‘Since I saw you last, the events of my life have followed each other in as quick a succession as the circumstances that gave them birth. You are aware of my having accompanied Prince Schwartzenberg on his mission to Paris. I was still there when the King of Rome was born, and I was selected to carry the news to our emperor.’
‘Yes,’ I replied, ‘and I read in all the newspapers that you made that journey of three hundred and twenty leagues [about nine hundred and sixty miles] in four days and a half.’
‘That’s easily explained. As far as Strasburg, I had the race-horses of the prince, and from the Austrian frontier I had the horses of his brother, Prince Joseph, from stage to stage, as far as Vienna.
‘I’ll spare you the particulars of my stay in Paris. It was a perfect whirl of excitement from beginning to end. Society was the brilliant reflex of the astounding prosperity of France, of her numerous victories, and her enthusiasm for everything pertaining to art. Our Austrian legation met with a specially cordial welcome. It was a succession of entertainments similar to those you are seeing here, but with different capitals for their _locale_. After having accompanied Prince Schwartzenberg a second time, but on that occasion to St. Petersburg, I exchanged the delightful life of society and drawing-rooms for that of the barracks of my regiment, then quartered at Buda. The transition could not have been more startling if I had retired into a Trappist monastery, when suddenly the whole of Europe breathed fire and flame.
‘I was thirty-four years old, and although the first days of my youth were not idly spent, chance has done more for me during the latter period than I had reason to expect. My mind was soon made up. I decided to go to the spot where the fire raged most fiercely, to embark upon a life so entirely at variance with my former habits. I was living with Baron de ----, a friend of my childhood, who was a major in my regiment, and who like myself was calculating the few chances of rapid promotion in the Austrian service.
‘“This,” I said to him one morning, “is a unique opportunity to provide for the future. Let us go to the Russians and offer them our swords as partisans. This bids fair to be an easy and lucrative campaign, likely to lead to many things by its quickly succeeding phases. Besides, it is sometimes sweet to embark in adventures, and to trust everything to fate. As for me, I have made up my mind to go. Will you, too, come?”[22]