread which had been so abruptly broken off in Baden-Baden.

And to that it gradually came. I no longer gave a decided “no” when any one spoke to me of an artistic future, and I resumed my singing lessons with Beranek. The old love of song, the old ambitious plans, the old self-confidence awoke and gathered strength once more. The resolve to persevere in my studies, and to continue them under some famous master, matured in my mind. I wrote to Maître Duprez in Paris to ask him if he would be willing to accept an ambitious, enthusiastic pupil; he replied that he would, and so it came to pass that my life had once more found the “one important thing.”

There was living at that time in Baden an old bachelor, a former ambassador, with whom we constantly associated. His name was Baron Koller. He was tall and very thin, closely shaven, extremely correct and elegant in his attire. He owned a house near the Kurpark, externally insignificant, but furnished in exquisite taste within. Here he frequently gave us little dinners.

The contemplation of the beautiful mementos which he had gathered about him in his rooms was a great pleasure to me. I “turned the leaves” in these rooms as in an interesting book of memoirs. All those fabrics, weapons, trinkets, female portraits, had stories to tell of distant journeys, of high life at courts and in society, and of intimate love affairs. And the master of the house himself: _ancien régime_ in his manners, sparkling with wit in his conversation.

There developed between the old gentleman and me a sort of—what shall I call it?—_esprit_-flirtation, a tossing back and forth of conversational shuttlecocks. He took special delight in my mastery of the elegances of the French language, and, because I realized this, I wrote in that language a whole booklet about his home, associating with the various trinkets and pictures imaginary stories and all sorts of observations. I copied it neatly, tied it with a blue ribbon, and sent it to him. He then gave it back to me, as a loan, with his marginal notes. He wanted me to see what keen pleasure the reading of it had given him,—a pleasure which was expressed in underlinings, exclamation marks, and a few brief sentences.

One time he honored me by the gift of a cup of old porcelain with the inscription _Respice finem_. To this I made answer in a few rhymed lines, the text of which I find jotted down in the diary which I was keeping at that time:

RESPICE FINEM

Zu fluges Wort, ein hemmnis dem Beginnen,
Das fühne Taten scheut in zauderhastem Sinnen;
Das mit berechnend faltem Geist
Das heute wegen Morgen von sich weist,
Und das manchen, der zu viel ans End’ gedacht,
Verzagt und flügelnd um sein Glüd gebracht.

Wagen und Beginnen liegt in jedes Menschen hand—
Das Ende hat fein Weiser noch erfannt.
Es trifft nicht in die vorgedachte Bahn,
Wie sie ersonnen hat des Grüblers Wahn;
Drum hat sich arg getäuscht, wer an das End’ gedacht,
Wenn er zu lichten wähnt der Zukunft dunkle Nacht.

Des Daseins höchste Frag’ ist: Werden und Bestehen,
Es wirke alles ohne Sorge ums Vergehen.
Die Blüte denkt ans Welken nicht,
Ums Löschen unbekümmert strahlt das Licht;
Im Weltenplan hat Gott ans Ende nicht gedacht,
Denn was er schuf, hat ohne Ende er gemacht.

THINK ON THE END

Too shrewd a phrase, by which the start is checked!
It shuns bold acts and dallies to reflect,
And, coldly calculating, thrusts away
For some To-morrow’s sake the sure To-day;
It brings the chance of happiness to naught
For many, who too much upon the end have thought.

Daring, beginning, lies in each man’s hand;
The end no sage’s eye has ever scanned.
It does not come by such a course at last
As by the purblind reasoner was forecast.
Therefore he sadly errs who on the end has thought,
If to light up the Future’s darksome night he sought.

To grow, to hold our ground, is life’s supreme affair.
No anxious thought of perishing should enter there.
The flower on fading does not think,
The light does not in fear of quenching sink.
God, when he planned the world, upon the end ne’er thought,
For endless did he make the universe he wrought!

He often sent me books from his library, and I wrote down for him my impressions regarding them; and so back and forth went messages, flowers, bonbons, and manuscripts,—a real flirtation! But it was wholly without erotic background; for the gallant diplomat might have been my grandfather.

X
RESIDENCE IN PARIS
Singing lessons resumed · Maître Duprez · The school in the Rue Laval ·
In the house of the Princess Mingrelia · In the imperial box at the
opera · Summer at Duprez’s place in the country · Return to Paris ·
Princess Salomé’s engagement · Prince Achille Murat · The wedding · With
the young couple · Off to Baden-Baden

At the beginning of the year 1867 we traveled to Paris.

But, I remember, of the powerful impression which it must produce on every one to come for the first time to the mighty metropolis about which one has heard and read so much,—of this impression I felt very little, my mind was so full of the “one important thing.” Even the prospect of the pleasure of meeting the Dadiani family of Mingrelia again here did not come so close to me; the only thing that I could think about, that made me tremble with terror and excitement, was the question, How will Maître Duprez judge of my voice, what progress shall I make, and what shape will my artistic career take?

The maestro owned a mansion on the Rue Laval, in which was a hall with a stage. Adjacent were small study-rooms in which the maestro and his son, Léon Duprez, gave private instruction. Every Friday the more advanced students gave arias and scenes from operas on the stage, and the little theater was filled with an audience of their friends and of strangers from outside. On the other side of the court was a small _hôtel_ used as a residence by the Duprez family, which consisted of the father and mother, the son and daughter-in-law.

At our first visit in the Rue Laval we were conducted into the theater building. First we went into a small waiting-room, around the walls of which ran bookcases full of opera scores. Students of both sexes were sitting and standing about, chatting. In the theater too a few scattered individuals were sitting and listening to the performance of a quite young girl who, with the accompanist of the establishment, Monsieur Maton, was practicing the Rosina aria, _Una voce poco fa_. Monsieur Maton had written out most artistic colorature for her; it purled and warbled like anything.

So then this school enables one to reach such a bravura! It inspired me with courage and the resolution to be very industrious.

Still, what verdict would the maestro pass on me after the test?—surely not like the severe Viardot. With quaking heart I mounted the steps to the stage, behind which was the room where M. Duprez was waiting for me. A benevolent old gentleman, well along toward eighty, but lively and vigorous, came to meet me. He had white curly hair, ruddy cheeks, and smiling eyes.

“Well, mademoiselle, so it was you who wrote me that enthusiastic letter, was it? You want to be something great or else nothing at all, do you? Well, then, let me hear how your voice sounds, and see if you can read notes.”

He handed me a book of original solfeggios and sat down at the upright piano. This time the test resulted favorably.

“Beautiful voice; I shall be able to make something of you—in two years you shall be _la première force_.”

I was happy, simply happy! Now the hours of instruction were settled; I was to have lessons twice a week. That was not enough for me.

“I should like to come every day, maestro.”

“You may do that; on the other days my son or M. Maton will practice with you. But I have only two hours a week, that is to say, half hours, to spare; that is quite enough.”

We rented and furnished a small flat in the Rue Laval, and forthwith began for me an active epoch of study, bright with hope. I spent all my forenoons in the theater building of the Hôtel Duprez, always accompanied by my mother, a thing which seemed rather tiresome and superfluous to the others who frequented the school. I put myself wholly into the _do_, _re_, _mi_, and into a little aria which the maestro had composed and which he gave me to study for my first piece. But I felt especial interest in my fellow-pupils, who were on the most various levels of ability; and the Friday performances, as I did not yet participate in them, were to me a great enjoyment. When later I myself had to sing up there it was an agony to me, to be sure; for the old nervousness came over me again, and I won no applause. But this did not take place till after the lapse of some time; for the present I was busied only with learning, and I went at it in joyous mood.

In the public recitals there participated also some of the maestro’s finished pupils who were already filling engagements at the theaters and had attained celebrity: the tenor Engel (known as Angèl); Mademoiselle Marimon, the _chanteuse légère_ of the Opéra Comique in Paris; and Jeanne Devriès of Brussels,—all three artists of the first rank. A young sister of the last-named, Fidès Devriès, had begun taking lessons only a short time before, and was the favorite of the maestro, the admiration of the whole class. She filled me with green-eyed envy. She was pretty as a picture—I could have forgiven her that, but she was sixteen years old, which put my twenty-three to shame, and she was making such rapid strides that although she had been in the school only a short time she already sang like a virtuoso and without the slightest nervousness. Ultimately she was engaged at the Paris Grand Opera, where she made her début as Ophelia with huge success. When I witnessed with what facility young Fidès learned the most difficult coloratures, with what correctness she read at sight, what peculiar magic dwelt in the timbre of her voice, and with what freedom and assurance of victory she moved on the little stage, always greeted and rewarded with the applause of the listeners and teachers, I was compelled to say to myself: “_That_ is talent, that is the special gift, that is the something that lies beyond ambition and industry, which one cannot attain but must _have_, and which I have not....”

I was in and out of the house of the Princess of Mingrelia a great deal. I did not divulge to her anything of my artistic plans. She supposed the “Contessina” had come to Paris merely for the sake of being with her and her daughter, and she invited me to all her dinners and receptions. Together with her family and a numerous body of servants she occupied a suite in the Hôtel du Louvre, with private entrance and private stairway. In the long array of reception rooms, and especially in the salon filled with flowers and bric-a-brac where she usually kept herself, there was once more the odor of Russian cigarettes and orange flowers. I felt myself transported back to the Weckerlin villa at Homburg, and could not help thinking of my infatuation for the Georgian prince, the Bagratide Heraclius. I inquired about him.

“What! Is his picture still alive in your heart, little Contessina? Well, he is soon coming to Paris ... and if you can’t have him, we will find another husband here for you, for it is high time you were married—twenty-three already, that is almost being an old maid! I shall marry off my Salomé before she gets to be twenty; only it is a pity, dearest, that you have not a good big dot. That is the main question here in Paris. Grace and beauty do not suffice. Salomé is to get an income of fifty thousand francs, a present that her brother Niko gives her; with that it will be an easier matter to find a good _parti_. And I already have my eye on some one, a member of the imperial family.”

“Of Russia?”

“No, of France.”

The princess and her daughter never missed any of the Empress Eugénie’s _petits lundis_, and the Empress herself had proposed the marriage plan to which the Dedopali referred. She would not say anything more definite about it just then, and even Salomé, whom I questioned, professed to know nothing at all of the matter.

The imperial box at the opera was frequently put at the disposal of the two ladies, and they often invited me to accompany them. One morning, when I came to my lesson at the music school, young Madame Duprez called to me:

“Were you at the opera yesterday evening?”

“Yes; Madame Sass was a splendid Valentine.”

“So that was you, was it? In the Emperor’s box?”

“Yes,” I replied, inwardly amused, in a tone as if it were my usual habit to occupy such places and no others at the theater. I felt that the incident made an impression on the whole school; evidently they were not in the habit of seeing the pupils in the monarch’s box. In the Mingrelian salon, on the other hand, my musical performances made a great impression again; there they were evidently not in the habit of seeing dilettantes sit down to the piano and treat the company to concert waltzes and colorature arias. Little—say, petty—gratifications of vanity.

The expected Prince Heraclius of Georgia did not come to Paris. Probably if he had come the flame in my heart would have flared up again, and the ambitious dream of becoming a great lady might have displaced that of the “great artist”; all the more because doubts about my talent kept growing upon me, the wretched nervousness refused to be overcome, and when I performed on the experimental stage I was unable to make a real success. Only my mother kept stimulating my courage and ambition; the maestro, too, promised that in a year or two of study he should form me into a superior artist, and I persevered.

The next summer (the Mingrelian family had gone off to the German watering-places again) we betook ourselves to the Duprez country estate, to continue the instruction there, it being interrupted in the school at Paris. In October we went back to the city, and the Mingrelian family too moved into the Hôtel du Louvre again. The old life of the preceding year was repeated: artistic interests and enjoyments in the Rue Laval, social interests and enjoyments with my Asiatic friends.

One day toward the end of the winter I received from Princess Salomé a dispatch: “Enjoy my good fortune with me; I have just become engaged to Prince Achille Murat.” On the same day she had sent me a card by mail, which I received a few hours later than the telegram. The little yellowed forty-year-old card is still among my old papers. I reproduce it in full:

Princesse Salomé Dadiani
de Mingrélie
Ma bien bonne Contesco, venez demain
à deux heures précises—vous passerez
la journée avec nous. J’ai une foule de choses
très pressées à faire et je m’adresse à
vous comme à _mon amie_ dévouée, pour vous demander
votre aide. Ne m’oubliez pas auprès de Mme.
votre mère. Soyez bien exacte.

I joyously obeyed the summons—there is nothing in the world more interesting to young girls than an engagement—and found the whole house in happy excitement.

I was told how it all came about. The affair, contemplated during the preceding winter by the Empress Eugénie and the Princess Ekaterina, had been brought to a satisfactory conclusion the week before. The Emperor undertook to provide his nephew with an allowance of fifty thousand francs a year, which excellently comported with the bride’s similar income; he also agreed to pay the young man’s debts.—Well, yes, debts—it was known to the whole town that he was one of the most extravagant high-livers in Paris. Among the diamonds of the then so celebrated “belle Hélène,” Hortense Schneider, were many jewels which Prince Achille Murat had laid at her feet. The prince was regarded as one of the handsomest of the young people in high society. The son of Prince Lucien and an American woman, he very much reminded one of an Englishman in his manner, in his accent, and in the blond type of his face. All this I knew from hearsay before the news of the betrothal came to me.

I found the fiancée busily engaged in sending announcements of her good fortune to all her St. Petersburg and Parisian acquaintances, and I must needs help her address the envelopes. She was really happy. To be sure the whole affair was arranged by the relatives on both sides, and she had seen her fiancé only three or four times; but in those circles, especially in France, they are used to having marriages contracted in this way. And the dazzling appearance of her suitor when introduced to her had thrown a spell over her: she was genuinely in love with the young man, and heartily enjoyed the thought of becoming “Princesse Achille Murat.”

Now she had before her also the interesting task of making up the trousseau, of superintending the appointments of a little _palais_ in the Elysée quarter, and of receiving the wedding gifts, the first installment of which had appeared that very day in a “river of diamonds” that her own mother had given her, and a pearl necklace which her fiancé had laid at her feet. So she had, as the old song[17] puts it, “diamonds and pearls”; she had beautiful eyes as well, a twofold princely crown, a hundred thousand francs of income, her nineteen years, and a handsome husband: “Darling, what more would you have?” To me also all this seemed at that time like the pinnacle of human happiness, and I honestly rejoiced with my friend. Later, much later, I learned that there is something “more” than all that, that there is a happiness which in its inward depth, even in very limited circumstances, is more radiant than any external glory, any affluence. Oh, my unspeakable married bliss ... but I will not anticipate.

On that same day I became acquainted with Salomé’s fiancé; before that time he had been no frequent visitor at the house. The first call which he had made, a few days previously, had been connected with the ceremonious proposal for the hand of his chosen. “Chosen” is the wrong expression; I should have said “the lady intended for him.” He pleased me very well—twenty-one years of age, exceedingly tall and slender in figure, a thin blond imperial, dazzling teeth, faultlessly elegant and assured behavior. It must be confessed, not a trace of tenderness: as he preserved a severely correct, not to say chillingly ceremonious, behavior toward every one, so he did even toward his betrothed.

Every morning, from that time forth, came the traditional great bouquet of flowers, sent to the house by a messenger, and in the afternoon appeared the suitor himself to _faire son cour_ for a brief hour.

The wedding was celebrated in the early days of May, 1868. A wedding which embraced three separate ceremonies,—first the civil service in the _mairie_, then a forenoon wedding according to the Catholic rite in the Tuileries, in the presence of the Emperor and Empress, and at nine o’clock that same evening in the Greek church according to the Orthodox rite. I participated in this last ceremony as first bridesmaid. My function consisted in holding a crown over the bride’s head during the whole marriage service. An illustrious company filled the brightly lighted, flower-decorated chapel. The ladies’ toilets were of great magnificence. The bride wore a veil which had been made for her at Brussels, with her family arms, the Golden Fleece, woven into its fabric. It flowed down from a diadem of diamonds, the Empress Eugénie’s wedding gift. The bride’s mother was adorned with the stars and ribbons of various orders. Among the jewels that were here displayed, I was especially struck by the historic set of emeralds which the bridegroom’s sister, the celebrated beauty Anne Murat, the wife of the Duc de Mouchy-Noailles, had put on in honor of this solemn occasion.

And is it not to a certain extent humiliating that I myself on this occasion allowed the parade of toilets and jewelry to sink so deep into my mind that at this day I can still see it all? I will even confess that I remember what I myself wore,—a gown made by Worth, of white gauze over rose-colored silk lining, garnished with innumerable little _volants_ from the waist to the train—it is to be hoped that at that important and solemn hour when my friend stood before the altar to be dedicated to an unknown destiny, I thought of something besides those many little spangles; but it is a fact that I still see the rose-pink shimmer rippling through the white threads of the gauze.

After the wedding there was a small ball at the princess’s. The innumerable _volants_ had an opportunity to whirl around in the dance, and I remember that my partner in the first quadrille was a Prince Bourbon. The newly wedded pair had disappeared from the festivity early and unobserved. They had decided not to take a wedding journey; they took up their residence at once in their newly furnished _petit hôtel_ in the Rue de Pressbourg.

There I spent many hours. Salomé usually invited me to dinner, and I was expected to come an hour earlier so that we might have time to chat before the husband and the guests should appear. After dinner, especially when we three were alone, we usually went to some one of the so-called _petits théâtres_, which Salomé was not allowed to attend before she was married, and which it now gave her much amusement to become acquainted with. I ought not by rights to have been taken along either, being still unmarried; but, in the first place, now that I was twenty-four years old I was no longer included in the category of young girls, and in the next place, in the _baignoire_ we were invisible to the general public.