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CHAPTER VII
AN UGLY DUCHESS
The town of Mitau is an ugly place, built near a dull and sluggish river, rudely spanned by a bridge of boats at the market-place. The palace, however, is a fine building, and there dwelt the ugly Duchess Anna Iwanowna—bad luck forever to her!—and there could have dwelt Count Saxe if he would but have obliged the duchess by marrying her. But he could not swallow the pill.
We were in Mitau from June, 1726, when those rascally Courlanders pretended they meant to make Count Saxe Duke of Courland, until August, 1727, when we made our way out of the place—only twenty of us; and not without trouble, either, of which I shall speak presently.
To this rag of a remnant of twenty was Count Saxe’s following reduced. It is true my master had three hundred men, many of them my Uhlans, the “Clear-the-way-boys,” intrenched on the island in the Lake of Uzmaiz, five days’ march away, where they stood guard over a military chest of considerable value, and a large quantity of arms and ammunition. Our enemies would have given their ears to know where our money and arms were—for they knew Count Saxe had both—and it 73 finally took near five thousand Russians a month to find them.
I reckon those fourteen months in Mitau as going far to atone for our sins. It was a time of negotiations, contentions, bickerings, proclamations and counter proclamations, Count Saxe on the one side, and the Russian Empire on the other; the Courlanders in between, handing out lies by the shovelful, with equal impartiality on either hand! What liars they were! There was an open green field near the town, where the Diet met in those summers of 1726 and 1727, which Count Saxe called the Field of Lies, after the celebrated spot in France, where the heirs of Charlemagne met to divide the empire. I am sure more lies were told about the duchy of Courland than were told about the division of the empire of Charlemagne. We had promises enough, and even votes enough to elect Count Saxe Duke of Courland, if only he could have put his hand on ten thousand stout soldiers, to make the election good. The Russians very rightly paid no attention to the pretensions of the Holsteiners, and the Hessians, and the rest of the crown snatchers, as Madame Riano had called them. They were but lath and plaster; but Count Saxe was a man well fashioned by nature of her strongest metal, and him the Russians reckoned with, and him only.
We had but one piece of good luck in Mitau, and that was the place in which we were lodged. It was an old stone schloss near the river, and had been the residence of the dukes of Courland until they screwed the money from their miserable people with which to build the fine palace. They had made themselves secure from 74 their lieges in case the lieges should rise against their masters; for the walls of the old schloss were nine feet thick, with mere slits for windows, and it was surrounded by a moat, with a drawbridge. Moreover, there was a brick tunnel a half of a quarter of a mile long, which debouched at the river’s edge. The market-place, however, had sprung up at that point, and also, the bridge of boats, so that it was no longer available for the escape of armed men.
We did not reckon upon either defense or escape, until it was too late—the first, the last, and the only time Count Saxe was ever caught napping by his enemies. And it was by my forethought—I say it with diffidence—that the drawbridge was put in working order. It came about in this manner.
The ugly duchess, having fallen in love with Count Saxe the first time she saw him, as all the women did, poor souls, they could not help themselves—invited him to lodge with his suite at the palace, instead of at the old schloss with the rats. Never were there such rats. We used to have regular battues of rats, killing them with our swords. But Count Saxe was wary—he had no mind to be lodged too far away from his horses. As it was, our stabling was at an inconvenient distance from the schloss. But how to get away from the pressing attentions of a lady is a problem; all will admit that.
One morning, however, a placard was found affixed to the palace gates, making light of Count Saxe’s alleged intention to take up his quarters at the palace. He happened to arrive just as a great crowd had assembled, laughing and jeering. He rode up, dismounted, 75 tore the placard from the iron gateway, cuffed half a dozen grinning fellows, and like a walking volcano marched into the palace. He demanded instantly to see the duchess, and after tearing the placard to shreds in her presence, declared that nothing would induce him to subject her to such indignities; consequently he would remain at the schloss with the rats. The duchess glared at him, and in her turn cuffed a saucy page that laughed behind his hand; and from that hour she was his enemy. No woman ever forgives a man for being more prudent than she, and although I swear I know nothing of Count Saxe’s affairs with the ladies, I will admit this, that he was not reckoned a prudish man exactly.
When he returned to the schloss, and with mirth and heartfelt joy told me of the thing, my reply was to go and examine the drawbridge. Our arms and accoutrements were always kept in perfect order, so there was no need to inspect them. The chains and blocks of the drawbridge were rusty and moss-grown, but I speedily got them in working order, well oiled, and the drawbridge moved up and down as smoothly as my lady’s fan opening and shutting. Count Saxe, seeing me at work, with several men, came to find out what we were doing.
“I am putting the drawbridge in order, sir, because you were so extremely decorous with the duchess,” I said to him; at which he shouted with laughter, but owned I was right.
There was an open plaza in front of the schloss, with several mean streets making off from it. Within was 76 a courtyard of some extent, with a few dismal trees growing, and around us was the stagnant green water of the moat. Oh, what a dreary place that was!
I had mountains of writing to do, those devilish Courlanders presenting endless petitions, protests, pieces, justifications, and other rubbish, all of which had to be answered civilly. We kept up a brisk correspondence with France when we could; but the Courlanders have no notion that a courier is a sacred object, so a vast number of our letters never got farther than Mitau.
Our communication from the rest of the world was scant and uncertain. Even Mademoiselle Lecouvreur’s letters rarely reached us, although we knew she wrote faithfully and often to Count Saxe. We knew scarce anything that was happening outside, except that Monsieur Voltaire was in England, and Count Saxe hoped he would remain there.
There was one person of whom I thought daily and hourly, but could hear no word of—Mademoiselle Francezka Capello. All I knew was that she and Madame Riano had set forth from Paris, in great state, on their travels. I was not the only person athirst for news of Francezka. Gaston Cheverny was as eager. He wrote continually to his brother Regnard imploring and demanding to know of Mademoiselle Capello’s welfare; but he admitted, with the utmost chagrin, that Regnard, in those of his letters which were received, never so much as mentioned Mademoiselle Capello’s name, which led me to infer that Regnard Cheverny knew all about her.
I have never known a man who early acquired a 77 fortune that was not a calculator and an acute reckoner of his own and other men’s chances. But Gaston Cheverny was not a calculator in the mean sense. The motto of his house well described him. It ran, in the old French—Un Loy, Un Foy, Un Roy. One faith was Gaston Cheverny’s in all things. He was full of youthful spirits, of ridiculous young daring, always wanting to achieve the impossible, and of the sort, when he could not conquer the world, to beat the watch. But those men are to be loved. Gaston Cheverny had great capacity for love and romance. The image of Francezka Capello had been deeply graven on his heart, and I saw what one does not often see in a young man barely one and twenty—a real devotion to an ideal, a faithfulness that can and will endure.
He was not one of the loose-tongued sort, who tell all to everybody. I think he never spoke of Mademoiselle Capello to any one but to me, and