The pair had just reached the French garden, when Bernstorff the Chancellor dismissed his secretary, took his hat and his walking-stick, and paid a visit to ex-Chancellor Schultz. He found the old man smoking a long curved pipe with a china bowl in an arbour at the bottom of his garden, the Aller singing over its stones at his elbow, and the sunlight glowing upon his flowers.
“Aha, my friend!” he said. “Do you need old Schultz’s help so soon? Sit down by my side and let me hear!”
Gottlieb Bernstorff sat down.
“It is a phrase you used to me yesterday.”
“Indeed?” said Schultz, puffing at his pipe.
“I shall be glad if you will explain it to me.”
“I must know what it is first.”
“You said ‘I shall have to tell you about Stechinelli.’”
Schultz smiled slyly.
“I see, my friend. Someone else has repeated that phrase to you since.”
Bernstorff’s face grew red.
“I am not admitting that. I did not interrupt you when you used it, for we were talking of more important things. But I laid it up on my memory to ask you for its meaning at a more convenient season. The only Stechinelli I ever heard of is Master of the Post House and a rich man.”
Schultz blew out a cloud of tobacco smoke from his mouth and began with a trifle of malicious enjoyment.
“That’s the fellow. Stechinelli was a beggar in Venice which, as you know, His Highness frequently visited in his younger days. Stechinelli’s pitch was on the steps of the Church of Santa Maria della Salute and there His Highness used to give him money and talk to him. Stechinelli was a clever fellow with sharp wit, and in the end His Highness took him to his lodging, sent for a tailor to dress him and carried him back to Celle. Here he advanced the man from post to post, setting great store upon the shrewdness of his judgment. But beggars on horseback, my dear Bernstorff, are apt to lose their heads before they have learnt to keep their seats. Stechinelli became a little overbearing, he took too much upon himself and on these occasions, His Highness would take him to a cupboard where his old beggar’s clothes were kept upon a frame, ready for him to wear again.”
Schultz left Bernstorff to make the proper application of that story for himself, and went on: “There’s a point which I should have recommended to your attention yesterday and I take the opportunity of doing it now. His Highness is, as we know, tractable and easy-going to a fault but, like all such men, he has moments of obstinacy over which no persuasion will prevail. Once he has made up his mind, nothing, not even the prayers of his wife nor the Princess will succeed in changing it. It is something to remember.”
“Yes. For it might help as well as hinder,” said Bernstorff thoughtfully and with a livelier note in his voice. It had been galling to her old Schultz roll his tongue round that story of Stechinelli, but it had been well worthwhile.
Schultz shrugged his shoulders.
“You will hardly say so, when it happens. A weak man stubborn — he outmules the mules!”
Yet mulishness might help. Old Schultz never had seen further than the end of his nose. Mulishness — His Highness’s mulishness — might be priceless, in such matters, say as the mooted marriage of Sophia Dorothea and young Augustus William of Wolfenbüttel. His Highness was only vaguely uncomfortable about it now. A little work must be done, Chancellor’s work, gradual, insinuating work, untiring work, work that slipped a word in here, an unhappy analogy there, and never misused an opportunity, until mulishness rounded and perfect, impervious to the tears of women and the persuasions of friends, laid its ban upon that marriage.
Schultz watched the thin face of his successor sharpen and his eyes gleam and a curious brooding smile flicker about his lips; and Schultz felt a chill creeping about his heart. “There was no one else to fill the place,” he said to himself for the hundredth time but now for the first time in a panic. He had distrusted Bernstorff before; he was afraid of him now. So still the man sat, staring out into the garden and with a look so private.
Schultz’s discomfort flashed a warning to Bernstorff’s mind. He relaxed into an easier attitude.
“I thank you for the story of Stechinelli,” he said holding out his hand. “You have helped me.” Certainly he had taken too much upon himself yesterday, he had gratified his first taste of power with a violence too greedy, he had rushed like a bull, where he should have walked as daintily as a cat. “You have helped me too in another and even more important way.”
Bernstorff took his leave. He had been in the mind to write with a running pen an irrevocable narrative of the late events in Celle, but he was persuaded now to a deliberate approach. He moved from his cramped quarters in the Kalandgasse to a house in the broad Schuhstrasse which took the sun and was more commodious. He set up an establishment more suitable to a Chancellor and bought a couple of steady hacks in that country famous for its horses. Then he sent for Heinrich Muller, the soldier, who had attended upon him in the Castle Chapel.
“Heinrich Muller” he said, “you will have completed your service in a month’s time.”
Heinrich Muller saluted.
“I have need of a good servant who can keep his mouth shut.”
“I am no gossip,” said Muller.
“I have spoken to the Captain of the Guard. You can be seconded to me today,” and within a couple of days Heinrich Muller stood in the Chancellor’s livery.
Thus a week passed and even so the letter was not penned. But it was composed sentence by sentence and corrected and reshaped in his mind whilst he went about this reordering of his life. So that one afternoon when the work of the chancery was done, he locked his door and wrote it out without an erasure.
“A memorandum on the banishment of Philip Christopher, Count Königsmark from the Court of Celle with an account of a conversation bearing on a marriage between the Princess Sophia Dorothea and Prince Augustus William of Wolfenbüttel.”
Thus he pompously entitled it. Then he sealed it and put it into his pocket, and at nine o’clock that night, in his own house, he summoned Heinrich Muller and bade him close the door.
“You will take this letter and button it in a safe pocket.”
Heinrich Muller took the letter and fastened it within his coat.
“You will guard it with your life,” continued Bernstorff.
“Yes, Excellency.”
“You will saddle the best of my horses, and you will ride towards Hanover.”
“Yes, Excellency.”
There was not a question, not even a look of surprise in the face of His Excellency’s new servant.
“You will pass the Palace of Herrenhausen and a mile beyond, halfway between Herrenhausen and Hanover, you will come to a big house in the French style — Monplaisir.”
“Monplaisir, Excellency.”
“You can, with a reasonable care of my horse, arrive at Monplaisir at eight in the morning.”
“Without doubt, Excellency.”
“You will ask for Madame Platen. Fix that name in your memory, Heinrich Muller. For you must give that letter into her own hands.”
Bernstorff was watching his messenger with a covert anxiety. Even that stolid creature must be aware of the reigning mistress of Ernst Augustus and of the great share she took in moulding the policy of the Duchy of Hanover. The Chancellor was awaiting a gleam in inquietude in the man’s eyes, a movement of repugnance from so equivocal an errand. But there was not the quiver of a feature. He had the servant he wanted under his hand, a man without understanding and without curiosity — a living automaton. Bernstorff felt the pride of the Centurion in the Gospel. “I say to him ‘Go’ and he goeth.” He laughed in his relief and explained his laugh, though there was little need that he should.
“You will have to wait, my friend Muller, before you present the letter and very likely for many hours. The lady does not go to bed with the birds, unless it be the nightingale.”
“I am to wait for an answer?” asked Muller.
Muller saluted and departed from the room. Within the half- hour Bernstorff heard the hooves of his horse clack on the cobbles beneath the window, and, looking out, saw him pass steadily upon his way. He was lost in the shadows of the houses long before the clatter of his horse ceased to reverberate through the sleeping town.
Chancellor Bernstorff sat late that night, gaping with admiration at his own audacity. He was setting Celle under Hanover with deliberation and for his own game. Celle was to be the minister and servant to enhance the glamour of Hanover. Bernstorff had taken his first step in the long career of intrigue and treachery which was to bring him fortune and a dishonourable name. It culminated in the darkest tragedy of his age. Would he have hesitated on this night and sent another to recall his messenger, had he foreseen? Hardly. For within a week of taking office, he was betraying the master who had set him up in his high place. He was betraying him without compunction, and with only a little fear lest he be discovered before he had made himself his indolent master’s master.
He counted the miles which Muller was covering with “a reasonable care” for the valuable horse he rode. He would have left the town behind him now. Bernstorff heard the steady beat of hooves upon the dark and empty road.
VII. SOPHIA DOROTHEA GIVES A TASTE OF HER QUALITY
THE TINY SPARK of fear, however, became the next day a smouldering fire. He began to wonder whether old Schultz, smoking his big curved pipe in his garden, had guessed the secret of his policy. He imagined, when the Duke sent for him to discuss the peasants’ right to cut peat along the road to Hanover, that he would find an order for his arrest and an escort of the guards. On the second day, when Muller had not returned, the smouldering fire burst into a blaze. Madame Platen had scorned his proposal of an alliance between them. She was speaking of him openly and angrily as an impudent fellow who had grown, in a night, too big for his boots. Or she was making fun of him and reading aloud to her lover Duke Ernest Augustus, with a mock- pompous emphasis, passages from his pretentious memorandum. All that day when he was not shivering with fear, he was burning with shame.
His plight was the more unhappy since it was the night of the great entertainment in the theatre and he must sit with Their Highnesses in their box on the first tier and pretend enthusiasm for the amateurish bleatings of the citizens of Celle. There was just one item which distracted his thoughts and gave him a minute or two of malicious gaiety. The recitation of Christoph von Grimmelshausen’s “Ode to a Nightingale” by the Princess Sophia Dorothea.
Bernstorff enjoyed the recitation all the more because he heard in the girl’s clear and lovely voice a little note of mockery which betrayed the bitterness of her spirit.
“I am not the only tormented wretch in this sparkling little theatre,” he said to himself and found therein a trifle of consolation.
He turned to Duchess Eleonore.
“May I presume to felicitate Your Highness upon your choice of this poem,” he cried. “Could there be sentiments more sweet and sensible? Or spoken with a more exquisite discretion? One must be a great poet indeed to draw from the nightingale’s notes so charming a lesson of resignation to the will of God!”
Duchess Eleonore looked sharply at the Chancellor. Was he daring to rally her? The Duke, for his part, received the little speech with entire contentment.
“You are right, my good Bernstorff. A worthy poem and admirable principles. Obedience and gratitude. Inspired, Bernstorff, and spoken with feeling. My dear,” and his hand fell upon his wife’s and patted it, “the most excellent selection. Ode to a Nightingale! Ha!”
But it was the sharp glance of Duchess Eleonore which Bernstorff carried home with him from the theatre. The Duchess Eleonore was acute. The Duchess Eleonore was his enemy. And the Duchess Eleonore was beloved by her husband. To step between the Duke and the Duke’s love for his Duchess, to snap the thread of it! That night it seemed to him an impossible task which required the strength and the arrogance and the divine birth of a Hercules to undertake. But the next morning it seemed to him easy. For on the next morning whilst the town was still opening its shutters, and there were no cries in the market-place and no clatter in the streets, Muller returned.
He brought with him a packet which he refused to deliver to anyone but His Excellency in person. He was taken upstairs and found His Excellency leaning up in bed on his elbow and his face working.
“You have been the devil of a time,” said His Excellency roughly.
“Maybe,” answered Muller.
“You have something for me. Quick!”
Muller certainly had something for him, but quick was another matter. He carefully closed the door after the servant who had admitted him. Then he took three loud paces into the room, and three soft paces back to the door, which he threw open suddenly to make sure that the woman was not listening at the keyhole. Finally he came to the bedside and dropped upon the coverlet a sealed packet.
Bernstorff tore open the packet. A flat white cardboard box — that too sealed — tumbled out and there was a letter. Bernstorff cried: “Throw open the shutters, Muller! How d’you expect me to read in this gloom?”
Muller strode to the windows, opened them and latched back the shutters against the outside wall. Muller expected nothing ever. Bernstorff read:
“I have kept your messenger for a second day. I had the honour to show your letter this morning to an August Personage and he bids me send to you the enclosed present as a token of his high esteem...”
Bernstorff read no more for the moment. His fingers were scratching too greedily at the flat white sealed box. But he composed his face and mastered his fingers, for his messenger was still in his bedroom.
“That was well done, Muller,” he said. “I am pleased. I am very pleased. Go now and take your rest.”
Muller took the praise as stolidly as he had taken the order. He saluted in the military style.
“Excellency,” he said and turning right-about, he went from the room.
Bernstorff waited until the sound of his boots upon the stairs had ceased. Then he broke the seals and opened the cardboard case. A gold snuff-box, with a ruby set in a circle of diamonds upon the lid of it, dropped out. Bernstorff snatched it up with a little whoop of pleasure. He opened it and shut it and fondled it. He ran his fingers over the smooth gold and pricked them on the incrusted jewels. This was the beginning, the small beginning of a great fortune. Let him play his cards well, and land would come — acres and acres, woodland and grainland, and land where great profitable buildings could be set up like that fine new tallow-candle factory of George William.
He tucked the snuff-box under his pillow and resumed the reading of his letter.
The August Personage desired nothing more than the closest understanding with the Duchy of Celle and welcomed heartily this confidential channel of correspondence now for the first time opened. Many secrets which it would be indiscreet to circulate through the Chanceries could be exchanged to the mutual benefit of both powers. Let Bernstorff write with complete freedom, and the August Personage would express his gratitude with the generosity natural to him. And this section of the letter was extremely gratifying to the Chancellor.
Madame Platen thereupon turned her attention to the body of the letter. She had not read to the August Personage His Excellency’s diverting account of the punishment and expulsion of Philip Christopher Königsmark.
“That affaire du coeur was< an absurdity of children and it is advisable that the admirable secrecy with which Your Excellency suppressed it should be preserved. There is, as Your Excellency undoubtedly knows, an important Party in the State who allows no opportunity to escape her of heaping ridicule and derision on Madame the Frenchwoman and her daughter. The silly escapade therefore would be better forgotten.
“The August Personage agreed that the Wolfenbüttel alliance would be deplorable and he u
rged Your Excellency to defeat it. A marriage between his eldest son George Lewis and the Princess Sophia Dorothea would on the other hand be in the truest interest of them all. It would confirm indisputably the present contract that, at the end of the Duke of Celle’s life, his Duchy should be joined with Hanover, and the accession of wealth which would come with the Princess’s dowry would help forward the claim to an Electorate which the August Person was now pressing upon the Emperor.”
On the other hand, the important Party in the State, in plain words the Duchess Sophia, had loftier dreams. George Lewis indeed, had been persuaded against his will to solicit the hand of Princess Anne of England, and was within a few months to travel to London.
Madame Platen continued:
“But that arrangement will fail. Advices from London assure me that he will not be welcome there, nor is he of that engaging disposition which could triumph over so much ill- will. It will be a strange thing therefore if we, each of us working in our own way, do not in a year or two accomplish the other alliance.”
Bernstorff locked the letter away in his bureau, and dressed with more than his usual ceremony. For the sharp glance of Duchess Eleonore caused him, even in the midst of his pleasure, a few twinges of discomfort. He must make his peace with her forthwith and he knew no better way than to proffer his congratulations on the success of her entertainment. On reaching the Castle he sent a footman to ask her permission for him to wait upon her, and he was granted an interview in the small three-cornered parlour.
Sophia Dorothea was present during this interview and Bernstorff, wishing to make the most of the occasion, ventured to add his thanks to her for the pleasure which her recitation had given to him.
“It was the performance of an artist,” he said and he saw the girl smile and the colour rise in her cheeks. “It is extraordinary,” he added but not aloud, “that ever since the days of Nero, nothing gives so much pleasure to royal people as to be told that they are artists.”
Complete Works of a E W Mason Page 699