Part 17

We observe that Sidonie was not content with writing out a rough draft of her own encomiums, but that she also corrected the fair copy. Such proceedings require no comment. The indefatigable doctor composes more poems, and receives requests to plague this, that, and the other critic. No importuning was required in the case of the pious historian, Michaud, who spent thirty years of his life in writing the history of the Crusades; it was rendered superfluous by the intimacy of his relations with the authoress; his criticism was an enthusiastic one. At last Madame de Krüdener is able to write to a friend: "My health is much improved; I have been at balls eight nights running without being the worse for it. What happiness! I cannot tell you, my friend, how much I am made of; poems are showered on me, I am overwhelmed with attentions, people dispute the privilege of a word with me. It is a thousand times more than I deserve; but _Providence loves to overwhelm its children with benefits_, even when they do not deserve them.... I should look upon it as cowardice not to publish a work which in my opinion is a useful one; therefore I regard the journey to Paris in the light of _a duty_; for my heart, my imagination, everything, draws me to the Lake of Geneva."

She went to Paris, and _Valérie_ was published in December 1803. All Madame de Krüdener's guns were primed, ready to salute the book. Not one missed fire. All the bells of criticism tolled. Like a good general, she was on the field of battle herself. She drove incognito from one fashionable shop to another, asking for hats, or scarfs, or feathers, or wreaths, or ribbons _à la Valérie_. When this elegant and still beautiful lady drove up in her carriage and asked with such assurance for these articles of her own invention, the shopkeepers did their utmost to come to an understanding of what she wanted and to provide it. And when astonished shop-girls denied the existence of such wares, Madame de Krüdener smiled so kindly and pitied them so much because they did not know _Valérie_ that she quickly transformed them into eager canvassers of readers for her book. She drove on with her purchases to other shops, and in a few days had produced amongst the shopkeepers such a furious competition in articles _à la Valérie_ that her friends, when they went at her instigation to ask for these wares, became innocent accomplices in her stratagem, and were constrained to bear witness to her triumph.

Now Madame de Krüdener writes to her friend: "The success of _Valérie_ is complete and unprecedented. An acquaintance said to me the other day: 'There is something _supernatural_ about such success.' Yes, my friend, it is the will of Heaven that this purer morality should be diffused throughout France, where as yet it is not so well understood."

Hardly had this feverish craving for celebrity been satisfied, this refinement of hypocrisy been brought to perfection, when Madame de Krüdener's genuine conversion took place. It came about in this wise. Sitting at the window of her house in Riga one day in 1805, she was in the act of bowing to one of the most favoured of her numerous admirers when the unfortunate man was seized with a fit of apoplexy and fell down dead. This incident preyed on her mind. Her melancholy, however, did not render her independent of earthly requirements, and she sent one day for a shoemaker to measure her for a pair of shoes. The man came. At first she hardly noticed him, but while he was kneeling in front of her she was struck by his happy expression. "Are you happy?" she asked him. "I am the happiest man in the world," was the reply. This shoemaker was one of the "awakened," a member of the community of Moravian Brethren. He had an aversion to work, and lived at home with his mother, Frau Blau, one of the worst religious hypocrites in Riga, who gained her livelihood by imposing upon the rich members of her sect. The sight of the shoemaker's happiness made such an impression on Madame de Krüdener's susceptible soul that she again and again visited his mother and him. At their house she made acquaintance with many more of the Moravian Brethren, and was soon as enthusiastic a Christian believer as any one of them. A gradual, slow training in Christianity would not have been possible in her case, but the doctrine of sudden conversion and entire change of life was one well calculated to have a strong effect upon her, now that she was over forty.

The same ardour which she had exhibited in the passions of her youth she now expended on the passion of her maturer years. Both her words and actions are henceforth inspired by religious enthusiasm. She divides her time between devotional exercises and charitable deeds. Her whole previous life seems to her to have been nothing but error and foolishness. Her whole life now is but one feeling, love to her Saviour. "I have not a thought except to please, to serve, to sacrifice everything to Him through whose grace I desire nothing except to be allowed to love all my fellow-men, and who shows me nothing in the future but glimpses of bliss. Oh, if men but knew the happiness of religion, how they would shun every care except care for their souls!"

Such was Madame de Krüdener's state of mind when, travelling once more in the autumn of 1806, she met and became intimate with Queen Louisa of Prussia. It was not long after the battle of Jena. The Queen, in her deep dejection, was peculiarly open to the persuasion of Madame de Krüdener's glowing religious eloquence, and Madame de Krüdener gained great influence over her, and through her over the King. We have proof of this in a letter from the Queen written some time afterwards. "I owe to your kind heart a confession which I am certain will cause you to shed tears of joy. It is that you have made me better than I was. Your straightforward words when we talked together on the subject of religion and Christianity have made the deepest impression upon me."

Madame de Krüdener went to Karlsruhe on purpose to see Jung-Stilling. Jung-Stilling had made a literary reputation for himself by the book in which he gave an account of his early life as a pious journeyman tailor. As a medical student at Strasburg he had associated with Goethe and won his favour. After practising successfully as an oculist, and holding a professorship of political economy, he had become a kind of prophet among the Pietists of South Germany, and was honoured as a saint by the pious court-circle and nobility of Baden. His character was not strong enough to stand such adulation, and he had degenerated into a vain and unreliable old twaddler, who boasted of his knowledge of the other world and revealed the hidden mysteries and designs of God by means of interpretations of the Revelation of St. John. To Jung-Stilling Madame de Krüdener now did homage as her master and guide. He had a weakness for the admiration of great ladies, and a close friendship sprang up between them. The venerable ghost-seer was at this time writing his _Theorie der Geisterkunde_ (Theory of Spirits). Madame de Krüdener was firmly persuaded of the truth of one of his wise predictions, namely, that the millennium was to begin in the year 1816, or 1819 at latest.

Not long after this visit to Karlsruhe she met Queen Hortense, who was so fascinated by her that she gave her a private audience every morning. But it would seem that Madame de Krüdener ingratiated herself in this case chiefly by reading to the Queen the manuscript of a novel she was writing, _Othilde_ by name, the pious moral of which did not prevent its being a "truly delicious" love-story.

She was now a pattern of every kind of Christian humility. When at Karlsruhe she climbed up to the dirtiest garrets to do deeds of charity. One day when she found a servant-girl crying in the street because she had been sent out to sweep, the great lady took the broom and swept the pavement herself.

The spiritual condition of Alsace at this time was somewhat remarkable. To some of its most intellectually advanced inhabitants the irreligion of the Revolution had communicated itself, but the great mass of the Protestant population had been terrified into a kind of religious mysticism, the distinctive feature of which was the belief in the near approach of the millennium. The most eminent clergyman in Alsace was the universally respected Pastor Oberlin of Waldbach, a man of the most sincere piety, who was, however, crazy enough to draw maps of the kingdom of heaven and publish a plan of the heavenly Jerusalem. He knew the exact order of precedence of the blessed dead, and was in regular communication with departed friends. Madame de Krüdener, provided with letters of introduction to this gentleman and others of the same persuasion, made her appearance in Alsace.

She had heard that a German pastor at Markirch, named Fontaines, had the power of working miracles, and that in his house lived a famous prophetess, Marie Kummer (generally known as "die Kummerin"), a hysterical Würtemberg peasant woman, who held constant communication with angels, and in her trances revealed the will of God. And she had also been told that Fontaines had expressed a wish to make the acquaintance of the divinely inspired lady from the North whom Marie Kummer had seen in a vision. In June 1808 Madame de Krüdener arrived at his house. He welcomed her solemnly on the threshold with the words of John to Jesus: "Art thou that one that should come, or do we look for another?" Flattered and delighted, Madame de Krüdener remained under the roof of this man, who was now generally supposed to be her lover. They spent their time in the study of the Revelation of St. John, and every day the lady listened to Marie Kummer's prophecies of the high mission and the great future awaiting her, and also Fontaines, who was to be her apostle. She wrote to a friend: "I am the happiest creature in the world.... The fulness of time is at hand; great calamities are about to happen, but you need not be afraid. The kingdom of the Lord is near, and He Himself will reign upon the earth for a thousand years." She goes on to say: "Imagine that I have literally _experienced miracles_. You have no conception of the happiness felt by those who give themselves entirely to Jesus Christ. He in His goodness and mercy has given me the distinct promise that He will answer the prayers I offer for my relations and friends."

It is not to be denied that the language in which she describes this new ardent devotion has a suspicious similarity to the language of a love which is not at all heavenly. Of God she writes: "It is impossible for me to tell what tenderness burns in my heart, how many tears I shed, what words tremble through my whole being when I feel myself loved thus--I, poor worm of the earth! I said to God the other day: 'What can I say to Thee, O my Beloved! (_O mon bien-aimé!_) Would that I could shout over the whole earth, and through all the heavens, how much I love Thee! Would that I could lead not only all men, but all the rebel spirits back to Thee!"

In the Vatican hangs a picture by a modern Italian painter which represents a nun kneeling at the feet of Christ, who returns her tearful gaze with the tenderest of glances. One involuntarily thinks of this picture when reading Madame de Krüdener's outbursts during her period of divine intoxication. She writes on another occasion: "All we have to do is to love, and to persuade others to love, the kindest, the best, the tenderest of all fathers." During her pious wanderings about the country, preaching and converting, she was joined by a young missionary. He was one of the many in whom she was afterwards disappointed, but shortly after he came to her she describes their feelings when worshipping together in such words as these: "What emotion! Can you imagine the bliss of our communions? No language can express it. We could not even hear the words spoken." It is impossible in reading this not to think of a passage in the writings of one of Madame de Krüdener's early admirers: "Lezay prétend (dit Chênedollé) que Madame de Krüdener dans les moments les plus décisifs avec son amant fait une prière à Dieu, en disant: Mon Dieu, que je suis heureuse! Je vous demande pardon de l'excès de mon bonheur?" He adds: "Elle reçoit ce sacrifice comme une personne qui va recevoir sa communion."[1] Similar pious emotionalism is, however, common to all the mystics of the day.

Madame de Krüdener did not know that both Fontaines and Marie Kummer had a past which was anything but confidence-inspiring.

At the outbreak of the Revolution Fontaines, then aged twenty, was a violent Jacobin; during the Reign of Terror he cast in his lot with Eulogius Schneider, and was one of the most eager of that man's followers in denouncing the clergy, closing churches, plundering Strasburg Cathedral, &c. He held orations in the temples of Reason, got himself appointed a Protestant pastor, married, and behaved in such a scandalous manner that he was compelled to give up his charge. Nevertheless, when the reaction against the Revolution set in, he received another call, as representative of the extremest Pietism, and soon gained a great reputation as an exorciser of evil spirits. When it came out that he had managed in three years (1801-4) to make away with almost all the means of his congregation, he had to retire into obscurity for a time. In 1805 he received a call to Markirch. There, two years later, he took Marie Kummer into his house. This woman, though she was a simple vagrant, and had changed her religion several times, was held in great reverence by the Pietists. A certain Pastor Hiller consecrated her to be the bride of Jesus. In the course of time she bore this same pastor a son, who was destined, they declared, to become the witness mentioned in the third verse of the eleventh chapter of the Book of Revelation. The worldly-minded civil authorities none the less condemned Marie to the pillory and a term of imprisonment. When she came out of prison she proclaimed the end of the world to be at hand, and advised a general emigration of believers to the Holy Land. She actually persuaded a number of foolish persons to set out with her for Jerusalem, and to entrust her with the travelling funds; but when they reached Vienna she was taken into custody. After a term of imprisonment there she went back to Alsace. The comet of 1807 furnished her with a pretext for sensational prophecies of plague, famine, and war, and on hearing the report of the arrival of the Russian baroness she had a vision, in which that lady's high destiny was revealed to her.

When Madame de Krüdener had lived in the edifying company of Fontaines and Marie Kummer for fully eight months, Fontaines began to feel that he was no longer safe in Markirch. Tales of his past life were being circulated. Marie Kummer consequently had a vision in which she received a divine command to go to Würtemberg and found a colony of true Christians there. The three at once set out. At their religious meetings in Würtemberg Fontaines was always dressed in black, Madame de Krüdener in blue, and Marie in grey. Besides prophesying the approaching end of the world they incautiously inveighed against the ungodly sovereign of the country, who had introduced a new liturgy. This led to Marie's imprisonment and the banishment of the other two. Marie joined Fontaines and Madame de Krüdener in Baden as soon as she was released, and there they again lived in intimate companionship, occupying themselves as before with devotional exercises and prophesying.

Madame de Krüdener, called to Riga by her mother's last illness, held meetings there too, at which she interpreted the Book of Revelation and dispensed the sacrament. At these meetings she was assisted by the pious shoemaker's pious mother, Frau Blau, in her character of prophetess. Towards the close of the year 1811 Madame de Krüdener returned to Karlsruhe. Fontaines had by this time been ordered off, but she continued to work in company with Marie Kummer, who was looked up to as a great prophetess because she had foretold the victory of the white over the black angel, and had announced that the people from the north of whom Jeremiah had written would presently make their appearance. The Russian war established her reputation, and after the news of the conflagration of Moscow came she was regarded as a positively sacred personage.

There is not the slightest doubt that Madame de Krüdener was entirely persuaded of the purity of her motives, and that she acted in all sincerity. She is not merely converted herself; she is possessed by a passion for converting. Again and again the idea of converting the very denizens of hell and the devil himself occurs to her. It was but natural that she had to bear much and painful misunderstanding on the part of those who were unable to believe in the change that had taken place in her. Even her own mother despised her and stopped writing to her. But no misunderstanding cooled her enthusiasm, which made an impression even upon rationalists. One of these, Sonntag, the chief dignitary of the Livonian church, who had carefully observed her behaviour at Riga in 1811, wrote many years afterwards that, though in his official capacity he had been obliged to sever his connection with her, he owed it to her to bear witness that she showed the deepest, purest, most active, most self-forgetful and self-sacrificing sympathy with every suffering and need of humanity.

Soon she, too, receives the gift of prophecy. It was not an uncommon gift at this time. Both De Maistre and Bonald prophesied the restoration of the royal family many years in advance, thereby winning considerable renown. But whenever their prophecies are of a more definite nature, it happens with them as with the prophecies of old--they do not come to pass. De Maistre, for instance, writing on the subject of the proposed seat of government in America, says: "I may safely wager ten to one that the town will not be built, or that it will not be called Washington, or that the Congress will not meet there;" which three things all happened. In 1807 he wrote (_Opuscules_, p. 98): "Nothing can restore the power of Prussia. This famous edifice, built of blood, filth, false coin, and pamphlets, has collapsed in one moment and is gone for ever." He also prophesied that the restoration of the Bourbons would take place quite peacefully, without foreign interference, and that autocratic rule and the power of the aristocracy would in the end be strengthened by the Revolution, &c., &c. Some of Bonald's prophecies (in his _Théorie du Pouvoir_) were rather more successful, for the simple reason that he who prophesies the end of the transient, prophesies what is certain to come true some day; there are things concerning the future to which Horatio's words apply: "There needs no ghost come from the grave to tell us this."

But Madame de Krüdener's prophecies attracted more attention than those of any of her contemporaries. In October 1814 she wrote from Strasburg to a lady at the Russian court: "We shall soon witness the punishment of guilty France, a punishment which Providence would have spared it if it had continued to bow beneath the cross." How was it possible, after Napoleon's return from Elba, to interpret this otherwise than as a mysterious prevision of this return?

She also wrote: "The storm is approaching; the lilies which the Eternal had preserved--the pure, delicate, symbolic flowers which had been crushed by a sceptre of iron, because such was the will of the Eternal--those lilies, which ought to have pled their cause before the tribunal of the purity and love of God, have only shown themselves to disappear." What could this be but a prophecy of the flight of Louis XVIII?

The fame of these predictions sped over Europe. One of the first to hear of them was Czar Alexander. Worn out by the campaigns of 1813 and 1814, tormented by an uneasy conscience, grieved by the sudden death of his only child and by the desertion of its mother, a lady who had been his mistress for eleven years, but whose affections were now transferred to one of his aides-de-camp, enfeebled by excesses of every kind, Alexander was exactly in the condition to be influenced by pious mysticism.[2]

He had been brought up without any religious education whatever. When, during his depression after the capture of Moscow, Prince Galitzin recommended him to seek comfort in the study of the Bible, such a thing as a Russian Bible was not to be found in the Winter Palace, and he had to be contented for the time with a French translation of the Vulgate. The proceedings at the Congress of Vienna, the faithlessness of Austria, the ingratitude of France, and the animosity aroused by his favourite project, the rehabilitation of Poland, in that country itself, had completely shaken his faith in human nature. The surprise of Napoleon's return from Elba had shaken his nerves. From the moment of his mistress's desertion he came under the influence of his wife, the Empress Elizabeth, who in her deserted condition had long ago taken refuge in melancholy mysticism. She persuaded him when he was at Karlsruhe to visit Jung-Stilling and learn what was his opinion of the political situation, viewed from the standpoint of the Book of Revelation. Jung-Stilling assured him that Napoleon was none other than the Apollyon mentioned in the ninth chapter of that book, and that the millennium was at hand.

In 1814, at the court of Baden, Madame de Krüdener had made the acquaintance of the Czarina, and since then the ardent prophetess had carried on a correspondence with one of Elizabeth's maids of honour who had an enthusiastic admiration for the Czar, with the full intention that her letters should be shown to him. Certain sentences in them were unmistakably written for his reading, such as the following: "What you tell me of the Czar's great and noble qualities I have long known. I know, too, that the Lord will grant me the happiness of seeing him--that the Prince of Darkness will in vain endeavour to prevent our meeting. I have much to say to the Czar." Immediately after the despatch of the letter here quoted from, Madame de Krüdener moved to Heilbronn; the Russian headquarters were presently transferred there, and late in the evening of the 4th of June 1815, heedless of the aide-de-camp's rebuffs, she made her way, unannounced, into the Czar's presence, and remained closeted with him for three hours. When she left him, Alexander's eyes were full of tears, and he was much agitated. Soon her influence over him was complete. They would shut themselves up together for half a day at a time, praying, reading the Bible, and discussing theological problems.

The days immediately preceding the battle of Waterloo they spend at Heidelberg, occupied in studying the Psalms. The intelligence of the reverses at Ligny and Quatre-Bras on the 16th and 17th of June reaches Alexander when he is thus employed; the Psalms console him and convince him of the justice of his cause. He prays and fasts. On the 18th of June the battle of Waterloo is fought. Alexander immediately sets out for Paris, but with the understanding that Madame de Krüdener is to follow promptly. His greatest grief at this moment is that his brother Constantine is not converted too. Before leaving Heidelberg our prophetess visits the prisoners who are awaiting their sentence of death and preaches to them with great effect; then she follows the Czar, whose Christian disposition affords her intense satisfaction.