This story gave rise to others of the same nature, and many were the anecdotes related of sudden death, the summons which startles men in the midst of revelry and festival, at council-board or in the judgment-seat. Some of these are well known, others would have but small interest for the general reader, but one of the most curious was told by the prince himself with the piquant raciness in which he so much excelled, and which has graven the history in my memory. It happened during a time, too, which possessed a peculiar interest to me—a time which, in spite of its importance, has found but few chroniclers—the period of the occupation of Paris by the allied armies, and the visit of the sovereigns of Europe, in 1815. Men’s minds were so agitated by the crowding of events the one upon the other, by dread anticipations of what would come next, that public feeling was taken by surprise, and scarcely had time to set up its own standard, or leisure to record its own impressions; this I take to be the reason why so few of the memoirs of our day contain any special description of the state of society at that time.
“I had been dining with a circle of wary, ever-watchful diplomates of the lesser kind, Russians, Austrians, and Prussians,” began the prince; “every word had been weighed in the balance of prudence and _prévoyance_ before I had ventured to give it utterance. Not a syllable of the conversation of others had been permitted to fall unheeded on my ear, and the extreme tension of intellect which it had required, both in weighing my own words and in watching those of others, had, at last, so wearied my mind, that I experienced a feeling of vacancy, an exhaustion of moral power, which might be compared to nothing but inebriation. When the repast was over, I strolled forth on foot to seek my old friend and comforter, Bergasse. I knew by experience that an hour spent with him would restore my spirit to its equilibrium, and soothe, by the counter-irritation of his fund of whimsical argument, the agitation of my nervous system. He was not at home, however, and I was turning away, disappointed, from his lodgings, when his valet, an old confidential servant, followed me with the information, that, if I needed Monsieur very much, he had left word where he was to be found; he had gone to the _soirée_ at Madame de Krudener’s; it was to be a grand gala night at her house, and the Emperor Alexander was to be among the guests!