Farewell, My Queen by Black Moishe (children's ebooks online txt) 📗

on? There is an anecdote that struck me when I heard it. A young boy of noble birth is authorized to go out alone for the first time. As he is aware of his family’s financial woes, he enjoys himself, but is careful not to be too extravagant. Upon his return, he proudly shows his grandfather the money he has not spent. The old man, instead of congratulating him, looks him contemptuously up and down, takes the almost intact purse the lad had been given, opens a window, and throws it out . . . Hands trained in that manner had certainly not learned how to hold fast . . . They did, however, know how to throw away. They were wonderfully skilled at throwing away. And the domestics behaved like their masters. At Versailles, it was incredible what they threw out the window. Complaints, objections, reprimands—nothing had any effect. At night, I was sometimes awakened by the smashing of glazed verandas. But I, Agathe, never threw anything away, and unlike theirs, my hands have learned to clutch firmly. How, then, did I so easily become involved with people who did not care deeply enough about anything to grasp it and hold it? Easily is not the right word. Everything is starting to desert me: words, my desire for words, persistence in applying myself to the task . . .The rain with its frenzied behavior shows no sign of letting up. Will Vienna, already half demolished, finally drown? I close my eyes. I sleep without really going to sleep. I live without really being alive . . .

At last, one morning, the sun came back, and I sobbed with relief. I wept with my eyes full of light. And I realized that it was not the waiting for summer that was wearing me down, but the fear that when summer came I might have lost the ability to enjoy it. I was wrong. I can still enjoy it. Late in the evening, sitting at the open window, looking out at a sky that is still bright, at daylight that still lingers, I am happy. And one pleasure especially is renewed: feeling the softness of the air. But in Vienna, the season of mild air is short-lived. The midsummer period is too hot, storm-filled, and exhausting. Mosquitoes come, indeed all sorts of insects, carrying strange diseases. Something not unlike the muggy spells we had in Versailles can occur here, but in Versailles such spells were accompanied by splendid skies; there is nothing like that in Vienna. Instead, sticky weather means pestilence, the plague commemorated in that monument on the Graben; stealthily, it finds its way in, and kills. I am invited to make a stay at the Prince de Ligne’s house in the mountains, at Kaltenberg, as I do each year. It is a delightful place, like all his residences. Delightful in its gaiety and in the lighthearted pleasure that the Prince brings to whatever he does. And even when he is not doing anything, there is the vibrant feeling that happiness is just moments away. For the coming summer, the Prince has promised me one of his prettiest houses, at any rate my favorite. He owns nine of them: little wooden houses. “My” house is right beside a river (it is called “the Angler’s House,” for an angler fishes with a line, à la Ligne, does he not?). In the middle of each of its shutters, a heart-shaped hole has been cut . . .

I have waited till October, not to come back home, but to pick up my writing again. During my stay at the Prince’s house, there was an accident that distressed me a good deal: a governess in the employ of the Princess de Ligne set fire to her dress. She was very quickly transformed into a human torch. Instead of rendering her assistance, the lackeys that came rushing in thought they were seeing a ghost. They fled, their screams as appalling as those of the unfortunate victim. Nothing else unpleasant occurred to mar our vacation . . . A month in the country, a month of indulging the delusion that we were living in a timeless world, that nothing had taken place, ever . . .The Prince has mastered to perfection the art of forgetting what one does not wish to remember. And the only expression of gratitude he expects from his guests, I believe, is that they follow his example and decree themselves young, heedless, eternally magnificent. I find it difficult.

One afternoon when I was dozing under a tree, he came over and lectured me in the kindliest way: “It is risky to take naps at our age, it gives the Grim Reaper a hold. And that, my dear, is a concession we must never grant him.” He slid his thumb across his front teeth. (Occasionally, the Prince’s manners are atrocious—they are part of his charm! That particular gesture gives him the opportunity to emphasize the fact that he still has teeth.) He moved an armchair and sat down, facing me. “You are about to tell me that you are tired. But you are not, absolutely not! It is all in your mind, I assure you.” When I insisted, he said, “Look at me. Do I look tired?” (He shook the two gold rings he wore in his ears.) “And yet I could easily choose to be old; it’s entirely up to me. Like the others, I have the necessary qualifications.” That he “had the qualifications” was a charming way to put it, I thought.

In the Prince de Ligne’s household, only French is spoken. Life goes on exactly the way it did in France during the reign of Louis XVI. The same habits, the same manners, the same affectations of speech, even the same fashions. The Prince’s current circle of personal acquaintances call him Charlie, just as his close friends had at Versailles. Concessions to the present day are kept to a minimum.