Part 18

In Paris her influence reaches its culminating point. The Czar calls upon her on the evening of her arrival. Her apartments in the Hôtel Montchenu are so situated that he can come to her at any hour of the day from the Elysée-Bourbon Palace by a private garden door. No dissipation, no amusement had now any temptation for the man whom the Parisians remembered as being so gay but a few years previously. "I am a disciple of Christ," he said; "I go about with the Gospel in my hands, and know nothing else." And Madame de Krüdener writes of him: "Alexander is the elect of God. He is treading the path of renunciation." Only language borrowed from the Apocalypse could express what she saw in him--a founder of the kingdom of Christ upon earth, an angel of peace with the flaming sword of power, the prince of light, &c, &c. Napoleon, on the other hand, she, like Adam Müller and his followers, believed to be the devil himself. Alexander was to restore the power of Christianity upon earth, and to obliterate the last trace of the Revolution and its deeds.

Alexander's reverence and gratitude knew no bounds. In the beginning of September a great review of 150,000 Russian troops was held at the Camp des Vertus in Champagne. Madame de Krüdener's presence could not be dispensed with. The Czar's carriage was sent for her early in the morning, and he received her, not like a favourite subject, but like a messenger from heaven, sent to lead his troops to victory. "Bare-headed, or wearing the little straw-hat which she generally carried hanging from her arm; her still fair hair hanging in plaits upon her shoulders, with a stray curl falling on her brow; dressed in a plain, dark robe, to which its cut and her bearing imparted elegance, and which was confined at the waist by a simple girdle--thus she arrived at dawn of day, thus she stood at the moment of prayer in front of the astonished army."[3]

About a year before this Alexander had read a book by the German mystic Franz von Baader, _On the Necessity Produced by the Revolution for a New and More Intimate Connection between Religion and Politics_. Under its influence he had formed a vague project for uniting the Christian monarchs of Europe in a mysterious alliance, which was to be in a very special manner commended to the protection of God; but at Vienna he had been obliged to give up all thoughts of carrying this project into effect. Now he discussed it with Madame de Krüdener. She entered into it eagerly, declaring that she herself had already, by the grace of God, conceived the very same idea. And who dare say that it is impossible or even unlikely that such an idea as this, _the plan of the Holy Alliance_, should have originated in the brain of a poor, silly woman, whose head had been turned by the amours of her youth and the religious enthusiasm of her later years? It is, as a matter of fact, more than probable that Europe and civilisation owe their thanks to her for it. A man who is distinctly inclined to undervalue her influence, and who is wrong where he denies it, Queen Louisa of Prussia's beloved brother, the Grand Duke of Mecklenburg-Strelitz, writes: "Madame de Krüdener never exercised the smallest influence over my angelic sister of Prussia, nor yet over the King, her husband, who judged this lamentably famous woman perfectly correctly. Of the Emperor Alexander she had, on the contrary, taken such complete possession that the Holy Alliance, which he proposed and succeeded in forming, may be regarded as entirely her work; you may be sure that I should not say this unless I were certain of it."

Some days after her arrival in Paris, Alexander said to Madame de Krüdener: "I am leaving France; but before my departure I shall publish a manifesto, acknowledging our gratitude to God the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost, for His protection, and calling on all nations to unite in common submission to the Gospel." With these words he handed her a paper. It was the draft of the compact between the three sovereigns. Capefigue, who actually saw this document, writes: "I have lying before me the rough draft of the compact; it is from beginning to end in the Emperor Alexander's handwriting, with corrections by Madame de Krüdener. The words _The Holy Alliance_ are written by that extraordinary woman." Thus even the name is of her devising. She chose it with a reference to the prophecies of the end of the world in the Book of the Prophet Daniel.

Having traced this woman's career from the very beginning, we know who and what she was; we have also some idea of what the Revolution was; consequently our first feeling is one of astonishment that these pious maxims and reminiscences of the Apocalypse written, with the same pen which wrote the Elegy to Sidonie, by the lady who a few years before was buying scarfs and hats _à la Valérie_, should have had power to stem the renewed impetus of the current of the Revolution for fifteen years. Not for fifteen years did inevitable evolution, the progress of science, the audacity of art, the rebellion of hearts, take shape in action which broke the charm.

The three monarchs "solemnly declare, in the name of the most holy and indivisible Trinity, that their intention in the present proclamation is to assert in face of the universe their irrevocable determination to be guided, both in the government of their own dominions and in their political relations with other governments, entirely by the rules of justice, love, and truth contained in the Christian religion. Far from being only applicable in private life, these prescriptions ought directly to influence the conduct of rulers, as indicating the only means of placing the institutions of society on a solid foundation and remedying their imperfections."

So much for the words of the compact. What was really sincere and benevolent intention on the part of the foolish imperial enthusiast was sagacious hypocrisy on that of his brother monarchs. Who does not know the rest? Who does not know what the Holy Alliance came to mean--the introduction of a general European reaction, in essence barbarism, in its outward form a lie? It was in the name of the Holy Alliance that, during the saddest decades of our century, even the very feeblest endeavours in the direction of intellectual and political liberty were checked or crushed.

The Alliance received the voluntary adhesion of the potentate who had most to gain from it, the Pope. Without any petty consideration of his own position as head of the Roman Catholic Church, Pius lauded to the skies the resolution of his compeers--Alexander, the Greek Pope; the King of Prussia, the Lutheran Pope; and the King of England, the Anglican Pope. At the Congress of Vienna he proposed a plan of restoration in comparison with which the dreams of all the reactionaries of other days paled and all previous attempts to restore pre-Revolutionary conditions sank into nothingness. With one stroke of the pen the existence of the Revolution and the Empire was blotted out. The Holy Roman Empire was to be restored, and along with it all the social conditions and institutions of the Middle Ages--tithes, church property, exemption of the clergy from taxation, and the Inquisition.

The last years of Madame de Krüdener's life present no events of historical interest. She became ever more sincerely and fanatically religious, and her desire to display her faith in deeds became ever more ardent. It was now the one desire of her heart and object of her life to help the poor and the sick. She preached to the poor, founded churches, and proclaimed the advent of the kingdom of God. But from the moment when her Christianity took a practical form the character of her position changed. The royal personages, the authorities, all the great, who as long as she remained the court lady had smiled upon her, instinctively divined an enemy in her as soon as she began to address herself to the people. On one occasion she traversed Switzerland from frontier to frontier in a sort of mad religious triumphal procession; the next time she visited that country she was driven out of one town after the other. At Basle, where she distributed tracts among the soldiers and according to her own account converted half the garrison, the infuriated clergy succeeded in having her expelled from the town. In Baden, where her charities during a famine were truly munificent, her house was surrounded by gendarmes, and the people who had sought refuge with her were dispersed. She was expelled from Lucerne by the police authorities. When she tried to make her way into France through Alsace, she was turned back, and was at the same time forbidden to return to Baden. She was finally conducted under police escort to the Russian frontier, being passed on by the Würtemberg to the Bavarian, by the Bavarian to the Saxon, by the Saxon to the Prussian police, and by these last handed over to the authorities of her own country. She had lost Alexander's favour for ever, partly because she had been much too communicative about the origin of the Holy Alliance, partly because of the mixed and often bad company in which she travelled about. The accounts which she gave in her religious periodicals and pamphlets of social evils, of the boundless distress of the poor and the unjust oppressions of their rulers, were denounced as socialism and communism. Christianity as she understood it could not but be obnoxious to the authorities. She was, moreover, foolish enough to express her enthusiastic sympathy with the Greek war of independence in a very incautious manner, and presumptuous enough to declare openly that the Emperor, as founder of the Holy Alliance, was in duty bound to place himself in the forefront of a crusade against Turkey. Cast off by Alexander, she left St. Petersburg, and from this time onwards lived, as a missionary, a life of self-inflicted penance. She underwent all kinds of hardships, suffering voluntarily herself, and alleviating the sufferings of others whenever it was possible. She died in 1824 while on a missionary expedition in the Crimea.

An interesting contrast to the French-Russian Madame de Krüdener is to be found in the German-Russian Princess Galizin, a lady who belongs to the end of the eighteenth, as Madame de Krüdener does to the beginning of the nineteenth century. Madame de Krüdener's characteristics stand out more sharply on such a background as the life of Madame de Galizin. The Princess's is a genuinely German type of character. She is as simple as her younger contemporary is polished and complex; she is ingenuous and at the same time sentimental, full of soul and wanting in brain-power. Her husband was, like Krüdener, a man of the world. He was a friend and admirer of Diderot; it was, indeed, Diderot who first inspired the Princess with the desire and the courage to study, but she soon became that philosopher's ardent opponent. As careless of her feminine attractions as Madame de Krüdener was coquettish, Madame de Galizin had her head shaved to make it impossible for her to go into society, and from the age of twenty-four lived a life of seclusion. To cure herself entirely of egoism she "offered to the God of love the sacrifice of her understanding." As an instance of her ignorance of the world it may be mentioned that, when her son desired to enter the military service of a foreign country, she applied first to the Prussian, then to the Austrian commander-in-chief for permission to send along with him a tutor who was to guard him against the irregular habits of military life, and was astonished by receiving the answer from both that it was impossible for an officer to join the army accompanied by a male governess of this description.

In spite of Princess Galizin's warm-hearted sincerity, her tone is as pietistically supernatural as Madame de Krüdener's is mystically sensual.[4]

In Madame de Krüdener we have before us a being whose original equipment would seem to mark her as destined to act some important part. She possesses a vigour of life and a vividness of emotion sufficient for two ordinary human beings; only it is not healthy vigour and emotion, but an inward restlessness, an inward fire, which gives out sparks incessantly on every side. There is in her an original capital of Russian volatility and pliability, German sentimentality, French sense of proportion, and "Asiatic" sensual charm.

She enters life with no thorough education behind her, no serious aim before her, with a strong craving for happiness, and a poetic turn--predestined, therefore, to live in illusions. When she finds herself surrounded by admirers she gives herself up to dizzy enjoyment of this gratification, and begins to regard herself as a superior being. As long as she preserves outward fidelity to her husband she lives in the illusion that she is the heroine of duty. When she becomes unfaithful, she chooses a new model, and is transformed in her own estimation into another ideal, the ideal fair sinner. She writes of the ladies of Geneva, that they have neither the charm of virtue nor "the charm of sin." This latter she herself acquired. She continued to be ideal in so far as it is ideal to be the first of one's own species, unique. On this supposition of her own ideality is founded her belief that it was she who brought happiness (orders and titles) to her husband.

All illusion consists in a wrong association of cause and effect--religious illusion like the rest. But religious illusion is a double illusion; the individual subject to it does not trace the effect to its cause, but to a vague origin, the centre of existence--illusion number one--and in the centre of existence he places, not, as he imagines, the Deity, but himself--illusion number two. The beautiful wife believes that her husband receives his decorations direct from God, but also that she herself is the cause of God's bestowing them. She is the real cause, God is the means by which she works. She continues to lead her gay life as long as it continues to provide her with illusions. But a clever woman, with highly-strung nerves, tires in the long run of such a life, tires of the new admirer's jealousy of his predecessor, and of fooling herself and another for, say, the tenth time with the words: "You are the only man I have ever loved." After this life has lost its illusions, and existence for the time being its charm, the possibility of a new illusion presents itself. Madame de Krüdener regards the apoplectic shock which killed her lover in the same light as St. Augustine, Pascal, and Luther regarded similar occurrences. It is a hint, a warning to her. The happy shoemaker tells her of his certainty of being one of the elect of God. When she learns the secret of his happiness, she resolves that she too will be one of the elect.

Faith in God is in her case the satisfaction of the desire to be elect, to be the chosen one. She believes herself to be converted, and is, at the bottom of her heart, what she was. When she puts into the mouth of the Deity the words in which He assures her of His love, what is she doing but once again writing letters and elegies to Sidonie? The echo of her own self-adoration sounds to her like a voice from heaven, and she thanks God now as she did before for being thus distinguished--by herself. What she desires now as before is to be loved. As Chateaubriand proceeded to his earthly Alhambra via the earthly Jerusalem, she seeks her heavenly Alhambra by the way of the heavenly Zion. The only difference in their cases is, that he wishes to deceive others; she deceives herself. She is a coquette; so is he, and so is Lamartine; they are haughty coquettes, and she is a humble one.

What chiefly distinguishes her from them is, however, not her character, but her gifts and her feminine nature. Chateaubriand, as a man, has at least a sufficient glimmering of science to make it impossible for him to be imposed on by miracle-workers and village sibyls. Madame de Krüdener is a woman, and in a reactionary age the definition holds good: Woman is the natural prey of the priests. Destitute of any scientific basis of thought, she sooner or later, except in rare, unusually favourable circumstances, becomes a prey to her enthusiasm, which does not know on what to expend itself, to her vague longings after she knows not what, to her cowardice, which is terrified by the calamities of life, to her various illusions; and all these powers--enthusiasm, longing, fear, and imagination--deliver up their victim bound hand and foot as a prey to the Church, whose authority has, moreover, been imprinted upon her soul by her education from her earliest youth. Such was the case with Madame de Krüdener. All that she comes into contact with of the intellectual life of her day--its great wars of liberation, its research, its philosophy, its enthusiasm for enlightenment--passes by her without being understood; the one quality of the spirit of her age that she understands and appropriates is its dissoluteness. When the reaction against the 18th century sets in, and it is, naturally, first and foremost taxed with impiety and frivolity, Madame de Krüdener immediately joins in the cry, because she herself has had no eyes for anything else in it, has comprehended nothing in it but its frivolousness and loose morality.

The reaction gains strength; it soon has a literature of its own, a literature treating of all those supernatural things which the authors persuade their readers that they believe in. They write whole volumes about thrones and principalities, cherubim and seraphim; they appear to be in sober earnest, but it never occurs to them that any human being will take them seriously. After any amount of ability has been displayed in the championing of tradition, there appears a woman who is simple enough to take everything literally, to believe that Marie Kummer has talked with angels, and that Fontaines has had such supernatural visions as it was the height of the fashion to describe in verse. Poets had begun to hymn the praises of the miracle-worker and the prophet--a poor naïve Magdalen takes them at their word, believes in the miracles which are shown her, and tries her hand at prophesying. We are preparing to shake our heads with a smile, when we perceive that the powers of the day are taking her seriously. She herself becomes a power. Chateaubriand, who neither believes in her nor with her, but who believes in her influence, tries to gain her support for his political projects, but in vain. She has but one desire, to restore to Christianity that authority which the Revolution had destroyed. In her eyes the Revolution has only accomplished one deed, the overthrow of sacred tradition; she, for her part, desires to do only the one, opposite, deed--to give back to Christianity its world-overshadowing power.

Alexander takes up the idea; the other powers adopt it as a useful political lever. As long as her sole desire is to vindicate the _authority_ of Christianity, as long as she aims at improving and converting the nations _from above_, and in concert with their sovereigns, Madame de Krüdener stands upon the pinnacle of honour and glory. But the revulsion comes. The consistent development of her religious tendency compels her to attempt a conversion of the nations _from below_, to go forth among them and, after the manner of the old apostles, practise Christianity in action instead of merely proclaiming it as doctrine. What childishness! So naïve is she that she believes the potentates will regard her new endeavours with the same favour which they showed to her earlier ones. She does not understand that authority dreads all interference with its own principle except official interference. From the moment when she begins really to act as a Christian, she is treated as a revolutionist. In the feeling of the universal brotherhood of humanity which inspires her, and in the enthusiasm with which she pleads the cause of the poor and the oppressed, the champions of authority see proof that she is--a socialist and a communist.

And thus it fell to Madame de Krüdener's lot to give practical proof of what the rehabilitation of Christianity as authority meant. For it was only as _authority_, as _power_, as _order_, that Christianity was wanted. It was employed as the police, the army, the prisons were employed, to keep everything quiet and support the principle of authority. From the moment when it began to be regarded as a personal matter, as a thing in itself, and to be practised in a manner which threatened to produce social disturbances, from that moment it was _disorder_, and the authorities expedited it, in the person of Madame de Krüdener, as promptly as possible from frontier to frontier.[5]

[1] A manuscript of Chênedollé's, quoted by Sainte-Beuve in _Derniers Portraits_, p. 290.

[2] Chateaubriand, _Congrès de Vérone_, i. 147.

[3] Sainte-Beuve, from the account of an eye-witness.

[4] Katerkamp, _Denkwürdigkeiten aus dem Leben der Fürstinn Amalia von Galitzin_, Münster, 1828.

The best idea of her religious enthusiasm is to be gained from such a production as the following beautiful little poem:--

GEBET DER LIEBE.

Liebe! lehre uns beten, dass uns erhöre die Liebe. O der Liebe vereintes Gebet ist Quelle der Liebe, Quelle des ewigen Lebens und unaussprechlicher Wonne! Schwester, rufe mir zu: "O Bruder! Bitten der Liebe Sende dem Vater für mich--ich sende Bitten der Liebe Täglich dem Vater für dich." O Schwester! der Bitten nicht eine Kann an die Liebe, von Liebe, für Liebe umsonst seyn.]

[5] Sources: Charles Eynard, _Vie de Madame Krüdener_, vols. i. and ii.; Sainte-Beuve, _Portraits de Femmes; Derniers Portraits; Deutsche Rundschau_ for November and December 1899.

IX

LYRIC POETRY: LAMARTINE AND HUGO

When the Hundred Days were over, and Louis XVIII, had returned for the second time, a mixed feeling, in which melancholy was the chief ingredient, took possession of the French people. Their king's first return had partaken of the appearance of a recall by the nation. But, seeing that he himself had made no attempt whatever to resist Napoleon with the troops which remained faithful to him, it was not possible to disguise the fact that he had been brought back by the bayonets of foreign armies. Hence in the eyes of the great majority his second accession bore the appearance of a humiliation inflicted upon France. But, on the other hand, it meant the restoration of lawful liberty after the terrible military despotism under which France had now sighed for so many years.

To literature the restoration of the monarchy was, to all appearance at least, a herald of liberty. After the lapse of twenty-five years, free discussion of ideas was again possible. The heavy hand which had lain so crushingly on the press had been removed. The fettered intellects and suppressed ideas were free to bestir themselves; men were at liberty to investigate into and judge the past, the Empire as well as the Revolution; and no great hindrances were placed in the way of their deliberating the future of France.

They were free to do it, but had they any inclination? If they had, it was of the slightest. The mood of France was the mood which follows on a long illness or on a war which has ended in defeat. Not that men longed for redress on the field of battle. Towards the close of Napoleon's reign no echo was awakened in their hearts when the cannon in front of the Invalides proclaimed a victory. They longed for peace, as the sick man, exhausted by blood-letting, longs for rest.