Invited lately to an evening-party at Lord Lansdowne's[190],çoisRené I was presented by His Majesty to a severe-looking lady, seventy-three years old: she was dressed in crape, wore a black veil like a diadem on her white hair, and resembled a queen who had abdicated her throne. She greeted me in a solemn voice with three mangled sentences from the _Génie du Christianisme_; then she said to me, with no less solemnity:
If she had said to me, "I am Lady Macbeth," I should have believed her. I had seen her formerly on the stage in all the strength of her talent. One has but to live to find again those wrecks of one century cast by the billows of time upon the shore of another century.
My French visitors in London were M. le Duc[192] and Madame la Duchesse de Guiche[193], of whom I will talk to you at Prague; M. le Marquis de Custine, whom I had seen as a child at Fervacques; and Madame la Vicomtesse de Noailles[194], as agreeable, witty and gracious as though she were still wandering, at fourteen years of age, in the beautiful gardens of Méréville.
People were weary of pleasure; the ambassadors were longing to go on leave; Prince Esterhazy was preparing to set out for Vienna: he hoped to be summoned to the Congress, for already they were speaking of a congress. M. Rothschild[195] was returning to France after concluding with his brother the Russian loan of twenty-three million roubles. The Duke of Bedford[196] had fought a duel with the huge Duke of Buckingham[197], at the bottom of a pit, in Hyde Park; an insulting song against the King of France, sent over from Paris and printed in the London papers, amused the Radical English mob, which laughed without knowing at what.
I left, on the 6th of June, for Royal Lodge, where the King had gone. He had invited me to dine and sleep.
I saw George IV. again on the 12th, 13th and 14th, at His Majesty's levee, drawing-room and ball. On the 24th, I gave a fête to the Prince[198] and Princess[199] of Denmark: the Duke of York had invited himself to it.
In earlier times, the kindness with which the Marchioness Conyngham treated me would have been an important thing: she told me that the idea of His Britannic Majesty's visit to the Continent was not quite abandoned. I religiously kept this great secret locked in my bosom. What important dispatches would have been written on this word of a favourite in the time of Mesdames de Verneuil[200], de Maintenon[201], des Ursins[202], de Pompadour! For the rest I should have heated myself unduly to obtain any information out of the Court in London: in vain do you speak, they do not listen to you.