“She has also the tongue of a fishwife,” said Schultz.
“Certainly she has used harsh phrases,” Bernstorff admitted reluctantly. “But it would have humiliated even a lady of less degree than the Duchess Sophia to be handed from brother to brother with a handsome gift as the price of taking her.”
Councillor Bernstorff was on delicate ground, for the harsh phrases by which term he mitigated the lady’s Billingsgate, were all directed at the household of Celle.
“It was too big a price besides,” Bernstorff added regretfully. For himself he would have liked to see the ceremonious and arrogant Sophia, the friend of Descartes and Leibnitz, and a possible Queen of England, Duchess of Celle instead of Duchess of Hanover. “First a promise by Duke George William that he would never marry...”
“Ah! That promise was broken,” said Schultz with a smile.
“At a big price too,” Bernstorff retorted.
“One gets nothing from Hanover, my friend, except at a big price. You will do well to remember that,” Schultz replied.
He was smiling. To his thinking the price had been well worthwhile. His musing had taken him back to the happy hour at Breda when the brown curls and flashing beauty of Eleonore d’Olbreuse, the young French Lady-in-Waiting to the Princess of Tarente, had netted the susceptible heart of George William, Duke of Celle, for good and all. A morganatic marriage had followed, a year later the beautiful Sophia Dorothea was born and Schultz’s fifteen years’ fight for the legitimisation of the mother and the daughter had begun. He was hampered by the opposition of Hanover, the greed of its Duke and the hatred of Duchess Sophia. But step by step he had won his way. Eleonore d’Olbreuse became Madame de Harburg, Madame de Harburg became Countess of Wilhelmsburg, and Sophia Dorothea, when she married, would have the right to emblazon her note-paper with the Royal Arms of Brunswick. Finally, a delay in the supply of troops to the Emperor Leopold brought that hesitating man to a decision, and just four years before this day when Chancellor Schultz surrendered his office, the Emperor’s Envoy had attended the ceremonious re-marriage of Duke George William with his wife, had greeted her as Your Highness, and Sophia Dorothea, then a girl of ten years, as Princess. So Chancellor Schultz pleasantly recollected and still Councillor Bernstorff protested: “But the price was too high. Her Highness cannot inherit — no, neither she nor the Princess. When the Duke dies, the Duchy is joined with Hanover.”
“Yes,” Schultz agreed. “Yet there has been some advantage in that hard bargain. His Highness set himself to save. There has been no French company of players sucking the blood of Celle, no Italian Opera, no carnivals, no masked balls, no mistresses sparkling with other women’s tears. A careful husbandry, instead, my friend Bernstorff. A home-spun prosperity in which all Celle has shared. And meanwhile a great fortune has been built up for Her Highness and her daughter. The Princess Sophia Dorothea! There’s not a Prince from one end of Germany to another but would think himself blessed if her pretty hand would rest in his.”
The Chancellor had thus good reason for his complacency. He was looking backward. Bernstorff on the other hand was looking ahead.
“And which of them will it be?” he asked with every appearance of nonchalance.
Schultz shrugged his shoulders.
“She will choose for herself. You are shocked, my friend? Then you will find much to shock you in the pleasant State of Celle. A husband who loves his wife. A wife who is content with her home. A daughter who at fourteen is still a child, with a child’s longings and a child’s pleasures. In God’s good time she will make her choice. It may be young Augustus William of Wolfenbüttel. Let us hope that it will be.”
Bernstorff shook his head doubtfully over that prospect and Schultz rallied him with a laugh.
“What, you too? Because the elder brother, betrothed too soon, dies in battle, the younger must not take his place? Superstition, Bernstorff. Beware of it! However, there is time and to spare. Let nature have her way!”
“Nature?” Bernstorff repeated. “At fourteen women are ripe for marriage.”
“And at fifteen they are ripe for death. Let the Princess Sophia Dorothea play for a little while longer with her dolls.”
“And amongst them,” said Bernstorff slowly, “with Philip Christopher von Königsmark?”
The Chancellor sat upright in his chair. He stared at his companion.
“Philip Christopher Königsmark?” he repeated. “The page?”
“The page,” said Bernstorff, nodding his head.
After that there fell a silence upon the room. That Bernstorff had some show of reason for what he said, Schultz could not doubt. All his complacency ebbed away from him. So much forethought he had taken to safeguard the little realm to which he had given every beat of his loyal heart, to stop every crevice through which an untimely wind could creep. And here suddenly was a danger which he had never taken into account.
IT was the custom in those days for the cadets of noble families to complete their education as pages in Ducal or Imperial Courts. In neighbouring Sweden, no family shone with a brighter lustre than that of old John Christopher Königsmark who had captured Prague in 1648 and recovered the famous Silver Book of Bishop Ulphilas. His descendants had stamped their names on every battlefield in Europe and left some fragrance of their passage in every boudoir. Great soldiers and great lovers, remarkable for the beauty of their features and the rare distinction of their manners, they would have been fabulous if they had not been real. Homeric stories were told of them and the stories were true. Charles John, swimming with his sword between his teeth, had captured a Turkish galley single-handed. He was the only Protestant who had ever been made a Knight of Malta. A girl of high family in England fled from her home and camped with him as his page from Vienna to the gates of Constantinople. Wherever there were battles to be fought, or women to be loved, one of that family ran, bright and ruinous like a flame through standing corn.
And here was a sprig of that breed in the quiet Court of Celle, where the greatest heiress of the day twisted her father round her child’s finger and delighted her adoring mother by the quickness of her wits and the liveliness of her spirit. He, Schultz, should have known the danger and prevented it. He sat blaming himself: and the brightness of the day was dimmed. The very silence of the room became an oppression. It seemed to him that shadows were gathering in the corners, taking unto themselves life, an evil life, which spread like a miasma through the kindly Palace, setting it out as a scene fit for darkness and unknown horrors.
Chancellor Schultz shook his shoulders violently. He got up from his chair and walked quickly across the room. As he gazed out through the open window, the wide, orderly space of lawn and alley, sleeping in the sunlight, calmed the trouble of his spirit. From the market-place beyond the church a drowsy peaceful hum reached to his ears, and away upon his right hand, he could hear the river Aller singing pleasantly over its stones at the bottom of the French garden. He grumbled at the ease with which he had let these dark and foolish fancies capture him.
“It’s high time I went,” he said to himself. “I’m getting old, and old men make catastrophes out of cobwebs. A page? A page can be sent away and the State still stand upright.” He laughed and returned to his seat.
“Let me hear this desperate story of the page and the Princess, my good Bernstorff.”
“There is to be an entertainment in the theatre on the occasion of Her Highness’ birthday,” said Bernstorff. “There will be interludes, recitations, songs by the citizens of Celle for the citizens of Celle.”
Bernstorff could not check the sniff of disdain. In the Castle of Celle, high up on the top floor, was the most adorable little theatre in the world, a place of white and gold, lit by candles in glass candelabra — the daintiest little band-box of a theatre, perfect for a witty comedy played by that French company at Hanover or for a charming operetta sung by that Italian troupe at Hanover. Here the burghers of the town, stiff in their best clothes, were to profane
its daintiness with their uncouth gestures and clumsy speech. Of all the dreary entertainments conceivable, nothing to Bernstorff’s thinking could equal the amateurish efforts of bumpkins dressed in clothes of their own making. And there would be three hours of it — three, eternal, tedious hours. Bernstorff grew so hot in his anticipation of them that he forgot his reason for mentioning them.
Chancellor Schultz brought him back to it.
“After all I am still Chancellor,” he reflected. “I must make sure that there is some body in this story. If there is none, Bernstorff must whistle for his appointment. Shall I tell him about Stechinelli?”
Aloud he said: “There is nothing new in such entertainments.”
“There is to be an item which is new,” Bernstorff returned.
“It will be the less popular,” said Schultz.
Bernstorff leaned forward, nodding his head to underline his words.
“There is to be a scene out of a new play.”
“Excellent!” said Schultz.
“The play is by Racine.”
“I have never heard of him,” remarked Schultz.
Bernstorff sat up in his chair and observed coldly: “He is held in great esteem by King Louis of France.”
“That is probably why,” said Schultz.
There were moments when Bernstorff was profoundly shocked by the Boeotian contentment of his superior Minister. Louis was an enemy no doubt, but he was by universal recognition the arbiter of taste and patron of letters. However, with ignorance so abysmal, there could be no argument.
“The scene is to be acted by the Princess Sophia Dorothea and Philip Königsmark, a page.”
“But not a lackey,” answered Schultz. “We will not forget that in the veins of the Königsmarks flows the royal blood of Pfalz and Nassau.”
Bernstorff went about on another tack.
“It is a passionate love scene.”
“To be played by babies,” said Schultz. “It should be amusing.”
“It is being rehearsed daily with fervour,” objected Bernstorff. “I have stood once or twice under the gallery at the back of the theatre and listened.”
Schultz was now a little more impressed than he wished to be or cared to show.
“Moreover the play’s motive is the old fable of Iphigenia. Iphigenia is to be sacrificed with the acquiescence of her father. The scene is the one in which Achilles-Königsmark or shall we say Königsmark-Achilles seeks to dissuade the Princess Sophia-Iphigenia from her proper obedience.”
Schultz twisted uncomfortable in his chair.
“But no doubt Her Highness supervises these rehearsals,” he argued.
“She does.”
“In that case the fervour you condemn will be no more than the scene requires.”
Bernstorff smiled.
“And in fact the dialogue is declamatory,” he admitted.
“Well then?
Chancellor Schultz spread out his hands. The choice of the scene may have been unfortunate. But if there was no paddling of hands, no faces cheek to cheek, no knee pressing amorously against knee, there was no great harm done — nothing at all events to make all this pother about.
But Bernstorff had not finished.
“The rehearsals are discreet. But they have brought two young people, both of unusual beauty, into a close acquaintanceship. The rehearsals under supervision have inspired a desire for meetings under no supervision at all.”
“And such meetings take place?”
“Every day,” said Bernstorff.
Schultz drew a long breath.
“I should have been told of this,” he said, but he had no doubt why he had not been told. Bernstorff would wish to make his assumption of high office memorable by some lightning stroke which would set his master in his debt.
“One of these days,” he added thoughtfully, “I shall have to tell you about Stechinelli. Meanwhile, where do these meetings take place?”
“In the chapel of the Palace,” Bernstorff replied. He explained with a note of acrimony in his voice: “A lime-tree grows in front of my office window. It darkens the room, which is inconvenient, but it makes a screen through which no one outside can look. Across the Court is the chapel and the entrance to the chapel is from the Court.”
“Well?” said Schultz.
“At six o’clock in the afternoon Philip Königsmark comes alone to the courtyard. He comes carelessly, sauntering, with an eye upon the windows. As soon as he thinks that no one is overlooking him, he slips into the chapel. And there he waits. He waits in His Highness’ gallery with the latticed windows. If you followed him in, a trifle surprised at so much devotion in a boy so modish, as I once did, you would see no one, you would hear no one. You would believe the chapel to be empty.
“And it is empty,” Schultz insisted.
“Until the Princess comes. She may come soon. She may not come for an hour. But in the end — yes, the Princess brings the sins of her fourteen years to the same throne of grace,” and Bernstorff laughed with satisfaction in the neatness of his phrases.
Schultz did not laugh. He was as glum as a man could be.
“And they stay long?” he asked.
“Half-past-seven is the hour for supper, as Your Excellency knows,” Bernstorff replied, “and young Königsmark must stand upon his duties behind His Highness’ great chair. But he comes to the chapel already dressed.”
“And doubtless,” Schultz continued — and the irony had passed now from Bernstorff’s voice into his, “you have been able, from that dark room which you are to exchange for mine, to hear something of their talk, perhaps to observe something of their conduct.”
Bernstorff’s sallow face flushed a dark red.
“My duty,” he began, “bade me forget my dignity.”
“You hid yourself,” Chancellor Schultz translated bluntly.
“In the pulpit,” Bernstorff admitted. “The young couple sat said by side on the chairs beneath me. It was — inconvenient. I suffered sharply from the cramp.”
Chancellor Schultz was not sorry to hear that. He permitted himself even to utter a little grunt of pleasure. It was indeed the only tiny morsel of pleasure to be extracted from the whole of this untimely episode.
“You heard them then?”
“Yes, I heard them,” said Bernstorff and he tittered at the absurdity of the conversation to which, with the cramp in his calves and the cold stone of the pulpit bruising his knees, he had been compelled to listen for a good half-hour.
“They talked like children, if indeed ever were children so serious. They were going to break down the barriers — he of course with a flashing sword whilst she waited. Together they were going to do noble things — they were not quite sure what — but things which would make a lovelier world for other people—”
“Yes, yes, yes,” Schultz interrupted roughly. Young people had dreams and were all the better for them. He felt uneasy, and a little ashamed at hearing their dreams profaned, ridiculed, made silly. He shook himself as if his clothes hung uncomfortably upon his limbs. Let the children laugh at their fine imaginings when they had grown up — but no one else, certainly not Chancellor Schultz who had many faults to reproach himself with, and certainly not Councillor Bernstorff who had more. They were sacred — the dreams of children — however quickly they might tarnish and fade. “And that was all?”
Bernstorff smiled.
“They were all soul,” he said summing up the conversations, “waiting unconsciously for the spark which would reveal to them that they were also — all body.”
And again Schultz was silent. The sentence was like a blow between the eyes. There was too much force and truth in it for argument. Yes, the moment would come, the spark would kindle and pass from one to the other. He looked at Bernstorff and nodded his head. It was a gesture of surrender.
“We are in time,” he said drawing a breath of relief. “We are in time.”
At that moment with a blare of horns, a great barking of dog
s and a clatter of hoofs, Duke George William and his huntsmen swirled joyously into the courtyard.
II. PHILIP THE PAGE
HER SERENE HIGHNESS, the Duchess of Celle, began to doubt her wisdom in selecting a scene from the Tragedy of Iphigenia at just the same time as did Chancellor Schultz. She was sitting in a small three-cornered room at the top of the Castle’s southern tower. The ceiling and walls were heavily decorated with golden images of the acanthus flower, but it had the homely and comfortable look of a parlour much in use. One of its windows commanded the park with its smooth beech trees and its grass as smooth; the other looked down a slope to the French garden of trim yew shrubs and glowing beds of flowers and horn- beam hedges, with a round pond in the middle, which shone in the sunlight like a mirror. Perronet had laid out that garden for her so that she might have at her elbow a piece of her native Poitou, but she had no eyes for it this morning. Neither for the garden nor the strip of embroidery which lay upon her knee.
She was forty-one years old in this summer; and whilst the beauty which had long ago captured Duke George William had ripened, she had gradually added to it a serene dignity exactly fitted to her new title and advancement. To Duchess Sophia over at Hanover she was “a little clot of dirt” — to her own people of Celle she was a Queen in the right of her devotion to their prosperity and happiness. However, there was very little of stateliness in her look at this moment. She was watching her young daughter with a loving amusement which waited only for an exclamation to break into a laugh.
“In trouble, darling?” she asked.
Sophia Dorothea, her feet drawn back under her chair, was bending over a copy-book and breathing heavily. Her dark brows were drawn together in a frown. She put down a word and crossed it out again and sucked her pencil and looked at the printed copy of Iphigenia, which lay beside the copy-book and finally threw the pencil down and sat up in her chair.
“Mother, let’s talk treason. German — is — a — barbarous language.” Her young voice rang out clear as the sound of a bell. She challenged the world to contradict her.
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 694